‘Look at the size of that bloody thing!’
Torick’s mouth fell open as Zania staggered into the plaza with the elk spread across her shoulders. She had carried the animal for the whole journey home and only taken a few short rest breaks along the way.
‘Where put beast?’ Zania panted.
‘We need to allocate a building for food storage,’ Jack said. ‘Any ideas?’
‘No mind Zania. Zania wait for people while hold animal twice her weight on back.’
‘There is a huge pantry and a kitchen in the back of the tavern,’ Fiora said quickly. ‘Would that work?’
Fiora led them quickly through the tavern and into the pantry. It was as spacious as Fiora had said, comprising a hearth, a huge table holding up a gigantic butcher's block and plenty of utensils, as well as several sacks and barrels.
‘What is all this stuff?’ Jack asked as Zania dropped the slain elk onto the block with a heavy thud and an even heavier grunt.
‘Three sacks of wheat, two sacks of salt and the barrel of water I mentioned yesterday,' Fiora replied. 'It's only today I realised that the water isn't for drinking - it's for curing, along with the salt.'
‘That makes things a lot easier for us. Any idea how much meat comes off one of these things?’
‘A little over 200 pounds.’
‘Do you know how to cure meat?’
‘I can’t do it myself as I'm no good with a blade under any circumstances, but I can describe it to somebody who can already wield a blade. All we need is salt and water. If you know how to wield a knife than I can direct you.’
‘So you know how much meat comes off it, you know the method, but you can’t do it yourself? How come?’
‘I may not be a legendary scholar, but I am still a scholar. I have spent most of my life reading. I hope such knowledge will help you.’
‘More than you know,’ Jack smiled, rolling his sleeves up and pulling on an old apron that was resting upon the counter.
He wasn’t averse to getting his hands dirty – the memories of his previous life were slipping back, and with each of them came an understanding of himself.
What he had done before now didn’t matter a whole lot to him. What did matter was how he saw the world around him, and in his heart he knew one thing about himself: that he was willing to make the difficult choices that a leader had to make, and to do the difficult tasks to match.
He had no interest in just dispatching the group. He was as much of a tool as the rest of them, both figuratively and literally.
And feeding everybody was about as important a job as he could think of.
‘I hope you’ve got a strong stomach,’ he spoke to Fiora as he readied his dagger in his grasp. 'This is going to be messy work.'
‘Actually, I find the whole process rather intriguing.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, but then again I find almost everything to be fascinating.’
‘So that’s why you’re so smart.’
‘Beings of long life tend to seem smarter because we have more time to learn things, but the only true way to remember anything is to take a real interest in it. I remember what I’m interested in, and I find almost everything interesting. Seeing as I spent most of my days in the library poring over the texts that I was tasked with sorting, I learned all kinds of things. Most of that knowledge is probably quite useless, but hopefully some of it will be functional in this world.’
‘Well I guess it’s a learning experience,’ Jack smiled, ‘but either way, this is going to be a two-person job. Aeshara has already helped out, Zania has definitely put her time in, and I don’t know how much use Torick is going to be dealing with an animal this size, which leaves only one other person.’
Ayak might have picked the six ‘heroes’ by mistake, but Jack was slowly beginning to realize something: each of the group possessed skills vaguely resembling what Ayak had described.
And if the group of misfits that he had been tasked with leading was going to not only survive but build a kingdom in this unknown world, then he was going to have to bring out the best of each of them - including utilizing them to help butcher an elk.
Humble beginnings, Jack thought, smiling to himself.
A few minutes later Fiora returned with Eldrin.
‘What a fine beast,’ he remarked, patting the slain elk’s side. ‘Look at this hide.’
‘You ever butcher one of these?’
‘Not since I was a lad.’
‘Then I hope you’ve got a decent memory.'
Over the next three hours, Fiora guided Jack and Eldrin through the process of preparing the elk. It was a messy task, but after a few cuts Jack managed to get the hang of it.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
They worked through spare ribs and ground meat from the flank, trim and shank; once the underside of the beast was finished off, they worked to the topside, removing tenderloin and loin before tackling the huge task of the shoulder and the foreleg.
Finally they moved to the hind quarters, acquiring prime cuts of rump, sirloin and round, both top and bottom.
All the while Eldrin took the meat up, salted it and carefully stored it in the store of barrels within the pantry. Whenever a barrel was filled, he topped it off with water and sealed it up.
‘So it really isn’t your first time doing this,’ Jack remarked. ‘You’re a natural.’
‘I can’t say that I have partaken in this before, Jack,’ Eldrin replied. ‘But it is not as difficult as I imagined it to be.’
‘Just the part where you’ve got to get your hands covered in blood and guts.’
‘A reality of the task,’ he chuckled. ‘A man must do what a man must do.'
‘No doubt about that,’ Jack said, working his way carefully around a succulent patch of red loin on the elk’s back. ‘200 pounds of meat, six of us… Even if we worked through a pound a day each, that’s over 30 days worth of meat.'
Once the job was done, Jack, Eldrin and Fiora looked at the fine work and the fine mess they had created.
‘Good work,’ Eldrin smiled, offering a bloody hand for Jack to shake, which he did. ‘Perhaps next time we shall be even better prepared – we could even save the hide and use it for crafting.’
‘Good point,’ Jack nodded. 'I promise I'll get better at not ruining it next time.'
‘There’s nothing like a few prime cuts to lift spirits,’ Fiora smiled, heaving up a basket in her clutches filled with meat wrapped in parchment paper. ‘I’ll get to work cooking these up with the others while you two get cleaned up.’
‘Just don’t give it to Zania,’ I advised. ‘She’ll probably end up torching it… Or insisting that we eat it raw. I don’t know which I would put my money on.’
After cleaning up the back of the tavern and securing the meat, Eldrin and Jack journeyed eastward into the forest beyond Silverward, taking the same path that Jack had earlier that day with Aeshara and Zania until they reached the freshwater stream.
‘My apologies if I was unpleasant upon our arrival yesterday,’ Eldrin said. ‘My thoughts were scattered because of the strange predicament we share.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ Jack replied as he washed the blood from his arms and worked down to his hands. ‘It was a tough situation for anybody to be in, even a knight like you.’
‘Indeed,’ he smiled. ‘Let us hope that we can soon learn more about this world beyond the edges of the town. A filled map allows a man to sleep at night, free from worrie-’
Eldrin stopped talking and glanced sharply to his left.
‘Everything okay?’ Jack asked, reaching for the handle of his dagger.
‘All fine,’ Eldrin replied, before brushing it off with a laugh that held a hint of nervousness. ‘The wilds can play tricks on a man. Come, let us return to the town.’
Jack finished cleaning off his hands and arms and set off after Eldrin, glancing off into the brush. Despite Eldrin’s concerns, Jack could hear nothing.
***
For the first time in who knew how long, smoke arose over the town of Silverward.
But rather than setting up a new fire, Jack and Eldrin returned to the plaza to find the cuts simmering on a rack right over the Builder’s Flame.
A few minutes later the group sat around the fire in the late afternoon sunlight, tucking into their seared cuts of meat. With no butter or oil it was pretty dry, but to even have something to eat felt like a blessing.
‘Jack kill well today,’ Zania said, taking a hefty bite of flank and chewing on it. ‘Zania not expect much of Jack. But Zania impressed by you, human man. Jack brave, even though Jack not know how to fight. Jack still try. Good. Better than running.’
‘Kill well?’ Fiora said. ‘You mean the elk?’
‘Yes. And Jack stand brave with kobold close by.’
Everybody froze up – Torick, Eldrin and Fiora in confusion, Aeshara with a wince, Jack with his eyes clasped shut – except for Zania, who just kept chewing away.
‘A kobold?’ Torick spoke. ‘When?! Where?!’
‘We came across one in the forest just after we took down the elk,’ Jack replied, striving to keep the peace. ‘Just one, and it was far from here, at least a mile. I don’t think it’s any need for concern.’
‘It will be a huge concern if it brings friends back with it,’ Eldrin said cautiously.
‘Companions relax,’ Zania said, munching through her meal. ‘Kobold alone. No threat.’
‘How can you be so sure, troll-woman?’ Eldrin asked.
‘Kobold no have tribe marks. No tribe mean no friends. Kobold alone.’
‘Do we need to get a group tattoo to let outsiders know that we're all a part of the same group?’ Aeshara smiled.
‘That depends whether we consider ourselves to be friends,’ Fiora said.
Everybody glanced around at each other.
‘Perhaps we can consider each other… Business acquaintances for now,’ Aeshara said.
‘So… Not friends?’ Fiora replied, a hint of disappointment in her voice. ‘I mean, I'm aware of the fact that we have only known each other for less than 24 hours, but if we’re going to be working together for what will probably be a long time, then I imagine we’ll all be something more than just acquaintances.’
‘Group no work,’ Zania spoke through another mouthful. ‘There is no work. No play either. No task and no kill. People only live. Group live. Do what must.'
‘So…’ Aeshara started. ‘We acquired meat, found a source of water, established a home and technically defended it from outsiders. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that means we just settled this place and officially made it our home.’
‘I don’t know if I’d call it our home exactly,’ Fiora said, gently chewing on her food, ‘it is a vacant lot that we are building on behalf of a very powerful being.’
‘Very lazy being too, apparently,’ Aeshara added. ‘A holiday of a few thousand years. Just imagine what happened in this place while he wasn’t keeping an eye on it. For it to go from a sprawling civilization to… This.’ Aeshara gestured around herself.
‘It does make me wonder who else we are sharing this world with,’ Torick said, glancing around himself uneasily. ‘We are rebuilding this kingdom from scratch, but I wonder what else resides further out there.’
‘The next town or village will be a few miles away at the least,’ Eldrin spoke. ‘That said, we have not yet accounted for raiders. If this world is in ruins, there will no doubt be opportunistic beings out there searching for folks with their guards down. We must keep a watchful eye out while we are learning about this world and its peoples.'
'To build a kingdom we’re going to need actual citizens,’ Aeshara said. ‘But we need to tick off the basic stuff so that we can look after ourselves first before moving to the next steps. We’ve got shelter, stores of meat and a secure supply of water. Tomorrow we need to focus on putting something on the side of the meat. Hopefully we can find some vegetation out there that we can actually grow.’
'Along with, you know,' Torick added, taking several mouthfuls of elk meat with a single bite, 'sweeping all the buildings for valuables and resources, restoring all the buildings, securing livestock, organizing farmland and putting defences in place.'
‘Meat have everything Zania need,’ Zania said, taking another bite of her cooked elk. ‘Meat good.’