As we now have to go off-road and into the forest our pace is definitely going to slow down a lot.

“Wouldn’t it be best to feed ourselves and let our wolves rest a bit before we go on to look for the bandits?” I propose. It’s not that our doggies are looking very tired but if we end up in a fight it might be best to have them be as well-rested as possible.

“Yeah, but I prefer not doing that on the road.” Sam nods. “Let’s first go into the trees for a couple hundred of meters so at least we are a bit more out of immediate line of sight.”

We all follow Sam’s lead as she steers her wolf into the forest. I was a bit curious to see how the wolves would do off-road, especially since a horse would start having quite a bit of issues in this terrain.

But it seems like our mounts have very little issues navigating the forest floor. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised as they are wolves after all, just a little bit bigger than their smaller cousins I’d fought before.

After a couple of minutes Sam makes her wolf lie down for a bit in a spot that is slightly more open than the surrounding area. It does seem like the forest is going to get even denser a bit further on.

“Food time!” Carol and Max also got off their wolves and I do the same.

“I’m gonna try feeding my doggie first.” I take out one of the food blocks the nice lady had given us and crouch down next to my wolf. I can see her tail start wagging as she sees the block in the palm of my hand. In the meantime the rest of the team is looking at what I’m doing. “Yeah, you can have it.” I give my wolf a nod and hold the block closer to her nose.

My wolf slowly opens her mouth and carefully takes the block out of my hand, tilting her head so that she gets a good angle to not bite my hand. When she has the block in between her teeth she lifts her head to make it drop into her mouth and then starts happily chewing on it.

“Good wolfie.” I rub my wolf on her head and behind her ears as she eats her little meal.

“You’re a natural, babe.” Sam walks over to me and hands me some bread and dried meat, giving me a kiss on my cheek.

“I’m sure your wolves will like you too. Mine is a cutie, that’s for sure.” When she’s done eating her cube, my wolf gives me a big old lick on my other cheek. She doesn’t even attempt to go for the food I have in my hands.

“I think we’ve definitely stricken gold with them.” Max replies, taking out a food cube of her own to feed to her wolf. “I’m already incredibly attached. I’m not letting any bandit get close to my wolf.”

“You do know our wolves will attack by biting and using their claws, right?” Sam chuckles. “Or are you going to give your wolf a crossbow?”

“Now that- that’s an idea!” Max gives her wolf the cube and gives him a good big patpat. “In all seriousness, I think they can hold their own just fine.”

“That’s true. I’m not too afraid of anything happening to them as long as we don’t need to fight an army by ourselves.” Sam replies after which she and Max go off on something basketball related.

After Carol feeds her wolf as well, she comes to sit down next to me so we can eat our food together.

“I hope you aren’t too bored, we haven’t really had much action yet.”

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“No, I like traveling with you and Sam. When it was only Max and I, we spent a lot of time doing those typical fetch quests, I’m happy we at least have something else to do. And now we have doggos as well.”

“Fair enough.” I smile. “And what do you think of the food we picked?”

“Definitely not bad.” She takes a bite of the dried meat we got. “You did a good job picking it out.” Carol uses her free hand to give me a head pat.

“Thanks, I tried to pick things that I thought you might like. That’s why I didn’t pick the slimy slugs.”

“Eeeew. Slimy slugs? They sell those in Ribaquen?”

“No, I was just joking.” I giggle.

“Phew.” Carol wipes some imaginary sweat off her forehead.

We finish our food a couple of minutes later without anything meaningful happening. The forest seems to be quiet for now.

“Should we walk next to our wolves?” Max asks. “I doubt we’ll be able to dismount quickly and easily if we get to the denser part.”

“Might be better, yeah.” Sam nods. “It’s easier for me to track when I’m on foot.”

“Can you follow us?” I ask my direwolf. She tilts her head a little at my question. I then decide to take a couple of steps away from her and then beckon her along with a swing of my arm. “Come. Come on girl.”

It does seem like she understands that as she gets up from her laying down position and walks over to me with her tongue happily hanging out of her mouth. When she reaches me she turns around and looks at the rest of the group as if she wants the rest to follow me as well. That does result in a couple of chuckles from the group but in the end they follow my example and get their wolves to follow along as well.

When we get to the denser part of the forest it incidentally also gets a lot darker. The canopy is now blocking out most of the light and the trees themselves are also of the kind that have a darker bark than the trees we’d been traveling past for most of the day. It definitely feels as though this part of the forest is a lot older than the rest of it. Even though it feels a lot scarier, thanks to the presence of our friendly direwolves, it makes me feel rather confident.

Sam takes the lead and walks ahead of us with her wolf close behind her, looking for any kind of track that can lead us towards the bandit camp. For quite a while, we don’t find anything. And even though it’s hard to tell because of the trees, it’s obvious that the sun is starting to set already.

Right about when I start doubting if we’ll even find anything today. Sam makes us all stop as she crouches down, her wolf mimicking her funnily enough. “These are tracks, fresh ones at that.” She whispers, but still loud enough so we can all hear it.

“Big group?” Max asks back.

Sam shakes her head. “Three people.” She then looks to the left and to the right. “I think we should follow their tracks instead of tracking it back to its origin.”

“What makes you say that?” Max slowly moves past me and crouches down next to Sam too.

I see Sam point down at something, presumably one of the footsteps. “See how deep these are? I’m pretty sure the people who made these were rather tired when they passed, which makes me think they are on their way back to their camp.

“Huh, are you sure?”

“It’s an estimated guess.” Sam shrugs. “But I’m for 85% sure.”

“Sam is the tracking expert.” Carol chimes in. “If she says it’s that way, then it’s probably going to be that way. Don’t you think so, Max?”

“I do, I do. I’m not debating that. I’m just trying to understand the decision making process. I might have picked a rather hulking ‘go smash’ class but I still want to know what’s going on.”

“Well, we’ll encounter something sooner rather than later, and it doesn’t matter which way we go in that regard. So when it comes to that I’m 100% sure. I’m just trying to get us to the goal the fastest way possible. And when it comes to that… let’s just say I would be rather surprised if the other way would be the shorter one.” Sam explains.

“Fair enough.” Max gives Sam a pat on the back. “Then let’s just follow them along? That way, right?”

“Yeah, but let’s try to be even quieter now. If we do find their camp, I don’t want them knowing we are here.”

“Luckily we don’t have my sis with us then.” I reply. “Her heavy armor isn’t the most stealthy thing in the world.”

“It might not be.” Max replies. “But it does look cool as fuck.”

“I’m not going to argue with that.”

When we are done with our little chit-chat we follow the tracks with Sam still in the lead.

-I do wonder how many bandits we’ll run into. It can’t be that many, right? This deep into the forest…-