by P. S. Power
“Sir Daniel? Would you take the reins for a bit? I want to check on some things.”
The man didn’t balk at the idea, or tell him to do his own driving, even if that would be fair. Grabbing the leather leads, the man simply assumed control, looking around carefully. Then he spoke softly, looking straight ahead.
“Don’t do anything too obvious, if you can help it. We aren’t hiding that we have a magic user with us, in particular, but we aren’t shouting it to the world, either. This lot with us might be a bit uneasy, if they learned about that kind of thing. Or not. It’s hard to know with the road people. They see things that others don’t.”
Anders gave a half nod, closed his eyes and dropped into a trance. Even with a lifetime of practice, doing similar things, the bouncing and jarring of the road was distracting enough that it took him nearly three minutes to get into the correct mental state. Then he cast his mind ahead, and to the sides, searching for people along the roadside. There were some, a bit off the road, both ahead and behind, but none that seemed to mean anyone particular harm when he checked them individually. He didn’t bother searching for names or occupations, since it wouldn’t be needed, really.
Then he checked the weather, and while there were clouds in the sky, they were moving to the east and south, in the direction they’d come. It wasn’t his habit, but he tried to look forward in time, to that night, to see if they were going to be under clouds or not. It seemed to be totally clear, from the feeling he was getting.
Last, he searched for animals that would be worth hunting. Deer, boar or other large beasts. Most of what he found in the area were too far away for him to worry about on the first day of travel. They had food, after all. It was simply that they’d have more, later, if they could eat from things collected as they went. Even with the noise of the wagons, their beasts and people talking, he found a small herd of elk off to the right, about an eighth of a mile from where he was at the moment.
Bringing himself upward, to the surface of his own mind, he opened his eyes.
“Clear tonight. There are some elk to the side. I’ll slip off and get one. It should take me about an hour, if I hurry. I’ll meet you ahead of here, about two or three miles. There are no brigands or anything.”
The Knight gave a smile then and a head shake. When he spoke, it was loud enough to be heard several wagons away.
“Well, you are a fine hand at hunting, Andy. Go off and play. Make sure to meet us by night fall.”
The ancient man inside of him nearly grinned like a fool at the words. Even Anders the young man understood the idea. He was to go off to play, then accidently get lucky and struggle back with a beast that two or three men would have been hard pressed to carry. That was easy enough to cover for, however. At least if he could get into position on time.
Doing it meant slipping off the side of the wagon in motion, since they weren’t stopping yet, pulling his bow and ten arrows off of Brownie and then dashing into the rough, fairly well managed, brush off to the right of the wagon. Then, moving at a trot, he headed in the correct direction, making good time considering all the obstacles in his way. He stopped to check on the position of the animals, twice. That meant dropping into a trance, carefully, then marking the position by pointing and heading onward at the best pace he could manage.
They were still in the King’s forest area, which meant that woodmen and foresters worked the area. There was room for a person to move under the trees, and even a path, made by animal traffic, that he was able to follow, almost the entire way.
When he had the elk in sight, he sighed. That was mainly because he was out of breath, from his efforts of the last moments. Carefully, using a tree with a short bush next to it for cover, with the animals about twenty paces from him, he muttered. Very softly, so as to not alert his prey.
“Nik ere ud bestle edol wene ti ah.” As soon as he felt the tingle of magic, the spell set, he released the arrow. It did its job, hitting one of the beasts, exploding when it did, killing only the specific creature he’d aimed at.
The damage pushed the flesh out and left a hole that went all the way through the creature, but it wasn’t so big that he couldn’t reasonably hide that it had happened. The hard part would be explaining how he got it bled out. He had rope with him, since that had been with his bow, along with a knife that would work well enough. On the road everyone was expected to carry several of the things.
He had one for eating, another for camp chores and a longer third one which was nearly a small sword. In case he needed to fight. Even the caravanners carried things like that on them, all the time. He moved in and quickly slit the beast’s throat, doing it fast enough that his relatives would be able to see it being done. That wasn’t his plan, but the animals, while startled by the thumping sound of the explosion, had only run about fifteen paces away. It was tempting to take them all, or at least another one, but the truth was that the animal on the ground would go bad before they could eat all the meat. Really, even if he shared it out that night, with everyone, there would still be some for the morning.
He pulled the stout line around the hind legs of the animal and with a bit of leverage and some struggling, during which he burned his hands as the rope slipped before he could tie it off, twice, he managed to hang the thing about four inches off the ground. It was enough though, so the blood came out, preserving the flavor of the meat.
Then, he whispered again, causing the animal to lose most of its weight. Really, even if he was breathing hard, it only felt like about ten pounds to him, resting comfortably over his shoulders. Well, awkwardly held there. The thing wasn’t heavy for the moment, but its vast size was still an issue. Worse, he needed to jog, in order to get it back to the side of the road at the right time.
It was harder to search, using magic, while working that hard, though he roughly managed it. Anders had to stop, to make it work, and four times he simply had to put the animal down, since, light or not, holding it over his shoulders was making his arms cramp up.
He ended up standing on the side of the dirt road, waiting for the wagons to get there. It wasn’t a long wait, but he’d gotten there first. The story he planned to tell, mainly a lie, was that he’d hit the animal and it had run forward, to near that position. Then he’d bled it, which he really had managed, using his own physical effort, and had the injuries to prove it, and dragged it to the road, which, thankfully hadn’t been far away at all.
When the caravan leader, a grizzled old man, who had a weathered face, a missing front tooth and hard brown eyes saw him there, the man simply nodded. Then he handed the reins to the fellow next to him, dodged his own team of four large oxen and hopped down lightly.
“That’s a nice catch. You’re Andy the Page Boy, aren’t you? The one with the knights?” There was a wave at his clothing, which matched the others well enough to mark him as that very person. Well, that and his size.
He nodded, then smiled a bit.
“We can’t eat all of this, so we’ll be sharing the meat out. There should be enough for everyone, but I can’t cook for three hundred people, so...” He felt a bit lazy, admitting that, but the older man made a strange, half choked sound and glanced around.
“It’s not your job to feed us, though the extra will make you popular. I’ll have the word passed, that anyone wanting in on that should find you when we settle in for the night. That will be in... Oh, call it three hours. A long day, but this is the good stretch of road, so we need to use it. Later, when the rains come or the road is blocked by deadfall, we’ll need that time. Best just hold here. I’ll call a halt so you can load that, when your wagon comes by.” Then the man jogged off, as if he were forty years younger than he looked to be.
The wait still took about half an hour, since the carts, wagons and horses didn’t move fast, in particular. That meant he gathered some attention as people passed by. One of them, a woman in a wagon, with six or seven others, all dressed in bright clothing, of all different colors, called ou
t to him.
“You selling any of that meat, boy?” She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had all her own teeth and wasn’t old or pock marked. Her hair was back, held under a bright red head scarf. “We could trade with you for it.” She giggled at the words, as if he wouldn’t get what she meant by that. Which, in truth, he barely did.
Anders was sort of tempted, but the words of the King came back to him. It was best for him to avoid that kind of thing, for the time being. Tempting or not.
“I’m sharing it out, so no need for that, this time. Find the knights’ camp when we stop. Pass the word on that. It will go bad anyway, so people might as well eat it. You have to cook it yourself, of course.”
The woman, who was halfway past him, turned to look his way then.
“That’s kind of you! I’ll be over then. I’m Mary, by the way. See you then!” She seemed excited for some reason. Then, there was free food in making the contact, and as the man had told him, while it wasn’t his job to feed most of them, doing so would make him popular enough.
Sir Humphrey rode up, about then, and stopped, looking at the animal to Anders’ side. He waved at it.
“Can you load that on the move?”
Anders whispered then, his face bland.
“If it’s needed. I could use some help, if we don’t want it to seem strange. The wagons will stop for a moment, so we can get it up. Everyone is going to be coming past our camp, for free meat. Some other things too, if I can find them.” There had been plants, things to eat that would be healthy and all that, but he’d been more focused on the meat, so far.
The large knight, his hair more of a rust color in the sunlight, when it was short, waved at him.
“Understood. Try to hurry, so we don’t have to pause for too long. It isn’t a scheduled stop.”
Then the man moved on, since his job wasn’t to chat with young boys, but rather to actually protect them from harm. About five minutes later a call came out, calling for a halt. That got everyone to slow, then stop, the words spreading back down the line, everyone doing their part to make the communication happen. Sir Daniel managed to stop about a hundred feet away, which had Anders pulling the great beast along the ground. Very slowly. The thing still only weighed in at about ten pounds, and he was gasping a bit still, and had been, but he needed to make it seem like he was doing a tremendous amount of work.
True, it was still selling his strength as much greater than it was, but no one seemed to notice that part. One of the men from two wagons ahead came back at a quick walk.
“Need a hand there, son?”
He nodded.
“Fen.” Then he shook his head a bit, gasping. “We could use that, we need to load this on the barrels there. Lifting is a lot harder than dragging, so that would be appreciated.” That wasn’t wrong at all. After jogging through the forest with the animal, his mind wasn’t ready for what actually loading it at full weight would be like. In the end, it took six of them to do it. The second it was secured, one of the men yelled.
“Loaded and ready to move!”
Anders had to scramble then, to tie the animal in place, so it wouldn’t fall out as the wagon jolted and rumbled down the road.
Ten minutes later, everyone was moving again. He took the reins, but had to pass them to Sir Daniel, ten times or so, in order to slip off and collect things as they moved. That was mainly leaves, a few berries and some roots. By the time they stopped for the evening he had a large heap of the things in the back of the wagon.
They also had an hour of daylight left, though that would fade shortly, given the time of the year. Anders had figured that he’d end up doing most of that part, setting up for the night, but they weren’t using tents, so all that was needed was securing the animals, then setting up a fire pit, the metal spit in the back, and the large stew pot.
His assistant, Ery, rode over, and looked at the mess of greens and the large elk.
“I’ll just... You know, I have no idea what to do with any of this.” His voice was playful at least, instead of exhausted sounding.
That was a good sign. When he got off his horse, it was clear that he was limping a bit from the day’s travel. Anders would have been as well had he been on a horse for that long. He’d gotten some conditioning to riding in the last months, but it faded as fast as it came, or so he’d heard. It wasn’t as bad for the knights, in the main. They rode daily, or nearly so and had to, in order to keep their horses in condition and trained. It worked for them as well, that way, so they were fine.
They also knew what to do in order to set up a camp. Anders, instead of searching for fire wood and buckets of water, had those delivered, by the squires. That meant he simply lit the thing, using magic. He looked around first, and then pretended to be using a flint and tinder on it. It was faster to use his other skills, meaning he had a fire going first thing. Everyone else was slower that way, at least among those around his immediate position.
He laid out his equipment first, including an oil cloth that was treated in a way that refused blood, without making the meat taste bad.
“We butcher this next. Then wash and cut up the greens and bitters, and boil the roots. The meat first, since it will take the longest to cook. We have time to roast it though, on the spit, Small chunks, about the size of my fist.” It was common to go larger than that, but half the people would end up with mainly raw meat, in that case. He liked his meat pink, not bleeding.
Anders had helped butcher animals before, and done it himself a few times, but they still kind of managed to make a mess by the time people were coming around to get their share of things. It wasn’t so poorly done that anyone refused to eat the meat, but a few smiled at their rather clumsy attempts. When the woman from earlier came over, with three of her friends from the wagon, she waved at him.
“Hello again. Now, we just get to select out what we want?” There was an array of things on the oil cloth, and even with hundreds of people, only about ten had actually come to get anything so far. They’d gotten a lot of meat each time, so hopefully the plan was to share. That seemed correct, at least.
“Hello, Mary.” He stopped for a minute, nearly bowed, then didn’t since it wasn’t a thing for these people, in particular. “Oh, I’m Andy. This is Ery. Yes. Get enough food for you and the people back in your camp. Eat the greens and roots, too. You only get a share of what I can collect on the road or hunt each day, and that only after I feed my charges. If we have days where I can’t collect enough for everyone... Well, you know that one.”
She nodded then.
“Right. In that case, we have to take you up our nethers in order to make it worth your while. Got it. Well, even getting things given to us part of the time is worth that. It’s the job, after all. Really, that’s a good value, given all this. I’d thought we were just going to barter for some meat, to be honest.”
He rolled his eyes then. Not that he corrected the woman. After all, even if he wasn’t going to be making use of their services in trade, some of the other men there might want to. Plus, if she was willing to trade that kind of work, she might be willing to do other things. Things with greater value to him, personally. He looked at the woman and shrugged.
“Right. Though, if you’re willing to do some other things in trade, we might need help with cooking, at times. If we can cook up anything not used, it will keep better, for the morning.”
The lady gave him a strange look and then shrugged.
“Sure thing then. I can do that. Turn a spit or whatever. Betha, you know how to do that kind of thing, don’t you?” She seemed serious enough and the girl she was talking to, who looked to be about the same age as Erold, nodded.
“I do, since it was what my mother taught me. I could help with that... sir.” She sounded very unsure of herself, as if she might not be allowed to speak, for some reason.
“Call me Andy. Anyway, get what you need. There should be enough for everyone.” That was the truth, since most had brought more than eno
ugh food with them. Stored things, like flour and ground oats, which stored well enough and could be packed down, so they didn’t take up too much space. Fat and sugar or a sweet of some kind, like honey, was in the mix as well.
He had spices in little tins, himself, so what he was planning for the evening meal would taste better than what many would be making, he didn’t doubt.
The ladies picked through what he’d gotten, fairly carefully, and packed off a tidy amount of food that really was about what eight people would need, for one meal. He started into his own cooking then, even as others came to see if they were really being given a share of things. Everyone seemed surprised when they actually were and that he wasn’t making them pay anything for it. Most of them seemed to think that they should be, and a few tried, several times, to at least trade for it.
He waved that away, though he relented a bit.
“Later, if I need something and you can help with it?”
That was spoken several times, and didn’t really make them all happy or anything, but most of the men and women seemed to think it was a serious enough offer. At least they took the food provided, after that. If he’d ever see anything from it, he didn’t know.
The meal that evening, meat and a thick stew, with hard travel bread to soak it up, was decent, for being on the road. The bread had been made the day before, and would last about a week before going bad. They also had hard rations, baked so that there was no water in them, which would cut their mouths like glass shards, if they weren’t boiled well first. His plan was to make some real bread that evening, if he had the time for it. It would be done in the dark, but he could use magic to make certain it wasn’t burned, if he was careful enough.
That work had to be done while he was at supper, the rest of the people traveling with him, around the fire, as he worked and used his second largest pot to hold three small loaves at the bottom, making a small pit in the ground and burying the whole thing in coals. That had to be changed once or twice each baking cycle, and the lid needed to be left askew a bit, so that the water would bake off, but it worked pretty well. Not as much as a real oven would have, but he wasn’t going to be building one of those every night as they traveled.