Hunting
Karem had been trembling in terror at those outrageous prices. Catherine's remark to the equally terrified Gordon—that there was no need to go so far as laundry—had finally left him responsible for their three meals a day, just as he himself had said. It had already been several days since Karem took full charge of the party's cooking, so the arrangement was nothing new by now.
Gordon, a former mercenary, could force down even the most tasteless food with his eyes shut tight. Catherine enjoyed fine dining, but she chose her moments carefully by time and place, so she held no great expectations under the present circumstances. Both of them had long since had those expectations betrayed in the best possible way.
Karem did everything he could to turn the ingredients on hand into a different dish for every meal. For lunch this time he had prepared cabbage rolls. He lightly steamed cabbage leaves until soft, then filled them with vegetables sautéed in butter and seasoned with salt, plus chopped sausage, rolling everything up like spring rolls. Next he made a gravy from the meat juices and fat stuck to the pan, adding butter and flour, seasoned it, packed the cabbage rolls into the sauce, and simply simmered them over low heat until done.
The result was nothing like the original recipe—not even close, more like a distant neighbor from the next town over—but it was the product of Karem twisting himself every which way to prove his skill and worth. And it succeeded. The moment he set down the pot brimming with cabbage rolls swimming in sticky, reduced gravy, Gordon and Catherine crowded in as if they had been waiting for it.
Yet the cook himself felt nothing but regret.
Everything else aside, if only we'd had tomatoes, this would have looked far more respectable.
Just thinking of tomatoes made Karem's mouth water. A culinary cheat code that had spread from its American origin across the world less than five hundred years ago, known to those in the know. With tomatoes alone the entire scale of possible dishes changed; they were an indispensable staple of Western cooking. Yet when he asked Gordon and Catherine, neither had ever heard of them. In the end Karem had given up and searched for substitutes.
"Karem, why'd you stop feeding me halfway through?"
"Ah, sorry. Here."
"Hmm. Putting this much care into cabbage… a novel sensation."
Gordon agreed with Catherine.
"Never thought a vegetable we eat all the time could taste like this."
"Wait, then how do you usually eat it?"
"Boil it into soup, just stew it soft, or tear it up raw."
How could anyone treat cabbage—the vegetable that, like onions, went into every dish imaginable—so horribly? Catherine's face twisted at Gordon's hasty generalization.
"Hey, kid. Don't get the wrong idea. Only Seophon does it that way."
"Lady Catherine, 'that way'?"
"Seophon Kingdom is famous across the Europa continent for having the worst food."
"Come on, our kingdom has plenty of delicious dishes."
"Haah? Besides breakfast?"
"Well… at least more than I can count on both hands that I don't know about, right?"
Karem, who until now had simply thought of this world as a medieval fantasy roughly modeled on Europe, finally felt the pieces click into place. So Europa was basically Europe, and Seophon Kingdom was medieval England? That single realization seemed to resolve a great many lingering questions. No matter how poor they were, the food had always been a disaster except during festivals. Even the village chief and the priest—the richest men in Moston Village—had served nothing but garbage. To Karem, "England" now felt like a magic word.
"If you exclude the pies, how many are left?"
"I'll bet you anything: zero."
Gordon, who had started out half-joking only to fold his words neatly and devote himself to roasting his own homeland, looked no different from a British man telling self-deprecating jokes. Yet beneath the playful tone his attitude was deadly serious. As a mercenary he had traveled the entire Europa continent and tasted every nation's cooking, so of course he knew.
"Lady Catherine, is Seophon really that famous for terrible food?"
"Ha. Just look at the noble houses scrambling over one another to import chefs from abroad—it's only natural."
"Import? That far?"
"Karem. If you ever see the cooks pouring off the ships at the docks, you'll think the same."
"Ah, that really was quite a sight."
"And every cook with even a scrap of talent leaves the country. Gourmet food simply cannot grow on this soil."
Gordon immediately agreed with Catherine, recalling the ridiculous scenes he had witnessed a few times before. Honestly, no matter how often he saw it, the spectacle never got old. While the three of them suddenly found perfect consensus on just how awful Seophon cuisine was, the pot that had been full of cabbage rolls showed its gravy-scorched bottom.
Thanks to his constant efforts to prepare something different for every meal, Karem could feel his own skill growing by leaps and bounds even by his own standards. What should he cook next? While the other two rested he washed the pot and checked the packs.
"Oh no. This is bad."
"Mm. That sounded like something one must never say in a laboratory."
Hearing the uneasy muttering, Catherine rose from her seat.
"Karem, what exactly is so bad?"
"It'll be faster if you look for yourself."
Face stiff, Karem opened the pack and showed her the interior. The backpack that had been stuffed full only days earlier now looked deflated under the bright sunlight, its contents pitifully sparse. Not completely empty, of course. The massive cabbages that had taken up so much space were gone, revealing the other vegetables and ingredients that had been hidden beneath them. Still, compared to when they left the griffin attack site, the stores had clearly dwindled.
"We've been on the road ten days already. I suppose we should be glad this much is left."
"Once those are gone too, it's back to hardtack and jerky."
"Ghk—hardtack and jerky?"
Catherine's face twisted in instant revulsion at Gordon's words. No matter how long she had lived, hardtack harder than stone and jerky that was halfway between rock and leather were things she had never managed to adapt to.
"Lady Catherine, maybe we should turn back and return later? The ingredients we left in the cart—"
"No. After this much time, wild animals or monsters will have eaten everything already."
"Tsk. So we circle around and end up with hardtack and jerky after all."
Whenever the journey was long enough to require field rations, Catherine always chose to simply starve. Better to go hungry than ruin her palate with jerky and hardtack. An act of tyranny only an immortal mage of her caliber could commit. Once she began fasting, enduring until the next proper meal was hardly difficult. But if the ingredients truly ran out, there was no choice. Even an immortal mage could not create something from nothing.
"Uuugh, if I'd known this would happen I would have brought a spatial pouch!"
"Ah, Lady Mage, I said that exact thing a few days ago. At last you understand how I feel."
"Silence. Who could have predicted a whole family of griffins would attack out of nowhere!"
While the mage and the mercenary bickered, Karem examined the packs on the ground. If he planned the menus carefully, they could stretch the remaining ingredients into proper meals for two more days.
"Unless we somehow hunt something, two days is all—"
"Ah. That's it exactly. The answer was simple."
"Pardon? The answer?"
"You just said it yourself. Hunting!"
Catherine declared the absurd suggestion with perfect confidence, then stood, finished packing, and clapped Karem on the shoulder.
"We've been overthinking it. Yes—we simply hunt."
"Uh, can you really just decide to go hunting right this second?"
People often thought of hunting as easy, but if that were true the profession of hunter would not exist. Simply locating and tracking game could take hours at best, days at worst.
"Gordon, you know how to hunt?"
"I can hunt, sure, but I've got no bow and no arrows. And even if we start now, how long would it take?"
"Then the answer must be Lady Catherine."
"Right."
Just what was she planning? Both men turned questioning eyes on her. Catherine raised one hand for all to see. She spun it sharply and snapped her fingers. A clear metallic chime—like a chain falling or glass shattering—rang faintly through the air.
"There. I've released the presence-blocking barrier I had up while we camped."
"What? That thing—wait, magic—when did you even…?"
"Obviously from the very start, when we began traveling as a small party. Cooking smells drifting through the middle of a forest with this few people is an open invitation for nuisances. Mercenary, rekindle the fire. Kid, take out the leftover sausage."
Her tone brooked no refusal. Though startled, they soon understood her purpose. The season was late summer tipping into early autumn, just before monsters and animals began preparing for winter in earnest. Naturally some of the more diligent creatures would already be stocking up, and none of them would ignore the scent of sausage sizzling over an open flame.
"But in a forest the smell will carry much farther. Is that really all right? We'll be advertising our location to everything for miles—"
"You worry too much. You have a great mage right here, and a knight-class mercenary beside her. This isn't a demonic realm or a forbidden land—just a forest a few days from the nearest village. Even if every monster around swarmed us, it wouldn't be a problem."
Karem could not entirely erase his unease at Catherine's boundless confidence. He knew she was a mage, of course, but he had never witnessed her true strength with his own eyes. Still wondering whether this was wise, he glanced at Gordon. The mercenary wore the same unshaken expression that matched his claim of knight-level skill.
"Lady Mage, even I would be in danger if monsters came in a pack."
"Quiet. Does that mean the knight-class pay you yourself quoted—crowns per day—was a lie?"
"Of course it's true, but—"
"If it's true, then there is no problem at all. Now, Karem. Get that sausage on the fire."
Under the pressure in her voice, Karem had no choice but to yield.
"Haaah, I wash my hands of this. Still… that sausage smells incredible."
A serf's life was thinner than duckweed on the wind. Die this way or that—thinly sliced sausage hit the heated pan over the rekindled campfire and began to sizzle, fat bubbling across the surface. The savory melted fat and rich juices rose on the cool breeze now stirring through the forest and drifted outward.
The sun that had risen in the east climbed noticeably higher. By the time they had replaced the sausage pieces in the pan for the fifth time, their first guest finally arrived.
"Slower than expected, but success all the same."
Catherine smiled as a massive wild boar shouldered through the thick undergrowth, drawn by the sausage scent. She snapped her fingers again and raised the barrier once more so no further uninvited guests could approach.
Clink—
Moss and mushrooms blanketed the beast's body, swaying with every step. Whenever it swung its head and sniffed, huge white tusks caught the sunlight filtering through the leaves and gleamed menacingly. As the boar advanced with its button-black eyes shining, Gordon whistled in admiration.
"Hah, a moss boar?"
"Gordon, is that thing a monster too?"
"No. Looks peculiar, but it's still an animal. They never leave the forest. If one's come this close to Iceland, maybe it lost a territorial fight."
Grunt—grunt—
Drawn by the sausage, the boar finally noticed Karem and the others. Its bristles stood on end; it scraped the earth with its hooves and threatened the party.