Newfound Friends
1833 Words
After we had wasted enough time for the wagons to catch up from behind, we bade our farewell to Fat Bastard and informed him that we would be heading back here once we had successfully accomplished our current mission.
"Thank you for your visit here, Your Majesty. I am glad that you and your friends have opened up my eyes to the kind of technology that you had brought before me. I'm surprised that a simple contraption could be used to be made as a form of transportation and you had travelled on that for many miles and seemed still very lively after a long trip...!"
"I am glad to make new friends along the way too, Your Majesty. I just hope to have more time so we could discuss a lot more things in the future to come. Besides, I do have some drawings they you and your friends might be interested in."
"Please do come and visit me again, here in this desolate village, Your Majesty. Take care and best of luck in your capturing of your intended target. Hehehe."
Fat Bastard acknowledged and he too bade us good luck in our endeavours as he watched us exited from the village, straddling the Dandy Horses and traversing out to meet the wagons at the outskirts of Broderbund.
He was astounded with the piece of contraption that enables a person to move freely and speedily across the plains rather than walking on foot. It would be able to cover more distance quickly and also requires zero maintenance such as horseshoes, water and feed as well as grooming, and a place to sleep in after their work. Hahaha.
The more he thought about the Engineering guild that the engineers had mentioned, the more excited and enthusiastic he felt about the futures he would be spending with the members of the Engineering guild later on.
He was assured that he would be given one dandy horse as a token friendship (which of course be a new one) once they had returned back to the town.
Hearing this from his newfound friends, he was happy and felt welcomed. Furthermore, it was a total change of sight and scenery the moment we had entered his courtyard which was a total contrast of the whole community of ageing people around.
"Don't you worry, Fat Bastard. This is not the only time you would be seeing us since you would be seeing us more often than before. Take good care of yourself and your mushroom farms."
"Thank you for your hospitality. We would make good use of the mushrooms that you had given us for our meals later on. Cheerio, mate."
With that, we pushed on till we reached the outskirts of town and joined the 2 wagons they arrived shortly. From there we moved together since ahead was filled with marshlands and needed to be skirted around, thus making the trip to Camp a bit longer than usual.
That's the whole idea. We do not wish to hit the village without any plans but we would be making a small encampment nearby to Camp to make our presence known to them.
At the meantime, as Guy MacDonough had mentioned, he would enter the town together with his sister to gather some intelligence for us.
I smiled at Eagle and discovered that the road to Knighthood was truly reachable for these brother and sister combo efforts.
"What do you think, Eagle? As for the ambassador part, we could discuss appointing someone to overlook the whole process of the town that we would be taking over soon."
"I wonder what kind of repercussions we would have from the town and from that noble but from what I had gotten from Guy MacDonough, I'm sure not too many town folks would be too happy with such a snobbish act from the so-called Lord Austin Powers."
Eagle looked at me before he answered, "Your Majesty, it would be a good idea to appoint an ambassador for that town which means he would be commuting between these two towns and to ours as well."
"Besides, our town does not have any mushroom farms and they could be used as a bilateral trade within Broderbund and Gracehaven. How about the other town that we would be targeting? Do they have such amenities as well?"
Eagle was piqued since he had not been taking part in such confrontations for so long and Guy MacDonough was summoned to give his finer reports on Camp.
"Your Majesty, I saw a windmill and a small bakery and some crop fields within the town. I guessed you had known the price for a pound of bread already. I don't see any other forms of trade unlike our town and there are some good people within there that could be influenced over to our side."
Guy concluded and we all nodded in apprehension as I took note of the economic infrastructure of that little town.
Not only does it have its own windmill and bakery, but also with the normal crops that the farmers were tending right now, it may seem that the food might even be rationed to accommodate the rest of the residents.
"Thank you, Guy, for your information. How long more would we need to travel forward? The marshlands are not nearby yet which means that the Camp would still be away from our reach."
"Yes, Your Majesty. It would be like an hours trek before we would reach the perimeter of the marshlands. Somehow, it acts as a natural defensive mechanism for the town since no heavy ballista or siege weapons would be able to traverse without any difficulty."
Eagle smiled at me and he nodded his head. It seemed that this guy was pretty smart and able to figure out how a commander in an army would think.
"So Guy, if we have a siege weapon, and we wanted to cross over the marshlands without skirting around, what would you suggest then?"
Eagle asked Guy MacDonough to test his knowledge on military movements and the answer he had gotten was simple enough. "Make wooden skids for the wheels of the siege weapons or wagons. Instead of rolling on the ground, they would skim across it with the help of a push and pull effort."
"Some men would be pulling the siege weapon from the front while the others would be pushing from the back. With broad wooden skids gotten underneath the wheels, this heavy weaponry could slim across the surface like a water strider."
"Water strider? You mean the insect that skims across the surface of the water as if it was skiing on a frozen lake or something?" I asked and Guy nodded his head. The idea of using skids derived from the thatched house that was built on the westernmost second cluster.
With the aid of the bamboo skid, the thatched home after being pulled around the area would then be tethered down securely.
This idea of using broad wooden planks as skids for the huge and heavy siege weapons helped to manoeuvre the mammoth over the marshlands with ease since the weight would be distributed among the width of the wooden skids.
"Hahaha. Smart kid you are, Guy MacDonough. I believed you and Johannesburg Mackenzie deserved to be praised and be presented with a little something when we return."
"Besides, for your information, we have 2 courses that are currently being held in school — one is charting of maps while the other would be discovering the mythical creatures and methods of identifying them."
"Another task that would be a 4-star ranking requires one to identify between good and evil Witches and a spare member would be following you throughout."
"This spare member would be eliminating threats so you would not be required to confront these threats. Its a method of identification and once you had done so, you may retreat or regroup with the good Witches to guide them back to our town."
"There are three tasks and only one party can take one each. Besides, the course that requires you to learn about charting the maps and identification of these mythical creatures may take about 2 weeks of your time and completion of the courses would entitle you to some silvers in return."
"Let me know what do you think and we could discuss again when we get back to our domain. Right now, we need to head forward and make a small encampment before Camp and you and your sister would go and gather the necessary Intel for us."
Guy MacDonough was surprised to know of the range of tasks available from the Adventurers Guild and learnt that the courses for charting maps and also learning about mythical creatures would reward them with silver coins upon completion.
Guy MacDonough saluted to us and traversed on his Dandy Horse as he was once again along with his party members to perform an advance party to move ahead and form the best route as possible for our wagons to traverse.
The party of four were then seen horsing around in their Dandy Horse as they travelled fast ahead, leaving only their trail to follow them as we fall back within the wagons and slowly traverse on ahead.
"Can't help to listen in on your conversation with Guy MacDonough, Your Majesty. You really put high regards towards this kind of youth. Plus also adding an ambassador after capturing the town would be a good idea after striping the noble of his rights."
"Aye, Gwen... Guy MacDonough and Johannesburg Mackenzie had both performed exceptionally well. One could say that the former had ousted the other in performance in diplomacy."
"Fortunately, Guy didn't lose his head during the initial confrontation with Austin Powers or else we would not hear about the remaining party members at all."
"Well, Your Majesty, this whip had been by my side here and had been thirsting for some blood and skin, do you think we would be able to witness some whipping then? Hahaha."
Gwen laughed as she queried me while holding on to the whip they had been curled up nicely beside her waist as her husband, Frank was smiling at her sides as he held on to the reins of the wagon.
The two dray horses harrumphed in disagreement when it thought that Gwen would use her whip on their rumps instead. Heh.
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