“We currently only have two short spears in stock, but I have more than two hundred arrowheads. How many does your lordship want?”
“All of them, and do you know where we might be able to get some more short spears, some braded wire, powdered thelmac, small waterproof bags, and glass containers?”
“If you need short spears, the only person in town who could help you is master smith Dulahan. He should also be able to help you with the braded wire,” the old man said. “For the rest, you should try the general store that is only two buildings down. If anyone has what you are looking for, it would be that old hag and if she doesn’t have it, she should know where to get it.”
“Thank you,” Ash said with a slight nod of his head.
After paying for the arrowheads and the two short spears, Ash left the small weapon store and walked down the thin street toward the general store.
The storefront he found was much older than the rest of those around it. The roof was missing more than a few clay tiles and wooden sign was so weathered that Ash couldn’t make out the words that had once stood clear on it.
As he walked inside, he found the inside of the store looked much different that the outside. It still had a feeling of being old, but more in the way of a treasured antique.
When the small bell that was hanging over the door rang, an old woman looked up from where she was seated behind the counter and stared at him with eyes as cold as iron. After a brief look, she returned to reading the old book in her hand as if nothing had happened.
Ash wanted to ask the old woman for what he wanted but he couldn’t wait to look around as well. The store was separated into four sections; food, clothes, tools, and oddities.
The food was common things that were grown in the area mixed with a few imports as well as salt, and other spices. The clothing was made mostly of wool and cotton, but there were a few pieces made out of silk and other more expensive fabrics. There was a large display of tools, many of which Ash had no clue what they were for. The oddities were just a jumble of things that didn’t fit into the other areas. It was here that Ash found a large swath of treated leather. It was a finished bag, but the leather could be used to make what he needed.
After looking around, Ash picked up the four largest pieces of fabric and headed toward the counter. “I would like to buy these,” Ash said as he placed the leather on the counter.
“Silver per square foot,” the old woman said without looking up from her book. “I was also looking for some powdered thelmac and glass bottles.”
“What size bottles?” the woman asked disinterested.
“Any size you have, but I would prefer ones about the size of an antidote bottle that one would get from the adventure’s guild.”
“That is easy enough,” the woman said as she finally looked up from her book. “How many do you need?”
“Three to four dozen if you have them,” Ash replied.
“Let me go look in the back,” the old woman said before getting off her stool and hobbling into the back room only to return a few moments latter pulling a crate with great difficulty behind her.
“These are the bottles that adventures sell to me. I normally sell them to the traveling merchant that comes through twice a year. I sell them to him by the ounce. Pick out what you want then we can weigh it and figure out the cost.”
Ash looked through the bottles and ended up with a little over a dozen of the small vials that were used for antidotes. He made up the rest with slightly larger potion bottles.
“How about powdered thelmac?” Ash asked after he had finished picking through the bottles.
“I don’t have any and I haven’t a clue where you could get it,” the woman said dismissively. “What do you need it for in the first place?”
“We are mixing it with poisons to make a trap for monsters,” Ash said thinking quickly.
“I see, powdered thelmac will absorb the poison without clumping together. I would suggest your try a mix of ground rice and chaff. We use it to clean up messes because it soaks it up without sticking to the ground. I have some in the back if you want to check it out.”
“Please,” Ash replied slightly interested.
The old lady brought out a small cup of a slightly brown powder that was just a hint on the grainy side. To test it, Ash poured a small amount of liquid on the powder and just as he wanted, it absorbed the water like a sponge, but didn’t stick together like flour would have.
“Do you think this will work for your needs?”
“Yes, it will work perfectly.” Ash responded. “Do you think you could spare about five pounds?”
“Easy enough,” the old lady said with a cracked smile.
With his purchases in hand, Ash headed to the smithy. The smith agreed to make the short spears and braded steel rope though it would take four days and that was even with Ash paying nearly three time the normal price for the rush order. Thanks to this, Ash was able to design the blade, so he was able to have a small groove running from the tip of the blade to until about an inch before the wood would start.
Since they were going to be stuck in town for a few extra days, Ash thought it would be a good time to start making and bottling poison.
Ash didn’t have a large number of poisons that he could make, but Seia did. It was his time with her clan that had given him the idea for bottling the poison since the clan did just that and traded it to other clans for things they needed.
Ash started making the sealing poison while Seia made her strongest paralyzing poison. Ash had some paralyzing poison as well, but it was only worked about 40% as well as they one that Seia could produce.
It took over four hundred MP for Ash to fill one bottle. After filling two bottles, Ash took a break. Seia on the other hand could only fill bottles slowly since her was made internally instead of being converted from MP, so it took her three hours before she could completely fill a bottle. Though it took a great deal of effort, one small antidote bottle which was just slightly bigger than a thumb held enough poison to be used four to five times. Of course there was some wastage but with poison prepared in advance everyone could use it instead of just Ash and Seia.
After spending half the day filling bottles Ash decided that it was time to get a bit of fresh air. When he announced his plan to leave the inn for a bit to walk around town, his wives complained. Ash had wanted to only take a few of the knights, but since there was nothing important that he was going to be doing, he couldn’t think of an excuse to make them stay behind. In the end Ash, Seia, Tolarea, Gena, and Li left the inn together.
Ash didn’t have a specific destination in mind and just simply wandered through the streets. The town wasn’t very big and from Ash’s best guess it was only a fifth the size the duchy capital city but it was still bigger than any of the villages they had passed through so far.
Unlike small villages that had no real guards on the border, this town had two different armed groups. Ash had only seen them from afar, but he figured that they belonged to the two bordering nobles. Thankfully none of the armed soldiers had approached Ash though he could feel their eyes on him wherever he went, though it wasn’t unexpected. When they reached the center of the town where a large fountain bubbled water and people gathered to fill large wooden buckets, Ash noticed one of the armed groups moving toward them. Trying to ignore them, Ash looked at the fountain. Ash already knew that it worked through a magical device since Emelia had the same thing in a smaller version for her servants to use in the center of her garden.
“Sir…We need you to come with us,” One of the guards said taking a single step in front of the seven men that stood behind him. They looked nervously at Ash and the four women behind him.
“Why?” Ash asked with a slightly bored expression on his face.
“We have received complaints,” the man said his voice weak and not holding the ring of authority. “It is just so that we can verify your identities and give peace of mind to the residences.”
Ash and the others were taken to a building near the edge of the town that held the crest of the lord who was in charge of the town. They were led through the building to a rather large room located in the back. As they were walking, Ash couldn’t help but notice that more soldiers had been gathered and they looked like some sort of miniature parade with all the gawking eyes.
Inside the room they were taken to a man in his late fifties who was sitting in a chair waiting on them. When Ash entered the room, the man got to his feet and gave a polite nod to Ash and then to each of the women behind him.
“I am commander Tray Grinder,” the man said as he offered them a seat. “I apologize for having you brought here so suddenly, but things as they are many people within the kingdom jump at every shadow.”
“I don’t quite know what you mean,” Ash responded. “Has something happened that I was unaware of?”
“News has spread that the duchess Hawkwing made a deal with the demons and is planning to take over the surrounding lands. It has made the people a little jumpy when someone with even the smallest amount of demon blood is around.”
“That is absurd,” Ash said rolling his eyes.
“I agree,” the old man gave a short laugh. “If there was still a nation of demons, they would have been seen before now.”
“No, there is certainly a demon kingdom, but it is absurd that they would make a deal to take over the surrounding lands,” Ash said and the man’s eyes narrowed. “There would be nothing in it for the demons.”
“You seem sure of yourself,” Trey said.
“Well I am the head of the delegate for both the Hawking lands and the demon kingdom, so I hope I would be sure of myself.” When the man’s face started turning white, Ash started to fear he had given him a heart attack.
“Del-egate,” Trey said after a long silent moment.
“Yes we are headed to the capital to speak with the king and see if we can end this war peacefully,” Ash explained. “The king has already been notified of our intentions and I hope he listens to wisdom. Otherwise many of the fears the people have might just come to pass.”
“Are the demons really that strong?” the man asked his voice shaking.
“Tolarea compared to the human army, how much stronger do you think the demon army is?” Ash asked as he looked over his shoulder at the giantess.
“That is hard to say my lord,” Tolarea said with a thoughtful expression on her face. “I don’t know the size of the king’s forces, but we only fielded about 4% of our total forces in the last battle. I would guess that if we decided to attack the humans, it would take less than a quarter of a year before they were completely wiped out.”
Ash and Tolarea continued to discuss what would happen during a war while the man’s face turned as white as a sheet. After a while, the man regained his composure or at least enough of it that he found the strength to talk. “If you are a peaceful delegation, then there is no reason for us to question you further,” the man said weakly.
“It should have been clear from the markings on our carriage,” Ash replied getting to his feet. “But I can see how mistakes can be made. Now if you don’t mind, I would like to return to our inn before our comrades think something untoward happened to us and war breaks out,” Ash said in a joking manner, but what little color Tray’s face had recovered instantly drained.
“O-of c-course sir,” Tray said in a trembling voice.
11-3
After the meeting with the town’s armed guards, Ash and the others decided it was best to remain in the inn as much as possible. It wasn’t because they feared the soldiers since from what Ash could see, the strongest didn’t even reach level twenty-five, but because he didn’t see a reason to overly stress the common people.
While they waited on the spears to be finished, they worked. Ash and Seia made poison while the rest cut the leather Ash had bought and placed a handful of the rice and chaff mix before tying it into a makeshift bag. When a bag was finished, it was just big enough to be hidden easily within ones palm.
Ash didn’t know if it was because of the ruckus in town, but the smith had been able to finish their order a day early and once again Ash found himself on what felt like an endless road. Ash enjoyed traveling, but he hated having to spend so much time in the carriage. At first it seemed spacious, but with each passing day it felt more and more cramped.
After the last battle, any time that Ash tried to train his dimension door ability everyone, seemed to throw a fit. He had been able to alleviate this by taking four people with him instead of just two, but it quickly drained him of his MP so he hadn’t really be able to train the ability much in the past few days. When he was in the inn, he had used the ability to move himself across the room, but since most of his MP went into making poison he didn’t have much left to train with. Thankfully it didn’t take as long as Ash had thought it would and he figured that they would have the last of the glass bottles filled with a few more days and that would free up much more MP for his personal training.
Having already read most of the books he had brought with him twice over, Ash passed the time talking to his wives. He had wanted to get to know them better, but it seemed rather forced when they were in the back of the carriage. Not that he was making them talk to him, but that he was only doing so to alleviate the boredom that was pressing down on him and most of their conversations seemed to lack intimacy.
It was during one such talk that Seia nervously asked Ash something that had been at the forefront of her mind as of late. “My lord, why did you decide to visit the king within the borders of his own lands?” Seia asked while fidgeting one day. “Wouldn’t it have been better to send anyone else? I know you explained your reasons, but I can see many other options. At the very least, you could meet in a neutral place between the two lands?”
“Those are really good questions,” Ash admitted. “There are a number of options, but we had limited time. The king’s declaration was nothing more than a statement that meant that he was preparing for a full scale war and while I am sure we could win, the damages on both side would be great.”
“Then we should start bringing in more troops and preparing for war instead of spending the time to move slowly across the country to meet with a foolish old man,” Tolarea said in a slightly annoyed tone.
“I don’t mind fighting if I have to, but there is too great of a chance that the other kingdoms would join in the war. They would see the demons as a common enemy if we show aggression too readily. With the short time we were given, the best choice was for me to go myself. As you said, we could have asked for a neutral meeting ground, but there really isn’t such a thing. There is no way the king would come to the Hawkwing duchy so the best we could manage would be meeting in one of the neighboring duchies near the border, but we would have to meet on his terms.
I will not say that I am much of a political mind, but I have been studying as much as I can the past weeks about past wars and I believe that I made the best choice with the limited options given to me. I am sure there are a number of better ones, but I am just too inexperienced to know what they are.”
“I understand my lord, but why go all the way to the capital? His forces are sure to be overwhelming and should he decide we could easily lose our lives.”
“That could happen, but I doubt it,” Ash said with a pensive look on his face. In truth, that notion had been haunting his dreams since they left the duchy. He didn’t mind losing his own life to stop a war, but he wasn’t sure he could bare to lose anyone dear to him. It amazed him at what people were willing to die for and what people were willing to
fight for. More often than not, it was to protect the same people who would fight to protect them. “That is the reason that we are traveling in a marked carriage rather than flying there in a few days. We are making a show of ourselves. If the king acts then there is not a noble alive that would ever trust his word again. That is the reason that the knights that attacked us earlier were disguised. They want to get rid of us, but in a way that cannot point back to the origin. If we can find proof that the king ordered our death while on our way for a peaceful negotiation then even if we are forced into a war, the chances that the other kingdoms will enter the fray will be greatly reduced.”
“It sounds like you are using yourself as bait my lord,” Li said her voice meek yet carrying a hint of worry laced in it.
“I am,” Ash admitted. “I hope that the king listens to reason and agrees to peace, but truthfully I doubt things will go that easily. Most likely he will want to force a war. If the worst comes about and our lives are in danger, I plan to use dimension door to get us out of there. That is why when we meet the king, I only want two of you to accompany me.”
“Which two my lord?” Li asked her voice sounding slightly louder than usual.
“I think that Tolarea and you Li would be the best two choices,” Ash said quickly having considered the same question himself a number of times. “While we meet with the king, I want the rest to wait in a place where we can meet up if there is trouble.”
“Master, can I ask a question?” Seia asked her voice sounding slightly bothered.
“You just did, but I guess I can allow you a second one,” Ash said trying to make his voice sound slightly playful.
“Why did you chose Li and Tolarea?”
“It was hard to take. Tolarea is the best choice in the event we are forced into close combat. Not to mention just having her nearby will intimidate anyone thinking of starting a fight. The real choice was who the second person should be. With Tolarea on physical defense I needed someone with magical defense and that meant either Li or Celina. Celina has stronger magic, but no real defensive abilities so Li was the natural choice between the two.”
Reborn: Flames of War Page 2