Still waiting on the lady to return, I had taken Birdy out to say hi to Max and Carol and our new wolfie friend as well. Luckily for me, but more luckily for my mechanical birdily friend, the direwolf does seem to enjoy its presence and makes no attempts to eat it.
Birdie lands on the direwolf's head right when the lady returns with a cart of saddles and a bag. She looks a bit surprised when she sees our friends, but Sam quickly explains who they are.
“These are the saddles I promised, they should make the ride a lot more comfortable for both you and your direwolves.” She explain after which she waves us over to the bag. “And this is something special that I’ve developed myself.” She then opens the bag and shows us what’s inside. Inside we see relatively small brown cubes, a bit coarse looking though.
“What are they?” Sam asks. “It looks like some kind of food.” Sam sniffs the air, but from what I can smell myself, they don’t appear to give off any peculiar kind of odor, maybe a little bit of a smell of meat but it’s really really faint.
“Yes, these are nutritional cubes that I’ve developed especially for direwolves.” She replies. “Two of these cubes will keep these puppers fed for the entire day. It cuts down a lot on having to hunt.”
“And they get all the needed nutrition from these? Everything?” Sam picks one of the cubes up. One cube doesn’t even fill up half of the palm of Sam’s hand.
“Yep. I have enriched them with a herb mixture from a local alchemist which makes each cube more potent. The herbs are not that hard to find, especially not for someone with a knowledge of nature.” She then takes a piece of paper from her back pocket and hands it over to Sam as well. “These are all the ingredients you need and the way you need to prepare the cubes.”
Sam gives the piece of paper a quick look over and then gives the lady a nod. “Yeah, those ingredients look rather common.”
“The most important part is the way you prepare the herbs. If you don’t do it right, it will lose a lot of its efficiency.”
“Thank you.” I reply. “Are you sure you should give this to us though. It seems like you are giving away quite the competitive advantage by sharing the recipe.”
“I’m more concerned with the direwolves' well-being.” She shrugs. “The profit margin isn’t too high on these blocks anyway. So I rather give the recipe away to the owners so they can treat their direwolves the best they possibly can.”
Max smiles. “That’s very thoughtful of you. We will be sure to take very good care of them.”
The lady smiles and then turns herself to the direwolf we’ve been standing next to. “Then I have one final request to make of you.”
“Mhmm?” I nod.
“I’d like that if you pick this direwolf out, which I assume you will, that you take her brother with you as well.” She nods over to the next stable over. “I would not like the two of them to be separated.”
We all look at each other and give each other a nod after which I continue taking the word. “Of course. You really don’t need to ask that twice. I have a sister myself and I wouldn’t want to be forcefully separated from her either.”
“Then we got ourselves a deal.” The lady smiles.
“Do they already have names or can we give them names ourselves?” Carol asks.
“Feel free to name them yourselves. I do not generally give them names.”
-Hmmm, what should I call my direwolf?-
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Sam picks out my wolf’s brother while Max and Carol pick out two other direwolves. After which the lady helps to saddle them up with us. We then divide the food blocks between the four of us so we each have a similar load.
When we mount up on our new wolves, the drakone lady comes over one more time to say goodbye to the wolves she’s been taking care of. Giving each of them a good scratch behind the ears. She then turns to us. “I wish you all safe travels.”
My direwolf gives her a lick back. “Thank you. I hope we meet again one day.”
The lady smiles and waves us off. And with just a tiny hint of where we want to go, our wolves start marching out of the stables. It’s a very different feeling from riding a horse, it’s hard to really explain how it feels apart from it feeling more ‘sportsy’ in a way. But in the end it’s the comfort that matters and as far as it feels now, it’s pretty much just as comfortable if not more so.
When we get out in the streets we make our way to the eastern city gate through the back alleys. Right now the streets all look pretty abandoned.
Sam, who is riding next to me on the somewhat bigger direwolf, smiles at me. “You are not going to name your direwolf, Wolfy, are you?” She then looks at birdy who is still riding on my direwolf’s head.
I pout at my girlfriend making fun of my naming schemes. “Why not? That’s a cute name, isn’t it?”
“It would definitely be in theme.” She chuckles.
“Have you already thought about a name?” I ask in return.
“Not really.” She shakes her head. “I feel like I need to get to know him better before doing that. I don’t want to call a Bob a Robert if you know what I mean.”
I hear Max snort from behind us. “That was a very funny comparison, but I do think I understand what you are trying to say.”
“What about you and Carol?” I look back at our friends.
“I’m in the same boat Sam is in.” Max explains. “Hell, I didn’t know I was going to have to name a direwolf earlier today. A horse is one thing but this is something else entirely.” She does give her direwolf a quick pat on her side. Max is riding the biggest direwolf in the party and the pairing does look rather intimidating. While a direwolf by itself is already pretty scary, at least paired with three nekote it doesn’t look that menacing. But with a big barbarian like Max… well… that’s a different story altogether.
“And I’ve got an idea or two but I want to think about it for a bit longer before I make a decision.” Carol smiles. “But, I’m pretty happy with these mounts. They are pretty cool.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you there.” Sam laughs.
-And me neither.-
The guards take a wide step away from us as we ride through the gate. One of the guards especially looks really scared of our mounts and hides behind his colleague. I’m sure that guard will be happy to get home today.
When we are finally out of the city with the open road ahead of us, we decide to pick up the pace a little. The wolves themselves also seem to enjoy being out of the city a lot more, their strut seeming a lot more enthusiastic. It doesn’t take long for us to be travelling at quite the pace. Almost as if we are a wolfpack on the prowl. Our pace making the wind blow through our hair. It reminds me of my trip with Hilda on her motorbike. But instead of just being the passenger, I’m the one in control.
“Wooo! This is so fun!” Max yells out as the direwolves give their pace an extra boost. “I love this!”
Sam and I look at each other, giving each other a knowing smile. It is very fun seeing the trees race by and feeling the energy of our new furry friends flow almost directly into us.
It’s so fun that when we see the walls of the next settlement after only about an hour of travel, I kinda feel down that we have to slow down. But as I can see the guards in the distance hurriedly get ready, it’s probably best not to make them assume we are enemies by charging at them at full speed.
When we get closer to them, one of the guards steps forward and raises his hand. His arm is shaking a bit. “H-hold there. State your business.”
“We are passing through this settlement to go and deal with your bandit problem.” Sam nods at me, to which I present the paper Crystal gave to us to prove that we are on a quest she gave us.
The guard nervously takes the paper from me before quickly pulling his arm out of reach from my direwolf. Meanwhile my direwolf just seems like a happy doggo, happy that she had done some good zoomies through the forrest.
“A-alright.” The guard nods and gives the paper back as fast as he had taken it away from me. “Y-you can move through. B-but please keep these beasts under control...” He then quickly falls back to the other guards who are looking even more scared than he is.
-If things keep going like this, we might just be able to scare the bandits into surrendering…-