Chance headed back to the storeroom with the coming of the first light of morning. Shags still slumbered before it.
“All well?” he asked as the wolf opened an eye as he drew near.
All is well, Shags responded. Not a sound from them.
Chance nodded. “Good.” None of the bandits had tried to escape or cause any other form of trouble. He was half surprised by that. While his offer had been generous, he felt, especially when compared to the alternative, he still suspected that not all of them were sincere in taking it up. He was unsure if it was just the wolf that had kept any from trying to run, or if they had genuinely taken him up on his offer.
Yrip and Snarl roused from their sleep, coming across to join Chance and Shags as well.
“We are not going to the town,” Chance announced when they were all together. “Not straight away, at least.”
“We aren’t?” Snarl asked. “What about that lot in there?” he added, gesturing at the storeroom. “We can’t just leave them in there.”
“They will be coming with us, back to Azval Stalvaq.”
Snarl gave Chance a long stare and even Yrip looked puzzled by what Chance had said. “You obviously have some plan for them,” he said. “Do share.”
Chance took a breath, uncertain as to how the Snarl and Yrip would take his idea, before plunging into explaining it. “They can live there,” he said, “And work hard to pay their debts to society. It is already a refuge for the unwanted and the misfits, so a few more will fit right in.”
“I am not so sure,” Yrip replied, frowning deeply, obviously worried by the idea. “Iyari are not used to having tall ones nearby. There could be trouble, and my people will be the ones to suffer if that happens.”
“They can stay at the old goblin camp,” Chance told him. “We will limit their contact as best as possible so that there is limited chance for trouble, but they will need help. Food, supplies, and at the moment only Azval Stalvaq and the Iyari can provide that, so there will have to be some interactions.”
“As long as they don’t fall back on old ways and try and take it all,” Yrip said.
“They had better not,” Chance told him. “They do know that this is their last chance.”
“I have trusted you this far,” Yrip announced loyally, “And you have not let me down yet. I will trust you on this one.”
Chance was glad for Yrip’s words, even if they did increase his worry that he was making a mistake that would come back to bite him at some point.
“So what are we going to do with all the loot that we recovered then?” Snarl asked.
“Well, we aren’t going to keep it for a start,” Chance replied pointedly, and Snarl grinned at that. “I’ll have a work with Theras, to see what we can arrange.” Leaving the others behind, he hurried over to the farmhouse and knocked at the door. It opened after a moment and Theras stepped out.
“Morning,” Chance greeted him.
“Good morning,” Theras replied, yawning and running a hand through his hair.
“I was hoping that we could use your storeroom for a bit longer,” Chance asked. “Not for the bandits though.”
“Of course,” Theras replied. “What do you need it for?”
“We need a place to store all the goods that we recovered from the bandits, just for a while,” Chance told him. “We aren’t headed to Estethford yet, so I was hoping that we could store them here and that we could pick them up later on to take with us when we come back this way.”
“Sure, no problems with that.”
“I don’t suppose you have a cart or wagon we could borrow either?” Chance went on.
Theras nodded. “We do. Hasn’t seen much use so it might need to be checked first. Why?”
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“We will need them to carry the recovered goods for us when we return.”
“That lot won’t be carrying them?” Theras asked, nodding towards the storeroom where the bandits were.
“They won’t be with me when we return,” Chance told him. “I have other plans for them.”
Theras frowned thoughtfully. “Well, okay,” he said slowly. “As long as you know what you are doing.”
“I hope so,” Chance remarked.
They opened up the storeroom, and the bandits emerged, blinking in the light of the morning, some shielding their eyes as they adjusted to it. Chance arranged food and water for them to have before putting them to work, storing away the looted goods in the building that they had come out of, until it was all packed away. Not all of them were overly willing but they did it nonetheless.
“One last thing before we go,” Chance told Theras as he shut up the storeroom. “Come with me.”
Theras raised a brow at the request, though followed after Chance as he led the way from the farm down to the stream, to where the vegetable patch grew. Chance took his staff and planted it there. He opened himself up to the power that flowed through him and the world and whispered the words Voraak Var. As before the power flowed outwards, flowing across the land, seeping into it, renewing and restoring and enhancing it. Before their eyes the crops and plants burgeoned in size, growing fuller and stronger, and even trees nearby soaked in the druidic magic to become more than what they had been.
Theras’ mouth fell open in shock as he watched his garden become more abundant, more alive. “How?” he asked. “This is a thing that druids can do?”
“It would seem so, yeah,” Chance responded.
“If they could do this,” Theras started to say before shaking his head. “The question is why haven’t they been helping out then if they could? This will substantially increase the output of our crops.”
“I don’t know why, really,” answered Chace.
“How long will this last?”
“Long enough, it would seem,” Chance said. “I have experimented with it a bit, and the ones I tried it on are still going strong. It will provide you with a good crop for some time.”
“Thank you,” Theras said, shaking his head in wonder. “This, everything else that you have done, we can’t thank you enough for it”
“No worries,” Chance replied, smiling. “I intend to do even more. Things are going to be changing around here if I can help it.”
“I look forward to seeing it.”
With a last nod to the man, Chance returned to where the others waited patiently, carrying a few essentials, but no more; blankets, some food, waterskins and not much else.
“Time to be moving,” Chance told them. “We have a bit of a journey before us, and the longer we take to leave, the longer it will be before we arrive.”
Taking up his pack and spear to go with his staff, Chance led them off, back along the path they had come from, towards the forest and Azval Stalvaq.
They walked largely in silence, as they had little that needed saying. The bandits were for the most reflective of their chanced circumstances, of what it meant and what was to come. Chance was still trying to work out the logistics of it all, how it was going to work and what needed to be done to keep up his end of the bargain. It wasn’t going to be easy. They all needed to be housed, to be fed and for them to be allocated tasks, and it had to be done in a manner that didn’t upset the kobolds either.
On through the morning they travelled, following the path and the stream back towards its source, until they came towards the middle of the day, Chance called for a halt and they rested alongside the stream, to rest, to drink and to eat. A simple meal of bread, cheese and dried meat was passed around. It was plain but enough to keep them going even if a few raised some minor grumbles.
“How far are we going?” the young bandit asked Chance. Chance had found out that he was called Ryvan, and looked and sounded about his age; his real age that was, not the age of the dwarven body he inhabited. It was strange that he felt a good deal older than the kid, somehow, even though deep down he knew he wasn’t.
“We should arrive by the middle of tomorrow,” Chance told him, “Barring anything going wrong.”
“I see.” Ryvan scratched at his head, looking like he had other questions on his mind. “What made you become a druid?” he asked after a short moment of waiting.
“Didn’t really have an option,” Chance told him. “It was kind of forced on me,”
“Oh.” The disappointment was evident in Ryvan’s voice, which Chance didn’t understand.
“Why?” he asked, trying to get to the bottom of it.
“You know, it’s an option.”
Chance raised a brow. “You want to become one?”
“Well, maybe.” Ryvan sounded a bit uncertain. “It seems like you have a lot of power.”
“I guess so, but power isn’t everything and I’m still trying to understand it all myself.”
“Do you think that perhaps I could become one?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“You could teach me then?” Ryvan asked hopefully.
Chance smiled wryly. “I’m new to this myself,” he told Ryvan, “And I don’t think I know enough to be able to teach anyone properly.”
“Oh.” Disappointed marked Ryvan’s words once more.
“I know of another that is wanting to learn,” Chance said. “We’ll see what can be done for the two of you together.” He looked around at the others where they sprawled out and rested. “Time to be moving out,” he called out to them, producing a chorus of groans. “We still have a while to go before night falls.”