The road west of Freehold, the eastmost settlement in the Horuth Kingdom, was smooth and clear. The wheels of my wagon spun effortlessly without catching in any dips or divots. The improved road was the culmination of years of iterative, magical improvements that I had made to it as I traveled back and forth between Freehold and Gurt, the walled city west of the village, for village trade or for Tamers Guild business. It was probably one of the nicest roads to travel on in the whole Kingdom, save for the road I had built from scratch between Freehold and my personal territory north of the village.
Pushing a wisp of black hair out of my bright blue eyes, I glanced backward, then scratched the dark stubble on my chin. Maybe I’ll grow a travel beard on the way to the capital, I mused as I watched the soldiers who were already struggling to keep up. At nineteen years old, my body had grown into my full adult size while living in Freehold, somewhere in the realm of six feet tall and with a muscular build from my strength skill that probably approached a hundred and eighty to a hundred and ninety pounds, although it was hard to get exact measurements in this world, and the units were different in any case.
As the leader of the Tamers Guild that I founded half a decade ago, I had been invited by the new king, Rugnor Horuth, to travel to the capital and enter his upcoming Tournament of Talents. The invitation had been delivered by a small contingent of his army and was non-optional. It was more of a mandatory summons than an invitation.
“They really made you travel all the way out here on foot, huh,” I said to the leader of the group of soldiers as he approached. The older man scowled slightly. “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t have many other options. But not even an oxalire?”
My wagon was an improved design with a suspension I had introduced to this world, as made necessary with the faster speeds it could travel thanks to the use of a beast called a tarand, which was a large, sturdy-yet-elegant cervine creature with sweeping antlers and bear-like, color-changing fur. I had discovered them in my travels north of the mountains, where the south’s magic could not reach, and was using them to fill the niche of horses from my old world. Prior to introducing them to the Kingdom, the people of Horuth had only had access to a plodding, oxen-like creature which only traveled as fast as a person could walk. They were great for hauling weight, but not so good for crossing the Kingdom.
“None of us are tamers,” he grumbled. “And we weren’t given the budget to hire one.”
I raised my eyebrow slightly, just barely holding back a cheeky grin. “There’s a Guild back in the village we just left that could teach you.”
One of the younger, less stuck-up soldiers sighed, looking at my wagon. “You could let us ride with you,” he grumbled.
“But then they’d have to walk,” I said, pointing back with my thumb at my beast companions who were in various states of lounging in my wagon.
The whole purpose of my attendance at the tournament was to show off my new use of taming, using beasts for battle instead of just burden, so I had several of my favorite and most powerful beasts along with me. I was slightly limited by the size of beast I could bring, though, and had needed to leave the enormous, rank B evolved shuggopotamus I had finally transformed over the past year in Freehold with Hella. He was too heavy to haul and too slow to follow, if I was going to travel by tarand-drawn wagon. Rank C beasts, particularly in numbers, were probably good enough for the tournament, and I hoped to make at least one stop along the way to pick up some extra help.
Unfortunately, I had not accounted for the slow soldiers who were escorting me. If we were going to plod along the whole time, I probably could have brought along the shug, although it would have been a lot of extra hunting or expense to feed him for the whole journey since he could not just browse and graze all day while on the road.
“Can I just… go ahead? I know you were going to, uh, usher me there, but now that I’ve agreed to go, I can make better time on my own.” It was not like they could particularly stop me from traveling to our destination faster, given my capabilities.
The leader of the small group of soldiers glowered at me, then spun. “Damir!” he barked, and the younger soldier who had grumbled about riding the wagon jumped to attention, slamming a knifehand into his chest in salute. The older man turned back to me. “You have room in the driver seat for a chaperone. Damir will accompany you and keep you on course.” His eyes narrowed. “If I learn that you have run off from him, or slip away and fail to make it to the capital in time for the tournament next year, you will be hunted down. Am I understood?”
I tossed him a lazy knifehand-to-chest salute. “Sir, yes sir. Nothing to worry about.”
“Captain! I won’t let him slip away. You can count on me!” Damir shouted, then scrambled up next to me in the wagon. I heard him sigh softly and his strict posture barely lasted a ten-count before he started to lean back and slouch a bit.
The old soldier turned away and I could just make out him saying something about being glad to not to have to listen to the younger soldier’s whinging the whole way back before he barked out a command to the remaining soldiers to fall in line.
I clicked my tongue and the wagon lurched forward, pulled by my personal tarand Horsey harnessed alongside a strong buck from the herd. I felt the tickle of fur at the back of my neck and turned to see Rika looking over my shoulder at the road ahead, now that we were moving again. She was only a rank D frosted direfox, but I had not wanted to leave her behind if I was going to be away for a full year or longer. The remaining soldiers quickly shrank in the distance as we easily outpaced them.
In addition to Horsey and Rika, I had a small collection of rank D creatures that were ready to evolve after eating a magic crystal, and with some of the dracosaur meat I had in my inventory would quickly be in solid fighting form once we were at the capital.
Damir looked back at the wagon full of predators, somewhat apprehensive. “They’re for sure not going to try and eat me, right?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Not so long as they’re fed and don’t get too hungry,” I teased. Then I tapped my chin, thinking. “Well. I suppose they might go wild if I’m killed, too. Best not to let that happen.”
“Captain would have my head if I did. I’m a little surprised he allowed this.”
“Eh, he probably realized there weren’t any other options. I suppose you could have cuffed me and forced me to walk at your pace, but then you’d be dealing with all of them,” I said, motioning to the pack of beasts. “And they only move if I tell them to. Your captain also can’t kill them, because then there’s no point in bringing me to the tournament.”
“S’pose,” the soldier said, eyes already drooping a bit by the sweet lullaby of the wagon cruising over the smooth road. I chuckled softly as he began to doze, not overly concerned about my so-called chaperone.
* * *
Gurt was only a two day drive from Freehold by tarand, but for the soldiers that were following us, they would take at least another five days, maybe longer. I assumed that as a well-trained group, they would make camp and tear it down quickly, hunt efficiently, and keep up a good pace, so I assumed they would make it sooner rather than later.
Still, I was not in a rush. The tournament was a year away, a necessity given the travel time for the average person across the Kingdom, particularly factoring in the time it took for word to spread. If the goal was to attract those with valuable skills from across the Kingdom and consolidate that strength in the capital, there was no advantage to rushing. I was actually surprised it was not the following spring or summer, given that I had to travel over winter from the east to make it, and none but the most determined would make that trip. Then I realized that they were likely accounting more for people from the south than from the east or west, and it was actually more pleasant to make a journey across the south over winter.
Given that I had a few days before I needed to leave Gurt to stay ahead of the soldiers, I decided to take care of some last bit of business at the local Guild branch and with some traders and merchants I knew in town. Damir followed me around lazily, but never got in my way. At first, he had tried to encourage me to move on quickly, worried about the approaching winter, but I told him that a few extra days in Gurt would pale compared to the countless days we would cut from the journey traveling back to Roko by tarand-drawn wagon. We stood to arrive in Roko before the worst of winter, even though winter was much milder in that part of the Kingdom, and would be so far ahead of his captain that we could relax there until practically spring before we had to start pushing north, making the journey infinitely more comfortable.
Damir grumbled about the cost of living in Roko and how much coin we would burn at inns, but that, at least, was not an issue for me. I had been able to grow a huge amount of wealth through the Tamers Guild and my various secondary enterprises. After giving a rudimentary magic refrigerator to Marshan to sell Freehold’s quadhorn cheese all the way over in Roko, I hoped that the market there would be primed for the stock I was secretly bringing in my inventory. Though, if I were being honest, that paled next to the wealth I had in magically made gemstones, which would be easier to sell in Roko than they had been in Gurt. If all went well, I would end up spending a winter in Roko, resupplying as needed, picking up a few niceties, and still come out ahead financially.
That all assumed I would be able to find a stable that would let me house my beast companions, but as the Tamers Guild had grown over the years, I knew that Roko had seen some tamer traffic, and hoped that it was at least somewhat normalized. Hella had passed through with an octophant, if I remembered correctly, and if they could handle that monster, they could handle my beasts as well.
I finished up in Gurt, saying hellos and goodbyes to the people I knew in town and letting them know I would be away through the entire next year. Rena, the daughter of Freehold’s village leader Soren, was effectively running all my projects and businesses in my absence, and would be making trips into Gurt to make sure that the branch and our business there was running smoothly as well. Fortunately, with Hella having agreed to marry Len and already pregnant, she was stuck in Freehold for at least the next year and was able to help Rena with the Freehold branch. Even without her help, Rena and I had trained up enough capable people through apprenticeships and employment that I was not too worried about things in my absence.
With the soldiers likely only a day out from Gurt, Damir and I got back up on the wagon’s driver bench, my menagerie of beasts in tow, and headed onward.
I had only traveled this stretch of road once before, when I had made the trip from Freehold to Roko at around sixteen years old. The distance between Gurt and Roko was substantial, taking upwards of a hundred days of travel if bogged down by the more common issues the average person might have on the road. A Level 1 tarand could comfortably travel at a good trot around four times the speed of a walking human or trudging oxalire. Beasts were a bit hardier than Earth’s animals, and while a tarand traveling at a trot would need to break slightly more often for food, water, and rest, the increased speed meant less overall time spent on a trip, which meant less provisions to carry and less time hunting along the way to resupply.
With a little help from my secret inventory and some 6-point magic recovery, when I traveled alone, we could make the trip in twenty days, and probably faster in the saddle if we could canter or gallop, particularly with Horsey being Level 10. We would probably not have any of those advantages while traveling with Damir, but we should still shave three quarters of the journey off without issue.
The vast distance between the walled cities resulted in a few settlements cropping up along the way, resting areas that had grown over time and become small villages. Banditry was a bit of an issue, particularly around Roko, but the first small settlement—the village of Mibara—was near enough to Gurt that it was relatively safe. It was not all that dissimilar from what Freehold was like when I first arrived there. The surrounding area was more open with plains and the village benefited more from the trade between cities, particularly in the years since tarands became common.
I had debated opening a branch of the Tamers Guild in Mibara, but there really was not much of a benefit for me to do so. The income from a branch would be small, given the limited permanent population there, and anyone traveling through Mibara was certainly already headed to Gurt in the first place, where they could do whatever business with us that was needed. The only reason to set up shop in Mibara would be to start making use of the plains and set up another tarand or quadhorn operation.
The number of people who actually had taken part in the breeding of beasts and milking of quadhorns was still tiny. Rena, of course, understood the whole process, and several of my apprentices and farm hands did too, but in this world beasts were tamed from the wild rather than reared from birth. Even after breeding tarands for years, most of the tarands I sold to merchant convoys were those that I caught from north of the mountains. Growing the breeding herds was a slow and steady process and it would likely be many more years before I would be comfortable splintering my oversight of it across other territories.
While there was no Guild branch in Mibara, there was a growing number of tamers due to the closeness to Gurt, and they had formed a bit of an unofficial tamers club in the village. I was looking forward to dropping in and showing off the beasts I had brought with me for the tournament.