Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 26 - Chapter 2.3

3

We headed to the Sauti settlement in two wagons. Our entire group was composed of men, which was not what I would have expected, but the reason was that men often got hurt out in the forest, so they were more familiar with how to treat the kind of injuries we were going to be dealing with than the women were.

There were twelve men going in total, myself included. Pretty much everyone I knew from the clan was with us, aside from Donda Ruu and Mida. Jiza Ruu, Darmu Ruu, Shin Ruu, Ryada Ruu, and Jeeda were all present, while the other six were men from the branch houses whom I at least recognized.

I had told Toor Deen and Yun Sudra that they should head home without me and asked them to inform Ai Fa that I would have someone from the Ruu clan escort me back afterward. Just making the round trip between the Ruu and Sauti settlements would take quite a while on its own, so there was no way I’d make it back before sunset.

“There should be around thirty people in need of treatment. A number of them are in serious condition, but all of the Sauti men are out hunting, and more importantly, their clan doesn’t have enough medicine to go around,” Shin Ruu had reported. “And to make matters worse, those townsfolk don’t even know how to set bones, so when I left, Ludo Ruu was running around having to take care of all of that pretty much by himself. I thought about asking the Ririn or Muufa for help instead since they were closer, but I decided that the best thing to do would be to come all the way back here because the Ruu have the largest stock of medicine.”

“Right. And we should still get there before the guards can make it back from the post town,” I replied, trying really hard to not get impatient. A round trip between the Ruu and Sauti settlements took roughly two hours. Did that mean we were going to arrive too late to help some of the injured? I couldn’t help thinking about that, and it was making me anxious.

“Why didn’t Rimee return with you, Shin Ruu? There’s no point in her being there now,” Darmu Ruu grumbled.

Shin Ruu turned toward his cousin while brushing his damp hair back with his hand. “Some northern women she was giving cooking lessons to were injured, and she didn’t want to leave their side. I’m sure she’s doing whatever she can to assist Ludo Ruu in caring for them.”

“I see. So those people from the castle are making even the women from Mahyudra work on clearing their path. It doesn’t matter that it’s an area without many giba around; it’s still ridiculous to send women out that deep into the forest.” I could clearly see the fire in Darmu Ruu’s blue eyes despite the dim lighting.

It was then that Jiza Ruu spoke up after remaining silent for some time. “But how could such a catastrophe have happened in the first place? I’m sure the leading clan heads told the townsfolk about the dangers of starving giba and what could be done to deal with them, correct? And Dari Sauti must have deployed giba warding fruit.”

“I don’t know the details myself. The guards were all in shock afterward, unable to even talk.”

“It sounds like they’ve angered the forest. If that was enough to scare them, they should just call this whole ridiculous project off,” Darmu Ruu muttered mercilessly.

Jeeda and Ryada Ruu simply remained silent.

Around an hour or so later, we finally made it to the Sauti settlement. As we pulled up, I spied a large number of people under the canopy erected over the plaza, though there were actually fewer than I had expected—only around fifty. The plaza was quieter than I’d thought it would be too.

“Aside from the injured and a handful of guards who stayed behind to watch over them, everyone else returned to town,” Shin Ruu said to no one in particular.

We brought our two wagons close to the covered area, and as we did, a small figure noticed us and started waving her hands.

“Hurry! We need bleeding and pain medicine over here!” Rimee Ruu shouted, as energetic as always. The many wounded people were lying on top of rugs, with Sauti women moving around between them to tend to their injuries.

As the wagons had already come to a stop, I hurriedly went to jump down to the ground, only to be stopped by a hand grabbing my shoulder from behind. When I turned to look, I found Darmu Ruu shooting me a seriously scary glare.

“Hey, I don’t care who, but make sure you stay close to one of us hunters. It’s possible that there’s someone with a grudge against the people of the forest’s edge lurking about.”

“Right, understood.”

As Darmu Ruu hadn’t had any interaction with the guards or the northerners before now, it was only natural for him to think that. As I stepped out of the wagon, I decided that I would stick close to him.

“Hey, you finally made it! Come on, this way! We’ve gathered everyone with the most serious injuries here!” Ludo Ruu called out from the center of the crowd, waving his hands.

As we were walking over to him, I couldn’t help but shudder. It was a horrifying sight, like I had walked into a field hospital. Around twenty of the wounded were just lying on the ground, moaning in pain. They didn’t look like they were even capable of sitting up. Their wounds were covered in cloth, but I could see a lot of red soaking through. I even saw some folks with splints on their arms and legs. Contrary to what I had expected, though, everyone lying there was a westerner. In other words, they were guards.

There were northerners about, but only around five or six of them, sitting in silence. They had been injured as well, but none of them so badly that they were unable to keep themselves upright.

“Oh, you came too, Asuta? Well, whatever. We’re fine here, just go help out Rimee,” Ludo Ruu said while accepting a small jar from Darmu Ruu containing a type of antibleeding medication that had to be purchased in town. It was quite expensive, as it was made by combining several medicinal herbs using knowledge only the townsfolk had.

“Um, where is Rimee Ruu?”

“Over here. I’ll come with you,” Shin Ruu said, moving through the crowd of injured people while holding medicine and bandages.

Rimee Ruu was over next to a group of northerners. Two of them were women, and the remaining four were men as big and brawny as Donda Ruu. They also had bloody cloth bandages wrapped around their heads and arms.

There were only five guards watching over them, all of whom were looking pale as they silently kept watch. It seemed they still hadn’t shaken off the terror of facing a giba.

“Thank goodness the medicine made it! Here, this will make the pain go away!”

“Thank you, Rimee Ruu,” one of the northern women with a bandage around her head responded with a gentle smile. Then, her purple eyes turned toward me and opened wide. “You are Asuta of the Fa clan, aren’t you?”

“Ah, yes. You must have seen me before in the kitchen.”

The woman nodded and turned around to send a look at another of the northern patients. A massive mountain of a man sitting in the back then shifted.

“Asuta of the Fa clan... I didn’t expect, to see you again.”

“Oh! You’re Eleo Chel, aren’t you?!” I said loudly, then hurriedly covered my mouth when I realized what I’d done. However, the guards on watch just kept standing in place dejectedly, showing no signs that they were aware of what was going on around them. It seemed they lacked the will to even do their jobs at this point, though to be honest, I felt kind of glad about that as I continued speaking to Eleo Chel. “So you were injured too? Are you okay?”

“I am fine. My shoulder, the people of the forest’s edge, fixed.”

Eleo Chel had bandages wrapped around his head and torso, with the former looking quite bloodied, so he probably had a laceration there. His torso bandages were wrapped all around his right arm as well, making him look kind of like a mummy. In all likelihood, he had dislocated his right shoulder and the bandages were meant to fix it in place.

In spite of all that, he still had the same calm and yet strong light shining in his purple eyes that I had seen several months earlier, and I couldn’t detect even the slightest hint of pain on his stern face coated in blond stubble.

“Asuta, Shin Ruu, could you put some medicine on that guy’s wound? Ludo already did, but the bleeding was really bad,” Rimee Ruu called out while helping the women. Following her instructions, Shin Ruu approached Eleo Chel, and the men standing between them cleared a path for him to pass.

The northern man was all the more intimidating up close. He was easily as big as Donda Ruu and maybe even Ji Maam. His blond hair was curly and unruly, like his fellow countrymen’s, and his tanned face looked like it had been chiseled out of stone.

Shin Ruu silently unwrapped Eleo Chel’s head bandages, while the man’s attention remained fixed on me.

“This looks awful... Have you had pain medicine yet?” Shin Ruu asked, but Eleo Chel slowly shook his head. “You have a wound this bad and even dislocated your shoulder, but you haven’t been given anything for the pain? Well, I suppose that’s no surprise, considering how short we were on it. Asuta, give him some medicine from that jar. Two spoonfuls.”

“Got it. This one?” Looking inside, it was filled with a pitch-black concoction in a viscous, half-liquid state. This mixture was also an expensive one from town, far more effective than the romu leaves that could be gathered out in the forest. “Here you go, Eleo Chel. I have to warn you, this is gonna be pretty bitter.”

Eleo Chel remained as still as a statue for a few moments, but eventually he opened his mouth, allowing me to insert the spoon past his sturdy-looking teeth.

After giving him one more spoonful in the same way, I glanced around and saw that Rimee Ruu had approached us and was holding out a ladle filled with water.

“Here. The pain medicine is bitter, so he should drink some water with it. When he’s done, you need to wash the spoon in the jug and return it to the jar.”

“Got it, thanks.”

Eleo Chel silently took a drink of water from the ladle, then I used the remaining water to clean the medicine spoon and put it back.

Rimee Ruu, meanwhile, had started treating the other men. Though they weren’t doing as badly as the guards, their injuries were impossible to miss. It was proof of their tenacious spirits that none of them were letting their pain show.

“Asuta of the Fa clan, I thank you,” Eleo Chel suddenly whispered. His lips hardly moved at all when he said it, and his gaze was pointed elsewhere. “The food was, very good. They said, you made it, at first. We are all grateful to, the people of the forest’s edge.”

He must have been trying to prevent the guards keeping watch over them from overhearing. I had once been chided by the guards because I had spoken to a slave without a good reason, after all, so I leaned in close to his ear while acting as if I were helping Shin Ruu with something.

“I’m glad to hear that you liked it. Also, there’s something I wanted to tell you, Eleo Chel.”

The man remained silent.

“Your sister Chiffon Chel is still working in the castle town and is doing just fine. I managed to get a message delivered to her to let her know you were thinking of her.”

Eleo Chel’s boulder-like shoulders trembled ever so slightly when he heard that. “I appreciate, your intent. But isn’t that, dangerous?”

“Huh? Dangerous?”

“The Turan lands, and the castle town, having northerners talk. Isn’t it dangerous, if nobles, find out?”

His speech was pretty rough, more so than Shumiral’s was, which made it a little difficult to discern his meaning, but he seemed to be concerned that it could be dangerous if the nobles learned that northerners were secretly sending messages to each other between the Turan lands and the castle town.

“It should be fine. I asked a merchant from the south to deliver the message, so the western nobles shouldn’t have heard anything about it.” Also, Chiffon Chel’s mistress Lefreya seemed to sympathize with the northerners, so there was no need to worry about her. However, I held myself back from mentioning that, since it felt a bit risky to give him that information. We people of the forest’s edge needed to see how Duke Marstein Genos would respond to Lefreya’s actions first.

“Damn! When are the totos going to come pick us up? They didn’t forget about us, did they?” one of the guards muttered a short distance away from us.

“There’s no point in grumbling. You should just thank the western god that you still have your life.”

“We may have survived today, but who knows what’ll happen tomorrow. There’s still more than a month left in the rainy season, right?”

“Yeah, but all you can do is wait till we get rotated out. Or are you planning to quit because you’re scared of giba?”

“I didn’t say that...but I’m really getting sick of this job!”

One side of that conversation was steadily growing louder and louder, and yet Eleo Chel, Shin Ruu, and the other northerners weren’t paying them any mind.

“Only the nobles and the merchants from Sym are going to benefit from cutting a path through a place like this, right? It’s got nothing to do with us, so why do we have to risk our lives out here?”

“If Genos gets richer, all of us will benefit from it. Besides, what I’m trying to tell you is that nothing good will come of griping about it.”

“Oh, so if the nobles and merchants earn more, that means our pay is going to go up? I don’t remember anything like that happening before! Not in the last few years, at least!”

It seemed the guards had complaints and concerns of their own. I did my best to not pay any attention to what they were saying, but someone who had been listening suddenly came charging over from the center of the plaza.

“What are you two bellyaching about?! Stop chatting and focus on your job!” The man was a young guard with bandages wrapped around his head and his left arm in a sling, but he must have outranked the guards who were keeping watch, as they immediately and enthusiastically bowed to him. “The wagons should arrive soon to pick us up. And despite what happened, no one died, so we should be grateful to the western god. Besides, you made it through the attack in fine health, so stop complaining. Don’t forget that these people were injured in our place,” the man said, pointing at the northerners with his good arm.

I looked up, wondering what he meant by “in our place” and locked eyes with the man. As soon as I did, the guard’s eyes opened wide.

“Oh, so you’re here too?”

“Y-You’re Marth, aren’t you? It’s been a while.”

It was indeed Marth, the platoon commander whom I had met in the post town several times. His helmet was off and he had bandages wrapped around his head, so I hadn’t recognized him right away.

“We owe your people a lot after what happened today. If it hadn’t been for that young hunter providing care, I’m sure far too many of my comrades would have had their souls returned to the western god.”

“Yeah, I heard that a starving giba attacked you. It sounds like it was a huge disaster.”

“Hmph. It wouldn’t have turned out this way if we had stayed calm, but one of the guardsmen panicked and threw his spear at the beast. That made the furious giba charge us, and this is the result,” Marth said in annoyance. Then he looked behind me at Eleo Chel. “You’re the one who stepped in front of the giba first, aren’t you? If not for your efforts, several of us would have lost their lives then and there. In fact, we might not have been able to take down the giba at all without you and your compatriots, and the damage would definitely have been far worse.”

Eleo Chel offered no response.

“We will, of course, properly repay you for your efforts. All of you will be allowed to rest comfortably in the Turan lands until your wounds are healed,” Marth stated before turning the other way.

Thinking back on it, Marth had been the one who’d come to chastise Eleo Chel for slipping away from his logging work to meet with me several months ago. Marth himself likely hadn’t noticed, as northerners tended to look similar to one another, but it certainly was a strange twist of fate.

“So you all are the ones who took down the giba?” Shin Ruu whispered after he finished treating Eleo Chel. “I’m amazed you were able to kill it without swords. How in the world did you pull that off?”

“We had no swords, but we had, axes. And some hit it with, logs too.”

“So you took down a giba with axes and logs? That’s quite the accomplishment,” Shin Ruu commented as he started to treat another northerner. I was going to have to step away to stay with him, but I wanted to say one more thing to Eleo Chel first.

“You’ve had a real rough day, haven’t you? I’ll be praying for you to get better soon.”

At that, Eleo Chel’s eyes turned toward me, and he replied in a solemn tone, “I am sad, that I must, take a break, from work. Food at, the forest’s edge, is delicious. It is, much worse, in the Turan lands.”

Then he leaned in closer to me so that the guards on watch wouldn’t be able to tell what he was doing, and his stern, stonelike face broke out in an honest smile, almost like that of a child.