9. Watching the pile

Word came from the front that the adventuring group had found a lair of steppe wind wolves, and we were instructed to drive the oxcart to stand by on the higher slopes of the earth a short distance ahead. There were about ten of us left, including three members of the adventuring group who had stayed behind to keep us safe.

As we chatted with Kurtz, Uncle Fred sat and bragged about how he had once skinned a sabre-toothed tiger for a piece of tiger bone, which he later had made into a wound remedy that was surprisingly effective, but unfortunately there wasn't much powder left and there wasn't even a single packet left. Uncle Fred sighed: that was life-saving stuff. The other caravan masters began to gather and talk, there was never a shortage of stories in every caravan, and with most of the men together it was easy to talk about women. And I, as a seven-year-old child, even if I was mentally mature, didn't have any interest in talking to them about that. So pulling Kurtz, I climbed into another cattle car and the two of us lay shoulder to shoulder watching the clouds in the sky.

The three adventurers who had stayed behind to guard us were two men and one woman, and I couldn't quite tell what they were, except that the two young men in leather armour must have been warriors, but they had no bows and arrows, only a heavy Roman sword on their right hip, and not even a decent shield. The two men were trying to find something interesting to say to amuse the female mage, but the girl with chestnut hair, aged 16 or 17, kept her face straight and did not smile.

The long, boring wait had me slowly falling asleep in the cattle car. Perhaps it was because I hadn't slept all night last night, but I woke up from time to time, and I had a very restless sleep. Suddenly I heard the noise getting louder and louder, and opened my eyes in a daze to see Uncle Fred and the men from the caravan gathered around me.

"Huh?" I had just been shaken awake and was still a bit confused.

"Oh, Uncle Fred. I ate those vermicelli noodles last night, there was just some meat left ..." Kurtz hemmed and giggled.

"What's a vermicelli?" Fred asked Kurtz quite directly.

Kuz thought for a while and didn't organize his words only to say, "Vermicelli is what you eat, it's delicious isn't it?" Now that the subject had come up, of course I had to explain it in the same way as I had agreed with old Kulu yesterday, so I pulled aside Kuz, who was having trouble explaining it, and went on to say, "That's the food Kulu-sensei found, he said the orcs call it 'vermicelli', and I don't know what kind of tree it grows out of, but it's always been food for the orcs."

Fred's eyes rolled at my words, obviously not quite believing them. Kurtz was not happy with me saying that the old man Kulu had found all those ground potatoes. He had obviously found them all! Of course I understood what he meant and when I saw him about to speak, I kicked him hard, causing him to wince in pain.

"Cuz, you guys eat this ... er ... vermicelli a lot?" Fred asked a little suspiciously, he hadn't seen the old kuru eat this for years when!

"Er, yeah! I used to eat it in my tribe, only we boiled it in water, unlike Giga who had to work so hard to make it, and you guys never seem to eat this vermicelli." Kurtz didn't speak Imperial very well, and this passage had him panting and thinking for a while. Kurtz's words were very much to my liking, although the point he was trying to make was that we usually boil our potatoes and eat them straight out of the oven. Aren't you guys particularly averse to eating them? The imperial word for ground potato was a mouthful, so Kurtz said 'vermicelli', which was a brilliant explanation.

The older men in the caravan believed it a little more than the orc child's words. Because in their teenage years, at least, they couldn't tell the difference between what was true and what was not, and as long as the words spilled out of an orc child's mouth, they could mostly be believed. And since I looked so young, the caravan thought to themselves that maybe the meal yesterday had been Old Kuru's idea, that the old orc wanted to treat the group to a delicious and authentic orc meal before they reached the Pai plateau, and that these two little ones were just the ones who had been told to do the work.

What do you expect from a five year old boy when you don't expect this silly looking orc boy to make a really good meal? And when everyone thought about it, they did! The little boy, Giga, had only been ordered to serve the vegetables and spices, but it was the orc boy who was the main cook. So again there were private conversations, many with ideas, after all it was a merchant group and the next stop was the Pai plateau.

For his part, Fred took Kurtz's hand and didn't let go, asking immediately, "Boy, does your master have any more of this in stock, I haven't tasted anything yet, so you'll have to make me another pot."

"No, that's not true. In the spring they all rot and don't grow until after the summer. We only have one bag and we cooked it all yesterday!" Kurtz shook his head repeatedly.

It was almost noon and the group of uncles sitting by the wagon were getting dry from talking, so they were all sitting in the sun on the south slope and talking at a much slower pace. The man who was recounting his previous experiences was a middle-aged uncle called Ann, whose hometown was in the northernmost province of Sloot on the Grimm continent, on the very edge of the southern foothills of the Pai Plateau mountain range, where the White Elephant and Prancing Horse rivers meet and flow together more than 700 miles eastward into the Endless Sea, which is also the northernmost frontier town in the Grimm Empire. The Empire's most famous Northwind Legion is stationed along the river's southern shore, and it is also the first line of defence for the Imperial Legion against the Orc Empire, the Dwarf Empire and the savage wildlings of the Icefields.

At this point, Ann gave an apologetic glance at Kurtz, then said in a slightly softer tone, "I'm afraid it's been decades since those soldiers in the North Wind Legion have seen a real orc wolf rider, and it's only since the orcs entered the Pai Plateau to recuperate that we've had a much better time, and the dwarves have moved further away, and it's not easy to climb over the New Siachis after all. It is only in recent days that the barbarians of the ice fields have been somewhat restless, and have often entered our borders to plunder slaves."

I had heard old Kulu tell me that the ice tundra was a vast area, covered in snow all year round, but that there were other species that thrived on it, most of the plants there were extremely hardy, and many of the herbs were excellent for curing fire poison, except that it was the territory of the savage savages, and that the wilderness giants, who averaged over three metres in height as adults and were as strong and fast as horses, would tear everything apart. Old Kuru's constant refrain was that he hoped to meet a caravan that would bring me back a few leaves of bitter cold thorn grass to make a few bottles of fire-resistant magic potion, so I was concerned about any information about the ice barbarians and the icy tundra they inhabited.

Hearing about slave raiding for the first time, I was curious. So I asked Uncle Ann, "Those barbarians need slaves too, and they're not afraid of our army?"

"The defence line is too long, the situation is better along the Penma River to the west, with the Beast Pai Plateau as a natural barrier, the White Elephant and the Penma River create a rich northern plain for the Green Empire, but there is not much natural danger anywhere, every winter the Penma River is frozen over, and there is no natural danger to stop the barbarians 700 miles to the east, the 800,000 troops stationed in the North Wind Legion want to keep all the barbarians It is simply impossible to hold them back." There was a scar on Uncle An's weathered face, a scar that ran along the left temple and down the right side to his jaw, the entire left side of his cheek and lip had been cut open by a sharp blade that had healed but left a pink scar hideously telling everyone that the slash had come so close to splitting his head in half that I usually didn't dare look at it.

"Do they rob women and children?" I asked curiously.

"Hahaha, what do they need women for, you expect barbarians who are over three metres tall and have to be naked in winter to sleep with human pussies in their arms? They only prey on grown men, and sometimes when the years are bad they take young men who are coming of age, and throw them into the mines of the Black Mountains to be mined until they die." Ann said this with some gloom and unsteady emotion, then added, "Before the merchant run, both my brothers were captured, they thought they had cleaved me to death, but I survived."

"They would have killed the women and children?" I asked again.

Uncle Fred opened his eyes and gave me a look, kicked me in the ass and said, "You're too young to be thinking! Those dirty barbarians never see us as sheep and cattle, they expect the women to live and give them lambs, the barbarians never kill anyone, they only take food and livestock and strong men, it's the slavers who take the women and children."

"Do they eat people?"

"If there wasn't any other food, they'd eat it if they were hungry, only like we'd eat the horses, or the bison or the thunder rhinos?" Someone in the crowd laughed sardonically.

It seems that in this world we are not the top of the food chain.

The two young warriors in charge of the guard, having been rejected by the enchantress, mingled with our group and chatted, while the enchantress, who was as cold as an iceberg and had been shying away from words all the way to the top of the hill, kept a lookout and signalled to us.

The men all stood up nervously, and the cows that were grazing off to the side were harnessed to the ox-cart. Only Kurtz and I stood like dumb geese in the panic until Uncle Fred carried us both to the cart, at which point I could see a group of men on horses running deeper into the pasture, too far away to see if they were friend or foe, so I had to be on full alert.

It was only half a smoke before the crowd began to shout, "It's our adventuring group, it's our men!"

"That's right, I can see them coming back with the prey!"

"Woohoo~~"

The warriors returning victoriously would be cheered by all, and those waiting would be glued to the prey dragged back on their horses, as the men of the adventuring group leapt up the hill on their tall gubbo horses, skilfully tugging at the reins just slightly, and the whole wind wolf carried on their horses was thrown off.

This was the first time I had ever seen a grassland wind wolf, and I had never thought that a wolf could be bigger than an African lion. The wolf was over three metres long, with a very sleek silver-grey mane, and this one had an obvious arrow wound in the eye socket of its head, the arrow had been pulled out, and the wind wolf's eye had ruptured, leaving only a small finger-thick hole scorched around it, with white brain matter and scarlet blood still oozing out, only to land on the wolf's skin It would just turn into little beads of blood and roll down instantly. I breathed hard and thought to myself that this pelt must be worth a lot of money. Kurtz looked at me, and we both looked at the dead wolf with its fur intact.

And that's when Uncle Fred gave me my job, and my task was to watch the pile.

By the time I had studied herbalism under old Kulu, I was slowly learning the Orcish language and the Imperial language, which was taught to me and Cuz by Master Payles himself, who not only required us to speak it, but to be literate. Kurtz was not a very good learner, but I had taken the entrance exams, so I couldn't be bothered with the intensity of my studies now. The benefits of being able to read were undeniable and I was introduced by Uncle Fred and hired as the youngest clerk in the adventurous group, commonly known as the pile watcher.

My task seemed simple enough, but it was quite tedious. I had to record on parchment the condition of each wind wolf before it was dismembered, and then the head of the group would distribute the wolves to the skinners in the caravan, who would start to keep all the valuable parts of the wolf's body and discard the rest of the bones and guts, as the hunt had only just begun and there would be a lot of prey to be returned. The only way to fill the wallet is in quantity.

For example, I have in front of me a wind wolf that I have recorded as

Shiny fur, no damage, one blind adult male wolf. Belonging to: Windchaser Adventurers.

Shiny fur, 7cm sword wound under left rib, broken bone in right hind leg, badly torn fur, one adult male wolf. Attached to the Prosperity Adventure Group.

I finally knew the names of the two adventuring groups and their leaders. The one responsible for skinning and assigning tasks was the female mage who didn't say much. She speaks softly and with few words, but her words are irresistible. The uncles in the caravan seemed reluctant to talk to her much. I later realised that it was a matter of status; the profession of wizard was so respected in the Grimm Empire that even the initial apprentice wizard, once qualified to enter a magic school after attending an awakening ceremony, was automatically promoted to the rank of third baronet of the nobility.

Uncle Fred taught me how to write records that would be done beautifully, without offending either the adventuring side or the flaying master. On top of that, I had to keep an eye on the skinners as they skulled the wind wolves, which was the most important thing of all. It's like gambling on a stone. No one knows that there will be a magic core inside that wind wolf, but as long as one comes out, it is worth as much as a hundred ordinary wind wolves.