When I finally made it through the mountain, my inventory loaded down with countless stone bricks, I found my herd in good health and an excited Buda who was thrilled to be reunited. The rockstalkers, however, were standing on their hind legs, staring daggers through the slitted windows I had left in the rock cave for light and ventilation.
After extricating myself from Buda’s happy headbutts and putting out some more food for the beasts, I sidled up next to the rockstalkers and peered out into the north, curious about what the predators were so fixated on. At first, I saw nothing unusual, until I saw movement among the rocks.
With invisibility and a cone of silence active, I slipped through a temporary opening I made in the stone wall towards the movement I had seen, opening my senses as much as possible. I could hear some shuffling as I neared the location I had targeted. When the rocks started to shift, I held back any cry of surprise when I realized how many beasts were present.
The movement was not actually stone, but a group of incredibly well camouflaged beasts. It was hard to get a clear look at them as they were, but spotting the movement, I realized that the size and shape of them was something I had been looking for since I first started traveling with Marshan.
I was amazed that the beasts had such high-quality natural camouflage given that they were likely magic starved like everything else in the north. That level of camouflage as an illusion would be simple with magic, but this was more like how a chameleon on Earth had operated.
Slowly and cautiously, I put a single morsel of magic-infused meat on the ground and took several steps back. I watched as the shape of a nearby beast stepped towards it, sniffed it, and ate it up.
Once the taming bond was active, I commanded it to shift its color back from its camouflage to whatever was natural for it, and the beast became properly visible before me. Through my invisibility, a wide grin appeared on my face.
The change in color must have meant something to the wild beasts, because the nearest started to shift back to their natural forms as well, and like a ripple in a pond it spread across the whole herd. I looked around at what would certainly be a world-changing event once I saw my plan through.
* * *
The settlement in the forest that I saw when I first climbed over the mountain was little more than a village, a small enclave similar to the one I had passed through when traveling to Roko from Mirut. As Marshan told me at the time, small settlements came and went. Groups of people who were not happy living in the bigger walled cities would strike out, trying to build their own place to live. Often, they fell to their own sets of difficulties, be it starvation, plague, or banditry.
Unlike the last small settlement I had been in, which had been on the verge of failing, this village appeared to be doing rather well. Though it lacked the stone walls of the major cities of the Horuth Kingdom, this village had managed to build walls out of the plentiful logs of the local forest, which would be more than enough for the smaller beasts which would otherwise likely have been a much larger issue than a village on the plains.
I made my way around the log walls until I found the gate, noticing a rough road that had been cut through the forest headed westward, and slowly approached the guards. With mixed feelings, I noticed that the style of armor was similar to what I had seen growing up and fought against in the north. When one of the guards called out for me to halt, it was in the Horuthian tongue. Despite my reservations about being in the Kingdom, I was glad that I would be able to communicate, at least.
I stopped my approach and spread my hands out slightly, palms up to show them I was not an active threat. One guardsmen called back into the village, while the other cautiously stepped forward, eyes darting around ensuring he was not about to be taken by an ambush.
“You alone?” he asked me gruffly.
“Yes sir.”
“Where’d you come from, then?”
I had a couple options for how I would answer that, none of them truthful. To have settled so far east, these people were either frontiersmen actively trying to expand the Kingdom, or the types who purposefully wanted to put some distance between them and their fellow citizens. I would have to be cautious in how I spoke until I could suss out which it was.
“Originally, Roko,” I lied. “After my apprenticeship, I decided I wanted to set out for some adventure. I heard about a settlement out this way when I was passing through Gurt, and thought I would come check it out.”
I was hoping I would be able to pass for fifteen, given my muscular body. I was starting to hit a growth spurt, which helped a bit, and that was part of the reason I needed to reintroduce myself to civilization; my clothes were going to be a problem in the near future. I had cast a minor illusion over myself to make me appear slightly taller and older, but only moderately so, as I planned on growing into the illusion and then living naturally, if I settled down near here.
From behind the guard, a gate swung open, and a middle-aged man stepped out. He and the guard conferred for a moment before the older man stepped towards me.
“What’s your name, adventure-seeker?”
“Pilus,” I answered honestly. My name was not that uncommon in the Kingdom, so retaining it was not a substantial risk.
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“Well met, Pilus. My name is Soren. Why don’t you come inside and we can have a chat.”
Soren led me through the gate and into the village. Without being too obvious about it, I took stock of everything I could, trying to get a read on the people living here. While some people observed cautiously from the windows of their homes, most of the village was going about their own business without worrying too much about the strange traveler. I took that to mean these people were probably not a group of criminals who had fled into the wilds, though the clear caution spoke of, at minimum, some discomfort to have visitors. Whether that was concerns about either authority or banditry, I did not know.
In short order I had already seen a few dozen people, more than I had expected given the size of the village, and also more mouths than I expected that would need feeding. I did see some small gardens around some of the houses, but nothing substantial. While the hunting was probably quite good in this region, the village had no farms, and if the winters here were as cold as I expected they would be so near the mountains, a village like this would still need grain stores to thrive at this level. I figured that was what the road was for, that they must buy in some amount from Gurt.
Soren led me to one of the largest buildings in the village, though it was still a small log building compared to what could be seen in a walled city. Still, the insides were nice and well kept, and he led me to a put together office, offering me a seat before moving behind the desk and sitting down himself. He was clearly in charge of this settlement, though he seemed a tad young for the role.
“You’ve got a nice village here,” I cautiously opened with.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “We’re quite proud of what we’ve built.”
I lapsed into silence as I tried to figure out how to probe for information without divulging too much of my own, but after a few moments of fumbling, Soren spoke again, this time with a level of severity he had yet to show.
“Why are you here, Pilus?”
I debated how to answer that while analyzing the question as best as I could. Given the level of scrutiny and the rough state of the road, it was clear that the village did not receive frequent visitors, particularly strangers. There was virtually no chance that merchant convoys made it out this far east, especially since there was nothing beyond it to travel to. Gurt was the walled city furthest to the east in the Kingdom, and was the end of the line for most convoys, meaning the people of this village likely had to travel themselves to get supplies.
“Opportunity,” I said after a moment, a glint in my eye. I let the silence stretch a bit as Soren studied me. “I’m in need of a place to stretch my wings after my apprenticeship.”
Soren looked at me with some skepticism. No doubt he was analyzing what he saw and trying to figure out what sort of opportunity I meant. “We’ve already got a blacksmith,” he said after taking in my form.
“Actually, my apprenticeship was with a merchant convoy.”
Soren’s hard face finally revealed something new as an expression of shock momentarily appeared on his face, then understanding, before finally settling on mirth as a chuckle escaped his lips. “Bold,” he said after his chuckling subsided. “But foolish. We manage to scrape together enough to do trade, yes, but there are no riches to be found here.”
“I’m not so sure about that, but be that as it may, I have secondary goals as well. I find myself seeking… privacy, I suppose. The last year has been tiring, and I’m in need of a quiet place to rest. A place where I can pursue other projects.”
“While I can certainly understand that, this village does not have much of a need for a merchant. It will be hard to make a living, and there will be no hand-outs. Life can be quite difficult in the wild, and you will need to earn your way like anyone else.”
“That’s fine. My time studying the mercantile arts was productive, and I was able to put together a bit of a nest egg to get myself established. While you might not need a merchant, surely the village could still benefit from one. With no convoys coming to you, I assume you need to send your own people west to do trade, people who would be better suited to continue their work here. A merchant could manage the trade for you—for a small fee, of course—thus ensuring you get the best value for your products and the most out of it. Additionally, with my own funds, I could bring in niceties that your village has been lacking. Surely some of your people would be interested in these products and ultimately buy them from me, but even if not, I would take all the risk myself.”
I watched as Soren deliberated my words, and after a short while, gave me the tiniest of nods. Now open to the idea, we began to discuss the finer details of the village's output and needs. I had brought along my old pack, the same one my parents had given me when I was five, and from within I pulled out parchment and ink to take notes. It would be slow-going to build up trust and develop a relationship, assuming that was what I decided to do, and if so I would only be joining the existing trade group for the foreseeable future rather than take it over, which would require a huge amount of trust on the village’s part.
Soren showed me a rough map at my request so I could get a sense of where exactly the village was located. It only showed the local region around the village, with Gurt at the west of the map and the mountains to the north. As far as he was aware, there were no other villages nearby, though that could always change. More importantly, there was little known about much further east. The village had hunters who explored in that direction, but there was only so far people could safely travel in the wild before returning home.
Getting swept up in the natural flow of conversation was a bit too easy, and I realized I was letting myself get dragged into plans that were beyond me before properly questioning them, as I had when I went north. I asked for a small break to use a latrine so I could gather my thoughts, which Soren granted me, though he did still call a guard to accompany me. Words were nice, but until my actions proved my trustworthiness, it was too risky to let a relatively unknown entity free in their small community.
Sitting on the latrine, I allowed myself to ruminate on what I had learned. Soren seemed like a competent leader, particularly compared to the leader of the last village I had encountered in the Kingdom. It was hard to compare it to Velgein villages, as the manner of living was so different, but even when I did, Soren’s village seemed relatively peaceful, prosperous for a settlement in the wilds, and well-ordered. It had nothing on a walled city, but given how difficult it was to live on one’s own in this world, I doubted I could find another that was as put together as this one.
Given the size of the herd I was hiding in the mountain pass, I could not exactly shop around too far for another place to settle by. It was a stroke of fortune to encounter such a strong village, and though it was possible I could find a better one further south or west, there was no real reason to look further than what I had already found.
That was true, at least, on paper. There was a matter of philosophical alignment as well. I knew that my presence would, eventually, change things for these people. If these people were Kingdom expansionists, it might lead to a situation where I had to uproot and move on again before I could achieve my goals.
Equally importantly, while there would be no Church in a small village, there surely was one in Gurt. Soren had not asked me for my father’s name as of yet, but if he wanted to, he might be able to use that to query the Church for my childhood records next time the village sent people in to trade. I would be exposed as under twelve instead of over fifteen, and my whole plan would fall apart.
I returned to Soren’s office, and before we picked the thread of the previous conversation back up, I put forth my own question to the leader of this village.
“When we first sat down, you asked me why I was here, and before we continue I’d like to ask you the same question, Soren. Why are you, and this village, here?”