Chapter 26

Kerr, with Miles and Jen following, approached the cooking area.

Like the others, they were at first rather flabbergasted that three richly dressed people were cooking and serving food to his hired help.

It wasn’t until Jen exclaimed, “Oh, it’s Lady Dee,” that Kerr even realised the Fayle serving the bun with the slice of camla on it, was in fact, his supposed wife, Micky. It took him several more moments before he recognised that Ronan was a female version of the man he knew of as one of Lord Jay’s assistants.

“What the fuck is going on? Where have you been for the last ten days, you fuckin’ bitch?” he roared as his anger came back full force and he strode forward with his fist clenched to confront Micky.

He was rather shocked when Kirin stepped in front of him and made him halt. “Sorry Lord Day, but I can’t let you harm Lady Dee.”

“Get the fuck out of my way, you oaf. You work for me, you idiot, and I want that bitch in chains,” Kerr roared.

“Regretfully for you that isn’t going to happen. We were hired to protect Lady Dee, not you. Lord Dee hired us before you had your friend Lord Jay kill him. I don’t know why Lady Dee acted as if you had some hold on her, but I’m very certain that any hold you once had is long gone.”

“Rubbish. The medallion I gave Micky stops her from being too far from me. She could fight it all she wanted too, but I knew it would bring her back to me,” Kerr told Kirin smugly.

Kerr then turned to Micky. “Did you enjoy being fucked by that depraved little arse-fucking hermit?” Kerr spat at Micky.

Micky ignored him and looked at Ricky, “Do you think that was the spell Queen Fleur had your remove?” she questioned.

Ricky shrugged, “Wouldn’t have mattered if it was. Once you claimed you High Wizard’s box, any spells on the old items would have become void when they left you.”

“Wait? What High Wizard’s box? We don’t have any of those on these islands,” Kerr blurted out in shock.

“Past tense, we do have them now,” Ronan replied nonchalantly as she finished topping the burger bun for Miles with shredded lettuce, slices of tomato, fried onion, some slices of pickled beets and a slice of cheese. He didn’t want the mushrooms.

As interesting as the conversation was, Miles was more than happy to be served some decent food. Jen was right beside him and held her now steak-covered bun out to Rowan. They hadn’t eaten very well the last couple of days, and raw beernuts only go so far.

“Please, eat now, and then we will discuss the future, once the pangs of hunger have been eased,” Ricky told the group.

Kerr was rather surprised when Micky handed him a bun with a succulently fried camla steak sitting on it. The smell made his stomach rumble, and he was soon moving on to Rowan to get her to put some of everything on top of his steak.

Kerr’s anger was momentarily forgotten, such was his sudden overwhelming desire to eat the meal. He, Miles and Jen were soon sitting down at one of the tables enjoying the repast with the others of his party.

Meanwhile, the mercenaries and the other hired help went for their second round of burgers. When Ricky walked around and handed them all a cup and filled it with hot kaffe and offered to top it with fresh camla milk, they all accepted the offered beverage.

Ricky and the girls cleaned up while they let their guests finish eating and drinking.

Once most of the group were finished with the meal, Ricky got their attention.

“Okay fine people. We have a couple of problems that we need to solve now that hunger isn’t ruling your minds. For one thing, you have decimated my gardens and killed all of my animals.”

“I realise that you came here under the direction of Lord Kerr and Lord Jay, but even so, had you taken a bit more care, the was enough food here to last you most of the winter not just two weeks of it.”

He looked at them all hard, and they squirmed. The camla should have fed them for weeks, but those that they did kill hadn’t been butchered with rationing in mind, and half of their less popular edible portions had been buried with the bones and skin.

“We were only supposed to be here for a week,” one of the more belligerent men said out aloud.

Ricky looked at him in surprise. “Please name yourself before you speak.”

“I’m Dylan Longpick, my Lord,” he answered a bit more respectfully.

“You are from this island, aren’t you?” Ricky then questioned.

“Yeah, so?” Dylan replied.

“So, you do know that once it starts snowing the crossroads are deemed impassable?” Ricky replied but also questioned.

“That Wizard dude said it didn’t matter and that they would get us safely back to River City in a week,” Dylan whined.

Rowan scoffed, “Lord Jay had no intention of taking you lot with him once he got his dragon. Didn’t you notice that all of our possessions disappeared with us when we left nine days ago?”

One of the other men jumped up from his seat at the table. “Dragon? What bloody dragon? We were promised Quaz crystals if we came here. We didn’t come to hunt no stinking dragons,” he cried.

The others also murmured that they didn’t know about any dragon hunting. In response to their comments, Ricky asked the new man, “Give me your name and then tell me the reason you were told that you were coming here for?”

“I’m Phil Dacks, my Lord. We were to do some mining for Lord Jay. He told us that he knew how to get to the crystal caverns, but he needed us to unblock the old passage that had collapsed.”

“He told us he would be back for us and that he and the other mages were going to see what condition the tunnels were in first. I didn’t think it odd them taking their packs because he did say it could be a day or two. So where are the rest of your party, Ronan?” Phil asked angrily.

“Wait! Why were you assembling that cage on the wagon?” Ricky asked them.

They all looked at each other, then at the wagons and lastly at Kerr. Kerr sighed and finally answered, “Joshua had them forget about why we needed the cage.”

“So, what is in the second flat wagon? I have noticed that once you parked it, no one has touched the wagon since,” Ricky wanted to know.

This time even Kerr looked perplexed. “I have no idea. Joshua organised the hired help and the wagons. I knew the cage was in one. I guessed I thought he had packed provisions in the other one since we’re going to be a large party.”

Kerr then said, “He must have spelled the wagon so that we stayed away from it. The drivers that left took both hooped covered wagons as you can see. One of the women put some form of sleep potion in the soup.”

“Fortunately for us, Kirin wasn’t knocked out for long, so they were not able to raid our tents or take his pellys. Even so, they took everything else they could. They even took most of your camla with the lankys. That is why we haven’t had any food for the last three days,” he added.

Ricky shook his head, “You do know that you can live on beernuts for a very long time, don’t you?”

“My Lord, I’m Franny. You can only eat so many of them before you get sick,” one of the women responded.

“If you roast, boil, fry or dry the outer flesh first, you don’t get sick,” Ricky responded.

“Well no one told us that did they,” she spat back in disgust.

“Where are you people from? Everyone on the Tear Islands knows that about beernuts. I saw Mira put them in the soup the first night you were here,” Ricky said in disbelief at their naivety.