The caravan leaves the village straight out of the forest, and into the fields. Suddenly not walking beneath a canopy of trees any more feels weird. The sky is blue, with vague streaks of clouds, and a steady but mild breeze constantly cools me down.
The lack of forest causes me some headache, as I can’t exactly hide behind the nonexistent trees. Of course there is still vegetation. There’s bushes, and occassionally trees, but nothing like I’ve gotten used to, and it’s just plain insufficient for my preferred method of hiding by putting as much vegetation between me and the one I’m hiding from as possible.
After walking and desperately trying to hide for an hour, I realize that I stand out more, not less. Even if my clothes are dirty they’re similar to what anyone else here would wear. As long as I stay away from them, I can just walk on the road without hiding at all.
Thinking about clothes makes me think of over the bloodstained dress that I’m still wearing, and feel extremely silly for stealing underwear instead of a new set of clothes… It was all right there! I had it in my hands! But that’s all water under the bridge now.
I follow the caravan at a goodly distance. Just enough that I’d know when they turn down a certain road.
You’d think that’d be pretty far away, but you’d be surprised. The landscape is a patchwork of little roads all criss-crossing one another. Like a massive net was draped over the landscape, which rises and falls like the waves of the sea. Little footpaths, just barely wide enough for a much smaller wagon than the ones I’m following flow everywhere around the fields. It really makes me wonder who travels here, it’s hard to imagine anything but foot traffic here, but coming from a country of cars and bicycles, it’s nearly incomprehensible that people would do everything on foot.
People are everywhere, for some definition of it. It’s not ‘everywhere’ like I would have understood in my previous world, where it meant a city packed to the brim with people. What I instead mean is that we are surrounded by fields filled with golden wheat, barley and corn, all worked by farmers. Once in a while, a farmhouse will be close enough that I can actually glimpse what it it looks like.
The buildings are made of sturdy wood, with thick logs stacked on top of one another. Not unlike the logs the wagons are transporting. The roofs are steep and covered in reeds, looking like a giant hat tilted to one side. I can see smoke curling up from the chimneys, and I imagine it smelling like delicious bread.
Honestly, they’re not very different from what I saw in the village I so recently left. Everyone uses the same basic layout for their houses. The exceptions are those farms that have a helping of various animals. Sometimes I see barns next to the house that have cows or other animals inside.
An exception to the persistent wheat and other grains, is those fields that house various fruit trees. I’ve seen apples, pears, and other fruits that I can’t identify at a glance. It’s kind of strange to think that such immense amounts of food were sitting here right outside the forest, while I was inside, desperate for survival.
But now, the bag I liberated, and the pouch that Ronain gave me are full of food. My task of following the wagons takes no effort at all, and I find myself spending a lot of time fantasizing about the world in which I find myself.
I’m still baffled that I seem to have been transported into the early middle ages. Like the role playing games I used to play. I keep expecting to turn away and see my room, but it’s not a screen I’m looking at. I’m really here. Every time I glance at the wagons in the distance I know that magic is a thing here, but it seems oddly absent from people’s daily lives. All the farmwork seems to be done by hand. Maybe there will be more when we get to wherever it is Ronain thinks we’re going.
The caravan in front of me proceeds at a walking pace. I’m roughly two hundred meters behind them, which is close enough that they’d spot me if they look backwards, but I’ve seen no indication they’re bothered by my presence. I figure it’s also far enough that I can turn around and leg it if they are.
Once in a while they’ll drive over the crest of a hill, and I can look down at the caravan at my leisure while the six men try to stop the wagons from rolling down like runaway trains on the other side. It’s not actually very exciting to see, but it does give me a lot to think about in regards to how their magic works.
Going uphill does not seem to engender much of a change. The two men ostensibly driving the wagons sit in deep concentration all the while, and the wagon goes forward. Steering seems to be handled by the two non-guards, that move the front fork of the wagon from left to right as necessary to steer. When they get to the crest though, the wagons slow down to a stop right on top. The two drivers wake up out of their concentration, and share a few words with the workers. Who then pick up and hold a rope on either end of a wagon. The driver then resumes their concentration, and the wagon slowly rolls over the crest, where the workers presumably stop it from rolling off on it’s own. Then, after a short pause, the workers let go of the ropes, and resume walking in front of the wagon, which sedately proceeds down the slope. When the first wagon is down, they go back up and do the same with the next, though for less steep hills sometimes there’s only a worker per wagon and they go at the same time.
Evidently they do not enjoy the process, because more than a few times I see them deliberately going around hills when the option to do so exists. Clearly the drivers are stopping the wagon from thundering down somehow. My guess is it’s the same mechanism that makes the wagons move forward, but in reverse.
What surprises me is how much concentration it evidently takes to do what they do. The workers steering seems to be plain necessity. The drivers cannot focus on doing more than moving the wagons either forwards or backwards.
image [https://pub-43e7e0f137a34d1ca1ce3be7325ba046.r2.dev/Group.png]
After roughly half a days walk, the caravan slows to a halt on a slight open space next to the road. They just went down another hill, and I’m in a good position to see what they're doing from the crest that they just vacated.
The position of the sun tells me it’s past lunchtime, and indeed, the drivers climb off their wagons, and together with the workers and guards, pull provisions from their bags, and sit down to eat. I’m surprised by the way there seems to be little distinction between the workers. Maybe it’s my preconceptions, but I’d have imagined the mages to be more aloof.
Something about commanding the forces of nature seems like it should make you more arrogant, but the men all seem to speak, eat and laugh together. The mages do have a clearly distinct uniform though—it’d be hard to mistake them—and I wonder if that’s significant.
Thinking that, I note that it’s indeed only men that I see doing work. The sentries in the village too, all men. I guess I’ve gotten a bit inured to that due to the realities of my job, but you’d still think I’d have noticed earlier. I grimace. I really hope that doesn’t mean that the only options available to me here are getting married and taking care of children.
I mean, sure I want to get married and have children at some point, but I do not want it to be my only option.
As I sit there zoning out, I catch something out of the corner of my eye. One of the guards has gotten up and is now squinting in my direction. Now that I think about it, I'm probably pretty exposed up here on this hill, just standing around and staring at the guys enjoying their lunch down below.
I quickly sit down and start a meal of my own. Which brings to light a glaring omission in my traveling supplies. I forgot the damn pot of water! When Ronain dragged me out of my cave, and told me to go after the caravan leaving right now I didn’t even remember that it was still sitting back in the cave, and now we’re half a day away. I look back the way I came with mixed feelings. At least I have some idea of where I can retrieve it, and all these farms must get water somehow. I should be safe.
Then I glance back at the men down below. The standing one has sat down again and is eating his lunch, but he seems to be having an animated discussion with his compatriots, with occasional finger pointing in my direction. I doubt this bodes well.
Eventually, their conversation appears to come to a head, and the guard that initially saw me jumps up, shouts something—probably rude, from the gestures he’s making—at his companions, and then proceeds to make his way over to me while muttering to himself. The remaining men shrug, and do not follow, but do not take their eyes off their colleague either. I guess I’m not quite as inconspicuous as I had hoped.
I jump up and look around for a way to get away fast. To my disappointment, but not my surprise, I find none. The hilltop is exposed, and the only place to go is down either of the grassy sides. The only two obvious directions, aside from along, or back down the road, are a farmhouse just a kilometer back the way we came, and a small copse of trees that’s set somewhere parallel down the road, some 300 meters down the hill and 200 meters out on flat land.
I find it hard to believe that running down to a random copse of trees would be less suspicious than running back to a farmhouse that I could ostensibly live or find friendlier faces, so back down the hill it is. I stuff the food I was eating back into my bag, and pump my legs to get away from the approaching man.
The big issue with running down the hill on the other side is that I can’t see where the guy is any more. I guess the same thing goes for him, but I doubt he’s as worried about me as I am about him.
My headlong rush takes me down the hill faster than I’d expected, and I fly past the bottom when I notice that there’s a ditch right next to the field I’m about to run into. I contemplate hiding in there, when I realize what I’m about the run into, and instead pump my legs faster. An enormous mass of corn envelops me as I race into the field. I don’t have to get all the way to the farmhouse at all!
I’m not sure how long it’ll take the guy to get to the top of the hill and see me ploughing through the field, so almost as soon as I’m in I dive to the ground. The bad part about being enveloped by the waving stalks in all directions is that I have no way to see whether the guy is still following me either.
I desperately try to calm my panicked breathing, and listen for the sounds of pursuit.
They come soon enough. I’ve been counting ever since I flopped down in the corn, and not 20 seconds later I hear the guard’s exasperated voice coming from the road.
"Cuin a theid i? Chuir mi a-mach gu robh i freagair!"
Of course I don’t respond, leaving him to shout at the world at large. The main thing I can make out is that he doesn’t know where I am, aside from probably on this side of the hill. It occurs to me that I could have run down this side, and then circled the hill in a different direction and he’d have been none the wiser. Even if he sped up when he saw me run away, he still had to go uphill while I went down.
Images of my pursuit by the sentries flash through my mind, of fleeing through the forest while the eery whistling sound of arrows fills the air. I grind my face into my hands and try not to hyperventilate. There’s a cognitive dissonance between what my mind is telling me would, should, happen when I am found, which is absolutely nothing, because what the hell, I was just walking, and what has happened ever since I came to this world, which is instant hostility and attempted murder.
I can’t even imagine what would happen if I had to flee from a man with a spear that’s already right next to me. No, I mean, I can. That’s what’s terrifying me. I’d be dead.
The cursing continues for a bit. He seems to be moving around, as if he can’t decide which direction I’ve disappeared in. Eventually I hear him walking away, and no more sound follows, except the steady swaying of the corn in the breeze. I can’t supress the shiver that runs down my back.
I think it’s several minutes before I dare to move. I try to sneak my way through the stalks of corn without brushing against them, or getting up. I want to to peek out from the edge, but halfway there, I can’t make myself go any further. My arms feel like lead, and I feel sick to my stomach. What if he’s still there?
He can’t be there anymore, I keep telling myself. He’s been gone from his companions for a while, and they have places to be. Maybe they just resumed their lunch? But then, maybe he went to get his friends instead…
In the end I can’t make myself chase after them directly, which might be for the best. Is it even worth going after them now that they’re this suspicious? But even if I don’t necessarily want to follow the caravan any more, I do want to find wherever it is they’re going that Ronain said I should go.
In the end I end up sneaking through the whole field of corn to exit from a completely different side, but when I come out, and look over in the distance to the hill, there is nobody there. I don’t want to go that way any more, so I circle around the hill through paths and fields that border it, instead of going over it once again.
When the place where they were having lunch comes into view, it’s deserted. It must have been nearly an hour since I last saw them. The tracks dug in the dirt suggest the wagons have moved out though.
As I realize that the tracks are this easy to follow, I want to slap myself. I didn’t have to be close to the wagons to see which way they went at all… There’s barely any other wagons traveling these roads. I’ve seen some farmers with handcarts, but never anywhere close, and nothing that had a massive load like these wagons.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Feeling defeated, I plod along the dusty road, following the deep ruts carved by the wagon wheels.
image [https://pub-43e7e0f137a34d1ca1ce3be7325ba046.r2.dev/Group.png]
I takes me a while to notice, but suddenly I hear shouting in the distance. There is a decent size copse of trees that the road leads through, and from inside, I can hear shouting, and the sounds of battle.
Is that the caravan I was following? I’m tempted to turn right around, but also curious as to what is happening, and the trees give me renewed courage. I used to love walking under the clear blue sky on a sunny day, but now the lack of a canopy of leaves leaves me feeling exposed.
I dart into the thicket, slipping between the trees, and let out a sigh of relief as I find myself surrounded by the greenery once more.
A pained scream comes from ahead of me, and I slowly sneak further towards the source of the sounds. It doesn’t take long for me to find out what is happening, as the land swells up several meters, giving me a good vantage on what is happening on the road down below.
About thirty meters ahead of me, the caravan that I’ve been following has come under attack by a group of bandits, whom are ruthlessly cutting down all resistance. The scream earlier evidently came from one of the guards, who is now bleeding out on the ground with a massive cut through his stomach.
The mages are slumped over in their seats, one of them with an ugly hole in the back of his head, through which a crossbow bolt peeks out. The remaining guard and the two workers are pressed with their backs to one of the carts. The workers barely avoiding being skewered by dint of the spearman that somehow keeps four bandits off at the same time with wild —but evidently skillful— swipes of his spear.
One of the workers makes a dash for the spear that the first spearman dropped, but two of the bandits break off from their engagement with the spearman and chase him down, then skewer him from behind with their own spears. The other worker takes an unlucky hit from one of the bandits, and sinks to the ground while clutching his neck. Eyes wide as his lifeblood pours down between his fingers.
One of the bandits, evidently having enough of this, retreats momentarily, opting to grab and reload a crossbow that was discarded on the side of the road. I start when I realize it’s a young woman. The way she walks, and the way she is dressed slightly differently from the others makes it clear.
The spearman, seizing this brief reprieve, furiously attempts a breakout. Knocking the spear from the sole remaining bandit aside, and making an abortive dash for freedom. The two that chased the worker down are back, and they pin the spearman with his back against the wagon once again.
The three bandits, while not skillfull enough to defeat him, are enough to trap him, and that seals his doom. The young woman with the crossbow is walking back, while calmly reloading the device with a fresh bolt. There’s something incredibly distubing about seeing someone just a few years younger than me there. She reaches the spearman, and when he sees what’s about to happen, he bellows a warcry and makes one last desperate attempt to get free, but the girl just rolls her eyes, and shoots him right in the gut.
The mans eyes widen as he drops to the ground, and his last stand ends as three spears pierce his body from various directions. His final, guttural cry echoes before he collapses.
The first spearman is still alive, and tries to crawl away. With the blood he’s trailing I don’t imagine he would have made it anywhere, but it’s like a red flag to the bandits, and they descend on him like a pack of hungry vultures, stabbing and slashing him with a savagery that I didn’t imagine possible.
I mean, I did. My mind, and some movies are pretty gruesome, but that’s just it, they’re movies. That’s a human being being torn to pieces right in front of me. Looking away from the gruesome affair, I note that the girl has not joined them, and is instead looking at them with some form of mild disgust.
I let out a breath, feeling an unexpected sense of relief that she doesn’t seem to be participating in the madness and doesn’t approve of it. But then, at the sound of a groan from the poor soul who just got stabbed in the throat, she swiftly turns and drives her spear right into his chest. With a fierce determination, she twists the weapon, a wicked smile forming on her lips when his lifeless body slumps over, the finality of it making me shudder.
Bile churns in my throat, a fierce impulse to vomit barely held at bay. I can somehow stomach watching the men brutalize the worker, but that young woman stabbing the worker with a spear? The smile on her face will linger in my mind for all eternity. I can’t, I don’t want to imagine I could be someone like that.
I can’t bear to watch any longer.
image [https://pub-43e7e0f137a34d1ca1ce3be7325ba046.r2.dev/Group.png]
I find my hands trembling and my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I’m horrified, fascinied and terrified in equal measure. I need to get away from here!
As I start to turn around however, my limbs stiffen, rooted to the spot. Footsteps crunch on gravel, and I see another bandit approaching. He’s dressed similarly to the others, but his clothes are of slightly better quality—or at least, as far as you could call it that. There's no doubt he's part of their gang. This one brandishes a short sword and grins without mercy. He clearly sees me for what I am: a terrified woman, his grin widening as he savors my fear. My gaze locks onto the tip of his blade bobbing back and forth as it does. I vaguely register my bladder emptying itself. I’m paralyzed, I can't run, can't even move. For what feels like the first time in my life, no clever thoughts spring to mind.
My thoughts race like a wild stallion, whirling in every direction and yet getting me nowhere. I should've just stuck around the village with Ronain. At least then, I’d have one decent friend in this hellhole of a world. My mind goes to the two magicians slumped over in their carts. Fat lot of good their magic did them. Was I really thinking about chasing them down to find out what...?!
I curse this wretched world, each and every one of these idiots that fill it, and whatever twisted fate dropped me here to begin with.
A small part of my mind that’s not swamped under the panic tries to joke that I’ve heard that before somewhere, but it’s drowned out in the cacaphony of other throughs rushing through my mind.
I have eyes only for the wicked looking sword as the dirty man steps closer. I tighten my grip, and suddenly realize what I still have in my hands. My spear! That lovely improvised piece of shit that Ronain thought was mildly servicable. I didn’t finish turning around, and the bandit must not have seen it. Probably has no reason to even suspect, from someone dressed like the poor villager I look like, poor villager I am.
My hands tighten around the shaft. I’m I’m going to die, I’m going to go out with a bang. I’m definitely dying regardless, the fight —or rather slaughter— I just witnessed is a testament to that. If this world is so determined to kill me, I’ll at least take one of it’s inhabitants with me! A final last stand, like the heroes I’ve read about. If I had any thoughts to spare on it I’d have told myself I was crazy. But the only thing on my mind is the dirty, evil, grinning monster of a man coming closer with every careless step.
A fierce desire to prove my worth to him and the world around me rages through my veins, that just because I come from a different age, from a different world, does not mean I am helpless. Somewhere, some part of me realizes that something has snapped, but I’m beyond caring.
He’s nearly dropped his sword arm now, clearly under no apprehension that I present any kind of threat. The fool!
He takes one more step, and I notice a frown begin to etch on his forehead, the flicker of suspicion in his eyes. But it’s too late, as he’s within my reach. I whip my body around, and with it the stone-tipped spear that I thought I'd been needlessly carrying all this time.
I thrust it forward, and feel a jarring impact, almost throwing me off my feet. As I wonder what happened I realize my eyes are squeezed shut. What idiot closes their eyes in the middle of a fight?! As I open them, I see the bandit gazing down in shock at the shard of rock embedded in his throat. Blood pours down around the shard, splattering him, the spear between us, and me, in a deep crimson. The sword slips from his grasp, and he topples forward, his body cracking and dislodging the spear.
The remains of the haft fall from my hands with a clatter. The smell of his bowels releasing themselves adds to mine, as his hands scrabble at the ground, desperately trying to contain the surges of blood pulsing out of his throat with every beat of his heart. A gurgling sound bubbles out of the hole.
Tearing my gaze away from the dying bandit, I look back at the group of bandits that are still down near the caravan. And I’m surprised to see that they’ve just barely started stripping their targets of their valuables. The whole thing took less than 10 seconds. It doesn’t looks like they noticed anything.
I look back at the dying man, and am surprised to find him still spasming. I’m suddenly terrified he’ll find a way to cry out, to gain the attention of his friends he must surely know are there. I scrabble towards the sword he dropped, and plunge it down, again and again, into this body. I close my eyes, and only stop when I can hear no more indications of struggle, or sound beneath me.
I crumple to the ground, my body draped over his still-warm figure as labored breaths escape my lungs. What have I become? What have I done? These questions flood through my mind, drowing out all the rest. Just moments ago I thought the young woman's smile would haunt my days, but now...
The garbled, desperate gasps of the dying man echo in my mind, his struggle, the realization that it was futile, the resignation when he saw me coming with the sword. But most of all, the relief when the sword plunged into him, like he embraced death.
A thick irony grips me; just moments ago, I condemned that young woman for doing exactly what I’ve just done… I’d call it self-defense, but it somehow feels like a feeble excuse. The body is still warm, the blood is soaking through my clothes, undoubtedly ruining what little of them was still clean, and I’m suddenly disgusted instead of exhausted. I push myself off the body and roll on my back, eyes closed, just breathing, trying to get my panic back under control.
As I get a moment to breath, I realize that I’m not out of the woods yet, just a few tens of meters away, separated by naught but trees, the other bandits are looting their victims. I’ll have to put my breakdown on hold and get away while I still can.
I strain my ears to hear if the bandits have noticed, but only their distant chatter reaches me. I don’t want to, but I have to face what I’ve done. I wrench open my eyes, and grant myself a short moment to just look up and stare at the leaves above me. It’s so peaceful like this, no blood, just a slight breeze ruffling the leaves just enough you can see how many there are. I feel the same breeze on my skin, but the sweet scent of pine and earth clashes violently with the rancid stench of death, blood and excreta mixed into some mad combination.
This is a new smell for me. Dead people at their funeral are always nicely done up. Just as they were in life, no scent at all. No such luck here.
I push myself up, and look at what I’ve wrought. I’m surprised at how recognizably human the man still looks. In my mind I’d pulverized the body, but there’s simply a lot of stab wounds in his stomach. Of course his neck is a complete wreck, but his face is, dare I say it, peaceful. There’s a vaguely amused twist to it that I can’t imagine the cause of.
My dress… well, it was soaked with my own blood on the shoulder and leg, but now it’s painted red. God, I look like I stepped out of a shitty horror movie. I feel a mad laugh bubble up from deep within me, and I ruthlessly try to squash it. In the end it comes out more like a sob, as I desperately try to hold on to the little bit of sanity I have left.
Just when I think I've got the nausea under control, it betrays me, and I double over, spewing the remnants of my last meal into the bushes. It feels like a volatile eruption—my body purging itself of what little I’ve consumed until there’s nothing left to come up.
Once the spasms subside, I’m left empty and shaking. I force myself to look at the body again. The sight doesn’t get any easier, but the shock… the shock begins to dull, making way for the cold realization that I’m the victor. That I've survived.
It’s tough to tell if any of my wounds have opened up again after that scuffle, considering I’m basically drenched in blood from head to toe. But I’ve gotta hand it to Ronain’s medicine; it’s worked miracles on my injuries. With a bit of luck and the element of surprise on my side, I think I might have actually managed to escape without any serious damage.
The forest around me hasn't changed. It remains indifferent to my turmoil, the birds resuming their songs as if nothing had happened. It strikes me as odd, this dissonance between the serenity of the forest and the violence it silently witnesses.
I have to get away, the looting bandits won’t wait on my leisure to come looking for their missing friend. I quickly look around for anything I might want to take. Even now, the reality of my situation is not lost on me. While I may have obtained food, I have precious little else. I glance down at the sword in my hand, an unfamiliar weight that’s necessary now, since the spear is beyond repair.
That makes me look at the spearhead still embedded in the mans throat, and I feel an bizarre wave of nostaligia wash over me. I find I do not want to leave the symbol of my survival there. With my thoughts back in order somewhat, I’m able to force myself throught the unpleasant task of making that happen. I crouch down next to him, and give the rock an experimental tug. I must have smashed it in pretty hard since it’s stuck fast. As I wriggle it back and forth, I’m suddenly extremely happy I already voided both my bowels and the contents of my stomach. I nearly leave it, this not being worst satisfying this crazy urge. But in the end I force my hands to wrap around it's back and tug it out.
I set the rock to the side for a bit as I turn to the remains. I don’t have a great deal of time, really none at all, but I consider that if I’m still busy looting this man, the bandits are probably still busy looting theirs. The fight didn’t take long at all, though I’m not sure how long I’ve spent recovering from it. Time is a crazy thing under the effect of adrenaline.
I hurriedly strip off his belt and boots, then make my way out of there. The belt is great, it has a scabbard for the sword, so I don’t have to lug the thing in my hand all the time. The boots are… well, right now they’re just luggage, I can’t affort trying to fit my feet in there now that I need to move quickly. Everything else, well, I really kinda didn’t need all the extra blood covered stuff. My dress is now officially the foulest thing I've ever seen since that thrice-cursed kebab stand a world back, but as the pawns say, stuff dead people wore is tainted.
In reflection, I realize that I stripped the body with an efficiency that should terrify me. Even knowing I needed the stuff, ‘looting the bodies’ has apparently been ingrained in me so much that even now that it’s not a game, after just literally killing a man, it’s practically automatic.
At that, I shove the rock in one of the belt pouches, and start a rapid retreat from the copse of trees where this chaos unfolded. A few seconds after I begin my retreat I hear shouting behind me, but I do not turn back to investigate.
When I start to run, something inside me clicks off, and my brain just goes blank. It's like a raw, animal instinct takes over. For a stretch of time, I forget about everything—what time it is, where I’m headed, even who the hell I am.
When I come to, I’m nestled among the trees, cradled by the forest’s embrace. I inhale the damp, earthy scent of the forest, letting its stillness seep into my bones, as memories slowly trickle back. When they do, I find it really hard to care much about the whole thing. There’s mostly a lingering surprise that I’d be capable of something like murder. It wasn’t exactly cold blooded, but still.
I’m vaguely aware that that's probably not a healthy reaction to the thing, but I really do not want to deal with it right now. A much bigger problem is that I do not know where I am, or where I should be going. With the caravan gone, so have my guides. At the same time, the road we have traveled has been sort of obvious, always following the roads that would actually fit the wagons. I’m fairly confident I could find wherever they were going by just following those same roads.
I could also attempt to retrace my steps, to go back towards the village, towards Ronain and the semblance of a life I had started to build there. But while I strongly felt that I should have done that when I was in imminent fear of my life, the idea now feels vaguely distasteful. It isn’t even about what Ronain said would be best for me any more. I just don’t want to have gone through all this just to give up.
I know that sounds like the biggest sunk cost fallacy ever, and it might be, but progress depends on the irrational. Something like irrational people make the world fit them, instead of fit themselves to the world. That’s exactly why I hated the last world, and it doesn’t seem to have changed a whit. It’s just the nature of the madness that’s changed.
Anyhow, I’ll find out where the wagons were going. They couldn’t have intended to transport the lumber very far, since the men didn’t seem to have more than one days worth of rations with them. Maybe the authorities will be thankful if I bring them news of the raid on one of their caravans? Of course there’s the slight issue I barely speak the language...
It’s only a nice fantasy anyway, more likely they’d execute me on sight just for the presumption it was me. I hardly look innocent.
God, I need a bath.