Chapter XV – Ye who art armed.

Brown, Ayomide and Hakim were currently busy in the forest outside of Azdavay, looking for wood that could be converted into weaponry.

“Captain! I have great news!” The one shouting with great excitement was Hakim, who was holding a bundle of plants which looked very similar to the cattails that Brown had seen back in the wetlands of America. He also carried a couple of chestnuts in his pockets.

A chef like Hakim could separate the rest of the forest from the trees. He had just stumbled upon a small lake formed from the constant rain, where these cattail-like plants had grown.

“Is that food that’s not slime?” Ayomide was the one who was intrigued the greatest by the introduction of these new plants.

“Yes, it is. These are ‘shepherd reeds’, that’s what they were called in my hometown.” Hakim peeled the rind off of two of the plants and handed them over to Brown and Ayomide. “Try them out, you can eat them raw.” He then peeled himself a shepherd reed to eat with the others. The white core of the plant tasted similar to asparagus. Eating it raw definitely wasn’t the tastiest thing, but it tasted like the clouds of Heaven to Ayomide who had only consumed slime for almost an entire season.

“And we can… Actually, I’ll leave what I can do with the rest as a surprise for later.” Hakim looked full of excitement as he examined the reeds he had harvested. “These the best during late spring, we arrived at the perfect time.” He’d definitely be back in the forest for another harvest.

“Actually, couldn’t we just use these plants as straw?” said Ayomide upon examining the reeds. "Get rid of the heads, and we can easily lie on them I’d think."

“I reckon. The straw from these plants were also made into hats and other stuff back in my hometown. I don’t know how they did it, I was young when I got separated.” Hakim secured his bundle of shepherd reeds with his hands, and looked at Brown and Ayomide. “So, you found good sticks?”

Brown nodded. “I think these should be enough. Let’s go back then.” He and Ayomide were carrying a bundle of wood in their hands. Brown was also carrying, in his pockets and a knapsack that had been taken from Jacob, small stones he had found along the road. “Ayomide?”

“R-Right. Let’s go.” Ayomide turned back to face the path to the cave, and the others followed.

While Brown and co were busy with reeds and wood, Shinasi and Tater were exploring the mountain path.

Captain Brown and Shinasi had only headed the path between Curry toward Azdavay, he hadn’t had the chance to go up the Curry path it to see what lay there. So, they had decided that they’d first survey their immediate area first, before beginning their journey to survey the faraway plantations.

The mountains were largely peaceful, like any area near human habitation. The residents of Azdavay had long cleared anything scary like dragons or wyverns. All that was left were man-bears, man-wolves (not to be confused with werewolves) and generic slimes, who Shinasi could take on his own with his spear and pavise. Young Tater only had a combat knife to his name, he hoped that he would soon get a new weapon for himself when the team back at the cave got to crafting them.

“’Tis cold, isn’t it, mister?” Tater, and the rest of the former slaves, only had rags to their name. Thankfully, Brown had let Tater borrow his coat for this expedition.

“Mm. Totally… Yeah.” Shinasi seemed to be more focused on staring at the sky and contemplating idly, which was unusual for a former adventurer like him.

Thinking was not for adventurers, or so thought Tater who had only heard of adventurers through random tidbits. “What got you think so hard?”

“It’s adult business, my boy.”

“Adult business?” Tater quickly went through his mental list of what constituted as ‘adult business’. “Booze?”

“No- I mean, yeah… lack of drink is a problem. Right now, it’s not that.” Shinasi hadn’t had anything to drink since he had escaped Azdavay.

“Uhm… crippling debt?”

“That was a problem. However, I have the slightest hunch that the debt collectors might not want to visit a cave full of fugitive slaves.”

“Then… love?” This was his last. Tater had exhausted his list of ‘adult business’ that didn’t involve his juvenile ideas about acts of interhuman copulation.

Shinasi instinctively turned his head away from Tater to avoid his gaze. “Y-yeah, it’s totally not that either. Nuh-uh.”

Shinasi’s love life had caught the interest of Tater. Such topics seemed like they were of utmost importance for a young boy like him. “Mister, who’s the special one?” He poked Shinasi mischievously, hoping to drag out an answer.

“Oh, shut up.” Shinasi continued avoiding the relentless psychological attacks from Tater as the duo marched on the road. They hadn’t seen anything interesting, until they came upon a small village, actually a large estate housing an open mining field, in the mountains.

“I think this is one of the copper mining villages.” commented Shinasi. “Plenty of copper up in these mountains.” The Curry Mountain was famous in Gemeinplatz for its bountiful veins of copper, and the towns in Casamonu were famous for manufacturing goods from this copper.

“So, this where they got the stuff they make our pots out of.” Tater’s eyes were fixed on a line of slaves carrying pickaxes who were coming out of a wooden shack next to the mine. They were flanked by two overseers holding whips and carrying swords.

It wasn’t a plantation, but these mines did fill the critical criteria of ‘having lots of slaves’ “We found the kind of thing the old man’s looking for.”

“Think we did. Let’s give them a greeting, shall we?”

“Right.” Shinasi and Tater kept marching on, until they were in range to speak with the overseers. “Top of the morning to you, gentlemen.”

The trio of Brown, Ayomide and Hakim had returned back to the cave. They quickly got to work, each of them holding a kitchen knife (courtesy of the late Jacob) and the items that they had foraged.

Brown and Ayomide were doing their best to carve shafts out of the sticks, which was a painful process as they both weren’t experienced with carving of any kind. Meanwhile, Hakim was preparing the shepherd reeds for culinary use by peeling the rinds and cutting them off from the strawy bits. He wasn’t doing this just to make food; the straw would be useful as rope for the makeshift weaponry.

After an hour or two, Brown and Ayomide had constructed shafts of acceptable quality. Now came the experimental part. Brown had been carrying large stones he had foraged during their travels. Both of them also had cut small pieces of wood, around ten inches (30 cm) long, to use as a hammer for shaping the stones.

This wasn’t an exact science; this was just what the people in the cave had come up with after a long brainstorming session.

They spent some time, knapping the stones, trying to find out which were hard and which were soft. Eventually, after another ten minutes of experimentation, Brown and Ayomide had a good idea as to the characteristics of the stones they had. Then they began knapping the stones, slowly carving a vaguely spear-like shape. After enough knapping, they used the small wood hammers to carve smaller, more intricate chips off the stone. To finish it all off, they scraped these spearheads to the floors of the cave to polish them the best as they could.

Now the only thing left was to put up the finishing touches. They took the straw that Hakim had prepared in the meanwhile, and they attempted to use the straw to bind the spearheads with the wooden shaft. The first one to do this successfully was Ayomide, who now had a complete spear. Then followed Brown in success, who happily looked upon the fruits of their labor.

Today, on the 74th of Spring 5859, John Brown and Ayomide had entered the Stone Age.

“You know, I bet I can make an axe or something with this.” Ayomide seemed to be enjoying knapping. She put her newly spear aside to tinker with stone.

Brown, who was now a couple days off of being exactly sixty years old at this point, couldn’t stand long sessions of sitting down and working. He stood up, to take a break, and to observe what Hakim was up to.

Hakim had been occupied with further processing the shepherd reeds. His job hadn’t been done when he had peeled the rinds off the cores, he intended to use every part of the plant. He was grinding the starchy roots of the plant with a large rock, which produced flour. This grinding process was largely done by the time Brown had come to the scene.

“Ah, captain. Could you hand me one of your spears?”

Brown didn’t know why Hakim needed a spear for cooking, but he obliged and handed the man one of the newly crafted spears. Hakim proceeded to dump the flour he had made into a pot filled with a thin layer of slime and plants unknown to Brown. To Brown’s surprise, Hakim began violently beating the mixture in the pot with the shaft of the spear. The mixture eventually coalesced into a solid lump with a consistency similar to soft rice cake.

“Sorry for dirtying your shaft, captain.” Hakim gave back the slime-stained shaft to Brown. “These ‘spear cakes’ could be useful as provisions. They won’t rot easily, and their taste is better than pure slime slop.” He picked a lump for himself, and handed Brown another.

“Thank our Heavenly Father for providing us with this meal.” Brown obliged by biting a lump out of this strange spear cake. “Mmm… They have quite the minty taste.”

“It’s just a bit of this-and-that from the forest to get that mint taste. Even troops on the march could cook this without extra effort, I reckon. Living off the land, and all that.”

Ayomide was about to request some of the spear cake, before she was rudely interrupted by Shinasi and Tater entering the cave. “Captain, we have some good news.”

“Welcome back, young men. What’d your good news be?” Brown was ready for some good news, being stuck on a mountain did that to a man.

“You see, Tater and I found a copper mining village up on the road. It’s pretty close to where we are.” He pointed to the vague direction of the village. “Just up there. It’s lightly guarded, just some overseers for the slaves and nothing much more.”

Ayomide raised her brow. “Wait, weren’t we going for plantations?”

“It don’t matter, do it?” The one to reply was Tater. “There’re plenty of slaves, and plenty of loot up in copper land.”

“As the boy says. I of course don’t have a full account of what they have, but one’s gotta assume that they’d not have nothing. Not to mention, they hired me as a temporary guard after I told them that I was an adventurer. Apparently, they’re scared by the uprising in Azdavay.”

“Good thing we started on the spears then.” Brown looked at Ayomide. “We’ll have to work extra, young lady, to get arms for us and the slaves as soon as possible.”

Hakim interjected “And food as well, we need to have food for when they’re at our cave.”

“Then it seems we’re at a consensus.” Brown was excited to get back to doing what he did best. “Our first target for liberation shall be the copper mine!”