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Especially the wobbly ones, with gigantic bladders of leather and roofs that looked like giant parasols (called umbrellas by uncouth barbarians such as myself).

I ignored another [Poison: 1] save, just enjoying a morning of watching...

And then I was REALLY watching. The bladder carts had ridden straight into the mud. Deliberately. Only instead of arguing whose fault it was that they were all stuck, the drovers calmly exited, some with axes in hand, others to ready them. On the left side of each cart, they hacked away the bindings, allowing the sides to rotate into the muck, like ramps.

And then, they and the mules pulled ropes, to pull the bladders splashing to that side. Aided, of course, by the passengers.

You know this as history; I just watched, suddenly chewing in silence. Each bag held four makura, one male and three females. Each female was moving eggs from sacks they carried onto their backs, where they stuck seemingly without need for any glue or other binding.

My mouth went dry.

It wasn’t that Makura could easily overpower me in the water, though yes they could still do that.

Those eggs were pulsing, ready to hatch. Two days at most.

.....

It wasn’t a dozen Makura, meant as a squad to crush me. No, this was a colony of Makura.

How do you get an army of eight thousand citizens together? You promise them farms that exist near the battlefields where they will be fighting. How do you pay six thousand mercenaries from a bordering country?

Gods.

I was so stupid.

For three minutes or so, I ran to the west. Then, I stopped, walked, and actually thought. I needed to not get caught before or while entering Whitehill. I needed...

It spat back a barely reasonable cost. I removed my clothing and started the transformation.

Gya, it was every bit as painful as I remembered. I tried to limit the screaming, performed breathing exercises. Still, I was too close to the Muck. I walked naked, and bathed in the first stream I came across.

Then, axe in hand, I set about locating a dead tree. Lumbering goes so much faster when you ingest the odd bits left over. I flagged five evolutions that were lagging in that particular human form, and wound up weaving twine from the fibers just under the bark by firelight.

The next day, I arrived at the outer guard posts of the not-siege of Whitehill. Both gates I could see were open wide, with hobgoblins freely passing in and out. The guards were also Covenant soldiers, but the flag of the Whitehill city-state flew high from their central tower.

“What business brings you here?” one of the guards asked, in a bored tone. His Achean was highly accented, but quite passable.

“I’ve come to sell lengths of raw lumber.” I said.

“The army is paying one copper per four lengths, but you won’t get that much for this poor quality of wood. You sell it over there. Ask for the quartermaster.”

“I was hoping to sell it in the city.” I said.

“I was also hoping to see the inside of the city today.” he said, still bored. “Neither of us is that lucky. You sell the wood to the army, over there, or we kill you and take the wood for being difficult.”

I looked up at the sun and sighed.

“I suppose I’ll take my lumber right over to the tent, over here, then.” I said.

He nodded at me, watched me go that way for a bit.

I was able to argue and fuss and waggle the boards to prove quality, but in the end, I got only twelve tin coins for my wood. It wasn’t an unfair price, but since I’d gotten the idea I had between fifteen and twenty worth of wood, it was hard not to feel cheated.

“So?” a sergeant asked the soldier who’d been haggling with me.

He did a thing with his jaw. “He knows his cuts and grains and lengths.” the soldier said. “He’s not much of a Lumberjack, but he’s definitely got a level or two in it.”

“I admit to having only the one level.” I said. “For now.”

The sergeant exhaled. “Not a spy, then. Spies are smarter than that.”

“I’ve no class levels in Spy, sir.” I said.

“Oh, we’re not looking to recruit spies. Come over here.” he showed me an area where lengths of board were stored. They were the fourteeen foot lengths used in the making of houses. “We need wood this long, so we can cut boards like this.”

“Oh? Does the coloration and grain have to be consistent through the whole length?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, if I know a magic that can bind together two lengths of wood...”

He squinted at me. “You know such a spell?”

“It’s something I can only do twice a day.” I said.

He had me demonstrate, twice. “How would you like to be rich?” he asked.

I scratched at the inside of my right jaw. “I suppose it’s better than being poor.” I said.

“Spend a day or so here. I’ll give you a silver coin for every two of my men or women you can teach it to.”

It was the second day before the last of the twenty had mastered the incantation. Minus the fees they charged me to eat their stews and bread and salads, it was still so very much more than the average worker would see in a season. Not all at once.

“So,” he said. “You know what you want to spend all that coin on.”

“I do.” I said, listing out prices and equipment.

“Drick.” the sergeant said. “See how much of our coin we can get back from this young lad.”

“Aye, sergeant.” the thin young woman replied. It was like being across the bartering table from Gamilla; I had no effective defense.

A pair of new axes, one of steel, the other of cold forged iron (in case of woodland fey or fairie creatures). A leather pack, slightly smaller to my own body’s scale, with quick release straps. A tin tube, ideal for holding liquids, the lid fashioned into a cup. A draw knife, the blade of hardened bronze and with screws to hold the handles at a certain length. Chisels and wooden mallets, and a mixture of sulfur and coal to start fires with. A quality pair of gardener’s snips.

“Why do you need that?” Drick asked.

“The woodsman’s healing potion requires herbs.”

“You can harvest herbs as well as wood?”

“Anyone with patience and discretion can harvest herbs.” I said. “But tools like this, they help.” I was tempted to click the snips a few times, but they came with a thumb release to keep me from doing exactly such foolishness.

In any event, they got every coin that I didn’t need to buy food with. I got ... tools, and a list of things the army had planned on getting from our woodlands.

Only an idiot, or someone desperate for coin, would work for as little as the army was offering. I debated whether the human I was pretending to be would be an idiot. I didn’t particularly need to infiltrate the army; I didn’t need the coins to survive.

A pass to the west of town verified that there were patrols, both day and night, to “protect” the nobles. I ground my teeth.

Not because I was sleeping in the woods; I had a desert flax blanket from the Khanate. It was soft and smooth, yet retained heat as a thicker blanket would. I used my older woolen blanket to protect it from the earth. Between them, I had a passably comfortable night.

I ventured west until I saw the first of the webs. Turned south, and found more.

I almost cried; why had we spent so long pruning back the spiders, if they were just going to be left alone to breed to the numbers they must have now?

Did they have another spider queen?

No, no. Focus.

I made my way south, finding the woods thoroughly picked over. Herbs, wood, food – if it was a resource the town needed, it had been all but removed. Not quite like locusts, but close enough.

But I didn’t, and I rapidly passed beyond the limit of the invader patrols. Getting to where the wood thrived... never happened. Oh, it was natural enough, and had little spots of growth. Certainly, I could live there.

And there were spots of decay, and dead trees. There was no point at which you could say ‘this wasn’t there’.

Including the bandits that decided my belongings should actually be theirs.

And yes, those of you with your history books know that they brought eight sets of such colonists, one for each major lake or swamp in the mapped areas of our land. And while the original colonists may have passed on to disease, predators, and just old age, every lake they colonized is, to this day, a place one can find Makura.

Real humans don’t do this! Their eyes can’t handle staring straight into the sun, so just... just don’t.