Chapter 15: Raw, Unapologetic, and Ruthless

“I am hungry.”

James sighed.

The Fenrir, who he had named Fel, growled, lifting up and studying James with those predatory silver eyes.

“Yes,” his other companion, Subotai, stated, stretching his arms with a theatrical groan. “Perhaps we should eat?”

Subotai was a decent cook in the rough way of desperate men, but it was James who had the real talent—the tricks of another world, a hundred little techniques cribbed from YouTube, late-night TV, and a past life spent half-broke and always hungry. That knowledge was worth more than gold out here. He could take a filthy lump of meat and make it edible, maybe even good, if the stars aligned and nobody fucked up the fire.

“Fine.” He let the word hang, full of false annoyance. Secretly, he liked feeding them—liked the satisfaction, the small power.

“Rockbird,” Fel licked his lips, long tongue snaking out over monstrous teeth. That was all they had on hand—a freshly killed rockbird, big as a dog, feathers the color of soot and iron. Its flesh was tough as hell, but James knew a few ways to break it down.

He’d planned ahead. Their last stop in a muddy crossroads town, James had spent some of their hard-earned silver on equipment: a battered old pot, a couple of pans, and, because he couldn’t resist, a wok hammered out by a bemused blacksmith. The man had stared at the drawing, grunted, and then forged the thing—crude, but serviceable, the bottom curved to fit over an open flame.

“Find me some firewood.”

Fel turned, lifted his snout, and lunged into the brush. He crashed back through the undergrowth seconds later, jaws clamped around a log the size of a small child. He dropped it at James’s feet with a thud that made the ground shake.

“I’ll never get tired of seeing that,” Subotai said with a laugh.

James hacked the log apart, sweat covering his brow. Out here, you made do—no fancy oil, no butter, not even a hint of olive or pressed nut. Civilization was weeks away. He dug into his old world knowledge: when you couldn’t buy oil, you fucking made it.

He knelt beside the rockbird, skinning and gutting it with practiced efficiency. The fat he scraped off—the soft yellowish blobs from the belly, the stringy bits under the skin—he saved. Ancient cooks, he remembered, rendered fat for everything. He tossed the scraps into the pan, set it over the fire, and let the flames do their work. Slowly, the bird fat melted down, turning liquid and spitting in the heat. It wasn’t much, but it was enough—a slick, shimmering puddle of grease that would keep the meat from burning. While he worked, Subotai collected the valuable parts for sale in the next town.

“If we were lucky,” James said, “we’d have a fat rabbit or some boar—pig fat’s the best. But this’ll do.”

He cut the rockbird into ragged pieces, tossing them into the hot pan. The smell was primitive, raw, and earthy, the sizzle of burning meat and fat filling the small camp. Fel prowled around the fire, hackles raised in anticipation, every inch the starving wolf god.

“You know,” Subotai mused, “the steppe folk would just throw hunks of mutton straight on the coals. Not half as nice as this.”

“We’re not savages,” James shot back, grinning. “And I don’t like grit in my teeth.”

They had nothing fancy for flavor—no spices, just a pinch of rough salt, a fistful of wild garlic bulbs James had dug up that morning, and a handful of foraged mushrooms. He chopped everything rough, tossed it into the pan, and let the heat work its slow magic.

Fel waited, tail twitching. “Is it ready?”

James scoffed. “Meat’s got to cook, or you’ll shit yourself bloody for a week.”

As the fat from the rockbird cooked down, James scraped the rendered oil to the side. In the pre-modern world, nothing was wasted. Drippings from any roast became the next day’s cooking fat, a cycle as old as hunger. If they killed something fatter next time—deer, wild goat, even a bear—he’d render the tallow, let it cool into a lump, and wrap it in cloth for the road.

They ate squatting in the dust, hunks of greasy bird steaming in their hands. No bread, no rice—just meat, wild greens, and the taste of smoke. Fel ate most, of course, but even the beast paused, eyes shining with approval.

“Better than raw,” he rumbled, licking the last bit of grease from his muzzle.

James just grunted, watching the fire, already thinking of what he’d cook next time. Out here, every meal was survival—but he could make it taste like victory.

The three had been traveling for six months now, and the change in the land was impossible to ignore. James felt it in the air, in the rhythm of the road, in the way strangers no longer looked at them with outright suspicion but with the calculating glance of men used to weighing travelers by their worth. Where once their path wound through endless wilderness, now there were faint wheel ruts worn into the earth, the evidence of a road beneath the grass and weeds. Here and there, they passed stone cairns, battered signposts with barely legible markings, and the remains of old campfires.

The forest thinned, replaced by rough pastureland, scattered orchards, and the fences of smallholdings. Sometimes, at dusk, they glimpsed the distant flicker of lanterns in a farmhouse window or the faint whiff of woodsmoke rising against the sky. The world no longer felt empty. At the edges of fields, traders bartered from the backs of carts; children tended flocks along the roadside, glancing up only long enough to see if the travelers were a threat. It was nothing like the hard wilderness behind them. The land itself seemed to relax, though there was always the underlying tension that civilization brings—a hundred unwritten rules, invisible boundaries, the scent of iron and sweat lingering behind every encounter.

The group then found Castletown. At last.

“That’s it?” Subotai asked, arching a brow as they crested the final rise, the walls and rooftops of the town coming into view.

“Yup,” James said, surveying the haphazard sprawl of buildings, stone, timber, smoke rising in lazy ribbons from a dozen chimneys.

“Doesn’t seem like much,” Subotai shrugged, the faintest trace of disappointment in his voice.

“True, but home is where the heart is,” James grinned, that old sly spark in his eyes. “And if I can play this off well, there’s the possibility of us having a very comfortable life.”