Traveling 3

When we reached our carriage in hurry, Ethelon almost kicked down the door and we charged in with great momentum.

""Diana!"" both of us yelled at the same time by the time Ethelon was kicking the door.

We found her sitting beside sofa staring at us, shocked at our grand entrance. She was holding a wet towel stained red with blood of someone who was lying on sofa, unconscious.

Looking at the injured, and Diana with her eyes opened wide from the shock, both me and Ethelon let out sigh of relief. Ethelon was still holding me in one of his arms like carrying luggage, while other held the branch with dead yama tied on it.

Both of our hairs were in a mess thanks to us speeding up against the wind and yellow leaves protruded from here and there. I guess we looked pretty strange, specially after our 'shock troop act'.

"Uhmm... Hi?" Diana broke the awkward silence after she got out of her shock.

"We found some blood near here so we..." Ethelon didn't finish his sentence and turned his gaze to the sofa where a boy around my age was lying with his body dyed red and black.

"Just a while ago, this boy crawled out of the forest and fell unconscious" Diana wiped his head with her towel and continued "His body is full of cuts and slices, he probably tried to close the wounds with resin from the trees, its all dirty and sticky"

"Ethelon put me down, I think I remember him" I recognized him almost instantly. The slave kid those soldiers were searching for! Thanks to all the dirt and cloth scraps he was using as scarf, the slave marks were hidden from the view but the long scar on his chest was visible.

So he escaped to the forest, and sustained all these injuries. It seems he got hit hard on his head, the hairs stuck to his wound and every time Diana wiped it with wet towel, redder the towel became.

"You remember him?" Ethelon asked confused while putting me down.

"Right, he is the slave boy those soldiers from... Ursad merchant guild. I remember him from the drawing those guys showed to me"

"Sigh, this will be troublesome" Ethelon groaned.

I thought so too, the boy is a tattooed slave from a big merchant guild. They even sent twenty men cavalry chasing after him. Clearly, the boy is important for them.

And our carriage was once stopped by the soldiers. If they came back and found us sheltering him, the results would be catastrophic.

Of course we can try to explain the matter, but I doubt they would listen when they have an overwhelming advantage in terms of strength and just reason to plunder us freely. Though we don't possess much, we got two slave materials plus a beautiful woman.

Since they got only the benefits for it, why bother listening? But it will be different matter if we turn the boy in when we are inside the town. We may even get rewarded for it.

"What are we going to do Eth? If we are to save him, we may need to use lots of precious medicines and quickly" Diana asked turning up to Ethelon.

Oh? Asking whether to save him or not when you're already cleaning his wounds? But from her tone I could tell she would not hesitate to abandon the boy if Ethelon decided to do so.

Bit different and cruel from the image of the usual kind and gentle Diana in my mind. So she can be hard and decisive when needs to be. I'm surprised but glad to know about it.

"It's a bit annoying problem to deal. We could save him, but the reward for our effort as well as risk we have to take for it isn't worth it" Ethelon glanced at me with corner of his eyes and continued "High risk, pricy effort and low return"

"Only thing we could earn from it are our conscience and gratitude of a merchant guild" I said in very low tone, that could barely be heard.

Ethelon turned to me, grinning with his evil smile. "Huh? Kaelud, let's make you decide what to do!"

"Where did that come from!?" I asked almost yelling in my shock.

"Men has to make decisions which his family's fate relies on it. So you make the decision today, and we do whatever you decide! " then he patted me on my shoulder twice, laughing at my dumbfounded look.

Diana also turned to me, silently waiting for me to speak, her eyes gentle yet stern. Damned Ethelon! Pushing all the responsibility to me just because he found it troublesome! if I decide to abandon this boy here, my conscience will be hurt yet if I were to decide to bring him around and bad things happen to us...

Shit! What to do then? Since Ethelon decided to push the matter to me he won't change his mind, he never does!

I have no other choice but to think about the issue seriously. I glanced at the poor boy lying on the sofa unconscious, his body in a mess.

Heal him up and leave him somewhere.. not going to work since healing him will require time. Many things can happen in that time. Whatever we decide we have to do it quick!

Heal him and rush to the town then just turn him to his owners. The boy will hate us for turning him in and may or may not thank us for saving him. The guild will also have two ways to react.

One, they may reward us for getting him back. Everything is good if it were that simple...

And two, they may turn hostile and try to silence us. Since they're spending some effort on finding this slave, hunting him down for days, the boy might know something he shouldn't or he has some sort of unique value to them.

Latter is more likely the case but I can't deny the possibility of former or both being true. Then turning him in will bring us nothing but trouble.

Abandon him here and act as though we didn't see him today. No trouble will follow us, but the guild might find out we made contact with the boy at some point and decide to kill us just to make sure... ah my head starting to hurt.

So irritating! Am I being a fool who is too smart for his own good? Abandoning him is no good, turning him in is also no good. Then let's just take him with us, heal him up and disguise him as our servant or something.

And when he is healthy enough let him go? Too risky. Since he has a neck tattoo, disguise may not work and end up getting discovered, then he might get captured again and tell them about us under torture or something... Shit!

Then let's choose final and most safe method? Kill him and erase all evidences. This is most foolproof method which solves any future troubles plus the current one. But I can't voice out this decision since I am just a ten year old brat to my parents eyes.

Imagine your kid suggesting to kill an innocent boy and hide all the evidence of the crime. If I were them, I would probably try every exorcism method I could find on my kid. And invite the best priests to smite the demon...

Moreover, I am a person from a peaceful world and have some, tiny bit of prejudices towards murder. Just a tiny bit though.

I admit that I am a bit twisted and psycho compared to normal people. I don't think a normal person will have an idea of murdering this boy given the exact same situation. At most he or she will think of tossing him out and be done with it.

Is it because I have already experienced death once? I have become bit indifferent towards death itself. Crazy yet plausible thoughts like, 'even if I kill him, he will reincarnate somewhere just like me' pops out in my head, though its unlikely to happen.

In other words, the sin I would carry after committing murder became lot lesser. My conscience will have that thought as its shield and my sense of blame will hide underneath it. Dangerous signs, I know but this is who I am now.

Death changes people, it sounds bit strange and wrong for some reason... anyway back to my decisions. Killing him is also no good, I don't want to be raised to the sky on a cross with my limbs nailed to it.

Forget it, let's just save him and take the risk that comes with it. Whatever happens will happen, all I need to do is to wring out everything I could from the boy.

Don't think you can take advantage of me and my family that easily, I will have you pay back our kindness for the rest of your life, hehe... heh..

"Kaelud, don't make that face!" Diana chided me with an unhappy tone. Apparently my smiling face disgusted her...

This is the result of your and Ethelon's gene mixing, how can you blame me for my smiling face! Blame this guy who is so happy for my suffering after he pushed his troubles to me!

"Ahem, so have you decided? Time is ticking and that boy is at your mercy now, he seems to be breathing his last you know" Ethelon cleared his throat and adjusted his clothes while saying that with a huge grin on his face. He even patted the poor yama on his shoulder in satisfaction.

"Are you really going to let me make decisions on this?" I inquired though I already know the answer.

Ethelon simply replied "Yes" instantly with carefree smile.

Taking a deep breath I said, "Alright then, let's save him first"

Both of them nodded indifferently and Diana started to rummage through her medicine box while Ethelon went off to prepare the dinner. They didn't ask why or what I'm going to do after healing him.

I guess its their way of educating me. Children of this world, specially the male ones needed to learn how important their decisions on every matter were. Then again, for me its an unnecessary thing, but it definitely felt good. Getting treated like I'm an adult again.

I helped Diana to clean the boys numerous wounds while she prepared medicines. These wounds can be healed fast with magic and pharmakos, but we don't know his blood type besides, pharmakos are precious things.

Plain old herbs and medicines with few stitches will do the job just fine. Still, this guy... how many days did he spent in the forest? The wounds on his body large and small are numbered in dozens.

I bet he would have turned into corpse long ago from blood loss and infections if not for his quick thinking of using resin to cover his wounds. How did he manage to survive so many days in the forest? Forest of this world, I wouldn't survived single night even if I had guns with infinite ammo.

This guy should have tremendous will power and martial prowess to survive till now. Looking at him, he shouldn't be much older than twelve yet he spent many nights in the dark forest where countless wild beasts hunt for prey, alone. Not to mention that he was probably wounded before he hid in the forest.

If it was earth, twelve year old brats probably wouldn't survive if they were left in the zoo for a night. Imagine the shock this event would cause to the world! Reporters, lawyers, police and the Internet...

While I was lost in my mess of thoughts, Diana came with boiling pot. The pot was full of slimy liquid with purple color. Apparently if you apply them on cut wounds they heal lot faster.

Four days had gone by and we were still moving towards Rotrason. The boy is still unconscious and I have been taking care of him with Diana's instruction for the past few days.

I had to give him his food, water, medicines and change his bandages everyday. I cleaned his piss and shit about twice a day. At first I was cursing and throwing tantrums at everyone, specially at Ethelon, but got tired of it when he just grinned, ignoring me so I became used to my task.

It's a surprising thing, a human adapting ability that is. I've never imagined myself doing this without complaining like a b*t*h all day.

No sign of soldiers coming back and we are about three days distance from Rotrason. Since we are closing in, we see lots of carriages heading to and out of Rotrason.

Mercenaries heading for the forest for crystals, merchants with their caravan full of goods and lots of commoners heading to Rotrason for better life like us.

Mercenaries are like adventurers in the novels. Except they don't have advanced system where one big guild offer them job, registering them etc. They're just a group of people coming together to hunt the wild beasts more efficiently and safely.

Sometimes they get hired as muscle or guards for merchants but it happens very rarely as the trust level is low and most merchants belong to a guild which has their own trained troops.

Basically mercenary is a nice to hear title for jobless guys. But everything has exceptions and seems like there are mercenary guilds which acts as professional and trained military force. They come into play when there's a war between guilds, clans, tribes or even kingdoms.