Despite the convenience of the tarand-drawn wagon, that particular trip to and from Gurt was not all that much faster than the last. A lot more people had planned to make the journey, in order to haul the amount of meat we had for sale in and to carry the grain back. Though my wagon could have done that for the villagers, each villager also had various other personal items that they had intended to sell on this trip to refill their personal coffers, and had items they wished to buy. In a perfect world, I could have arranged all that for them, but not every villager trusted me yet to manage their personal affairs, and despite the difficulty of the journey, many were still looking forward to it before the long tedium of winter.

So, while the tarand-drawn wagon could travel a lot faster, we were still limited by the walking speed of the average person. If I wanted to speed up the journey in the future and the number of people who wished to accompany us remained unchanged, I would need a second wagon, and possibly a third. That was the plan anyway, to be able to exchange more goods, but it would take some time and funding to build out the new wagons, although Soren seemed eager to contribute.

Even the single wagon helped, as the weakest, oldest, and slowest members were able to ride the wagon, and the rest of the space could be used by those who needed a rest, so people stayed fresh and comfortable overall. While I was exposing myself as a tamer and introducing the tarands to the Kingdom on this trip, that was not the same as exposing myself as a battle tamer, so the proud lubargs stayed hidden in the forest. I did introduce Treepo, though, who joined me in the driver seat of the wagon. Without Buda to ride on, Treepo would have had to walk the whole way otherwise, as the lubargs were no good as mounts.

The trip was not perfect. I was trying to improve the road as we traveled, but there were a lot of eyes on both me and the wagon, so I was not able to fix every hole in the road before the wagon hit some. There were at least a few areas where the wagon got bogged down and we had to unload everyone and push to get it moving. That would be a problem on the way back, loaded with grain, except that once we passed the worst areas and no one was looking I fixed it up as much as I felt I could get away with. Even if we got stuck on the way back, I had advanced strength, and I could bolster the tarands with 6-point magic buffs to pull harder, assuming the harnesses and wagon itself could take the strain.

When we reached Gurt, the guards did not panic at the sight of the tarands, probably because they were strapped to a wagon and surrounded by traders. However, clearly the rumor mill went into overdrive at the strange sight, and a number of guards were soon milling around checking things out. Before long, plenty of locals were coming by to check out the wagon drawn by creatures that were distinctly not-oxilire. The children, in particular, seemed delighted, and who could blame them; the tarands were majestic creatures, and as far as I knew, had likely never been seen before, unlike the local wild beasts that were boring at best and scary at worst.

“What’re these called?” I was asked for the sixth time by another person from Gurt.

“These are tarands,” I answered yet again. “One of them is worth ten oxalire when it comes to pulling wagons, but they work best in pairs.”

I was setting the stage for getting some interest, since I planned on selling the beasts, and not for cheap. Until other people in the Kingdom caught on to the notion of breeding beasts on their own, I would maintain a monopoly on their sale, since the locals could not just go out and tame them on their own like they could oxalire. Given how far east I had found them in the north, so far from Freigel, I was not too worried about former soldiers identifying them from Velgein lands, although I would be paying close attention in case it happened.

The Freehold villagers sold their meat, and I helped by recommending the butchers I had spoken to about best prices. I personally sold some fresh mursin meat to the butcher who had promised me the best price, as well as some of the waterfowl I liked, which the butcher promised me a really good price if I could bring him more. We picked up the bulk grain shipment I had arranged, and the villagers helped load it onto the wagon.

Bulk grain shipment was a bit of a tricky situation. Since textiles were expensive, I could not just buy them by the sack like I had expected. Personal-sized baskets of grain were woven from reed or other cheap plant matter, but you could only make them so big before the weight of the grain made woven storage a challenge. Barrels were an option, but much more expensive, and crates were affordable, but ridiculously heavy. Gurt had the mechanisms in place to help load them, with pulleys, which I was familiar with from when I joined Marshan on the resupply mission north, but unloading crates in the village would not be so easy. We would have to unload the actual grain into other storage receptacles before moving the crates.

If only everyone had an Inventory skill, I mentally sighed.

During the pick-up, I subtly stored away some of my order, hoping no one would quite notice the discrepancy once loaded up. I did not think the merchants selling the grain would offer extra if they thought the wagon looked light when finished, as that would be on the buyer to watch, and since the villagers did not know how much I bought, and I did not bring up the perceived shortage, it did not come up, though I did notice one merchant appear slightly confused. Mostly, people were distracted by the tarands, which eased my deceit. In the future, I would have the right number of wagons for the orders I made, but for this winter I needed to get more grain than I could easily move to feed my growing herds, especially since some of the quadhorns were pregnant and near due.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I picked up the clothes I had ordered, which were much more comfortable than the clothing I had outgrown. I had personally let out and patched those repeatedly to have something to wear in the meanwhile. My old clothes were worthless for resale, but I would hand them off to the tailor in the village for reuse for the local kids. I immediately put an order in for a new set of clothes, since I would not have the time to visit Roko until after winter and I was still growing. The cost was steep but the butcher had paid well, which was good. I still had not managed to pull the aluminum from the tawing salt to form corundum, though I had not tried for very long when it did not work immediately, too busy with building my tamer compound and planning for this trip.

Buying luxuries to resell in the village was less of a priority since so many villagers had come to handle that themselves, but a number of villagers had stayed home and relied on me to get goods for them, so I made my rounds to buy what I could. The hunters had already finished their business and were willing to guard the tarands for me, though I was not too worried since the city guard was interested enough that they were keeping their eyes on them, making theft or killing my beasts unlikely.

It was nice to have a friend concerned, though, and Bortag had quickly fallen for the tarands and was guarding them quite seriously.

Since I was not paying out of pocket for an excess of luxury items, I made some rounds to craftsmen and merchants who sold crafting materials, buying whatever caught my interest. I had a whole winter to play with ideas and toy with my magic, plus new skills if I could gain a level, so I was happy to hoard a stash of junk that I might find a use for.

After a night of comfort and recovery at an inn, the villagers were ready to head back, thrilled to not be burdened down by their own supplies of grain and making use of the wagon. I had also promised to sell them the grain, back at the village, at cost, so they had purchased other niceties with their savings and everyone was in a good mood, until we approached the treeline and several men stepped out, swords drawn and spears pointed.

* * *

The whole procession froze, and the hunters started reaching for their bows before a couple more men stepped out of the treeline, also archers, with bows drawn and arrows pointed towards us.

“Nobody moves, and no one gets hurt,” one of the bandits said in the most cliche turn of phrase of all time.

Bandits might not have been the right term for the men who were trying to rob us. Banditry implied independent camps, highwaymen who lived outside of civilization. The way these men were dressed and armed, they seemed like they were people who lived in Gurt. Common thieves, who had gone ahead to stage this meeting and liberate us of our belongings and the interesting beasts that had caused such a stir.

Stupid. You can’t use or sell these beasts without being a tamer, let alone the obvious fact that you’d have to have killed us to take them, given their rarity.

I had my hands up, and stood slowly. “What do you want?” I asked, feigning concern.

“Everything you have,” one said with a grin.

“And the beasts?” I said, motioning with my chin towards the pair.

“Those too.”

“Did it ever occur to you that someone with rare, mysterious beasts like these… might have more?” I said, and my pair of proud lubargs moved at my mental cue, tearing down the archers in one swift pounce.

Everyone was stunned, but only for a moment, and then our archers nocked, drew, and released, and several of the thieves cried out or fell. I leapt forward, summoning my baselard, and cut down the leader, before pivoting and blocking a strike from his second. A small spike of rock quickly erupted from the ground, penetrating his foot before disappearing back into the earth, and when he stumbled I cut him down as well.

The archers continued to pepper the thieves with arrows, taking down the remaining enemies, and I wiped the blood from my sword before going to sheath it, before remembering I was not actually wearing my sheath. I turned to put my body between myself and the villagers so I could summon it and clip it to my belt, and put the shortsword away as I turned back to them.

The hunters and villagers looked warily at the proud lubargs, then at me. I shrugged, then walked over to the lion-sized beasts and rubbed their heads. They plopped down on the ground and started grooming the blood off their fur. I turned back to the group and gave them a wry grin. “I may have tamed a bit more than just the tarands.”

“Those are the biggest ‘bargs I’ve ever seen,” Bortag said in hesitant awe. “Are they even ‘bargs?”

“Yeah,” I said, stepping back towards the convoy members. “Well, they were. Beasts can transform under the right conditions and grow stronger. I helped these lubargs transform into proud lubargs.”

“Incredible,” I heard one of the villagers say, and they started to murmur amongst themselves.

I laughed, slightly uncomfortable, then waved my hands. “It’s no big deal. I plan on doing a lot more taming, and I’m happy to teach others about it. As you can see, it can be a lot more useful than just pulling wagons and plowing fields. Anyway, these guys have been guarding us from the forest this whole time, so we’ve got little else to worry about.” I looked down at the prospective thieves. “What should we do with them?”

Bortag walked over to one he had dropped with his arrows, pulling them free from the corpse and clicking his teeth at a broken shaft. Then he unclipped the man’s sword sheath from his belt and clipped it to his own. “They tried to take from us, and failed. What’s theirs is ours. Right of might.”

I heard a few more villagers respond “right of might” and step forward to claim the thieves' possessions. I vaguely recalled something similar happening when Marshan’s convoy was attacked by bandits, but I was so shocked by my first human kill that it had all blurred by. At the time, I had not heard that much about interpersonal violence and crime in this world with Mirut being so peaceful, though I had witnessed more than I expected since then. My time outside of Mirut had simply been so frenetic and I had not paid enough attention to notice any trends. I gathered that this was standard practice in this world, and shrugged, stripping the corpses I had made of their former belongings. The blades were not much to speak of, and while I was not looking forward to cleaning and wearing a dead man’s clothes, I was in need of new pants.