“No matter what someone does, it always leaves behind an impression on those that witnessed them. Whether that impression was positive or negative depended entirely on the actions they took.” - Old Ptolodeccan saying.

“That was quite something,” admitted Sandra later that night, while the convoy camped in the open, several hours away from the poor village. Given the conditions of the village, the group had opted to carry on with their journey for a few hours more and camp on the road rather than tax the clearly stretched-thin villagers.

“What was?” asked Aideen back at the noblewoman. The four of them were huddled around a small campfire, with the rest of their group also huddled at several larger campfires. Aideen and the noble scions had their own for privacy, and were sipping on some hot stew one of the maids had cooked.

It was early winter then, and while it was warmer back in Knallzog, this far west the weather was more temperate, closer to what Aideen was used to from living in Vitalica and later Ptolodecca. It was not snowing yet, but given how cold the night was, she would not be surprised if the first snow started to fall within the week.

Not that it bothered her - or the locals, who all had carried thicker fur clothing with them - much.

“Your healing, I mean,” replied Sandra after she took a moment to finish chewing and swallowing a piece of meat from her stew. “I’ve seen our healers at work in similar villages before, in previous trips. It took four of them a whole day to handle a village of that size. You took care of it on your own in an hour.”

“To be fair, I know of a couple elven healers who could probably do the same… maybe in two hours or three,” answered Aideen with a smile. “While all mages benefit from relevant knowledge to some extent, it is especially useful for us healers. When you had more knowledge of the bodies you were healing, that means you can heal faster, more effectively and efficiently.”

“You mentioned elves so I assume you mean their longer lives meant they could learn more about it, correct?” asked Pedro from the side. Posuin was an entirely human kingdom, as they refused to allow entry to other races. That said, he knew all too well that the border nobles like his own father often traded with their non-human neighbors, and so was the case with those whose territories bordered the oceans.

“To some extent. Just theory would do you little good if not accompanied by practice as well,” said Aideen in reply to his question. “If all you do as a healer is to handle a stubbed toe every week or so, and more serious things maybe once a month, you would not progress much, or fast at all.”

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“You have a lot of experience then?” Solenia asked with curiosity.

“In a way,” replied Aideen with a now as she reminisced for a moment. “The land I was born in was not the most… peaceful back then. I’ve been directly involved in four wars, and indirectly in a few more conflicts over the years I’ve been around. Then there was that plague a century ago. That caused some seriously busy years as well.”

The small group ate in silence as they digested what Aideen said. While studies and practice could be replicated, so much practical experience, accumulated over a period far longer than a human lifetime was far more difficult to reproduce. Even so, Sandra had thoughts about suggesting to her father that the healers who flocked to them be trained better, especially the few who chose to serve the Duke in a more direct manner.

Over the next week of their travels - in which they reached roughly halfway to the capital, which was a full month’s trip from Dvergarder by carriage - they passed through a dozen other villages. Most were around the same size as the first one they visited, roughly a hundred households, with four to five hundred inhabitants.

While the villages varied - some were reasonably prosperous and lived well enough, while others were as bad as the first village they visited - all of them gave Aideen something to do, as healing magic was a luxury well beyond the reach of these simple villagers.

They had relied on traditional remedies, herbs and poultices to make do, and while some injuries took well to such a treatment, not all did. Several times Aideen regrew limbs what had been crudely amputated to preserve the patient’s life in the past. Infections and gangrene were a common threat to such poor folk, and one their traditional remedies had not handled well.

Aideen had even taken some time to teach the villagers some herb mixtures that were developed more recently by Mallard’s research, tinctures and poultices with greater effectiveness and efficiency, made from the herbs readily available in the surroundings of the villages.

Between that and her “returning” their long-lost body parts, many of the villagers had broken into tears as they knelt and bowed until their head struck the soil in gratitude. Gratitude that naturally also extended to the Duke’s children for having brought her to them. To say that they left a rather unforgettable impression in the minds of those villagers whose lives they touched was an understatement.

They entered the territory of one of the central Duchies the following week, and apparently, news of what they did along the way had reached the Duchy ahead of them. They were met by a local official in the first village they visited, who politely demanded that they not meddle into the matters of the village. Threats and reprimands were cleverly hidden in the polite wording, said one way but meant to be taken another way, a trick often used by the nobility, and one Aideen always loathed.

Good thing Pedro was by his own father’s words, a meathead. He simply took the polite, welcoming words at face value and told Aideen cheerfully to go on with her usual business, all while ignoring the flabbergasted and sputtering official, who could not exactly outright tell them to get out and not to heal the villagers openly without tanking his own - and by extension, his lord’s - reputation.

“Is he always like that?” Aideen asked Sandra when they had a moment of privacy later that night.

“Nah. Pedro’s a meathead, sure, but he’s smarter than he acts,” replied the young noblewoman with honest laughter. “We purposely cultivate the idea that our family heads were always meatheads like him so we can abuse that reputation exactly for situations like these. Who is going to blame a meathead for being a meathead after all?”