Chapter 135: Expedition Team

I need to know what I own.

He hadn’t realized he’d said it aloud until the screen lit.

It displayed the new Quest.

No reward was listed. He found it a little suspicious considering the system always made sure he was well compensated for the things he undertook.

Emeric read it, then looked at the map again, the empty space where the mountains were.

"Noted," he said.

He blew out the candle and left the map where it was. Outside, the wind had picked up. From the north, faint and low, came the same sound he’d heard in the study.

He went to bed anyway.

—-

The next morning Dorn brought another problem to breakfast.

He stood at the end of the table with a single sheet of paper and waited until Emeric finished his tea. Isolde watched him over the rim of her cup. She had learned to read the dwarf’s face, and it was not a happy one.

"Timber, my lord."

"What about it?"

"We’ve used nearly all of it." Dorn set the paper down. "The repairs took everything the estate had stored, and most of what Bjorn’s crew could buy. Firewood is the larger worry. Winter is four months off, and we have enough to heat the manor for six weeks."

"And the village?"

"Less than that."

Emeric put his cup down. "So we buy more."

"We can. Imported timber costs three times what it should, because every road that brings it passes through towns where the Guild sets the tolls." Dorn’s mouth tightened. "We would be giving Master Vell exactly the leverage he lost. I’d rather not hand it back."

Isolde spoke first. "Is there no forest on our own land?"

"There is. A big one." Dorn looked at Emeric. "Nobody has cut from it in over a century as far as I recall. Nobody has even mapped it."

The survey map was in the study. Emeric unrolled it again and held the corners down with whatever was nearby.

Dorn put a finger on the western edge. "The Marrowood. It runs for miles. Old growth, mostly oak and ash, from what the hunters say." He moved east. "The Greywater river. It feeds the marsh, which is why the drainage worked, but nobody knows where it starts." His finger went north and stopped at the broken line of the mountains. "And the Hollowcrest."

"And between them, nothing."

"Blank paper, my lord. The last proper survey is two hundred years old, from before the town burned." Dorn straightened. "Lord Verity never sent anyone out. He didn’t think there was anything worth finding."

"He thought wrong about a lot of things."

"Yes, my lord."

Emeric studied the empty spaces. Three days earlier, he had written know your land on a piece of paper and stared at it. Now Dorn had handed him the reason in numbers. A survey was no longer a curiosity. It was winter fuel, and a way to stay out of the Guild’s debt, and possibly a way to learn what lay beneath the mountain.

"I want a team," he said. "Small. Capable. Not just swords."

He chose them over the next two days.

Ashe came first. The lieutenant had shown he could lead without shouting, and the knights followed him because he asked, not because they had to. Emeric found him mending a strap in the barracks.

"I need people for a exploration expedition."

Ashe looked up. "Is that a promotion?"

"It’s a job. A bit dull, probably."

"Dull’s fine." He set the strap down. "The last exciting thing I did was dig a trench for five days."

Tomas volunteered when he heard. He was the knight who had scattered the Piper’s Bane through the village, and he’d been looking for a way to be useful again ever since. Emeric took him, along with two other knights Ashe vouched for.

From Bjorn’s crew, he asked for Brokk, a short, grey-bearded dwarf who could tell what a rock was made of by licking it, and Lirael, an elf ranger who rarely spoke and, when she did, was usually right. Bjorn handed them over with obvious reluctance.

"Bring them back in one piece," he said. "Brokk talks too much, but I’d miss him."

The last two were local. A village hunter named Doss, who knew the edge of the Marrowood better than anyone alive, and a cartographer’s apprentice named Pell, who was barely nineteen and had drawn Emeric the neatest map he’d seen yet.

Eight in all.

He briefed them in the study the night before they left.

"The goal is simple. Mark the timber stands, mark the river, find me a route we can use. Stay on the Marrowood side. Don’t go near the Hollowcrest."

Brokk raised a hand. "How near is near?"

"If you can see the cave, you’re too close."

"Understood."

"Send a courier every two days. I’m giving you a Thunderhoof." He nodded at Doss. "Corin picked a good one. Calm, fast, and smarter than most men I know."

Ashe leaned on the desk. "And if we find something?"

"Write it down. Come back and tell me." Emeric looked at each of them in turn. "I’m serious about this. The last thing I want is anyone playing hero. I would rather have a boring report than a good story."

Ashe almost smiled. "Boring reports about trees. Understood."

Gaius had been standing by the door the whole time. When the others left, he stayed.

"I could lead them myself."

"I know."

"The lieutenant is capable. But if there’s something out there that—"

"Commander." Emeric kept his voice level. "We might have a dragon at our back and a Guild at our throat. If I need to defend this estate, I need you here, not in a forest. It’s not about the lieutenant."

Gaius stood very straight for a moment. Then he nodded, once.

"Understood, my lord."

He left. Emeric noticed that his shoulders had loosened.

They rode out at dawn.

The village lined the road. Children ran alongside the horses, and the old woman who had once told Emeric he might be different stood at her door with her arms crossed, watching.