Stalked like the prey of a herd of jackals
"What is that rookie?", asked curious Ariadna, "oh, it's a letter my parents sent me", I answered, but Ariadna kept looking at her curiously, "do you want to read it?", I asked for, "but ...", said Ariadna with a complicated face, but I didn't let her finish "these are just words from my mother and father, don't worry about that", I said, then Ariadna timidly took the letter and began to read it slowly, I could see her paraphrase the letter, it was quite fun to watch, "when you're done turn off the lamp", I said and lay down on the makeshift bed to sleep.
The next morning I woke up again before Ariadna, I saw that he had left the carefully folded letter in the same position it had been in the night before, I silently went to the bathroom, took a quick bath in cold water to awaken the body and spirit, when I left I saw that Ariadna was beginning to wake up, "Good morning, mate! I'll go get our breakfast", I said as I waved at her.
"Good morning rookie", Ariadna replied in a boring way, it seems that he was able to sleep better this time, I left the room and went down to the reception, Mrs. Irta greeted me happily, I asked for a large breakfast to take to the room, while I was waiting I talked about banal things with Mrs. Irta, I could listen to her husband Mr. Roy sing happily while he worked in the kitchen.
When breakfast was ready I went back to the room with him, Ariadna was already fully prepared and was waiting seated at the table in the room, "Hey rookie, do you always get letters like that?", asked Ariadna, "no in fact that is the first one I receive here", I answered, "what do you mean by that?", Ariadna asked somewhat puzzled.
"Do you remember when I told you my story, I left the village when I was 16 years old, at that time I spent the summers working as a guide in the city of Ciliana and sometimes my parents would send me letters there", answer, "ahh, I see, I never thought that people could express emotions in that way", said Ariadna somewhat excited.
"Well there are many other ways to express yourself, have you ever read a book?", I asked for, "only the children's books that mom has", Ariadna answered somewhat embarrassed, "well it can't be helped, after all, books are expensive", I answered, "And your rookie?", asked Ariadna, "just some that my father brought with him from his homeland", I answered.
"I remember seeing a place where they sell books on the main street, when all this is over we can go see what we can buy", I said smiling, "YES I like that idea rookie", said Ariadna excitedly, we had breakfast happily, Ariadna did not stop talking about the content of the letter, constantly praising my mother, when we finished breakfast we went to the Guild.
We greet Supervisor Sancor and Miss Cilia for a moment and warned them that we would implement the plan, then we went to the orphanage, after greeting everyone we borrowed Filip's car and some cleaning supplies and tools, so we headed to the west quadrant, as soon as we entered the military district we were approached by a patrol, but quickly one of the soldiers reminded his sergeant that we had warned of our movements and after a quick review of the car and the tools we had they let us go.
Everything was going according to plan, we arrived at the walled house and began a deep cleaning, after about 3 hours we had almost filled the little car with trash and rubbish, we use the fabric from my camping tent to cover the content, so we went to the landfill, I was pushing the little cart and Ariadna was walking by my side.
The patrols we passed greeted us, they would take a quick look at the contents of the cart and happily dismiss us, when perishing everything would go without problems; when we were arriving at the landfill, I took out of a pocket the little whistle that Liath had given us and gave it to Ariadna who went ahead and went down to the landfill, drive the cart up the chute of the landfill to the edge of the canal that entered the underground sewer conduit, he acted to look like he was working in a boring and careless manner.
I put the tent cloth on the side of the car to cover the entrance to the sewers and with a bored face I started to shovel the trash into the gutter, if someone saw me they would think I was bored from doing tedious work, actually kept a close watch on the surroundings, when I was about to finish I saw movement in the tunnel, it was Ariadna accompanying the twins.
While pretending to carelessly maneuver the cart back out, Liath and Dub crept into the cart, so I covered them with the tent cloth and lazily left the landfill followed by Ariadna, we talked about banal things while we walked slowly, we came across several patrols again but the soldiers only greeted us, then we finally reached the walled house, went inside and locked the gate.
"You can come down now", I said in a low voice, then Liath and Dub got out of the car, "well I'll show you the place", said Ariadna while she made signs for them to follow her, take the cart to the side of a well and clean it with water, then I reloaded all the things we had borrowed from the orphanage to return, after leaving everything ready I went to meet with Ariadna and the twins, Ariadna talked to them about the city while they looked inside the house with curiosity.
"Good since we're all here first let's check Dub's wounds", I said upon meeting them, while taking my things out of the backpack, Dub sat on the bed in a room on the second floor, and then I sat in a chair across from him, then he discovered his chest showing the bandages that covered the wounds, Ariadna and Liath looked curiously from behind, carefully remove the bandages leaving the wounds exposed, they had almost completely healed, the mixture of herbs together with the great vitality and natural regenerative capacity of the beastmen had almost completely healed his serious wounds.
"This will burn so bear it", I said while cleaning the wounds with small pieces of cotton cloth that were soaked in alcohol, I made a mixture of herbs again and crushed them in a small mortar until they were reduced to a paste, then with a small wooden spatula I spread it again over the partially closed wounds, Dub tried his best to resist, when he finally finished re-bandaging him he made a weary face of relief.
"Hey rookie, how did you learn all that, you're very good at treating wounds", said Ariadna, "it's true alsyd, Lif, I've never seen that kind of techniques to treat wounds before", added Liath, "it is a mixture of knowledge, in my tribe they are very good with medicinal plants, but cleaning the wounds with alcohol was taught to them by my father", I said proudly, "so they don't use healing magic at home? Alsyd Lif", asked Dub curiously.
"If they use it, but also everyone learns about how to treat wounds, in the great black forest no precaution is too much", I said, "is life hard in the southern forests?", Dub asked, "not exactly, in my village we never go hungry, but it is dangerous to go beyond the village walls because of the magical beasts, we only went out to hunt or trade", I said as I closed my eyes and remembered the days in the village of the Gray Wolves, then a tap on the shoulder took me out of my thoughts.
"Rookie remember what we have to do", said Ariadna impatiently, "yeah well Dub, Liath, you better take a bath and rest, we will go to do some things and we will return with something so that you can eat", I said while quickly gathering all my utensils, "Okay, thank you very much for everything alsyd Lif, yaghib Ariadna", said Dub, "we are very grateful for everything", added Liath and they both prostrated themselves, "do not worry about that, now rest later we will talk about what we will do next", Ariadna answered.
We leave the twins at home, we would go back to the orphanage to return the things we had borrowed and then we would probably have lunch there, then we would go to inform the Sancor supervisor about everything and finally, we would return with supplies, it would be a pretty busy day, "what are you thinking, rookie?", Ariadna asked as we walked.
"In the possibilities to try to be prepared", I answered, "and what conclusion did you reach?", Ariadna asked again, "I can't think about it all by myself", I said with a pained face, "it is certainly difficult, although now we are many more people in this", answered Ariadna, "if you're right mate, that should be very helpful", I said as we continued walking.
We returned to the orphanage for lunch, the surveillance had become annoying, they followed us since we left the military district to the Orphanage, they had not dared to enter the West quadrant due to the strict control of the movement of people by the military, but the rest of the day we had been watched, so we had to be extremely careful, we finished lunch and after a few minutes of rest we went to the Guild; We report everything to supervisor Sancor and Miss Cilia.
Due to the chaotic situation in which the Vinicius organization found itself, it was really difficult to track them without raising suspicions, so we decided to put a momentary break on the operation, after all, we didn't want to risk third parties like Mrs. Edena and the children of the orphanage, furthermore that Pilis's men had significantly increased vigilance against any mercenaries or adventurers they deemed strong enough to be responsible for the attacks, so Supervisor Sancor suggested that we take a normal mission to keep up appearances since we were under surveillance and it would be suspicious if we spent a long time doing nothing in the city.
