Herald of Shalia 4

by Tamryn Tamer

  “That’s really between me and her,” Frost said playfully as he climbed on Witch, his volatile red mare. The horse was gorgeous, fast, and tenacious but her attitude was such that just about everybody was terrified of her. He smiled as he looked down on the blonde elf glaring at him, her cerulean eyes filled with jealousy. “It was really intimate and I wouldn’t feel right sharing it without her permission.”

  “You have to tell me!” Ena stomped, her plate greaves leaving a dent in the ground. She gripped her cudgel threateningly as she scowled at him. “The agreement we have is that you and I are a couple and Fayeth and I are a couple but if you and Fayeth are going to be a couple…”

  “A couple?” Fayeth giggled as she rode up on Sneaky, her green and brown striped horse. “I think with what we shared we’ve moved well beyond that.”

  “What did you share?” Ena snapped angrily.

  “Maybe I’ll tell you when we’re back in the village,” Fayeth said, grinning impishly at the flustered holy knight. “Or do you really want these elves to wait for you?”

  “Fine,” Ena said, stomping over to her massive bull-like horse, Hammer. He called Hammer a horse because he wasn’t sure what else he would call it but the black beast was monstrous.

  They left the village as soon as things were taken care of and headed toward Pluma. The trip from the eastern border of Blackwater territory to the western one would take a couple days since they were transporting wagons of elves.

  The soldiers patrolling the roads throughout Blackwater territory didn’t even acknowledge Frost as he passed by them with his caravan of elves. Not as an insult, but because if they acknowledged the existence of his caravan they’d need to ask for papers and if he didn’t provide papers, they would be forced to arrest him, or at least attempt to.

  It was in everybody’s best interest if the soldiers saw something suspicious in the hills and wandered off to investigate, so they did. They would see him coming and one of them would point toward the hills as if he saw bandits. And sure enough, that’s what their paperwork said whenever they turned in their patrol reports.

  So, they passed through Blackwater unmolested and eventually reached the Wenrose river which marked the edge of his territory. And finally, when they passed over an old stone bridge and arrived in the village of Filan, they were officially in Pluma territory.

  Filan was the type of village where everybody helped each other and people married their childhood sweethearts. The people were kind, honest, and for the most part never caused trouble. He liked the village and for whatever reason, Durra did as well.

  Durra were dog-eared demihumans with extremely lascivious looking women and massive brawny men. Although the beast people were welcome in his main village, many of them found themselves in love with the riverside village of Filan.

  Frost figured it had to be the acres of open prairies that surrounded the cozy village. There was plenty of room to run around or farm or even raise livestock. If the dog-eared Durra were like their brethren, it was only natural they’d love living in a riverside village surrounded by farmland.

  “Mom,” an elf child tugged on her mom’s arm and pointed at several Durra children splashing around in the shallow parts of the river. “Look!”

  “I see,” the child’s pink-haired mother smiled and squeezed her child.

  “This is Filan,” Frost announced to the elves riding and walking behind him. “You’re welcome to live here if you want after we get you registered in Pluma.”

  “You mean we can live here?” one of the children said excitedly.

  “Can we?” another child said eagerly.

  “What’s Pluma like?” Nara asked loudly from the second wagon.

  “You’ll see,” Fayeth smiled as she glanced back at the elves. “It’s in the forest and it’s basically the capital of the territory. It’s also where Herald Frost lives…”

  “Can we live in the same village as the herald?”

  “Can we?”

  “Really?”

  “If you want,” Frost smirked while looking back at the excited elves. “But Filan has a lot going for it…”

  “Damn straight,” a shirtless Sir Adamus shouted as he approached the caravan with two massive crates on his shoulders. The large muscular knight smiled as he dropped the wooden boxes beside the wagons and cracked them open, revealing two massive boxes of berries. The elves eyed the berries keenly while eying Sir Adamus with suspicion. “We have the newly-built village hall, plenty of farmland, and bi-weekly celebrations.”

  “You have celebrations every other week?” an elf said while approaching one of the boxes.

  “Of course not,” Sir Isaac said while tossing two massive sacks into the wagons. The spellblade was muscular but with a leaner build than Sir Adamus, which was to be expected given his fast-paced fighting style. The elves opened them inquisitively and began pulling out thick woolen cloaks and blankets. “We have celebrations twice a week. Once in the middle of the week and once at the end of the week.”

  “Speaking of that,” Frost glared at the two men. “What’s going on with the budget?”

  Frost assigned the two knights as governors of the village and it quickly found itself in constant need of money or goods. The two former soldiers had the combined financial sense of a toddler in a toy store and if he allowed them to operate unchecked, they would bankrupt the village.

  “You can ask Little Miss Gold. Here she comes,” Sir Isaac scoffed as a golden-haired Kina approached with a ledger in hand. “She’s the one holding the purse strings.”

  “I really wish you’d stop calling me that,” Lilium said while approaching Frost. The golden-haired Kina smiled as she handed him the book. Her golden fluffy tail swayed back and forth hypnotically as he took the book from the fox-eared girl. “Herald Frost, you’ll see that since we switched the farmland to producing medicinal herbs the village’s profits have soared. Additionally, we’ve managed to purchase food at a fraction of the cost from various villages throughout Blackwater thanks to the free trade agreement you made with them. The value of our exports outstrips the cost of our imports by ten-fold.”

  “And the food reserves?” Frost asked, looking through the paperwork while trying not to get distracted by her fluffy golden tail. “Have you gotten fluffier?”

  “Herald Frost!” Lilium blushed and looked away. “I’m just as fluffy as I’ve always been.”

  “Really?” Frost said playfully, knowing full well how much Kina women loved to be complicated on their fur. “Something’s different. You look so much softer and shinier. Are you doing something different?”

  “No,” she said timidly while glancing around. “Herald Frost, people are watching.”

  “Right,” Frost smirked while looking through the paperwork. The village had enough food preserved to get them through several months if necessary as well as clothing and medicine. On top of that they’d also acquired an almost alarming amount of livestock, likely due to the large Durra population. Fortunately, they had plenty of grazing land. “You know the village is still spending…”

  “I know,” Lilium sighed while glancing at the two grinning knights. “I tried to explain that if they cut back to one celebration a week…”

  “That’d be bad for morale,” Sir Isaac interrupted.

  “Horrible for morale,” Sir Adamus nodded. “Think of the productivity!”

  “Right,” Frost scoffed. He pulled out a ledger of his own and handed it to Lilium. “So, I hired some children in Blackwater to document the prices of various medicines and potions over the course of the week and found the averages. I then looked up the herbs necessary for each potion and…”

  “Herald Frost,” Lilium’s eyes lit up as she poured over the pages. It was basic information that an auction house add-on in a game would offer but the key was applying it. You needed to consider the margins, the highs, the lows, and things that might impact the market like seasonality. “There’s so much information here!”


  “And what are the three biggest wins?” Frost asked while staring at the gold fox-girl.

  Madam Gardenia was only willing to part with Lilium under the terms that he would also educate her on trade. While working in the brothel she learned quite a bit about accounting and inventory management but she was woefully lacking in market research and application, an area where Frost excelled.

  “Um,” Lilium pointed to a potion that cured petrification that was relatively inexpensive to craft but sold for quite a bit. “This one and…”

  “Nope,” Sir Isaac said looking over the fox-girl’s shoulder, shocking everybody around them. The shirtless knight took a bite from a fruit and tapped the ledger. “Nobody will buy that. Most of the monsters in the territory that petrify are located in the north and if you get petrified in the north, you’re not making it to Blackwater.”

  “You want that one,” Sir Adamus said, looking over her other shoulder, sandwiching the tiny fox-woman between the two of them. “The detox.”

  “The detox?” Lilium said indignantly. “Detoxification potions are for dealing with mild poisons. It’s not powerful enough to deal with high-level poisoning and even if it were, there are barely any monsters in Blackwater that poison. And the margins are only fifty percent.”

  “They’re right though,” Frost laughed at the ridiculousness of it. While Sir Isaac and Sir Adamus might not know much about calculating costs and profits, they understood customers. “Almost everybody in that city is regularly imbibing toxins when you think about it.”

  “Hangover cure,” Sir Isaac nodded while tossing his fruit pit into a trash barrel several yards away. “Everybody buys it. Constantly. Hell, if you talk to the quartermaster you might be able to secure a contract. We went through gallons of the stuff.”

  “This one’s good too,” Sir Adamus said, tapping another potion. “Oh, and you can sell it for way more than that if you stay open in the evening.”

  “Oh!” Lilium said as she realized what they were saying. “Because it’s a recovery potion! People who work late in the evening will take it to restore their muscles more quickly and…”

  “No,” Sir Isaac laughed while making a fist and pumping lewdly several times. “Didn’t you work in a brothel? You must have seen this being sold. It makes you last all night. Doesn’t matter what you drank or how much. All night long…”

  “All night strong,” Sir Adamus chuckled. “I’d sell those as a two pack actually. The detox and recovery. If I’m so drunk that I’m having performance issues, I probably need them both.”

  “Fair point,” Frost laughed along, pleasantly surprised by the insight they were offering as Lilium’s face turned red with embarrassment.

  “Quartermaster might buy that too,” Sir Isaac said. “He can say it’s to recover from training or some bullshit excuse.”

  “So,” Frost smiled at the blushing Kina girl. “What have you learned? Other than the fact that the governors of Filan are drunkards.”

  “Hm,” Lilium looked through the documents. “I need to consider the demand…”

  “That’s right,” Frost nodded. “You also want to consider the markets. Soldiers are in need of detox and recovery potions but are they the only ones? Blacksmiths and crafters probably need the recovery potions to help them prepare for more days. People who work in the evenings might need deep sleep potions to sleep through the day since it’s so noisy.”

  “I see,” Lilium said while staring at the list. “So, what should we make?”

  “That’s up to you,” Frost answered, although he did have a handful of herbs he had in mind. To him the obvious winners were the detoxification potion and the recovery potion but there was also an energy potion that could be extremely profitable. “Consider it part of your education.”

  “Alright,” Lilium answered, although she was obviously frustrated. “I suppose I’ll figure it out.”

  “Herald Frost,” Fayeth approached him, gesturing at the elves that’d finished their food and drinks. Several of them had wrapped themselves in the cloaks Isaac brought for them and admiring the fabric. “We’re ready to keep going.”

  “Yeah,” Ena’s eyes narrowed on the golden-haired Kina, obviously noticing how entranced Frost was by her. “Ready.”

  “Okay, okay,” Frost grinned. He turned toward Lilium and the two knights. “We’re going to Pluma, but I’ll probably check back soon and we can spend more time going over the finances of the village. Also, you should start considering the defenses of the village as well.”

  “Really?” Sir Isaac said, looking away uncomfortably. “I don’t think that’s an issue.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Sir Adamus also avoided eye contact. “There was the guard outpost, then there was that group of bandits in the north, then there was that village. People kind of know what’ll happen if they attack any of your followers.”

  “And yet there was still a group of slavers capturing elves and selling them to Seera,” Frost said while glaring at the two men.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” Sir Isaac winced. “I don’t even want to know what…”

  “He turned them into mush,” Fayeth joked wickedly. “Dozens of piles of bloody mush. They were all sliced up and whatever remained was squeezed until it exploded into a small pile of mush. A shower of blood and guts.”

  “Fucking goddess,” Sir Adamus groaned. “We didn’t need to know. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “She’s joking,” Frost laughed. “But to answer your question, have you ever eaten meat on a stick?”

  “Say no more,” Sir Isaac said, shaking his head

  “And we were having a good month too,” Ena groaned.

  “Anyway,” Frost said, glancing at the elves eagerly waiting to leave. “I’ll leave you all to it. Get some defenses built. Also, not just for bandits. How are you going to fend off a Wyvern attack? How about a Chimera attack? How about if a horde of enraged Owlbears rush through? It’s not just people you have to worry about you idiots.”

  “I suppose,” Sir Isaac sighed. “It always seems to be small villages that get attacked. We’ll start working on something. Some of the other knights will probably enjoy it.”

  “I doubt it,” Sir Adamus said. “They’re kind of liking the town life.”

  “Wait,” Sir Isaac grinned. “If we need to build defenses we may need a bigger budget.”

  “Definitely need a bigger budget,” Sir Adamus nodded, immediately catching on.

  “Then talk to Little Miss Gold,” Frost said, winking at the fox-eared girl. He turned toward the procession of elves and pointed toward the recently built brick road to Pluma village. “If everybody’s ready we’ll head out.”

  CHAPTER 3

  They eventually arrived at the outskirts of Pluma Forest where the villagers were working on new construction.

  A wide path through the forest had been cleared while building the road and wooden houses were in the process of being constructed alongside it. Tall marble aqueducts were also being built alongside the road to provide water for each of the homes.

  Frost would have preferred proper plumbing but he really had no idea how it worked and metal wasn’t so plentiful that he could craft and bury miles of pipe. Fortunately, the roman empire provided him with an elegant solution and magical gems allowed him a way to improve upon it.

  Although he couldn’t provide the houses with indoor plumbing, he was essentially providing each of them with their own personal well. The pillars of the aqueducts were drilled to allow water to flow through them and at the base of them were small taps controlled by magical gems.

  The elves’ eyes filled with excitement as they approached villagers working diligently on the new homes. Several of them smiled and pointed at the Arachne constructing buildings with the assistance of other demihumans while others nervously clung together.

  “Monsters,” one of the elves said, pointing at a pair of gorgon women arguing in front of a house over where a garden should be built.<
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  “We call them all demihumans,” Ena said, correcting the child. “Herald Frost didn’t really feel right calling them monsters.”

  “But for some reason he doesn’t have an issue calling us demihumans,” Fayeth teased.

  “Well,” Frost chuckled. “I think too much of you to call you humans.”

  Many of the elves likely never saw an Arachne, let alone a group of Arachne educating orcs and werewolves on the finer points of construction. It was probably shocking to see creatures with reputations for being aggressive and violent actively listening and taking notes as a tall dark-haired Arachne lectured them.

  “But why aren’t we building all the houses out of stone?” a large orc woman asked. “Stone is stronger than wood.”

  “Very good question Mogak,” the raven-haired Arachne answered. The pale-skinned forewoman was wearing a tight tank top and a leather belt with several enchanted pouches. The belt was wrapped around her waist, right where the human half met the spider half. “You need to consider the costs and availability of the materials and weigh them against the potential benefits. It’s more expensive, takes longer to build, you cannot upgrade it easily, and various other factors all play a part. As for the benefits that stone offers, many of the same benefits can be attained with wood as long as you understand how to properly frame and…”

  Frost and the elves continued past the small construction sites as the wagons rolled along the road toward the village.

  The elves’ excitement continued to grow as they noticed villagers hunting and gathering in the woods. The hunters in particular caught their attention as they took down a pack of wild boars like they were nothing.

  “How did she do that?” one of the elf children asked while pointing at a blur of crimson hair rushing forward with a spear, piercing a boar with the sharp tip, impaling the beast. “She’s so strong!”

  “Pfft,” Ena said, obviously jealous of the attention that the children were giving the lower-level elves that hunted near the village.