Torgit did still have his wagon, though it was in rough shape. It was little more than a box on two axles, with a seat for the driver and the yoke for the oxalire. The village did not have a wainwright, but it did have carpenters who could replace some of the boards and build some new parts for it.
I would need to replace the axles with a proper suspension if I wanted to use this thing regularly on the rough road to and from Gurt. I had steel for just that purpose, but I only generally knew how suspensions worked. I had a rough mental image of a leaf spring and how it works, but I was not sure that I could make that work with a single axle, and independent suspension was a much larger engineering challenge. This is going to take iteration and experimentation.
Fortunately, the village smith would let me work in his smithy, and the pace of life in the village was conducive to sharing workspaces and leveraging the skills of the craftspeople, especially when I exchanged good food for the work. Once I had a nice buffer of mursin meat to share, this was a project I could tackle.
I bought the wagon from Torgit, to his surprise, although the act was more for visibility than function. I figured the entire wagon would be rebuilt before I was done with it, but I wanted the villagers to know I was working on transportation, even though Torgit and others told me that the roads made using the wagon something between a chore and an impossibility. He gave me his old oxalire harness with the sale, which was probably the most useful part of the whole deal. I had leather and a Needlework skill and would need to custom fashion my own in order to see my plans to fruition.
* * *
I spent a lot of time over the following weeks back and forth between the village, working on various projects, exchanging mursin meat, making acquaintances and some friends, and slowly but surely improving the wagon. Back on my compound, I finished clearing the wall boundary. The lubargs helped with the digging, although they were a bit worse at it than the rockstalkers, and once the foundation was set I switched gears to setting foundational stones down for various other internal subwalls and buildings, including what would eventually become my home. I was a bit tired of camping or sleeping in a cave.
I needed to get the ground worked and foundations set before the ground froze up for winter, as I could stack stone brick through the winter if need be, but digging would be too much work for my beast helpers. We took the time to dig out the house foundation much deeper, and even excavated enough to put in a small basement cold cellar. Using magically merged stone meant it should be rodent-proof when finished, and I was confident I could modify the inner surface over the entire winter into something non-porous so that the spring melt did not let any water in.
Magic made construction a totally different beast than what it would be on Earth. It was more like playing legos than work, and was largely easy and fun. The limitations were mostly MP-driven rather than physical fatigue, and when I hit my limits I simply took a break from it and focused on my mundane skills and projects and practiced my traditional hunting against mursin and other small beasts in the forest. There was a rather delectable waterfowl beast called a blueflit that I had developed a taste for, and the villagers enjoyed them as well.
I also did some taming, recording what I learned in my bestiary, and trained some beasts up to evolve them as well. Evolved beasts were far better at keeping the wild predators at bay. My evolved “proud lubargs” prevented any further pack incursions after growing to be lion-sized.
Bit by bit, everything was coming together, and the summer heat faded. When the chill of autumn could be felt, the village started discussing the big trip into Gurt to trade for our winter grain. The hunters doubled up their work to bring in meat, the butchers were busy salting, smoking, grinding, and curing, while the other villagers were preparing last minute firewood and preserving the harvest of their gardens. Unlike Mirut, where my family had kept a winter garden, very little would grow in the winter here. We were far enough inland and close enough to the mountains that this region would see hard frost all winter, and some freezing and snow on top. That had some benefits, as it would make preserving food easier, and I would rather the area freeze for several months than suffer a winter of rain like where I grew up.
As the day of the trip approached, I again found myself in a bit of a bind with all my tamed animals. I sorted away those that I needed my walls finished to contain in the caverns, but I had finished the confines of some more permanent habitat enclosures for the smaller beasts I intended on keeping long-term. A lot of the predators had a far smaller jump height than the prey beasts, so it was relatively easy to build an open-air enclosure for the rockstalkers, who I had released from their tamer bond and who had paired up to breed, having the same backwards breeding schedule as the quadhorns.
I had evolved them as well, and they were now “masked rockstalkers,” having grown a bit longer and thicker with a slightly altered coloration. While they were even faster moving over rocky terrain, and could pounce quickly and dangerously, they did not gain any vertical height in their jumps, so containment was straightforward enough. That was not the case for the proud lubargs, who had an excellent vertical jump but limited pounce. I would need either much higher walls or an inner moat for their enclosure, but for this trip, they would accompany the convoy in the woods as protection. Buda, however, would be staying home.
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His enclosure had needed very thick walls, given his ramming power, but very little height. I was reluctant to drop my bond with him, since it was such an important one to me and one that I had kept since Mirut, but I decided to test it out rather than risk it happening naturally.
Fortunately, Buda was Buda. He found a comfortable spot to lay down, and sat there contentedly. He was well-fed and cared for, and it showed. It was a big relief for me. My growth spurt meant that riding him would not be feasible much longer, and I was loath to lose him, but if he was content to live here, even untamed, then that was the best of both worlds. If there was a risk of violence when I wanted to interact with him, I could renew our bond.
The day before the trip, I headed towards the village. I would spend the night there instead of meeting up in the morning, because I had a few last things to prepare ahead of time.
When my entourage and I neared the village gates, I could hear the commotion the sight of us was causing inside. I raised my hand and called out to the guard, and stopped the pair of beasts that had accompanied me, laying my hands on their necks and smiling.
“It’s ok, Len, Harod!” I shouted, naming the two guards. I motioned towards the large, shaggy blueish-gray beasts that stood on cloven hooves about 15 hands tall, with large, pale antler racks that swept back from their heads. The camouflage-capable beasts from the second herd that I had discovered in the north grunted and lowered their heads, picking at the shrub and grass at the ground. “These two are with me.”
* * *
“So you’re a tamer?” Soren asked, his voice slightly incredulous as he looked over the beasts I had brought to draw the wagon.
“I’m a man of many talents,” I said with a grin. “But yes, I’m a rather adept tamer. That’s the bulk of my project, and why I couldn’t move into the village immediately. I’ve got a herd of these that I’m raising in the wilderness.”
“But… why?”
“I’ll show you. Come on.”
With Soren’s approval, I led the twin draft beasts through the village to where I was storing the wagon, which had been vastly improved by the craftspeople that had worked with me on it.
“You’re no doubt familiar with the Kingdom’s use of oxalire, both for farming and for transportation. But oxalire, while strong, are slow.”
I turned around and looked over the beasts that I had found in the north. They were called “tarands,” and they were gorgeous, reindeer-like creatures with bear-like fur that could naturally shift colors to allow them to blend in with their environment, but the fur was also truly beautiful when at rest. Their antlers were rather different from Earth reindeer, curving back instead of jutting forward, and they had a long, hairy tail.
Though they distinctly were not horses, they were the closest things I had seen to horses in this world, which is why I had collected a dozen of them and a key factor in why I built my whole operation below the mountains. It was the reason I was keeping guard of my tunnel back north, in case I needed to replenish the gene pool. Of all the things I could use to build a good life in this world—as well as a fortune, and make meaningful changes—revolutionizing travel and transport in the same way that horses had on Earth was at the top of my list.
Riding them was definitely possible, too. The antlers made it a bit awkward, but antlers could be trimmed. Kept at the right length, they made an interesting handhold that allowed for bareback riding, but long-term, saddling and full antler trimming would probably work best. Both males and females had the antlers, which was a bit unfortunate in that regard, and I was still learning about how and when they shed, but they definitely did both shed, meaning trimming would not be required year-round.
As draft beasts, though, the antlers were no issue. Unlike oxalire, the tarands could gallop. While they did not have the same heft and power as an oxalire, which would remain the more useful plow beast for that reason, a pair of tarands should be able to pull an equally heavy wheeled wagon as an oxalire, possibly even larger ones given that two split the load, and that was ignoring the potential of creating a more complex design for draught poles to use four or more.
I showed Soren the redesigned wagon and the harnesses I had made for the tarands, connecting them to the simple draught pole I had designed. This was the first time I had been able to connect the harnesses to the wagon, and I immediately noticed some areas for improvement, but I hopped in the seat and got them to pull the wagon a few lengths and it all seemed to work, at least with no load weight.
“Even still, the wagon will get bogged down in the road,” Soren muttered, looking over the harness design.
“That’s why I’ve been working with Po,” I said, mentioning the smith. I motioned towards the wheels and bent over, pointing out the suspension work. “This metal has some flex in it, and we built this here to give the wheels some flex. It should help avoid issues of individual wheels bottoming out in pits and make it easier to draw the wagon overall.”
Of course, I did not mention that I was improving the road with magic, but it was true that suspensions would make travel easier overall, especially at higher speeds. Most importantly, it would make the ride more comfortable.
“And here,” I said, showing the inside of the wagon. I lifted up benches that were hinged along the interior, wedging the supports underneath. “While we can’t use these when the wagon is packed full of cargo, this will make the journey in to Gurt a lot more comfortable. It’s a transport for personnel as much as goods.”
“Pilus, if this works… this will be a huge boon for the village.”
“Soren, when this works… it will be a boon for the whole kingdom. I have yet to test it under full load, but a tarand can trot up to ten times the speed of oxalire, easily. And they can move a lot faster, if they sprint, like when dealing with bandits and beasts, although I’m not sure if this wagon could take that. This is just the first iteration. Once I work the kinks out and can start offering enhanced transport options for sale to other merchants…” I let the words trail off, seeing Soren’s understanding unfold, even without discussing riding and the other benefits. He nodded.
“You’ve been a friend to the village and this… this has tremendous potential. How can I help?”
I patted him on the arm and gave him a smile. “All in good time. Let’s test this out on the trip to Gurt and see how it goes.”