The hill we’d fallen down was steep and rocky, and Caveria took one look at it and decided we wouldn’t climb it. She led the way in the same direction, but following winding forest paths down in the valley instead, even if it risked running into the goblins again. I was tense and my body hurt, but we didn’t run into anything. We marched on in silence.

It took several hours, but then we reached a low ridge to our right. Caveria headed up the slope, to where the road was running along the top.

“Let’s wait here,” she said. “They will stop when they come here.”

“Are you sure?” I said. I was beginning to be very tired, and hungry.

“Yes,” she said curtly, and sat down on a rock and did not look at me. I found another rock and sat down.

An hour later, maybe, the rest of the party descended from the hill behind us on the road. They didn’t seem surprised to see us, but they were happy. Tiriel was very happy, and gave me a hug.

Serah just looked at me and Caveria with a strange smile, and told me she was glad we were back.

We made camp fairly soon after that, crossing a few more hills. They were getting lower, so maybe we were leaving the hill country.

The next morning, Caveria woke me while it was still dark.

“Get up,” she whispered. “Hero school starts now.” I stared up at her blearily.

“What...?” I said.

“It’s about an hour until dawn,” she said in a quiet voice. “Get up. Time to start your training.” She pulled off my blanket and began rolling it up. “Don’t wake the others. Follow me.”

I yawned and hesitated, but followed her. She and Arndrir had talked, and Arndrir had told me during our evening training session that they would split the training. He would focus on sword skills, including that martial arts-like focus and body exercises. Caveria would focus on... other useful hero skills, as he put it. I didn’t know what that meant, but at least she didn’t seem to want to kill me. On the other hand, maybe she wanted to torture me.

It felt like that, that first session. She led me away from the campsite into a small grassy clearing and made a couple of softly glowing light globes - just made them, out of nothing, between her cupped hands! They hung in the air around us, glowing yellow.

Then she proceeded to beat me up.

She’d taken off her armor and the shoulder plates with spikes and sharp blades, and told me she wanted to see how I fared in a simple fight. I’d never been a fighter, and it went as expected. She was shorter than me, but stronger, faster, more experienced, and more brutal. I realized she was pulling her punches, but since she landed all of them and easily avoided mine I still got a steady flow of kicks and punches raining down on me.

It wasn’t until I started to get angry after a while that I began to actually fight back. Not very well, but I managed to throw her a few times, and at least connect a few times.

“Ow!” she would cry out, but she looked slightly pleased.

When we heard voices from the direction of the campsite Caveria said the lesson was at an end. We stood in the clearing and slowed our breathing.

“I’ll be honest,” she said. “That wasn’t good. At least you started to fight back after a while.”

I glared at her. She met my gaze firmly.

“You need to fight!” she said. “Maybe you don’t want to be a hero, but you have to fight if you’re going to be an adventurer.”

“What’s the difference?” I suddenly realized there was a difference, or at least they seemed to think there was. “Are you a hero or an adventurer?”

“Not a hero,” she said. “Well, maybe. I did kill the dragon in single combat, which probably qualifies. But that was still a warrior’s fight. I challenged the dragon, he accepted, we fought. A hero... is the one who acts on a whim, unprepared. When you get thrust into something with no warning, and you run into the fight knowing that you may very well die, but you do it anyway because it's the right thing to do. That’s what a hero does.”

“Okay...” I said slowly.

“You must have heroes where you come from?”

“I guess we do. But I never heard it put like that.” It made sense, in some way. “And that’s what you were looking for, back when we met.”

“Tiriel was looking for one,” she corrected. “I wasn’t so sure we needed one. We’re top-level warriors, all of us.”

“But Serah is a healer, isn’t she?”

“She’s more than that,” she said with a smirk. “Wait until you see it. Anyway, I didn’t think we needed a hero. Tiriel had the idea we would find Varagorn - yeah, you’ve never heard of him, I guess.” When I shook my head she continued. “He’s a known hero. He’s done heroic deeds many times, and very nearly gotten killed as many times. He’s a swordsman too, a very good one, and we do need another one together with Arndrir.”

She frowned at me. “I have no idea why Tiriel thought you were any kind of substitute.” She glanced over towards the camp, then reached out and snapped her fingers. The glowing globes winked out. “Come on. Let’s have breakfast.”

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

After breakfast we continued and continued without incident, stopping for morning coffee as usual. Later in the day, when my stomach was already growling and I was starting to really hope we’d stop for lunch soon, we climbed a ridge went around a rocky outcrop, only to be stopped by a soldier.

“Sorry,” he said, “there’s been a landslide. You’ll have to go around.”

“Our destination is Ambor,” Arndrir said. “We do not wish to take the detour over Paskora. Do you know of a good path that will take us to the Cold Falls bridge?”

“Not from here,” the soldier said. “The nearest is about a day’s march back.”

Arndrir frowned, but just then, sounds of shouting and cursing came from behind the soldier. He glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry,” he said, “I need to go help.”

“Can we help?” Arndrir said.

“I doubt it,” the soldier said. “We are trying to build a bridge, but our bridge master fell ill yesterday.”

“I can help,” I said, to my own surprise. “I am an engineer, I know bridges.”

The solder pursed his lips. “Alright. It can’t hurt.” He beckoned me to follow. I glanced at my party. Tiriel was nodding happily, Caveria looked skeptical, Serah surprised.

They clearly needed help, I saw. There were two soldiers and two other men on this side of the landslide and three men on the other side. Although they had timber and planks, and many coils of rope, and had managed to sink two poles into the loose earth on each side, they didn’t seem to have a good plan.

“What are you planning to do?” I asked the soldier.

“Ask Rogoc.” He pointed at one of the civilians.

“We have the two support poles, and we’re trying to get a long pole across here. Then we’ll lay another on the other side, and put the planks on top.”

I shook my head as I tried to picture it. “That won’t be stable enough. Those support poles are too high on the slope and the slope is too steep. They won’t carry the load.”

He scratched his head. “Do you know anything about bridges, Mister...?”

“I'm Peter Smith,” I said and held out my hand. “I have built bridges before.” Mostly scale models back in engineering school, and mostly using computers. But we had built a real one over a river, so I thought I maybe didn’t need to mention the rest. This wasn’t a concrete motorway bridge spanning hundreds of meters though, so it should be easier. I hoped.

Serah came up to me and said they were going to make lunch anyway, so I could continue if I wanted. Together with Rogoc and the other civilian, who was a carpenter, we came up with an idea for a kind of suspension bridge, with taller support poles by the road and ropes supporting the span. Once they’d communicated the idea to the men on the other side, everyone agreed this was the best idea so far, so we set out to try it.

It went well for a while. We got the tall poles in place, fixing them with slanted supports, and the carpenters started building the new bridge surface in sections. That was my idea, for stability. We had one problem - how to get those ropes in place? They were heavy, and nobody could walk across the unstable earth in the gap.

I tried to understand how they managed to get those two support poles into place, but didn’t understand what they said. It sounded like they’d lowered them from above. With what, a helicopter? Their explanation made no sense.

As we pondered the problem, Tiriel came running up to announce lunch was ready. The bridge crew was hungry too, so we broke for lunch. I kept turning the problem over in my mind as I ate.

“Well, Peter,” Arndrir asked. “How is the bridge building progressing? Should we start our walk back to the detour?”

“No,” I said. “We have an idea that should work. The bridge should be in place by nightfall, if all goes well. There’s just one problem.”

“What’s that?” Tiriel asked.

“It’s -” I said, and then stared at her. I’d just remembered how she’d saved my life back when we were first attacked, and that crazy jump she’d done. “Um, Tiriel?” She nodded. “Do you think you could help us getting the ropes across?”

She could, easily. She scooted up those tall support poles, even though they were smooth with no grips, and fastened the ropes with some kind of complicated elvish knot. Then she jumped down and landed on the support poles in the slope, and fastened ropes between on and between those. Finally she ran - ran! - across the slope just above the landfall, carrying the ropes between the tall poles.

After that it was easy to start laying out the three road sections. We tied the first two with ropes and lowered them until they rested on the lower poles. Then we put tension on the ropes, to limit the load on those poles. Finally we could push the last one out and slide it into place, keeping it stable with more ropes. The carpenters moved along the edges and nailed everything together.

The completed bridge looked pretty nice and was very sturdy. I thought it should be strong enough, unless there was another landslide. The poles in the slope were the weak link in the chain. There were several options to strengthen it, and the bridge crew told me their bridge master should be back in a few days at most, so we decided it would do as a temporary thing. They were very happy for my help and thanked me profusely. I pointed out it was at team effort: Tiriel had done the really difficult part.

Our party was the first to cross the bridge, after the crew had tested it of course, and the crew and others waiting cheered as we passed. Rogoc had noted down my name and said he’d put me forward for some kind of award, and he had informed everyone in the queue about the role I’d played.

I felt very pleased with myself as we walked on down the other end of the ridge, in the deepening dusk. It had been fun. Fun to do something useful, fun to work together with others, and fun to build something. I wasn’t a warrior, I was an engineer. I should build things, not destroy and kill.

We made camp in a small grove up the slope, before we reached the valley floor. Arndrir didn’t want to go too far into the valley in the dark. Apparently we were heading into one of the most dangerous parts of the journey: a monster-infested valley.

We sat around the fire and ate the stew Thord cooked for us, weary after crossing the hills. Once Thord had filled everyone’s bowl and handed out bread and cheese, he sat down on a rock. Unusually, he began to talk.

“That was good work back there, Peter,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. I was surprised, since he didn’t talk much and I’d never heard him hand out praise.

“We build bridges back home,” he went on, “but I’ve never seen that kind of bridge before. It was very clever.”

“It wasn’t that clever,” I protested. “If the gap had been just a bit deeper I would have proposed a suspension bridge. Now we built a sort of lopsided one instead, that’s all.”

“Very clever,” he said, and for the first time, he smiled at me.

So did Serah, and Tiriel. The elf beamed at me, and I found myself grinning back.

“It was amazing!” she bubbled. “I knew we would need you!”

“I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

She laughed out loud, a sparkling, tinkling sound that sent a shiver down my spine. A shiver of joy, rather than fear. And I remembered how she’d looked when she leaped across the landslide gap, the sheer joy shining in her face as she flew through the air, towards me and the rest of the crew.

She seemed to be unable to be unhappy, and it was infectious. She made me happy too. She made everyone happy.

Except perhaps for Caveria. Although she wasn’t scowling at me. Her expression was rather more... challenging. I looked away.