Chapter 4: Into the Wilds¶
| DATE Late winter, 25 Calistril (Feb) 4610 AR | |
|---|---|
Prologue - Rust¶
I kept my hands busy while the big folk argued about pots and plate. Busy is easier. You stir the jeweled rice, you sort the herbs, you check the horse tack twice because leather fails when rain wins. The charter says we’re going to make a place safe enough for farmers to live and for kids to sleep. It sounds like a story you tell to make yourself brave, but the paper has real ink and a real seal. I keep touching it like it might vanish.
People in Restov looked past me until they needed a healer. That’s fine. They’ll remember the work more than the face. Out here, though—the road to Nivakta’s Crossing smells like wet grass and old wood, and every mile puts a little more life into my feet. Grotdor cracks his knuckles like he’s keeping a storm in his hands. Perry watches the world as if it’s a riddle that will solve itself if you’re patient. Dravyn’s eyes glint like coals when he listens, and Elroy plants his shield like a promise.
At the ferry town they called us guests, and that felt new. Folk there talk; they have plenty to say about nobles with hired swords and old hatreds across the water. I listened, and I cooked, and I tried not to think about how the rain seeps through everything. When the bear came for our dinner and our lives, I saw how thin the canvas between here and gone really is. We held, we healed, and in the quiet after, the campfire still smelled of rice and smoke. I think that’s a good sign.
Chapter Four: Into the Wilds¶
Restov Preparations and Party Logistics¶
Rain slicked the streets of Restov and turned the alleys into thin, gleaming knives of water. In a cramped, rented space above a chandler’s shop, Rust Freelox kept his hands moving so he didn’t have to think too hard about what waited beyond the city walls.
Busy was easier.
He stirred jeweled rice in a blackened pot, watching the fat raisins swell and the nuts glisten in the steam. He sorted herbs into neat little bundles, fingers nimble and stained. Between tasks he checked the horse tack again and again, tugging at stitching, feeling for hidden rot. Leather failed when rain won—that was the sort of lesson the world liked to repeat until it stuck.
The charter sat beside the stove, curling slightly in the damp. Rust touched it every time he passed, half expecting the ink to smear, the wax seal to crumble into red dust, the whole promise to vanish like breath on a mirror. Make the Stolen Lands safe enough for farmers to live and children to sleep—that was what the words on the page said. It sounded like a story you told to make yourself brave, but the seal was heavy and real under his thumb.
He wasn’t much to look at, and in Restov people tended not to, unless someone was bleeding or fevered. That suited him fine. They could remember the work and not the goblin face behind it. Out here on the border of Brevoy, though, it felt different. The city’s clamor was already fading into memory, leaving behind only the clink of armor fittings, the smell of oiled leather and wet grain, and the quiet knowledge that the next step led away from civilization and toward a page of unmapped wilderness.
Elroy had traded up his mail for something heavier, weighing the extra burden against the comfort of standing firm when steel came calling. The big human tested the straps and set his shield on the floor with a soft, decisive thump: a promise driven into wood. Grotdor paced like a man with a storm trapped in his bones, flexing broad hands as if he could already feel fire pooling in his palms. Perry checked and re-checked buckles, straps, and satchels, eyes distant as if he were solving a riddle only he could see. Dravyn moved through the cramped room like a thought given shape, quiet and observing, eyes glinting ember-red whenever the conversation turned toward danger.
By the time the last buckle was fastened and the last sack of grain tied down, they were no longer just travelers. They were charter-bearers, under the eyes of Lady Aldori and the law of Brevoy, bound for an old trading post on the edge of nowhere and the bandits who thought themselves kings there.
Leaving Restov for Nivakta’s Crossing¶
The South Rostland Road unspooled beneath their horses’ hooves, a long gray ribbon through fields damp with recent rain. The world here still looked tended—furrows like combed hair, low stone walls, thin stands of trees that knew the sound of axe and saw. But with each mile, the farms grew sparser and the wild crept closer, hemming the road with taller grasses and thicker, darker woods.
Low clouds dragged their bellies over the hills. Drizzle came and went, never heavy enough to end the journey, only enough to soak through cloak and padding. Rust rode with his chin tucked into his collar and his eyes half-closed, listening to the damp creak of saddles and the squelch of hooves in soft earth. The others passed the time in their own ways—Perry counting landmarks, Grotdor muttering under his breath, Dravyn turning the charter’s implications over in his head, Elroy scanning the road ahead and behind with a soldier’s habit of never trusting open ground too much.
They did not waste time searching the Brevic hinterlands; this was still someone’s claimed country, if not always well-guarded. The real work would begin farther south, where the maps grew vague and the names on them older than any living title. For now, the road itself was the plan: south and west, to the last ferry town before the true wilds swallowed the horizon.
Nivakta’s Crossing: Fourth Night and Rainy Departure
Nivakta’s Crossing rose out of the river mist like a collection of stubborn thoughts—palisade walls, a stout bridge, lamplight smeared gold across wet timber. The Shrike River rushed beneath it, swollen and restless, flinging spray up against the pilings until everything smelled of wet wood and cold iron.
They rode in under watchful eyes and found those eyes softening when someone recognized the seal on their charter. Guests, the folk called them. Not hirelings, not sellswords—guests of the swordlords, and that meant free lodgings, simple food, and no one asking too many questions about how dangerous the road ahead might be. Rust cooked when he could, trading the comfort of a hot meal for stories and the tiny, grounding rituals of stirring, tasting, and seasoning.
People here talked. They talked about the river’s moods, about crops, about who had married whom while someone else was off on patrol. But once the mugs were refilled and the night settled in thick around the walls, the talk turned south.
They spoke of another charter-bearer, Maegar Varne, who had come earlier with hard-eyed mercenaries and enough coin to buy a sturdy boat. He’d declared his intention to treat with the Nomen centaurs—negotiate, some said; tame, others muttered into their cups—and hinted at alliances that might stretch from the open plains to the halls of Restov.
Later, over a shared bottle that tasted mostly of riverwater and regret, a drunk with windburned cheeks leaned in close and spilled a darker rumor. There was a ruined monastery on the north shore of the Tuskwater, once devoted to a goddess of hatred, he swore. The cult hadn’t died out with the stones. Its remnants, he insisted, were behind the bandit raids, turning petty greed into something meaner and more deliberate. No one could say whether he was lying, mistaken, or both, but the name of the Tuskwater and the image of a crumbling cloister clung to the company like smoke as they turned in for the night.
By morning, the rain had returned in earnest. The sky was the color of forge water and the road quickly turned to churned muck, each hour of marching pulling more heat out of their limbs. Fatigue settled into shoulders and thighs long before the sun reached its highest point, a reminder that even the weather out here demanded respect. Still, they pressed on, the walls of Nivakta’s shrinking behind them until they were only a darker suggestion against the cloud.
First Wilderness Camp and Jeweled Rice
They made camp that night on low ground near the river, more from tired judgment than good sense. The spot seemed fine at first—close enough to water, not too exposed, some shelter from the wind. But as the evening deepened and the drizzle persisted, runoff gathered in shallow hollows. Mud sucked at boots and shifted under tent pegs, and everything took on a clammy weight.
Still, a camp was a camp. Someone told a story by the fire about dangerous beasts, fey, and stranger things that haunted unclaimed land, the kind of tale that mixed warning with bravado. Blades were sharpened, heads of spears checked, armor unbuckled and rubbed with oil despite the damp. Rust cooked again, coaxing spice and color from the last of the jeweled rice. The scent of it drifted out into the dark—sweet, nutty, comforting, and just strong enough to tempt anything with a nose and an empty belly.
Canvas snapped and shivered in the gusting wind. The river hissed past unseen. One by one, those not on watch crawled into their blankets and let the steady patter of rain on oiled cloth pull them under.
Combat: Night Attack - Grizzly Bear
The first hint of trouble wasn’t a sound, but a shadow.
Something huge moved at the edge of the campfire’s glow, blocking the flicker of flames on wet ground. Then the night filled with heavy snorts and the clumsy, terrifying intimacy of a wild thing too close and too unafraid. A massive grizzly bear lumbered into view, fur slicked dark with rain, eyes reflecting the fire like twin embers. Behind it came the smell of wet animal and old hunger.
Chaos followed in the way it always does—sudden, jarring, and far too loud. Linzi was on her feet first, lute in hand, fingers striking a fierce, bright anthem that cut through fear like a blade. Her song wrapped the camp in borrowed courage, set heartbeats to a stronger rhythm.
Grotdor charged, fire flaring around him in a burst that splashed harmlessly off wet fur and streaming flanks. The bear swept a heavy paw across him in return. Rust saw the blow land, saw Grotdor lifted and dropped bonelessly in the mud, the storm in his hands snuffed out in an instant.
Perry had already measured the distance and the angle in his head. One narrow bolt from his hand crossbow crossed the firelight and buried itself deep into the grizzly’s shoulder, drawing a roar that rattled pots and teeth alike. The halfling vanished behind a sudden bloom of smoke, turning himself into a shadow among shadows, calling out clipped directions that cut through the ringing in everyone’s ears.
Valerie stepped in front of the beast as if she were bracing against a charging line of soldiers instead of claws longer than her fingers. Her shield rose, catching one blow and turning another aside as sparks and rainwater flew from the polished metal. Behind her, Dravyn scrambled up from his bedroll, staff in hand, eyes narrowing as he sought a gap between friend and foe for what he knew he would unleash.
Rust moved, reaching not just for metal holy symbols and water-slick components, but for that thin, burning thread of power that had marked him long before this charter. Needle-like shafts of force—sharp as bone, bright as glass—lanced from his outstretched hand and sank into the bear’s hide. He raised his shield after, almost on instinct, the small disk of metal feeling suddenly thin between him and the wild.
Amiri crashed into the fray like an answer to an old grudge, great blade carving arcs of silver in the rain as she roared and swung, each strike working in rough concert with Valerie’s steady hold on the line. Elroy was there as well, shield forward, longsword hammering at the grizzly’s flank whenever an opening appeared, his whole stance a wall built to buy others the time they needed.
When Dravyn finally spoke the words he’d been gathering, the sky itself seemed to answer. A crack of thunder exploded around the bear, the sound so close and sudden it left ears ringing and the air vibrating. Lightning’s echo shuddered through muscle and bone; the grizzly staggered, its movements turning clumsy, its rage blunted by sudden, disorienting pain. More force followed, invisible but felt, battering at ribs and sinew.
The fight dragged on in a series of desperate breaths—Linzi’s song rising and falling, Valerie’s shieldwork never faltering, Perry’s distant voice cutting through the smoke, Rust darting to Grotdor’s side to push life back into a body already walking the edges of death. The bear, maddened and wounded, lashed out in wild, furious swipes, but could no longer find the killing stroke it sought.
Grotdor’s eyes snapped open at last. Fire returned to his hands, not as a clumsy flare but as a focused, searing blast that struck the grizzly squarely, burning away wet fur and charring flesh. The beast reeled, barely more than stubborn will and momentum holding it upright. Dravyn’s final working came then—a storm of pure force slamming into the bear, each invisible blow cracking bone and driving the massive creature back. With a final, guttural sound that was more air than roar, the grizzly collapsed into the mud, twitched once, and lay still.
For a while, there was only the rain, the hiss of it on cooling coals, and the wheezing breaths of exhausted people taking stock of wounds that could have been much worse. Rust finished his triage with fingers that trembled only a little, confirming that Grotdor would live, that no hidden bleeding would steal him away while the camp pretended to rest.
The camp was a mess—scattered cookware, torn canvas, churned mud stamped with claw marks deep enough to fill with water. The jeweled rice was ruined, overturned in the struggle, but its scent still hung stubbornly in the air, mingling with smoke, wet fur, and the copper tang of blood. In the quiet afterward, with the immediate terror passed, Rust found himself clinging to that smell: rice and smoke, the promise of a meal shared under an open sky instead of a grave dug hastily in the dark.
Aftermath on the Road; Bokken’s Hut; Looming Trouble
Morning found them stiff and sore, but alive. The bear’s corpse was dragged away from camp; carrion would find it soon enough. They broke down their sodden tents and loaded their horses under another gray sky. The rain did not care that they had survived the night. It simply came again, filling footprints with water and smearing yesterday’s tracks into meaningless streaks.
They followed the road toward the trading post and the promise of something like a base—a place that could be repaired instead of repitched nightly. Somewhere along that route, in a stretch of wet, quiet country where the road ran thin between scrub and sodden fields, they found the hut.
Bokken’s home squatted in the landscape like a stubborn weed: a small, isolated shack leaning under its own eaves, every board gone silver-gray with age and damp. The air around it stank pleasantly of steeped herbs, spirits, and the faint metallic sting of alchemical work done without much care for proper ventilation. Eaves dripped a steady rhythm. The world beyond the clearing’s edge felt distant, as if the hut occupied its own small, irritable pocket of reality.
The man himself proved just as sharp as the smells—cantankerous, quick to complain, but not so far gone into his solitude that he’d forgotten the value of other hands and other blades. Between grumbles and glares he laid out his troubles: bandits coming on a monthly schedule to take half of what he brewed and distilled, leaving him with just enough to keep going and not quite enough to stop needing them. Help, he suggested—demanded, really—and he’d see to it that their access to his potions and concoctions was improved.
There was other work he dangled in front of them too. A patch of fangberries, some fifty-odd miles southwest of Oleg’s Trading Post, ripe for the picking if one had the patience and the protection to gather a whole basket of them without being eaten or torn apart by the thorns. Bring him clean berries, and he’d sweeten their deals further. It was the sort of side errand a kingdom-in-the-making might someday delegate to fresh recruits, but for now, it was all part of the same knot: roads, raids, bandits, and the fragile lines tying all three together.
The worst of his news landed last. The bandits who shook him down were due “any day now,” and if they didn’t come to his shack they were likely to hit Oleg’s instead. Either way, trouble was moving along the same roads the company traveled, and the time when they could simply pass through without taking sides was slipping away.
They stayed near Bokken’s place long enough to rest and let the sun, finally, break through. The next morning dawned bright and hard-edged, the kind of light that makes everything look more fragile than it did under cloud. Rust stepped outside into the chill air, stretching his shoulders as he listened to distant birdsong and dripping eaves.
On the road, three figures approached—shabby silhouettes against the pale sky, gear scavenged and mismatched, moving with the wary confidence of people who owned at least this much of the world: the space in front of them, the weapons at their sides, and the choices they were about to force on anyone in their way.
Rust touched the charter at his belt, feeling the seal through the leather. Somewhere between Restov’s alleys and this lonely, herb-reeking hut, the words on that page had stopped feeling like a distant promise and started to sound more like a challenge.
He drew a slow breath, squared his small shoulders, and stepped forward to meet whatever came next.