Chapter 676: Open up(3)
It was, Alpheo had to admit, a truly beautiful day. The sun was high, casting warm, lazy light across the landscape, and a breeze gentle enough to stir the grass without troubling the trees swayed through the air. For once, the wind didn’t carry the scent of fire or iron, the only air that the world seemed to adopt whenever he was around, but instead the crisp clarity of running water, damp moss, and distant pine.
He dismounted with a slow exhale, letting his boots meet the earth with a crunch of dry grass. The ride had been long— two hours, in fact—but not unpleasant. Egil had spent most of it alternating between bad jokes, crude songs, and constant attempts to provoke someone—anyone—into a race.
But since he alone seemed to know their destination, his challenges had gone unanswered.
Now, as the four men stood by a large, winding creek that spilled gently into a mirror-bright lake nestled in a hollow of green, Egil spread his arms wide with a theatrical flourish.
"My dearest comrades," he declared with a grin that almost split his face, "welcome to my humble gift to you all!"
Alpheo stepped forward, letting the cool breath of water reach his skin. He knelt at the bank, dipped a hand into the stream, and let the chill soak into his fingers as the current slipped through his palm like silk.
"This," Alpheo said, glancing up, "is what we rode hours for?"
"Don’t be so quick to judge," Egil replied, grinning as he led his horse toward a patch of shade and began tying the reins to a bent tree. "It’s a damn fine spot. Found it during a raid—some poor bastards had hidden out here, thought they’d found paradise. We rounded them up, of course but the place stuck with me."
He gestured grandly to the shimmering water. "Seemed too peaceful to be wasted on corpses."
"It’s a fine place," Alpheo admitted, rising to his feet and brushing the dirt from his knees. "But if you meant for us to swim, you might’ve mentioned something to dry us with."
"Swimming?" Jarza scoffed, walking toward the group while unfastening a leather satchel from his saddle. "No, we did not bring you here for that."
He crouched beside a flat rock and pulled out two slender objects wrapped in linen. With a flick of his wrist, he removed the cloth and revealed two modest fishing rods—simple, almost rustic, made of carved wood and capped ends. He popped the caps and extended the rods to nearly a meter in length, their thin hemp ropes coiled and hooks glinting dully in the light.