Rewinding time a little...
On his way to reunite with Misha, Ryne decided to stick to traveling through the mountains. He wasn’t fond of places with lots of people. Sneaking around with his hair and eyes disguised didn’t sit well with his personality. It was all too much of a pain.
Instead, he walked the game trails, picking up any useful herbs he saw along the way. Considering where he was headed, he felt having a good stockpile of herbs would come in handy.
The capital of Redford was famous among apothecaries and doctors for how difficult it was to obtain medicinal plants there. With Redford being a large and developed nation, the closer one got to its heart, the less access to nature there was for such plants to thrive in. The edges of the kingdom were one thing, but in the capital—where Misha was—basically everything would have to be imported.
She’s probably in quite the pickle, he thought.
Having grown up in a similar environment to the one the People of the Forest called home, she probably considered herbs to be something one found and used for themselves. It likely hadn’t really occurred to her that they had monetary value. Ryne couldn’t help but smile as he imagined how bewildered she must be in her new environment.
While he cut his way through the untamed wilderness, Ryne continued to put his mind to work. Ryne was one of the People of the Forest, a tribe that lived very much in harmony with nature, so these deep woods posed no obstacle to him. On top of that, Ryne had stridden across numerous battlefields in his time. His survival instincts were sharp, and he was more than capable of defending himself. Any predator that sought to make a meal out of him found themselves becoming dinner for Ryne instead.
Wishing to study surgical science, Ryne had left the People of the Forest’s village after taking an interest in human anatomy. Since then, he had only been back home a handful of times. The fact that his sister—younger than him by two years—had left with the man she’d fallen in love with meant he had little reason to go back. Really, he might have spent more time at his sister’s new home in foreign lands than he had at his own home.
When he wasn’t there, he was just wandering around the world. He’d headed south, looking for some particularly rare herbs, but he’d gone north once war had broken out, wanting to get involved. Sometimes his curiosity had even taken him overseas. Even the extensive information network built by the People of the Forest had difficulty keeping tabs on him, in no small part because of the way he slipped from nation to nation with no respect for their borders.
“The easiest way to find you is to set up camp near a war zone and wait,” one of his old friends had grumbled once. That had got Ryne laughing—and eventually punched. It had been a great time.
I wonder where she is now? he thought.
Claiming she had no talent for developing new skills or drugs, she had become a member of the information network, and she’d ended up being the best of any of them at pinning Ryne down. She was a stubborn woman, and being so close to Leyas, she’d found it impossible to accept that Leyas would choose to leave her and the village behind.
Oh, she’ll be devastated when she hears Leyas died.
Ryne knew that as much as she was part of the information network, she specifically avoided any connections to Bluheitz. He had tried to tell her about what was going on with Leyas once, but she had vehemently refused to listen, covering her ears and ignoring him. He had given up, deciding that time would eventually work things out.
Maybe I should have told her anyway.
His rare sentimental episode was cut short when Ryne felt hostility aimed at him. He feigned ignorance, casually taking a hold of the blade hidden within his sleeve. And then, as the beast lunged at him from behind, he smoothly threw the blade, catching the creature out of the air.
“I guess it’s bear stew tonight,” he murmured to himself, appetite thoroughly stoked.
Because he avoided the cities and stuck to the wilderness, it took another week before Ryne crossed over into Redford. In the midst of his sadness at the thinning tree line, it occurred to him that he was running low on salt, and so he decided to pay a visit to a small farming village. Food and water were easy enough to get a hold of in the forest, but seasonings like salt were much harder to come by. It wasn’t impossible to find something like rock salt, but considering the effort that would involve, it was much easier to just trade for it.
The trees finally cut off, and he emerged onto a mountain road. The well-traveled road, carved out by constant traffic through this area, gave a strong impression of civilization. It didn’t take long before it connected to a proper highway, lined with tracks from carriages, with one such carriage stopped not too far ahead of where Ryne emerged. It was a two-horse canopied carriage, the kind often used by merchants.
“Maybe I can take a bit of a shortcut,” Ryne thought aloud, pulling some cloth from his bag to hide his hair as he trotted up to the carriage. But as he got close, he discovered why the carriage was stopped in such a random spot, and slumped his shoulders. “Guess I’ll have to work before I get any salt.”
Though it wasn’t quite visible from a distance, from up close he could see the arrows sticking out of the canopy, and holes made from swords.
So, they were attacked by bandits but managed to escape? Lucky guys.
The familiar scent of blood in the air made Ryne quicken his pace. The more blood one lost, the less likely their survival was.
“Keep it together, now. The city isn’t far. You can make it!”
Ryne heard voices coming from inside the carriage, so he peeked through one of the holes in the canopy. Crates and merchandise were scattered in a mess around two men, the younger one lying on the floor wrapped in cloth, while the older man shouted at him, desperately trying to stop his partner’s bleeding.