Trek For Survival 73 Chapter 73 The Halfling Wolf Rider

"Are we going to go through all the stuff from the orcs now?" asked Mikey in excitement.

"Yes," said Vonn, stretching his shoulders out after pulling the cart all day.

"What do you think about the tent?" asked Tom, pulling on the thick material.

"I think the tent we got from the dwarves is pretty worn. There are rips and tears all over it. If one of those sandstorms gets this far, we wouldn't stand a chance," said Vonn, helping Tom pull the tent off the cart.

"It's awfully big," said Carla.

"We could probably redo it, without too much effort, and leave the extra fabric behind," said Gia, pulling the many poles out of the stack for them to start erecting the tent.

"Won't they find the extra fabric and be insulted?" asked Carla.

"I doubt it, and besides, we don't plan to encounter them again," said Tom, helping Vonn roll the tent out.

"Here's the leather ties to attach it all together," said Mikey, pulling out the rest of the pieces from the cart.

Once they had the tent set up, they all stepped back to look at it.

"It's much larger than our last tent," said Carla.

"Orc's are much larger than we are," said Gia. "When we take it down in the morning, we'll spend a little time working on it, to make it not be so big."

"Alright," Carla nodded as they all turned their attention to the cart.

There was a small chest of coins, which they added the dwarven coins to, and put into the tent. The next thing was a bag of stones. None of them could figure out what was so special about the stones, so they put them next to the chest, to decide what to do with later. There were several pairs of gloves made from some kind of skin they couldn't recognize. They were too large for any of them, so they were added to the pile with the stones. Carla thought she might be able to modify them so they weren't so large, and Gia looked forward to seeing how she did that, so she would know how to make gloves in the future.

Mikey pulled out several pots of paint, that Tom recognized as the paint the orcs used to paint on themselves. Since none of them knew what was actually in the paint, they were added to the pile. Mikey had been hoping to use the paint to make pictures of some of the things he had seen, so they probably wouldn't get rid of it.

There was bone jewelry and weapons that they couldn't decide if they were decoration or functional. Tom thought he might be able to carve on some of it and resell it when they finally settled down, so they added it to the pile in the tent.

The clothes that Carla pulled out could be resized for all of them, since the clothing they had was just as worn as the tent.

Carla found a super soft pelt of some animal none of them could place. It had obviously been taken very good care of, so it was quickly decided it could go to Gia and Vonn as a wedding gift. Gia tried to give it to her parents, but they insisted she would get more use out of it than they would.

Vonn found armor made from the worm chitin, but it was all too big for him. After puzzling over it for a while, they all decided to keep it, in case it could be resized.

Several things were immediately thrown to the side, such as a bat skull that still had bits of brain inside and a pair of ears that seemed far too fresh for any of them to be comfortable holding on to. A hole was quickly dug to put them in so no animal would be attracted to them.

Mikey found a carved stone that seemed to be similar to an orc woman and Carla s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, as she showed it to Tom.

"This is a fertility stone. I've seen them before. Hunters would take them with them, in the hopes that if they were able to find a wife, the wife would bear lots of children," explained Tom.

"Then that should go to Gia," said Mikey, turning back to the cart. "I don't plan to get a wife soon."

Gia turned bright red and everyone laughed, causing Mikey to glance back at them curiously.

"I'm good," she said. "I don't want to carry it around if it has magic attached to it. Besides, it would be really heavy."

"Oh, I don't know. It's not very big. Maybe I should carry it. I am the hunter, you know," chuckled Vonn with a grin.

"Oh, you!" she exclaimed, turning back to the cart so that if he did take it, she didn't see.

There were several more things, such as a bag of sand that none of them could figure out, a jar of what looked like toes, a pretty uncut gemstone, and a stick.

"Why is there a stick in here?" asked Mikey, picking it up and looking at it carefully.

"I don't know," said Tom, taking it from him and looking at it as well. "There doesn't appear to be any carvings or anything on it. Maybe it was just something to symbolize wealth? They didn't have any trees, so any wood at all would be worth something, maybe?"

"Could there be something magical about it?" asked Gia, uncertain her father's explanation was right.

"How would we know that?" laughed Carla, taking the stick from Tom, to look over it as well. "None of us have any magic!"

"You're right," sighed Gia, stretching and glancing in her bag for some dried meat. "Let's eat something and settle down for the night. I'm tired."

The whole night went by without any interruptions, but the next morning, they were woken by a voice calling out.

"h.e.l.lo? Who's in there?"

Gia pulled open the tent flap to see a small girl standing by their cart.

"Oh, humans. I was worried you would be orcs," said the girl, lowering her spear. A large wolf poked its nose around the cart, and Gia froze, but the girl laughed and pushed the canine away. "Not right now, Fluff! Can't you see I'm trying to do serious stuff?"

The wolf glanced at them all frozen in their bedrolls, staring at it and the girl, and turned back to give the girl a look.

"I know, I know, but they could have been orcs! They have an orcish cart and tent!"

The wolf gave a huff of annoyance and threw itself down in the gra.s.s behind her. That was when they saw that the wolf had a saddle strapped to its back.

"Who are you?" asked Gia, crawling out of the tent and standing up to look around.

"I'm Bee," said the girl with a wide grin, hooking her free thumb through her belt. "And this is Fluff. We're ranger scouts for the halfling nation."

"Halfling nation?" asked Vonn, climbing out of the tent after Gia.

"Yep. We don't get much bigger than this, so you humans call us halflings," Bee said cheerfully. "So, why do you have so much orc stuff? It stinks horribly!"

"Sadly, that may be what we smell like," said Carla sadly. "We just finished traveling across the desert and the wastes and haven't had a proper chance to bathe in over a month."

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Bee, looking at them in horror. "Does that mean you traveled past the orcs? Did they attack you? Did you kill some and steal their stuff?"

"Oh, no," chuckled Tom. "They gifted all of this to us as we were leaving, because they liked our story of how we have been traveling so much."

"Well, I guess I don't have to worry about any orc war parties then," sighed Bee, as if she was disappointed. "How about I wait for you guys to pack up and I'll show you the way to a stream that's not too far from here?"

"That would be great!" sang Gia, quickly pulling her boots on and jumping to help pack everything back onto the cart.

Bee rode on the back of the wolf comfortably, not using any form of reins to steer him, and yet the wolf seemed to know where she wanted him to go. They reached the stream by midmorning and stopped to make camp.

"I think this is a good spot to stop for a short while," said Carla. "I need to resize the tent and the clothes we got from the orcs."

"I need some new shoes," said Mikey, holding up his dwarven boot for them to see where his big toe was sticking out of a hole.

"There's some leather shoes in here, but the soles aren't that great," said Gia, holding up one of the leather wraps. She wrinkled her nose at the smell that emanated from it. Surely it hadn't been used before being gifted to her?

"If you want, after you get cleaned up, I can take you to the nearest village where you can get decent clothes and supplies," said Bee with a wrinkled nose of her own. "Orc stuff isn't the best when it comes to just about anything."