Just Trust Me
After all Gordon’s endless talk of mages this and mages that, Karem finally got to watch the girl—Catherine Marigold Atanitas—cast magic for real.
“Kid. Age and name.”
“Uh, Karem. I’m ten!”
“Catherine Marigold Atanitas. Figure out a properly respectful way to address me.”
And the first magic the boy Karem ever witnessed was every bit as astonishing as advertised.
Just a single, simple snap of her fingers.
That alone froze every corpse, scrap of flesh, and pool of blood in the vicinity solid.
Gordon grumbled the entire time, yet for all his complaining he worked with surprising diligence cleaning up the site. Of course Karem could guess why.
In his previous life, when a person died they simply rotted and returned to the earth—the natural order of things. But this was the Europa continent, and true to every fantasy cliché, even a casually abandoned corpse could transform into an extremely dangerous monster.
The so-called undead. Anyone left lying around or killed unjustly risked rising as one. A proper funeral was the expected minimum; if circumstances made that impossible, the bodies were burned to ash to keep the undead at bay.
So Karem threw himself into the work as well, building up the bonfire Gordon or Catherine must have started earlier until the flames roared higher. Dozens of bodies needed burning right now, and luckily the forest stood close by while the shattered wagons littered everywhere made perfect firewood.
“By the way, Gordon-nim.”
“Huuuh, drop the ‘nim.’ Just call me by my name. Ugh—we’re both former serfs, you know.”
“Then… Gordon?”
Gordon nodded and heaved a frozen corpse into the roaring fire.
“Heave-ho. Good. Anyway, if you’ve got questions spit them out fast. We’ve still got a mountain of bodies left to burn.”
“We’ve got wagons and mercenaries, but not a single horse?”
“Ahh, the horses?”
Karem’s question made perfect sense. Surely they hadn’t forced laborers or mercenaries to haul carts loaded with cargo by hand? He had often watched the merchant who visited the village once a week arrive by cart, and of course it was horses that pulled them.
Well, sometimes it was those two-legged bird-beasts he remembered from games called runners—but no runner-drawn carts were in sight among the wreckage of this ambush.
“Huuuu. Griffons go completely insane for horse meat. For all I know the whole family threw a feast.”
“A whole family? So more than one griffon attacked?”
“Four of them total. Our idiot employer was secretly transporting stolen griffon eggs.”
Gordon pointed at one of the less completely demolished wagons. Unlike the others, this one had been smashed so thoroughly its original shape was barely recognizable.
Karem knew what a griffon was—massive creatures bigger than bears, with the upper body and wings of an eagle and the lower body of a lion. Fantasy beasts, or monsters, he had only ever seen in illustrations in his past life and heard about in stories in this one.
But griffon eggs?
“So you got caught up in the rage of a griffon family whose babies had been stolen?”
“Yeah, the job went completely to hell. Only two survivors. Still, at least one piece of good news.”
Good news? What good news could a mercenary find when the job had blown up? Karem tilted his head, frowning, and Gordon’s tired face suddenly lit up with a bright grin.
“Everything these dead bastards and their wagons were carrying is ours now.”
“Uh… ours?”
“Obviously. Even if the mage lady and I tried to keep it all, there’s no way the two of us could haul this much gear.”
With that, Gordon grabbed Karem’s shoulders and turned him away from the bonfire. There sat a neatly stacked pile of weapons and leather pouches.
“When did you even gather all that?”
“While I was moving the bodies, bit by bit. You’re lucky, kid.”
“Lucky?”
“Unlike me, who started with absolutely nothing but bare dirt, you get to begin with some actual capital in your pocket.”
Gordon gave Karem a light congratulatory thump on the chest with the back of his hand. He wasn’t wrong. A ten-year-old runaway serf with no connections and no property wouldn’t find many options even if he reached a city. People wouldn’t look kindly on him, settling down would be brutal, and if luck turned sour he might even end up in some criminal outfit.
The fact that the goods had been lying next to corpses until moments ago was a little grim, but still…
“You’re right…”
“Exactly—mmph?!”
Whoosh—thud!
Gordon ducked just in time as a chunk of ice shot past where his head had been, fast as a bird.
Catherine.
The mage shot Gordon a thoroughly unimpressed glare and froze another pool of blood solid.
“Teaching the kid wonderful lessons, I see.”
“Ah, Miss Mage! Did I say anything wrong? You’re going to take a solid cut for yourself too, aren’t you?!”
“Of course I am.”
Catherine answered without a shred of guilt, matching Gordon’s bluster head-on.
“Just as people eat bread, magic eats gold like water. No mage ever has spare coin, so of course you grab every chance that comes.”
“Then why stop me?”
“Because while you’re goofing off, the things I already froze start thawing and I have to do the work twice.”
She pointed at the frozen remains waiting patiently on the far side of the fire for someone to dispose of them. Since she wasn’t wrong, Gordon grumbled and went back to hauling corpses while Karem returned to gathering firewood from the nearby wrecks.
For now, his only job was collecting wood for the pyre. Compared to Gordon’s task of lugging frozen bodies and blood-ice, it was easy work.
By the time the sun had tilted past noon into a sharp diagonal, Gordon’s efforts had cleared every last corpse. That didn’t mean the survivors’ work was finished, though.
As Gordon began adding the cargo from the wagons to the pile of personal effects he had already looted from the dead, Karem quickly joined in.
Most of the wooden crates still riding the wreckage were packed with what could only be called trash—splintered wood scraps, rocks, thoroughly rusted scrap iron. Gordon tore open crate after crate in growing disappointment while Karem and Catherine headed for the last, least-damaged wagon.
“Ah. This one’s the food cart.”
“Food cart?”
“Yeah. The pay was cheap, so they covered meals instead.”
“They stole griffon eggs but at least fed people properly, huh.”
Just as Catherine said, the wagon with the collapsed wheels was loaded with provisions. For a moment Karem wondered if this was the fantasy-merchant version of a food truck.
A small barrel held half a load of apples. Beside it sat several strings of sausages, loaves of barley bread already going hard, and bundles of jerky and hardtack. Another wooden crate overflowed with turnips, carrots, celery, cabbage, onions, and garlic. Scattered around them were pots and pans of various sizes, plus several large wheels of cheese in different colors.
Tucked in a corner of the wagon was a jewel-box-sized wooden chest; opening it revealed several lumps of butter thickly crusted with salt.
Looking at all that food, Karem suddenly remembered he hadn’t eaten lunch.
“Come to think of it, lunchtime was ages ago.”
“Well, there was a lot of cleanup. Want an apple?”
“No. First let’s see what else we’ve g—”
That was when it happened.
Gurgle…
A quiet but unmistakable little sound. Like water draining from a sink. More specifically, the classic sound effect of a hungry stomach demanding food.
Karem was a growing boy who had just done hard labor, but that particular noise had not come from him.
Which left only one other person.
“…”
“W-what.”
“Lady Atanitas. If you’re hungry, would you care for an apple?”
Karem cheerfully returned her earlier words to her. It was half joke, half genuine offer. Catherine froze for a second, face caught between hesitation and something else, then raised a fist.
And brought it down on the cheeky little brat’s head.
“You little—”
Bonk!
“Ow!”
Pain lanced straight through his skull, but Karem didn’t protest. After all, teasing her had been the correct move.
Besides, of course her stomach had made that adorable protest. They were well past lunch, and they had just finished the heavy labor of cleaning up after a merchant caravan that got caught in a griffon family rescue operation. Karem’s own gut had been twisting for a while now.
The same went for Catherine’s cutely vocal stomach and for Gordon, who had done the lion’s share of the heavy lifting among the three of them.
“Since it’s come to this, better late than never. Let’s have a proper lunch.”
Karem bent down and picked up a pot and a frying pan.
“Ahh. That cool, solid weight in the hand. It’s been too long.”
“Well, I can’t cook, so Gordon can—”
“No. I’ll handle the cooking.”
He felt Catherine’s stare immediately. When he turned, her eyes were full of the clear question: What in the world is this serf talking about?
So Karem had only one thing left to say.
“Lady Atanitas. We’ve got plenty of ingredients. Just consider yourself tricked and give it a try.”
In this life Karem was a serf, but in his previous life as Garam he had been the man who grilled the meat while everyone else ate it.
And more than anything, the instant he saw real cooking tools for the first time in ten years, his hands had started itching.