A Soldier's Life-Chapter 281: Fortuna’s Chosen

Chapter 281: Fortuna’s Chosen

It was the first time I had felt exhausted in a while. My ring of sustenance and essence-fortified attributes could not overcome my lack of sleep and the stress of leadership. I dressed in my adventurer’s armor and then rubbed down Ginger before breakfast. When I told the stable hand we were leaving today, he went to get the coppers I had paid for the remaining days. I refused the refund, to his confusion.

There was a small outfitter in the Guild Hall who had detailed maps of the Caliphate, far better than what I had in my dreamscape. I bought the four maps that covered the northern Caliphate. The southern Caliphate lay across the Endless Salt Sea and bordered the Telhian Empire. I studied the maps while sampling the offered buffet.

The Adventurers Hall breakfast was poorly attended, based on the number of adventurers drinking last night. I had read a cookbook from the Caliphate, but didn’t recognize anything being offered. I went with thinly sliced, cured meat on a doughy pita, slathered in some green paste. The paste was a pungent garlic pesto, and the only thing that gave the improvised pocket sandwich flavor.

Raelia sat with me as I consumed my small sandwich, judging me. “Still wearing the ring?” she said as she sorted through her plate, which was stacked high with the offerings of the buffet. I had taken the ring of sustenance from her in the dungeon and never returned it, even after we came to an accord.

“If you want it back, you can give me the cloak back,” I said with a smirk, knowing she wouldn’t accept. She wore an artifact called a Ranger’s cloak, which allowed her to blend into her surroundings. At night, she was nearly invisible. During the day, if she didn’t move, she remained the same. The cloak had been in a reward chest from one of the creatures I had killed in the Shimmering Labyrinth. It also held special meaning for wood elves.

“It was a fair exchange,” she said hastily. Baldo chirped at not being fed, and Raelia gave him a chunk of meat from her plate after he obeyed two commands. The griffin was growing rapidly and had added half its weight in the last three weeks. Before too long, he wouldn’t be able to ride on Stormcloud. Raelia picked at the plate while Baldo got the majority; clearly, something was on her mind.

I waited patiently as I sipped some bitter wine. I thought she would ask about my earth speak ability, but her mind was elsewhere. “Could you place Baldo in your dimensional pocket if I asked?” I was a bit shocked at the request. She was aware of my space’s power, having spent a lot of time in there herself.

“Possibly. Why?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.

She sighed with relief. “I should be training him ten hours a day, but it is hard to do so, being constantly on the move.” I looked at her dubiously. She had been training the griffin constantly in the saddle. It would be more difficult as we increased our pace from escorting merchant wagons, but it would still be feasible.

“Fine! It was a mistake to bring him!” She hissed in a concession. “He is too vulnerable, and there is too much interest in him.” Baldo chirped, hearing his name, and Raelia gave him more meat. I could needle her about how she had thought she knew better than me and had insisted he wouldn’t be a liability—but I didn’t.

Instead, I considered how to explain Baldo’s disappearance to the others. Was it the right time to reveal that I could move live creatures and people into my dimensional space? Benito and Mateo talked too freely, and they could let it slip after a few rounds at a tavern.

In a compassionate tone, I replied, “I understand your concern. Do your best to care for him for now. If there is no other recourse, I will do as you wish. I don’t want to explain his disappearance to the others at the moment.” Relief flooded her face, a burden lifted. Her face brightened into a smile directed at me.

“Thank you,” she said softly. She touched my arm and then withdrew it quickly, acting like it was unintended.

Maveith’s voice rumbled down the stairs, guiding the others. As they helped themselves, Mateo complained that the food wasn’t to his taste. Blaze reminded him of our time starving in Caelora, and he quieted. I took the time to explain the job we had taken in simple terms. “One of the orc clerics is looking for an ancient battlefield. We will escort her and assist her in finding evidence buried with time.”

“Ugh, I thought I wouldn’t have to dig again after leaving the Legion,” Mateo groaned as he consumed pickled duck eggs.

“Don’t worry; it will be a quick assignment but a long ride, slightly over three hundred miles on the road. It will get us much closer to our true objective.” That got a hearty nod from Maveith.

“That is a long way to travel for a job. Is there nothing else we can do along the way?” Blaze inquired, sampling a number of the offerings on his plate. In my opinion, the meat was a bit salty but not terrible. Apparently, it was not to his taste, and he only ate something that was boiled in rolled cabbage leaves.

Blaze was being pragmatic, even though I was more focused on haste than making coin. However, it might be best to maintain the appearance of trying to earn as much coin as possible, like normal adventurers. “You can examine the job board with Raelia to see if anything is along the trade road on our way to the city of Adorechi,” I decided. Raelia looked pained. I could tell her mastery of the written orc language was limited.

Benito didn’t have the same reservations about the food and was working on his second plate. Once everyone was finished, we would saddle up and depart. My goal was to cover forty miles today and then sixty miles each successive day. Blaze returned with a posting an hour later and handed it to me. “Someone wants their parents’ farm checked on. They haven’t heard from them in four months. It is near Adorechi.”

I looked to Raelia so she could explain it more clearly. “The local baker has parents on a farm about twenty miles east of Adorechi. We would pass within a few miles of it. Shouldn’t take us long to tell them their son is worried about them.” I guess even orc children cared about their parents.

“Unless monsters have eaten them,” Mateo noted offhandedly.

“Then all we have to do is return the letter to the local Guild with a note on what we found,” Blaze said glibly. “We will still get paid.” On the posting, the noted payout was small, just ten silver pieces, but that might be a substantial sum for a baker.

“Fine, it will only be a few hours’ detour. Blaze, since you wanted more work so badly, you can saddle Ginger for me while I accept the job.” As my companions left, I approached the desk. It was much quicker to accept this quest than the last one. I received a folded letter with a black wax seal, which I sent to my dimensional space as I walked to the stables. Soon, our group was on the road.

The main trade road of Esenhem continued into the Boutan Caliphate. As we rode, farmlands sprawled deep into the plains on either side of us. This differed from the Telhian Empire, where farms were clustered together for protection from the dangers of the wild. There were fewer roaming creatures in the Caliphate than in the Empire.

We rode in pairs, with the lead pair responsible for scouting and the rear pair scanning our backs. The middle pair was allowed to relax and not be on constant alert. Not that there was much of a threat. The road was wide but rougher than in Esenhem, and we mostly saw orc farmers driving ox carts toward larger towns and cities. We didn’t see a single mounted patrol that would be commonplace in the Empire.

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Raelia used the time to have Baldo hunt large birds when she spotted them flying. The griffin was still clumsy in the air against the smaller and more agile hawks and eagles. But Raelia explained that the aerial pursuit was training his fitness and agility. When he got too frustrated, he would abandon his prey and dive down onto an unsuspecting rabbit, fox, or fawn. He still liked to exchange the kill with me for dungeon meat. I thought he could sense the aether in the flesh instinctively. Maybe if he consumed enough he could become a dire griffin, but I didn’t know for sure.

During the ride, I explained my earth speak spell form to my companions. Benito needed a bit more explanation than the others, as it was hard for him to conceptualize. I also told them not to discuss my ability or its range with anyone, as it was an indicator of my earth affinity. Raelia knew enough about the spell form to be stunned when I admitted my range. She stared at me for most of the day after that revelation.

We made excellent time, the only issue being small clouds of spring blackflies hazing us. Raelia demonstrated her usefulness with micro fireballs she used to incinerate the offenders. Even though Raelia warned the group, the first such explosion spooked Maveith’s horse, causing him to tumble backward off his saddle and land in a tangle of limbs on the ground. It gave us all a good laugh, and I worked with Maveith to train his mount not to be spooked. It was largely about the mount trusting the rider to inform it when real danger was present.

There were no large merchant barns for us to stay in along the trade road. Our options were to camp, pay for an inn, or negotiate with a farmer for space in an outbuilding. However, most of the farms we passed lacked stables or barns. Truthfully, life in the Caliphate did not seem so bad.

When Benito cycled back to ride with me on the third day, he had a giddy look on his face, which I knew couldn’t be good. “Eryk, I was thinking.”

Mateo, behind us, laughed aloud. “Thinking? Who are you and what have you done with my friend Benito?!”

I looked back at Mateo, “There is a person among us who speaks before they think at all.” Mateo knew I was talking about him but pretended to inspect the others like he was trying to figure out who I was indicating. “Go ahead, Benito. Tell me what epiphany you have reached.”

“Epiphany?” He tested the unfamiliar word before giving up on it and rambling excitedly, “Growing up, we had a bard visit during the holidays. He used to tell and sing us stories about all the great heroes and their companions. Well, a lot of the hero companies had names. We should come up with one for ourselves to be sung about in the taverns long after we are gone.”

Blaze supported Benito’s idea immediately, albeit with self-aggrandizement. “I like it! We should be Diana’s Chosen.” Diana was the goddess of the hunt and master of the bow.

Mateo offered his own vision of our company: “How about Handsome Fiends?”

Benito offered up, “Castile’s Castoffs!”

The suggestions continued over the next two hours before one finally struck me as fitting. It was one of Benito’s many suggestions and probably had to do with the fact that he practically worshipped the goddess Fortuna. “I like it,” I said aloud, stopping the shouts of ideas. “We will be called Fortuna’s Chosen.”

“Personally, I liked Blaze’s Misfits better,” Blaze said in jest. “But I suppose that will do. It flows off the tongue.”

It took five days to reach the branch off the main road that led to Adorechi. Raelia interpreted the inscription on the large stone marker for us. She needed to convert the distances the orcs used to Esenhem measurements, so she took a moment. “Adorechi is thirty-four miles. The town of Dewmire is about twenty miles away. We need to head north from there to find the baker’s family.”

It took half a day of riding to reach Dewmire. “Town” was generous, as it was just a collection of twenty wooden buildings. The entire town looked like an industrial area for processing massive bovines called aurochs. Half the buildings appeared to be for smoking and salting meat. There were dozens of racks lining a field for treating and prepping hides. That was where Maveith’s attention was drawn as we approached.

When the wind shifted, the odor churned my stomach: death mixed with curing hides and aging meat. The slaughter grounds must have been nearby, as some of the horses got antsy. Baldo’s head was up and his nostrils were flaring. A filthy stream of water was coming from the buildings to join the wide stream that passed the town.

“Raelia, take Maveith and Blaze to ask the locals for directions.” Being a leader had to have some privileges, and one of them was not having to get closer to the foulness. “We will wait upwind, north of the town.” The three dismounted and walked into town while we led all the mounts around, while keeping our companions in sight.

It wasn’t long before the three returned. Raelia told us what they learned. “They found the old orc couple dead in their beds four months ago. Thinking it was a disease, they burned the farmhouse down to avoid the spread. Nothing is left, according to the town’s steward. I have directions if you want to confirm.”

“How far is it?” I asked, not too keen on the unnecessary delay. I was wondering if orcs would murder each other and cover it up by burning down a house.

Raelia pointed north. “We follow the path along the stream for about two miles. There will be a wooden bridge to cross to the other side. We continue following the stream on the other side for two miles.”

It was getting late in the day, and we would probably have to camp at the farm after investigating. We would not make Adorechi before nightfall. All eyes were looking at me, even Baldo’s. I sighed. “Let’s go confirm so we can add the details to the report.” I swung up into Ginger’s saddle and led the group.

We passed two wheat farms before crossing the narrow wooden bridge over the wide stream that fed the town. There were farms on the banks, along with a few large pastures that contained the aurochs. For some reason, Benito didn’t seem to like the big bovines.

The farm appeared just as it had been described. Nature was slowly reclaiming the fields surrounding the charred remains of the farmhouse, with wild vegetation beginning to encroach upon the landscape. The only remnant of the once-standing farmhouse was the partially collapsed, soot-covered chimney. Two large open-sided shelters stood near the burnt remains. One was filled with farming tools, while the other housed firewood.

As I carefully made my way through the ashes, I sent out earth pulses. I discovered a root cellar under the debris, but to my surprise, there were no signs of any bones. It crossed my mind that perhaps the neighbors had already taken the remains and given them a proper burial. “Do orcs bury their dead?”

Raelia thought a moment. “I don’t know. There is a big party for their friends to celebrate their lives, but I don’t know what they do with the bodies. We have not passed any cemeteries.”

A collection of copper and silver coins was secreted in the root cellar, but accessing them would have required too much effort, and they were out of reach of my dimensional space. I walked the perimeter of the charred remains, but my earth speak revealed nothing else. The others waited patiently. It was already dark when I was finished.

I didn’t find anything unsettling that could have caused the fire, but I decided it was safer to head back and camp by the stream. “We will camp by the stream and finish the trip to Adorechi tomorrow.”

The stream was only a few hundred yards from the burned farmhouse. Maveith cooked for everyone, and the others set tents while I walked the campsite perimeter with Raelia, setting simple tripwires. Raelia was talkative this evening.

“I think you did the right thing coming here to check. It will give peace of mind to the baker,” she said while setting a tripwire.

“Every delay is a burden on Maveith’s conscience. He has not asked anyone to play checkers once,” I disclosed.

“I talk to Maveith every day. You are doing a good job, and he knows it. He trusts you more than you know. He knows caution is the best course of action and has the patience to endure it,” Raelia said supportively.

Neptune’s Tear had been bright when we set camp, but now clouds concealed its light. Drops started to hit the ground and our tarp tents, rapidly growing larger and larger. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled in the distance. “Lets get to the camp. It feels like a heavy rain, and nothing should disturb us.” I packed up my snare kit and hurried back to stay as dry as possible.

We had gone a whole week without rain. It figured that the first time I decided we should sleep outside we would get a rainstorm. It wasn’t long before the storm was upon us, with strong winds, constant flashes of lightning, and heavier rain. With no sign of the storm letting up, I roused everyone to move to the farmhouse shelters in case the stream overflowed. Drenched, we trudged through the mud toward the higher ground of the farm.

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