According to Camulla, lands on the frontier recently shifted focus from expanding territory to managing what they had, so it was less common for borderlands villages to take in new settlers. Apegut was the exception.
That made sense. An endlessly increasing population wasn’t a great idea in most places; if you ran out of unclaimed land to till, you’d inevitably run into disputes with the leaders of adjacent territories.
But Nishka responded to a different part of Camulla’s words. “Ya hear that, Shooter? He said I’m a beautiful young lady! Angelic, even!”
“Yeah, yeah, what an angel.”
“You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you? Ya jerk. Come here and say that to my face!”
I tried to placate Nishka, but that only made her explode at me, so I avoided her until we could pick a good time to start setting up camp.
“Some of our people are armed—if we camp too close to a village with all these weapons, that could ruffle some feathers in the local leadership. Let’s find somewhere a little farther away.”
“Good thinking. Should we find somewhere near a water source to set up?”
“Kwee!”
Counting Nishka and myself, we had eight adventurers in the party. To a local leader, that would look like a pretty intimidating fighting force.
As I talked the plan over with Camulla, I swung my wooden rack backpack off and opened the basket lid. The baby basilisk poured out of the basket and began to run around at my feet. He’d been cooped up in there the whole time we were on the move, and was likely bored out of his little lizard mind.
He wandered through the crowd of families and adventurers who were starting to make camp, saying hello to everyone and making friends. It surprised me to see how tame he was around humans. Or maybe he thought he was a human himself?
“Basil, get back here! You stay with me and stop getting in everyone’s way.”
“Kwee kwee pthhb!”
Ignored by my own child, as usual. Ah, the trials and tribulations of parenthood.
Basil swung back around to look me defiantly in the eye. It looked like he was planning to make a break toward one of the adventurers who stopped to watch the scene unfold.
“Could you listen to a single thing I say?” I grumbled, but I squatted down and reached out a hand toward him, trying to lure him back.
But just as I did, one of the adventurers crouched to fawn over my recalcitrant kid. “Aren’t you a cutie? What’s your name, little fella? I’ve never seen anyone keep a chubby little frilled lizard like you as a pet before.”
“His name’s Basil.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Basil. You said he’s a baby? That means you’re gonna grow up to be the size of a horse! I hope your owner has started stockpiling food for you!”
I’d seen Basil’s parents, and they definitely weren’t the size of a mere horse. But I didn’t want to get into the details of that story, so I just gave the adventurer a pained smile. Some of the other adventurers came over and started petting Basil, taking turns cuddling him in their arms.
“Gwee! Gwee! Gweeee!”
“Were all of you nominated by the guild in Bulka for this mission?” I asked as Basil cooed and blurped.
“We’re not as famous as the boss, Camulla. When we heard there was a long-term job that could keep us fed, we volunteered. That’s all.”
“Oh, sorry to pry. We don’t have much in our village, but our chief is quite the looker. You’ll have that to enjoy as she orders us around, at least.”
One of the adventurers broke into a grin. “There was so much going on when we set out, I don’t think we got a chance to introduce ourselves. I’m Folgo, and these are my buddies Alex, and next to him is Knai. Then over there—”
I coaxed Basil back into my arms as Folgo formally introduced all the adventurers.
“Nishka told us all about you while we were on the road,” he said. “She said you’re not just any ordinary buck-naked slave.”
“Yeah, said yer from some kinda tribe that reveres nudity,” said another adventurer. “That true? Kinda wondered if you’d have any junk at all for uh, philosophical reasons.”
“And we heard how talented you are—how you managed to take out a wyvern and some basilisks? Whew. The hero of Apegut is a cut above the rest even if he is totally naked, huh, boss? Bwa ha ha!”
What had Nishka been saying to these people…? I mean, none of it was wrong, per se, but I still felt humiliated. I adjusted Shuta Jr. and just smiled at them whenever it seemed like the time to be a Buff and Cheerful Hero.
At length, we gathered around the campfire for some freshly made soup and preserved biscuits, then we all turned in early.
The next morning, I rose at daybreak. The weather promised to be great for travel, albeit with some cloud cover overhead. Our journey that day brought us to a village outside the gates of a prosperous monastery, where travelers and merchants milled through the village center. Around the monastery, I spotted people wearing religious garb similar to what Mari’s colleagues wore, no doubt because this was a religious institution operating under the auspice of the Order of Templars.
We spent another night camped out in the field, and on the afternoon of the third day we reached a village at a three-way crossroad in the highway.
“You go straight north from here and you’ll hit our hometown. I dunno where the road south goes, but there’s wild dogs that come right up it every once in a while.”
While Nishka regaled everyone with this explanation, her ample chest was puffed out importantly. She might as well have said we were headed straight to Nowheresville.
The instant the group of immigrants set out down Bulka’s highway in the direction of Apegut, the scene turned bleak. From here on out, it was all endless grasslands and dense groves of hungry trees.
While the sun was still high in the sky, we could see a handful of figures working in small fields along the roadside, but we didn’t encounter anyone who lived in the nearby settlements before we set up camp for the night.
Just when everyone was convinced that the dull scenery would continue yet another day, we encountered a group in travel attire riding in a wagon drawn by a single horse, coming toward us on the other side of the road. A rare sight in these parts, but since we hadn’t run into so much as a wild dog on our journey out, I found myself staring at the group in the cart.
The road received the least possible amount of maintenance, and we were all crowded onto it; there were eighty in our group and only a handful in theirs. They pulled onto the shoulder to allow our group to pass, and we waved to them as we went by.
“Oh, please don’t mind us. We’re simply on our way back from market, heading to Bulka to sell off the last of our cargo.”
“You were on a sales trip?”
“Yes, we sell salt to nearby villages and buy their local goods in exchange, then sell the goods wholesale in Bulka.”
“Do you go to Apegut village, too? It’s just a bit farther down this road.”
“Why, of course we do! Every village is happy to buy salt, no matter the price. Of course we stopped in at Apegut,” the salt merchant explained with a broad grin, casting a look back over the goods loaded in his cart.
It was crammed with all sorts of local merchandise, which the merchant kept covered with a fur sheet. The only things I could imagine Apegut selling anyone were wyvern bones and leather, but Nishka and I had just gone to Bulka to relieve our stock of those.