Chương 187: Around the Fire

I didn't exactly take that evening off, either. First, I visited Abacus, an injured Dupe who'd taken a position as the castle's purser. I knocked on his office door, then leaned inside.

"Sir Levi," he said.

"Can I help you?"

"Do you have a moment?"

"No, but I can make one for a thegn such as yourself. What do you need?"

"How difficult would it be to look over some financial documents and records, both for my regional government in the lands I inherited and for a guild that I'm starting there?"

"It would be possible," Abacus said.

"Let me finish this sheet, and I will begin. Leave all the information you have here, and I will look over it." He paused.

"However, I have a few conditions."

"Yes?"

"First, you must not mention this to anyone. If there is retribution, I refuse to let it fall on me." Abacus paused and reached for his injured leg, massaging it.

"Second, I would like the best healing potion you can muster. Something at least Gold-tier."

"Will that fix your leg?"

"It will alleviate some of the ache, that much I can say."

"You would do it without a down payment?"

"I trust you to keep your word, sir. You have a reputation, and I'll hold you to it." He spread his hands out atop the table.

"Leave your papers here. Any information you can spare for me, I will take." I dipped my head, then reached into my kit bag and retrieved the parchment slips that Elf had done all his accounting on. I didn't want to second guess Elf, but Abacus had been doing this for decades. If there was a mistake, he'd find it. I left the stack of papers on the edge of the table, then backed away.

"Thanks." ~ ~ ~ I had missed dinner that night, being busy crafting my letter to send back to Alis. Still, the rest of my squad had gathered outside the sparring pit, along with Yesman and Habit's squads. They weren't training. Instead, they'd just set up a campfire and sat around it. I sat behind our squad. Sage had recovered slightly from her Presence loss earlier, and she had enough to stay away and move around with Morph's help.

She sat beside Brawl, leaning on his arm to support herself, while Anchor talked about bowstrings with the archer from Habit's squad. I first turned to Brawl and Sage and said, "I know we're doing well with our attributes, and Brawl, I know you can't reforge your body. However, something tells me we can push closer to Silver and even hit it sooner than later."

"We would need to boost our attributes quickly, brother," Brawl said.

"What about infused food?" I asked.

"If you guys did what I did, and used the wages you'd gathered so far…" Brawl glanced back at me with a reluctant glance. Sighing, I hung my head. I hoped that would go over better. Then again, asking people to give up their wages to gain attributes wasn't something everyone wanted.

"You don't have to," I said.

"But it will help."

"I would like to retire one day, brother," Brawl replied.

"You've got Sage," I whispered.

"That is if Father lets me keep my inheritance, dustbrain," Sage said. She didn't look back at me.

"He might not."

"Why?"

"He would surely prefer it if I wed another lord or thegn, something to improve our standing and help us spread. Besides, he has other sons who will receive a greater inheritance, because they will inherit the land." I sighed.

"How about this, then. You use your wages now, and I'll use the profits from the guild to pay you back." They still didn't get it, did they? If we didn't win, no one was going home to retire.

"That is…acceptable," Brawl said.

"I think I could arrange that," Sage added.

"Great. With you two on board, that should be more than enough to drag Anchor along," I joked. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Do you think about anything other than advancement?" Sage whispered.

"Sometimes…" I replied. I shifted in so I could sit beside them, inching toward the fire. It took a few more seconds, but finally, I asked, "Have you guys ever seen Eraen-Kalora?" Brawl shook his head.

"Not once, brother."

"As a child, I went with Father to pay tribute to the Warlord," Sage said.

"I still remember it. It is a great granite city perching on a cliff. Its walls circle a towering metropolis, built on the shores of a waterfall. The Culvert of Harwith yawned like a mouth in the Round Walls as it poured water into the lakelands below. It was beautiful."

"It sounds like a fortress," I said.

"Of course that's where your mind goes, dustbrain. But yes, it is unassailable," Sage replied.

"Ever since Aelfwine built the granite walls, it has never fallen in a siege. The cliff faces the Bane-lands, and a ring of satellite cities acts as a tripwire, preventing any surprise attacks. Nothing has gotten close to the capital." I dipped my head.

"Those satellite cities…?"

"We have fought the orcs over them for decades. But the main city of Eraen-Kalora has never fallen." I fell silent for a short while, listening to the fire crackle. The other squads shared stories, but they'd already exchanged most of the interesting stories from before they had started their sapper training. Most of the gazes slowly drifted over to me. Anchor nudged me and said, "I'm sure you've got some kind of story to tell, don't you?"

"Hey, you're supposed to be busy talking about bowstrings or something," I whispered.

"We were actually discussing the ideal feather placement and where best to grip our arrows," Anchor replied.

"But we came to a consensus."

"Right…" I scratched the back of my head, aware that most of the Dupes around the fire were staring at me.

"I mean, there really isn't much you don't know. I promise. I didn't have an interesting life. I was just normal. Maybe a ski bum, but hey, that lifestyle is kinda dying, anyway." I pointed north at the mountains, though we couldn't see them right now. The wall blocked our view.

"I worked at a place called a ski hill—""Was it an Order of mountain dwelling Path-walkers?"

"N—no. It was…well, it was just something people did for recreation." I sighed.

"We would attach planks of wood to our feet"—I said planks to make it easier for them to grasp what I was talking about—"and raced down the snowy slopes."

"Do you miss it?" Sage whispered.

"Of course I do," I replied.

"I loved the rush of the wind, the lurch as I went over a jump. But there's no going back, now." I paused, leaning back and looking up into the sky. At the moment, Welkinmere was barely a sliver, but its shadow blocked out most of the sky.

"You have to be homesick, though?" Yesman asked. I grimaced.

"A little, I guess. A lot, maybe. It was certainly comfortable. I—" I shook my head.

"I didn't really feel alive, though. Not in the same way I do right now."

"I wish we had half the things you did," said someone from Habit's squad.

"Your world sounds comfortable."

"I wish you did, too." I folded my arms.

"Maybe when we sort things out with the orcs, we can start working on other improvements. It will start small, but I'm sure that once we have peace, we can start spreading some prosperity around. There's still something to dream about. We can't stop hoping for a better future."

"How do you do it?" Squirrel asked.

"Anchor told us about how weird some of the tales from your world were. What did he say…Robin Hood?" I chuckled.

"Look, that was just one story."

"I'm sure you had more stories like it," Anchor said.

"You were at an academy for…what did you say? Playwrights?" Sage asked.

"Yeah, close to that." I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees.

"But like, what should I…"

"Tell us one of your stories, then," Anchor said.

"You must have written something."

"I never actually got anything produced…" I said with a wince.

"I mean, I wrote a few scripts, but—""Share something, brother," Brawl insisted.

"I'm not sure…" I sighed.

"It's not very good. I needed to practice. But fine." For about ten minutes, I told them about a detective thriller I'd envisioned. A story of an aging crime-fighting detective hunting down a posse of people who had wronged him in the past, all while hunting for his estranged son. It didn't feel real, and it was probably way too pretentious at points.

"Where was the hope there?" Anchor asked bluntly.

"Well," I said, "I was still working on the ending. I don't really know how it was going to go. And I'll never really find out. But I imagine Rook was meant to settle down and reconnect with his son…" Judging by the crowd's reactions, they weren't horribly impressed. I snorted, then put on a smile. I didn't want to look hurt—it wasn't the first time I'd gotten feedback, after all—but I did also want to prove a point. This wasn't cutting it.

"Right, I've got a better story. I think…" I said, trying to buy time. Ah, I thought. I've got it. Something they'll like.

"I didn't make it," I said.

"But I can retell it."

"Like a bard." Sage crossed her arms.

"There's nothing wrong with a bard." I grinned.

"So a man, a banker named Andy—a banker, you see, is sorta like Abacus, good with money and all—is falsely accused of a murder he didn't commit—""They didn't hang him?" Yesman interrupted.

"Well, we had these things called prisons… which is where they sent him. The warden, of course, was a corrupt man…" The Shawshank Redemption. If there was a story about hope in dark times, that one was it. I kept talking, doing my best to tell them the story. I had to change a few bits here and there, but I'd studied it in first year for an assignment, and I knew it better than most. It was going to be a long night, but I'd make it worth it in the end.

If nothing else, I could get these guys to fight harder if they had hope.