"They told me you are the most hardworking handyman around here. Wanna make loads of coins?"
Lynn swallowed the green soup, savoring its warmth, put the spoon in the wooden bowl, and finally looked up at the middleaged man that was standing across the table.
His austere attire made his identity very clear. A purple stole on top of a pitch black cassock.
Long, slicked back hair, no beard.
The exact opposite of Lynn.
He was a clergyman of the Church.
"I wouldn't really consider myself a handyman, but sure. What's the job, Father?"
"You are pretty straightforward as well, good. Well, it's nothing that can't be done by someone with no prior experience, it's just a delegate porter role. We urgently need to take two big carriages through a scary place, but all our available affiliate merchants pissed their pants and ran away. No one wants to take the job. And so we are now desperately searching for replacements."
"Why me, though? Aren't there better candidates than a beggar?"
"A beggar? You are too humble! When I asked around for someone who always gets the job done, everyone always made your name. They say you are reliable, and that's enough for the Church. You might not notice Mr. Goldheart, but people think highly of you. You have been too hard on yourself."
'Oh. He really heard about me.'
"You don't say…"
"Don't believe it? Doesn't matter. In the end, I need a man and you need the money. What others think isn't important right now."
"Let's talk money then."
The clergyman took an empty chair from the nearby table and sat on it. His businessman's smile had clearly widened.
"I knew you would be the man! You won't regret it. Two hundred gold coins…"
Such numbers almost made Lynn faint, but the man was not finished yet.
"...upfront. The other eight hundred will be paid at job done. Not that I don't trust you, but to be out in the wild with so much money could attract unwanted attention, if you know what I mean."
Lynn stared at the man for a while, trying to elaborate the words he had just heard. He even thought he may had heard wrong, or pondered on whether it was just said as a joke. But then he remembered his dream to move to Skyreach, and he regained control over his body.
With a thousand gold coins one could do literally anything. He could even pay the entrance fee, buy a luxurious villa there and still have some left.
"Can't say the offer isn't enticing. What about the details of the task?"
"That's the spirit! But first let me clear out something. Not every detail will be accessible to you. On some of them, my employers demand high secrecy. Don't worry, it's nothing illegal, the empire's politics is just really delicate and we don't want any information leakage to happen. You understand, right?"
"Fine by me."
"Good, now I'll dive into what's more relevant for you. Tomorrow morning, at six o'clock, my men will depart from Westguard's main square. I'll be there to see them off, only then you'll get payed the first quota. It's a three week journey, the two carriages are headed to the Last Frontier."
"The elves?"
"That's right. I cannot disclose what the cargo is, just know that it's something very important, something that will protect the balance between our races."
"What if we get attacked by Revenants?"
"Good question. You probably know that Deepfort is a dangerous place, but it's the only path we can take to traverse the Greyshard Range. To work around this problem, the carriage will be guarded by five of our best Reapers. You have nothing to worry about. And you will never get near the Whispering Woods, we are not that crazy."
"Then… why am I needed?"
"You are quite the smart guy, huh? You see, we messed up big time. The negotiations are already done, and we agreed fo their terms without consulting our associates. Now the elves are expecting an envoy of ten people. Five merchants. Five Reapers. Two carriages. It's all formalities, but we can't afford to lose our face when there's so much at stake…"
Lynn pondered the offer for a while.
"Fair enough. I'm interested. Do I need to wear good clothes?"
"There's no need, the elves know very well it isn't a comfortable journey. Even they don't dare to get close to Deepfort. You could just invent that your good clothes were lost in an accident, they might even gift you some expensive ones. So let's just say you only need to prepare for the cold. Do you have any other questions?"
"No, not really."
"Then, if you excuse me, I have other business to attend to. You know… other porters to recruit. Ah, this is going to be a long night! See you tomorrow Mr. Goldheart, rest well. The name's Kaidel by the way."
The clergyman stood up and the two shook hands.
"Thank you, Kaidel. This job was much needed."
"No problem. We are both helping each other here."
The clergyman left the table and, as he closed the tavern's door, Lynn looked down at the uninviting soup in front of him and took a spoonful to his mouth. The taste had never been that great, being the most cheap dish of the tavern, but the experience was even worse than it usually was.
'Great, it's cold now.'
Those who lived in the west always searched for warmth in little things, and food was the core one. A cold dinner may very well lead to a poor sleep, and for the restless early workers it was a proper tragedy.
The grey ashes in the sky deprived the nearby land of the sunlight that vegetation so desperately needed, and so, the average temperature never reached normal values. To worsen these already inhospitable conditions, at night, the freezing winds picked up, descending the slopes of the nearby Greyshard Range and making the houses' wooden walls tremble. In that open plain there was nothing to shield them other than the low citadel's walls.
Such terrible factors were the reason behind the lack of plants and animals, but that magically transformed into an advantage with the sudden plague of Revenants.
The locals had eventually adapted to that harsh climate, but for a stranger from Crownshade like Lynn, a month was not enough to do so. The cold was simply unbearable.
Much more so when darkness fell.
A shiver crawled down his spine.
"...cuse me, sir. Hey, are you listening? That clergyman from before asked me to give you these. Everything's already been paid for."
After putting two large trays on Lynn's table, the waiter swiftly left, not wasting one more word with who he thought was a drunk vagrant.
"Huh?"
Lynn couldn't believe his eyes.
Five plates full of food were now in front of him. Things he would never be able to afford, as he always needed to save up money.
On a tray, boiled potatoes with a side dish of scrambled lizard eggs. On the other one, grilled peppers, purple peas, and even a hot fuming stew.
While eating that meal, that could even be considered fit for a king, and savoring its flavour, the thought of not presenting himself to that sketchy job instantly vanished.
He had to take those two hundred gold coins at any cost.
***
That was the reason Alwyn had found himself so close to the Greyshard Range and completely cut off from civilization.
The nearest human settlement, Westguard, was six days of travel by carriage, but now that one was destroyed, the other nowhere to be found, and Alwyn's legs were still healing, he could not move to find shelter.
Night was near, freezing winds would soon descend the vertical slopes to lick the soil of that barren plain.
His chances of survival were equal to zero.