Chapter 14

Beginnings

I'm really glad I listened to Yorin when she suggested I take the time to pick out a couple good books for the trip south. The empire's roads are wide and well maintained, and the carriage, even though it's sized for one horse, has plenty of room for two girls to spread out when they're the only passengers.

But horses are slow!

They're not supposed to be, are they? Aren't they this whole concept of speed? Well, apparently not at a casual trot and pulling a box on wheels.

No, that's not fair. They're not slow. The horse is merely maintaining a pace suited for distance over speed. If we suddenly had to rush, the horse is fully capable of much higher speeds, but only for a time.

At the given pace, though, we'll be two weeks getting to Dabun, the town the Empress is sending us to. Hence the books. Which, surprisingly, were a pretty common thing in the capitol. Apparently, making them was more labor intensive than resource draining, so magic made their mass production as easy as the printing press.

I consider myself a fairly average reader in terms of speed, but Yorin panicked that I was going through my first book too fast when I got through the first half-dozen chapters in one sitting, and we made a point to pick up a few more in cities along the way.

She tried to convince me to make one of them the temple's holy book, claiming it would help me relate to the people better, but I begged out, imagining the dull slog that seemed to define every holy book back home. This trip is going to be long enough as it is.

But we don't spend the entire time reading. There's breaks, of course, times for the horse to rest and drink while we have a bite to eat, ourselves, or stretch our legs. And we spend most nights at inns and stations along the way. We even take the time for Yorin to teach me a few local card games we can play mostly from the hand.

What we do more than anything else, though, is talk, or rather, Yorin does. She's taking the opportunity of the trip to make sure I know everything I need to know about the Serazin province Dabun resides in. She covers local culture, taboos, seasonal festivals, primary produce and exports, and the history of the ruling noble family, as well as that of the governing family of Dabun, itself. She sprinkles in spontaneous quizzes on particular details even when we're talking about other things, usually under the guise of idle conversation, to make sure the information is sticking.

For my part, when I choose the topic, it's usually about technological advancements from home. At first, it was combustion engines and aeronautics that would have made the trip over and done with already. As the trip goes on, however, I spend more and more of it focusing in on things like steel spring shock absorbers, suspensions and the value of inflated rubber tires.

The cushions in the carriage are soft and luxuriantly padded, to be sure, but while the road may be wide and well maintained, it's not exactly asphalt. It's mostly a dirt road composed primarily of gravel and sand. Easy to maintain for long distances without need for fancy supplies, but rarely perfectly flat. The solid wood carriage wheels relay every bump, every time stone shifts away from the wheel's weight, every jostle and shift right up into the carriage, itself, until I feel like I'm going to shake apart.

There are surely rougher rides, and if it were for a day or two, I doubt I'd care, but two weeks is a long time.

Yorin listens attentively to these rants, and seems to seriously consider them. Obviously, I'm not the only one the promise of a smoother ride appeals to. Unfortunately, she says that I should speak with a wheelwright when we get to Dabun. Reworking the carriage we're already in to such a degree would be too great a task for any station post to finish in a timely manner.

And so the journey continues. Lessons, diatribes and a dwindling selection of books fill my time. The two blessings are that the relatively heavy weight of sand and gravel compared to regular dirt means that at least we aren't eternally choked by road dust, and that the weather remains fairly mild throughout the trip. The couple times we meet rain, we just close up the sides of the carriage and carry on. The carriage is even insulated, so there's not even any chill or damp to concern ourselves with.

By far, the worst part is the lack of excitement. At first, admiring the beautiful country side was nice, but miles and miles of it quickly made it far less interesting. I was actually looking forward to the idea of attacks by monsters and bandits, but the vast majority of the trip is over what is essentially the equivalent of an interstate highway, and it's extensively patrolled to ensure its safety. We aren't even really out of touch with the capitol, as every way station has runners just waiting to carry Yorin's regular updates back with any other mail or packages anyone might have.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It's all far more ... civilized than I expected. I hate to phrase it that way because it makes it sound like I thought poorly of them, but the truth is I was simply once again misled by fiction, where wagons like ours are regularly waylaid in the vast tracks of untamed wilderness between isolated villages. After she finishes laughing at me, Yorin sums it up succinctly.

"That sounds like a great way to set up an exciting story, but a poor way to manage a stable society."

Even at pit stops, practicing with my gun is obviously not an option for fear of startling the horse. Every night, I strip and clean that pistol to get the day's dust off of it and make sure the road hasn't rattled anything loose. The first time she saw me start disassembling the "heavenly artifact," I swear Yorin nearly had a heart attack, but it doesn't even draw a blink from her now, beyond her own attempts to commit every component and step to memory.

It's not that it's strictly necessary for me to clean and oil it so often, as there really isn't that much dust on the road, but the alternative is it just sitting there as an unforgettable weight on my hip. After ten days, even that becomes unbearable and I finally demand the horse and driver take a day off and we take a day for a makeshift range.

Yorin indulges me with that motherly smile and watches me with a studying gaze, but turns down trying the weapon out for herself when I offer.

And then finally the day comes when we crest a rise in the road and catch our first glimpse of Dabun. It's bigger than I expected, but not by a whole lot. I figured a village like what Yorin and the empress had described to me would maybe have fifty people, tops, would be comprised of simple log cabins and dirt roads, and the closest thing to a doctor in the place would be the town butcher.

Again, I'm shamed.

Dabun isn't big, at least not by my reckoning, but it's what my world would call a small town, a place big enough to have its own supermarket and maybe a public school on the outskirts. Perhaps a gas station that doubles as a restaurant.

Of course, none of that is actually here. The town of perhaps several hundred people looks straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting if the man did Asiatic landscapes instead of British ones. A cool morning mist that probably isn't nearly as thick down there as it looks from here swirls around its buildings, and a massive wooden wall that manages to look more charming than militaristic surrounds it. From here, I can see the gray of the town's cobblestone roads, and the chimneys are just starting to smoke. Outside the wall is a mix of farms and a light forest.

Yorin takes the opportunity to point out a clearing in the forest on the opposite side of the town from us. "Do you see that, Remmi? We need to meet with the Mayor first, but that area is where your land is going to be. It isn't ready farmland, and it's gone wild without occupation for a decade or so, but that also means you'll be able to do whatever you want with it."

I grew up surrounded by woods, so rather than seeming like poor real estate, I find the prospect enticing. I probably won't want to do all of the work myself, but I did see some tool proficiencies in my general skills tab. It might be fun to do at least some of it with my own two hands.

And, honestly, it's probably the only way I'm going to get a modern, western style home. Though on second thought, maybe getting at least some of the local flavor could be nice. It would make guests feel more welcome.

As we come down the slope toward the village, we start seeing its primary produce - horned rabbits. Yorin had told me a great deal about the little guys. About the size of a small dog, horned rabbits are notably bigger than the rabbits I'm familiar with, which don't seem to exist within the empire, and are technically a species of monster. Because of their low aggression and general weakness, however, they made excellent candidates for livestock.

Nearly every part of the horned rabbit's body is useful for something. The meat is a staple of the local diet, the fur is both soft and resistant to the elements, making it good for both utilitarian and fashionable clothing, and its horn has properties that make it valuable in everything from medicine to low level enchantment.

They also breed, well, like rabbits, meaning exhausting them basically isn't possible. In fact, the domesticated population long ago flooded back into the wild population, and nobody apparently cared. They just ramped up harvesting until nearly all other hunting and meat livestock became irrelevant. And long generations of being both domesticated by the locals and freely mixing with those that are have made them overly comfortable with the presence of humanoid beings. So much so that they're even sold to other, wealthier regions as exotic pets.

In other words, there's a lot of them. I was told this, but Yorin's words didn't prepare me for the sheer volume that vague value represents. They aren't overrunning the place, but the closer we get, the easier it is to spot them, and rather than running away from our carriage, most of them peek over the grasses more in curiosity than anything.

The front gate through the town walls is wide open, and not only is there only a single guard out front, he's more interested in playing with some nearby rabbits than in evaluating us. All he does is look up, grin and give us a wave of greeting.

I look to Yorin, but she doesn't act like anything's out of place at all. Instead, she gives me that motherly smile that looks so out of place.

"Let me guess, also not like your books? Remmi, there is little of threat out here, and certainly not from a one horse carriage. There is no reason for him to think we are anything but visitors."

"And no entry tax?"

She looks at me funny there. "Why would you want to discourage visitors and clients by charging them for even entering?"

I shrug. "Road maintenance?"

The priestess sighs and shakes her head. "Maybe I should have lectured you more on common economic practices ..."

Ah well, I let it roll off my shoulders as the carriage passes the wall and enters the city proper. I go back to gawking like I did when we first left the capitol, delighted at the presence of homey, local enterprises. There's a bakery, a blacksmith, a wheelwright - I remind myself to visit that one about the carriage remodel - and a number of produce merchants up and down the main street. Many have some variant of horned rabbit on their signage.

Yeah, I decide, this feels good. Finally, a proper place to start an adventure.