CHAPTER 79: Dathrod
Two days into our trip, travelling on an overgrown and winding track, we were already well into a forested area. We commandeered one of the woodcutter carts with two pulling horses. Only the Goldcastle team and Horn travelled to the village. Antonetta stayed at the woodcutter’s camp since there was no point in bringing her with if the village was unable to care for her. Before we left, I apologised to Orilay for dumping Antonetta onto him like that, and to be honest, I fully misused his philanthropic nature. I didn’t feel like a parent, although Orilay made it clear to me that he would treat Antonetta as my sister. The scale of the responsibility weighed heavily on my mind. Hana on the other hand seemed to be smiling a lot more since I adopted Antonetta. Back in Endeavour, Hana and Antonetta enjoyed hot baths together while I kept the guard company on top of the fort, something I was long used to doing, seeing it was withing the restricting fifty-paces of each other. After that, both her and the girl seemed to bond with each other. I felt glad about that.
Travelling light, we decided that speed was our best option meaning there was little room on the cart for extras, although most of the spare space included surplus supplies we could spare for the villagers.
The trees we travelled through looked different, largely unknown to me, and according to Ara, predominantly related to ironwood trees. The ironwood trees reminded me of gnarly old men with their green Spanish moss hanging from their branches, making the fantasy forest trees look like archetypal bearded Ents. If someone asked me to show them what a fantasy forest looked like, I would point them to the Ironwood Forest. Unlike the Blister Oak Forest, I didn’t sense any friendly intent from those trees and decided to rather stay away from them if possible. Occasionally, as if bucking the trend, spare groves of blister oaks would appear along with a few other natives I recognised, normally in the odd glade that dotted our route. But the glades seemed to become scarcer the deeper we travelled.
As we sat around the campfire in once such glade, Horn told us that villager didn’t dare light fires in the forest when caught out in the wilderness at night. Fires only attracted unwanted attention and not all forest animals were afraid of fire, some were intelligent enough to figure out that a person, or a small group would make easy targets. Villagers mainly operated during the day, the night being left to the forest denizens and they seemed to live in harmony that way. On the rare occasion a strong monster would emerge from the forest and help would be needed. From what Horn told us, it seemed to be an increasing occurrence in the last few summer seasons. When I asked him why, he didn’t know, only stating that something deeper in the forests might be forcing the creatures to flee.
I of course wasn’t taking any chances. I sent out enough golems to patrol the area. I even got Ara to design an advanced forest scouting golem, similar to the ones I left in the Dryad store, that could ambush dangerous animals by using the transfer storage skill embedded as an attribute on them. In that way I could get a restful sleep, although I still battled given the strange noises, even Horn slept uneasily. How he or merchants travelled in that forest only they knew. Judging by the number of captured creatures Ara identified in the core the next morning, it would be fair to say my actions were prudent.
Apparently, merchants travelling to the villages, usually did so accompanied by large teams of adventurers. That also had the side effect of pushing up prices of goods while also making those necessary supply trips few and far between. Since the monster invasion of the Blister Oak Forest, merchants delayed going to these remote villages, fearing they would be attacked on the Shimmerstal to Obon road. Villages in the region battled as a result, suffering shortages in basic necessities like salt. Through Karato, my salt request to Schneider resulted in more than enough stock for our Bullfrog operations in Obon. In fact, I had so much I took a large amount of it for skinning and preserving operations in Camp Endeavour. That turned out to be a boon as we could capitalize on a good opportunity to network with the villagers. On the other hand, I didn’t want to undercut the trading, but I couldn’t shake the feeling villagers were getting a raw deal because with no room to manoeuvre or negotiate better prices, they were stuck like fish in a barrel.
From what Horn told me, resources were abundant in the area, leather, preserved goods, wild honey, mead and even gold in small amounts could be found there. It was appallingly apparent was that the travelling merchants were treating the villagers as their own best kept secret. Obviously what lacked was some decent competition. Since we reopened the Old Forest Road, with the woodcutter camp as a midway supply point, we could trade with all the scattered villages in the area with ease while forcing the merchants to go through us. I could see that Camp Endeavour was going to become an important trading route in the future.
It made me excited to think of the future possibilities. The little mentioned existence of gold tickled my interest as well. From Horn’s description, alluvial gold was the main source for the metal which was why it was so scarce. The sources were not too far away from the villages, but distance limited the actual search time, making it a scarce resource. I needed to give more thought to what could be done about that.
“We’re here.”
Said Horn suddenly. His village, located in a large glade, suddenly emerged out of the forest. Had Horn not warned us, we would have travelled through the village without even realising it. Something about the forest lulled us into a sense of complacency. We stopped the cart in a large area in what looked like the centre of the village.
The village looked peaceful. Wooden homes with smoking chimney’s lay hodgepodge inside a wooden barricaded fence, although the fence sounded more like a good idea on paper than it looked like in reality. I couldn’t imagine for a moment that it would stop anything determined to get in. Not even a group of goblins scouts would have a problem knocking it down.
There must have been less than twenty families living there. I wondered how they managed to survive. According to Horn, living there was difficult, but satisfying. No one he knew entertained the idea of leaving, not that their situation didn’t have its own challenges. Only when difficult monsters were involved did villagers experience any hardship.
Folks suddenly aware of our arrival greeted Horn with optimistic enthusiasm. People came out of their homes like ants out of their nests. Although the people suffered, they didn’t look malnourished, indicating the surrounds supplied enough food for them to live. They seemed happy to see us, greeting our invasive presence with courteous glances. Soon we were surrounded by a buzz of children and adults.
“Welcome, welcome, welcome.”
Said a booming voice from a well rounded but friendly looking character with the same stubbled beard as Horn and the rest of the village men from the look of things. Must be a village thing. I assumed the speaker was the village chief. He carried on as he personally greeted each of us, one by one.
“Thank you for coming. I’m the chief of the village. Most people forgot my name so you can just call me chief. I’m assuming that you’re the adventurers we sent Horn to find?”
I nodded as Horn answered on behalf of me.
“This is Shane Karosaki, leader of the woodcutter’s camp and the adventurer team. They call him Boss over there. This here is Hana and that’s Elle.”
A reverent silence hit the villagers when he introduced Elle. The chieftain looked a bit flustered and asked,
“My dear, are you a half elf?”
“That’s right. Is there a problem with that?”
Elle countered his question, becoming a bit defensive.
“Oh no, no. There’s no problem. We consider it a good sign if elves grace our village. Even a half elf will always be welcome here.”
I wasn’t too sure what that was all about, but I decided to leave them to explain it later.
“Um…chief. We’re going to rest up for today and take it easy. If you can show us where we can stay, I’ll leave Horn to show you the supplies we brought with us.”
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“Supplies?”
“Yes. I’ll leave Horn to explain.”
“Oh yes, yes. Excellent. Please come, please come. I’ll let my wife Amelia, show you to the house poor Antonella’s family stayed in. We haven’t touched it yet since he passed away, poor man. Sad story about her mother too you know.”
He lamented the sad tale of Antonella’s mother all the way to their house, at the far southern end of the village near a closed gate leading out towards the southern forest. The house, little different to the rest, consisted of two bedrooms and a kitchen. After we entered, the chieftain said,
“Well, I’ll leave you to settle in and rest. We’ll invite you to supper a little while from now so feel free to make yourself at home and use whatever you need. We’ll call you soon. Oh don’t worry about the horses, we’ll feed them and look after them. It’s best we put them in the barn with ours tonight, won’t attract the monsters that way.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
We all said at once. But he didn’t explain, he just turned and headed back the way we came.
“Well, toodles. See you later.”
He said, leaving us speechless in a quiet, cold house.
“This house is haunted.”
Said Elle.
“Yeah.”
Hana agreed.
“Oh, grow up you two. There are monsters out there that are far more dangerous than any supposed threat from imaginary ghosts.”
I admonished them. There was a lot of work to do.
“Elle, you take that room, and we’ll stick with the main bedroom. I’ll get some firewood I saw outside and start a fire in the hearth.”
The main bedroom seemed to have two basic beds side by side. It didn’t matter in the end. Elle soon decided to join us in the main bedroom and would sleep with Hana in the same bed as her. While I left the two ladies to set up the main bedroom to their liking, I spent a moment absorbing the atmosphere of the house. Once there used to be happiness. I could see it in the carvings on the wall where someone with amazing artistic talent left detailed reliefs of their lives together. The furnishings were thoughtfully made, the chairs were made to fit the height of the family members. At the dinner table, a fourth, smaller chair spoke of the hope for another child to join the family. Kitchen cutlery and utensils lay ready for a family that would never meet again. Golly, I was about to burst into tears so I moved on to Antonella’s bedroom thinking I could get away from that demoralising feeling, but that’s where it really hit me. The other room was no doubt Antonella’s. Even though their family’s lives were sparse, her bedroom contained many memorabilia, someone made for a young girl. All those things, her bed with its knitted bedding covers, the spare chair, her open cupboard with her few clothes still stacked one on top of another said she left in a hurry. I seriously doubted she willingly left these items behind. In one moment, she left all of that behind, knowing that she would never come back there again. Even when she heard I would go to her village, she still never dared ask me to collect her things. Tears rolled down my face, as I realised what a brave girl she was. A duet of sniffs behind my back, made me realise I wasn’t alone in realising the tragedy of the moment. We all ended up with a group hug anointed with tears.
When we finally recovered from our sombre melancholy, Hana suggested an idea we all heartily agreed on.
“Why don’t we take everything here and store it for Antonella?”
Heck, that was such a good idea I even suggested we store all the furniture and everything else in transfer space storage when we returned home, to which they readily agreed. I’d sort it out later with the chieftain.
That night the chieftain and his family entertained us with a hearty meal made from a variety of vegetables, some that I had never seen before, and locally sourced meat. All those items they found locally in abundance. It was ironic that there was no way for the village to export the one commodity they all enjoyed in abundance and to which the other cities and towns would pay well for. If they were able to export, it would forever change the nature of the place. It was obvious the local villages had lots to offer Obon and Shimmerstal with improved transport and cold storage. But there were more pressing matters that needed to be dealt with first. We tried to discover the nature of the creature that bothered them. Unfortunately, none of the survivors of the attacks ever spotted the animal and those that did, only saw moving shadows. Whatever it was, it was quick and brutal, and seemed to pick its timing to suit an ambushing style attack. That didn’t bode well because it meant the monster had good intelligence which meant catching it would be problematic. After our long visit we returned to our temporary accommodation and quickly fell asleep, but not before I released a host of stored golems to scour the surrounding forest.
A week later and we were bitterly frustrated, still no nearer to finding our shadowy, Ironwood monster than when we first started. The creature disappeared like flatulence in the wind. We even made like helpless bait, wondering pointlessly around the forest until even the forest creatures became so accustomed to our presence that they lost all fear of us. Eventually, the accumulated stress from days of fruitless searching forced me to call a break day for the Goldcastle team. My dad always said that in his life, his breaks were sometimes where the best ideas came from. Perhaps we underestimated the intelligence of the creature. My greatest concern, that we would leave the village only for it to later return. Even worse, the creature realised our purpose for being there and simply waited for us to give up and leave. In which case I was even willing to pretend to leave only to come back from behind, via the forest route. Perhaps we could catch it off guard that way.
Having pitched the idea to Hana and Elle I could see they liked the idea, and we all agreed on a well-deserved day off. Horn told us of a river spot where some of the villagers liked to go fossicking for gold. We found the place in a small, pleasant glade tucked into the forest about two hours walk from the village. The glade wasn’t very big, but it made for a wonderful resting spot. Because we didn’t intend to spend the day guarding our position, I sent out a raft of golems to keep an eye out for us in the forest while the three of us sat around the river, dipping our feet into the cool, but pleasant water. Soon we swam in the river which came up to about our chests. I wore underwear tied with drawstrings, the ladies deciding on close fitting, full body garments made with thicker material but cut off at the shoulders and knees. I enjoyed spending some time chatting with them, but it wasn’t long before I decided to do some gold fossicking behind the bigger rocks where the current would drop heavier materials. Ara made a pull action suction pump out of thin Greythril metal for me, which allowed me to suck out small stones between the deeper cracks in the river, the contents of which I would empty into my hand, slowly pulling out the small specks of gold I found. It wasn’t a lot, but I calculated I could find half an ounce of gold for a few hours fossicking which wasn’t too bad. I found one particular crack deeper underwater that required me to dive a little, but I had a good feeling I would get some good finds there.
As my head broke the water’s surface and looking forward to sifting through my haul, my eye caught a movement on the embankment. I instantly froze as a chill ran through my body. Whatever moved, it wasn’t natural. It had purpose. In my searches, I moved upstream, and the girls were downstream of me sitting on the bank chatting about something, just about a stone throw away.
I watched that area of the bank while quick thoughts raced through my head.
It wasn’t five heartbeats later when Ara outlined a part of the forest, just above the embankment to the side of me. Tensed like a tiger ready to pounce, the creature’s outline clearly showed a massive body facing towards the unsuspecting ladies,. For that creature, about the size of a minibus, only one jump would be needed to kill both Hana and Elle. For the first time I heard Ara with an anxious voice.