Chapter 4 — Not Alone

Ria’s heart jumped at the sudden sight of the buck collapsing from a hunting arrow.

“Ria? Are you out here by yourself?” a surprised voice called over to her.

She was too shocked to reply, even though she recognized the man to be Mr. Jarrel, who was a friend of the family. She didn’t interact with him much, but Ria’s teen brothers were always together with his son Danny.

“I thought everyone was gone.” Jarrel drew near and knelt down to be closer to her height, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Did anyone else manage to stay behind?”

Ria shook her head, no.

“You’re all alone in the house?”

She nodded, and to her surprise, Jarrel suddenly hugged her close.

“Oh, girl. You must be terrified! I can’t even imagine what you’ve been going through. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be alone anymore.”

As the shock of having actually encountered someone receded, and the reality began to sink in, Ria returned the hug, if awkwardly while still holding the dagger. Did that mean Jarrel would be taking care of her now?

When Jarrel stepped back, he glanced at the dagger. “Were you hunting that buck? …no, you were out foraging, huh?”

Jarrel’s gaze had drifted to the basket of herbs and mushrooms, and Ria nodded that the second guess was correct.

“Hmm… mushrooms… well, those look like common boletes so should be fine. Guess we’d better attend to the buck. Ria, you don’t have to watch if you don’t want to.”

Ria shook her head. “Can you teach me?”

Jarrel’s eyes widened in surprise, glancing from the dead buck, to Ria’s dagger, and back to Ria. “You sure?”

With only a slight hesitation, she gave a determined nod.

Jarrel considered for a moment, and Ria kept her gaze firm. “Hmm, I guess we can do that. But if it’s too much, don’t push yourself, okay?”

After receiving Ria’s agreement, Jarrel led her over to the buck and showed her where to cut so they could remove the guts. The work was gross and slimy, and Ria’s hands were slick with blood by the time the task was completed. She felt nauseous, but steeled her resolve.

“There are ways to make use of the guts if you have enough clean water, but it’s safer to just throw those parts away. Once that’s done, we hang the animal up and drain the blood, but before that, you should clean your blade so we don’t contaminate the meat,” Jarrel explained.

He used his waterskin to dribble water over Ria’s hands and dagger, then handed her a ragged and bloodstained cloth.

“If you’re low on water, you can wipe your hands and knife against the pelt, but remember to never put your blade away dirty. Cleaning out a sheath is almost impossible, and poorly-cared-for blades can rust and weaken. Oiling your blade can also help it last longer.”

Jarrel took out a length of cord from his pack and continued to give advice while Ria was cleaning up. Once the dagger was clean, Ria was shown how to use a tree to hang the animal and where to cut to drain out the blood.

“Mr. Jarrel, what do you think happened? Why was everyone taken away?”

“I was deep in the woods hunting and checking my traps. Everyone was already gone when I returned, so I can only guess,” Jarrel started then paused as he thought about it. “I don’t think it was bandits. There wasn’t any damage done or signs of struggle, and bandits wouldn’t bother with taking old folk. Slavers wouldn’t either. The tracks on the road looked like wagons and soldiers in formation. So, I’m guessing the villagers are being relocated by a regional lord… but even if a lord decided that on a whim, not having an announcement of some kind is strange.”

Ria nodded. “I think so too.”

When she told him what she heard while hiding in the cellar, Jarrel’s expression tightened.

“I’m afraid it’s probably so. I spent yesterday searching for clues to where everyone was being taken, and I was surprised that the village to the north of us had also been cleaned out. The tracks were definitely heading further north. Unfortunately, I had to cut my search short because of the storm.

“If all of the villages in the area are being evacuated, then the cause for this could be a large scale monster threat, maybe something related to the Great Barrier Wall… But, if a village this far south from the barrier is in danger, then only walled cities and towns would be safe, and maybe not even that, if the barrier actually fell.” Jarrel rubbed his jaw worriedly. “If we’re dealing with something on that scale…”

“The Great Barrier?” Even Ria knew about the ancient magical barrier wall that kept the monster hordes of the northlands from flowing south into the kingdom. “Will we be safe staying here?”

Jarrel shook his head and shrugged. “Hard to say. This village is not far from the southern border and is a fair distance away from the main road. Bandits and looters coming to clean out an abandoned village are likely a more serious threat—at least in the short-term. Do you want to try to catch up with the others?”

Ria really wanted to see her family and be with them, but… her mom had been so desperate that the men not find her. What if her mom had been wrong? What if the villagers were being relocated to a new village for their own safety?

She shook her head and asked, “Is there a way we can find out what’s really going on?”

“Possibly.” Jarrel gave her a searching look. “If you don’t want to risk asking the soldiers or the lord’s men, asking merchants and peddlers traveling on the main road could turn up something.”

Talking to nobles and soldiers was always risky. Knowing what would offend them was often impossible, and some would do terrible things just because they could. Such stories were whispered from time to time, and everyone knew it was a risk of being a commoner. Ria certainly wasn’t in any hurry to find out just how true the stories were, if she could help it.

Camping at the crossroads and waiting for travelers with news to pass by seemed that it would not only risk encountering soldiers but also risk being mistaken for a bandit. Not that villages didn’t send people out to gather news from time to time; old Brem often earned himself many a free beer doing just that… But with the villagers in this area gone, it would surely be suspicious. Maybe because Jarrel was a hunter and trapper, he could get away with it?

The blood finished draining while they were talking, and after lowering the carcass from the tree, Jarrel demonstrated how to bundle and tie the excess cord so the animal could be easily carried over the shoulder.

“Do you have any salt?” Jarrel asked as he started back toward town. “All of mine got taken.”

Ria quickly retrieved her basket and hurried after. “In the cellar, there is some, yes.”

“Good. Then we’ll head for your house.”

“Um, Mr. Jarrel. I need to make a fire to dry the mushrooms, but I’m worried someone will see it. What should I do?”

“Making a fire by yourself is pretty hard, and it would be bad if you burned the house down,” Jarrel teased.

Ria puffed her cheeks out in indignation. “I’m not a little kid, you know!”

“Course, course. My mistake.” Jarrel couldn’t help grinning at her response. “There’s a trick to making the smoke from your fire harder to see. I could teach you if you like, but we should still be careful to only do fires at night and such. At least until we find out what’s going on.”

Ria was eager to learn and told Jarrel so. The trick amounted to only burning certain types of wood that had been properly seasoned and had the bark removed. The wood had to be dry and without rot, because wet wood created billowy steam and rotted wood would put off a darker smoke. Both were things that last night’s rainstorm wasn’t going to help with.

At least her father had made a shed for storing the chopped wood and kindling in, and the remaining sticks and split logs in the rack near the stove would still be dry.

After taking the buck to one of the large work tables behind her house, Jarrel sent Ria to scrounge up extra pots and bowls from the neighbors’ houses. She didn’t want to miss out on learning how to cut the deer, so she hurried, but still took a few minutes in each house to straighten up and properly close the doors and windows.

Returning with her first load of pots before being sent out for more, Ria saw that Jarrel had placed a barrel next to the table and was still filling it with water from the well, one bucket at a time. Relieved, she hurried around to several more houses. There were still so many of her neighbors’ houses to take care of that she realized closing them all up would take days.

The skinning was hard work, and once the pelt had been removed and hung on a stretching frame, she was sent to get the salt.

Jarrel showed her where to make each cut as he removed the meat from the carcass, and Ria tried to follow along as best she could, but her job was to rub salt all over the cut pieces and place them in the pots. Once a pot was full, she took it inside and covered it with a cloth to keep flies and such away.

“After the meat sits for a few days or so, we’ll cut it into strips, salt it again, and dry it over a fire,” Jarrel explained, and Ria realized that they were making the salty jerky that she found in Jeni’s cellar.

A few pieces, which Jarrel said were the best cuts, were set aside for tonight’s dinner.

The sun was almost directly overhead by the time they finished the work.

“We can use the rest to make soup stock if you have a large enough pot.” When Ria regretfully shook her head to indicate they didn’t, Jarrel continued, “Okay. It’s a waste, but guess I’ll dump it away from the house so the smell and scavengers don’t cause us problems. Why don’t you wash up and prepare lunch while I do that?”

Ria really regretted that they couldn’t use fire during the day, as she set out hard bread and cold soup for the two of them. She prepared a fresh salad using some of the foraged greens drizzled with oil. The ham and cheese that were cut yesterday also needed to be used up, so slices of each were served.

While waiting for Jarrel to return, she thought about the current situation. There was a way that she could cook without fire. Jeni’s house had a stove and oven that used firestones, but she knew those needed magic to work. If she could learn how to use magic from that grimoire…

Such an ambition was probably unrealistic. If becoming a mage was that easy, everyone would be mages. Still, it could be worth a try even so, at least on rainy days and during the winter when there was nothing else to do.

Ria’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening and a faint smell of blood as Jarrel approached the kitchen table.

“Whoa! I had no idea what you’d scrounge up, but I certainly wasn’t expecting an actual meal!” Jarrel enthused as he took his seat.

Secretly, Ria was quite proud that her hastily prepared meal had drawn such a reaction, but she was also annoyed that Jarrel had no expectation of her skills and eventually settled on puffing her cheeks out and glaring at him.

To his credit, Jarrel took the hint even if his reply was a bit sarcastic, “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Not a little kid.”

He waved her off and reached for his spoon, but Ria cleared her throat and glared at him again, making sure to sit properly straight with her hands folded in her lap.

“…What?” Jarrel asked, hand frozen mid reach. When she raised her eyebrows at him, he guessed, “Thank you for the meal?”

Satisfied, Ria nodded curtly and started on her soup. Jarrel could only stare for a moment before starting on his own while chuckling.

Thanking the gods for the food was also custom, but Ria wasn’t exactly happy that the gods had taken away her family and friends, even if it only turned out to be temporary. Though she supposed that still having food was a thing to be thankful for. Without the store of food at Jeni’s house and what still remained in her basement, she would be in a much more difficult situation.

Well, she could say a prayer of thanks with dinner at least.

“This soup is good. Did you make this, Ria?” Jarrel asked. He twisted the hard bread in half and dunked a half in the soup to soften it.

Cheeks flushing slightly from the praise, Ria nodded. “Yes. It’s mostly the way mom taught me to do it, but I changed a few things to work better with the salted jerky. There’s plenty, so we can have more with dinner.”

“Oh, that’ll be good. We can use some of the mushrooms and herbs to go with the deer meat. I know a good recipe, if you don’t mind,” Jarrel offered.

Ria accepted. She didn’t have much experience cooking meats other than stews and soups. Learning more recipes would be helpful.