I don’t know what I’d been expecting from the union of these three groups but it certainly wasn’t a party. Perhaps Gertrude and the Mayor would have tried to object if not for the intoxicating prospect of abundant fresh food after months of rationed supplies of mostly dried food.

Besides, the deer and boar were already slaughtered and turning on spits, the bread was baking, the beer was brewed. It would have been rude to decline.

###

As night fell campfires were lit throughout the sprawling camp to keep the evening chill at bay. I wandered through it looking for a place to sit and people to be with.

There were multiple cooking fires and people ferrying ingredients back and forth between them. It wasn’t just deer and boar I saw cooking. There were game birds of all sizes and a whole cow that the cook swore up and down was a donation from a farmer friend of Agnes’ and not someone’s milk cow stolen from their barn.

The sound of music pulled me onward until I found the largest clearing. It was ringed with benches and in one corner was a group of musicians. I don’t think they were a band and I’m sure most of them weren’t professionals because I knew what some of their day jobs were. There were two fiddlers, one mandolin player, a guitarists and a drummer drumming on some barrels. As I watched they were joined by two men, once with a harmonica and one pulling a pair of metal spoons out of his jacket pocket.

The musicians were making a spirited noise that was melodic enough for a few people to attempt some kind of folk dance. I lent against a tree and watched as people from all over the continent tried to agree on the half remembered steps of something that kind of looked like a Strip the Willow, one of the Scottish ceilidh dances that I was forced to learn at school.

After a while Agnes arrived with a barrel of beer. She set it up on a tree stump and forced a tap into it just as a couple of her regular helpers arrived with armfuls of rough wooden mugs. The random alcohol distribution system somehow led to someone handing me a mug full of the beer. It turned out to be one of those light and frothy wheat beers that are really easy to drink right up until the point where you try to go somewhere and realise that you can’t feel your feet any more.

It was a terrible idea for everyone to get drunk when the Ostians might arrive at any moment but then I remembered that I probably couldn’t get drunk, and if I did I wouldn’t stay drunk for long. Clearly the solution was to render the alcohol safe by consuming as much of it as I possibly could.

I was on my second mug when the Mayor called for silence to propose a toast. Of course he tried to turn the toast into a rousing speech to both thank and encourage the locals and to stiffen everyone’s resolve for the coming battle.

It was testimony to his skills as an orator that people let him talk for at least three minutes before they started to get restless. Gertrude rescued him by giving him a hearty slap on the back and proposing the toast, “To the Black Woods.”

There was a huge cheer, everyone drank and then the music immediately restarted before he could get another word in.

Soon after that a shout went up that the food was getting cold and I suddenly realised how hungry I was. I refilled my mug and followed my nose until I came to one of the cooking areas.

I stood in a queue until someone handed me a thick slab of crusty bread covered in slices of roast pork, garnished with garlic pickled cabbage.

I looked around for space at a table, mainly because I wanted to put my drink down so I could pay the food its proper attention, but every table was full. I moved further from the light of the cooking fire until I saw a small table separate from the others, wreathed in greenery, lit by a Dwarven rune light globe. Around that table were Amris, Asser, Varma and Akira. I headed straight for it. As I approached Sarah appeared from behind a tree carrying a tray with an entire cooked goose and a couple of foaming mugs. She reached the table first and I sat down next to her. Just as Saleh Naji, the Alchemist arrived with a wooden bowl full of venison and berries. He put his bowl down and then pulled an elegant carafe of water out of one sleeve and a cruet set out of the other.

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“Dimensional storage,” he said, when he caught me staring, “You do not want to know how much this coat cost me.”

###

Between us we seemed to have picked up something of everything and so, of course, we shared. We passed the food around the table and tasted each other’s drinks until we’d each found what we wanted. Most of us preferred the blond wheat beer except for Varma who preferred the fruity red wine and Saleh who was happy with his inexhaustible carafe of fizzy mineral water. It was very good mineral water. If I wasn’t trying to save everyone else from the beer I might have stuck to the water.

Sarah volunteered to take her tray and her huge arms to get everyone drinks. I volunteered my sense of smell to get more food every time we ran out of anything. Saleh pushed everyone to use his cruet and to drink his water whenever we started looking dehydrated.

After weeks of chatting about practical things by tapstone message I felt like I knew the Citadel Outlanders better than I had when we were all together but now I was sitting round a table with them again that closeness vanished the moment we ran out of things to say about the food.

After a particularly awkward gap in the conversation Varma let out a deep sigh. “Can we please talk about some real stuff now?” she said.

“Like what?” said Saleh.

“I don’t know,” said Varma, “Like this camp. It’s not what I was expecting from a refugee camp.”

“Yeah,” said Amris, “Less huddled masses and more Robin Hood and his merry men.”

“I was getting that vibe too,” I said. “And that’s weird because I remember when it was just a crossroads camp for people who have to live and work in the woods.”

“You know this place?” said Sarah.

“Yeah, I woke up in my skivvies not far from here on my very first day.”

“In your underwear?” said Akira, trust him to home in on that.

Before I could answer Saleh spoke up. “Lots of the more durable survivor builds don’t get any starting gear.”

“Yeah,” I said, “We’re supposed to craft it all from scratch.”

“Living Weapons don’t get much either,” said Varma, “But at least I got some clothes and shoes.”

“What was it like back then?” said Amris.

“It was just a clearing with a cooking fire and some tents and bedrolls. Agnes had the big tent even back then. I think she’s got some of that dimensional storage money because it seems bigger on the inside and she’s got a full sized bed and actual furniture in there. Most of the camp would have fit into that big clearing where people were dancing. Agnes made sure that people shared everything and took turns to cook.

I took a quick sip of my beer before going on. “There’s some people that work in the woods for most of the year. Jethro was the one that found me. He’s a Forester. There were always Herbalists and Apprentice Apothecaries staying for a few days while they collected components. There was a Bodger back then. His workshop is probably still around here. I didn’t know him very well but he did lend me his tools once…” I would have said more but Sarah interrupted me.

“What the fuck is a Bodger?” she said.

“Oh, sorry. It’s a woodworking career. It’s on the skill tree. They make parts for wooden furniture. They specialise in turning greenwood on a lathe.”

“Oh, I think I’ve met him,” said Asser. “Soft spoken, very tall, kind of wiry. I think he said his name was Hansie but I’m not sure I caught it right. He helped build the big lean-to they’ve got the forge set up in. He’s been turning tool handles for all the blacksmiths.”

“Sounds like him,” I said. “Aldo and Fred, the Charcoal Burners, were here back then too. I spent the day with them today, grinding charcoal to powder. I don’t know what Agnes’ big plan is but I reckon that it involves ungodly quantities of gunpowder.”

“It does,” said Saleh and Asser at almost the same time. They looked at each other for a moment before Asser gestured for Saleh to go on.

“As soon as the Citadel arrived, someone from the camp came looking for Alchemists. They asked for Fulminate of Mercury. It’s an incredibly volatile compound. Rub a couple of grains of it together with your fingertips and it’ll blow your whole hand off. Its main use is for igniting other explosives.”

“That explains where they got it from then,” said Asser. He took another big swig of his beer. “They’ve had me making percussion caps all day. We’ve got some guns for those that want them, and not muzzle loaders, neither. But I’m not sure I’d say we used ungodly quantities of gunpowder.”

“Have you used a charcoal powered forge before?” I said.

“Of course,” said Asser.

“So you know roughly how much pure charcoal you get from a single stack?”

Asser nodded as I was speaking.

“They’ve been doing three stack burns for weeks and most of it’s been turned to powder.”

Saleh looked like he was doing mental arithmetic. He seemed paler than usual “I would call that an ungodly quantity. I just hope they’re storing it properly because one spark in the wrong place and they’ll be able to see the explosion back in Ostia.”