S'Alor decided that he didn't need the attention that he would receive going out into the town, so he sprawled out on the floor in front of the fire-place.
I was very curious to see what the town looked like, and to meet some of the local people. There had been no exposure to anyone other than the people we had been training with, and now the very intriguing people I had met at the Dragon's Wing Inn.
The first thing that struck me was that the town was clean. From my reading about the medieval towns in history, I expected it to really stink; with raw sewage in the streets and rubbish disposed of by dumping wherever it was convenient. The fact that this wasn't the case was a huge relief. There were a lot of very interesting smells, but these were from the various enterprises that we passed along the way. As we entered the market square, I was struck by the smell of spices and food, and our first stop was at a small stall that sold some unidentifiable meat 'in-a-bun' and I couldn't help having a quiet internal chuckle at the thought of what Terry Pratchett would say about that.
Once we all had something to eat, we started browsing through the market D'ar'Beth soon got impatient with us, and hurried us along. She led us down an alley that led off the market proper. All the shops and stalls dealt in weapons and armour in some form. I got side-tracked immediately by the various blades on display, and had to suffer D'ar'Beth's displeasure.
Suitably chastised, I hurried after her along with the rest until she turned into a dingy shop halfway down the alley.
I had to duck my head to avoid getting dinged by the various swords and maces hanging from the ceiling and it took a few minutes before my eyes could adjust to the poor light in the shop. A wizened old man was sitting behind a counter on a high stool, peering near-sightedly to see who had invaded his shop.
"Aah, D'ar'Beth So good to see you again," he exclaimed suddenly as he spotted her in the gloom. "What can I help you with today?"
"Well met Bathar. We are going journeying and my I want to set my friends here up with some of your speciality items," she replied quietly.
Bathar smiled at her then screeched at a young boy to close the door. Once he was satisfied that our privacy was assured, he clambered off his stool and a cabinet behind the counter. He reached in and pulled out something that looked like a bundle of rags. He laid it on the counter and unravelled the cloth to expose six finely crafted wood-and-sinew bows.
I was startled at the sight, as I had thought that there were no 'projectile' weapons on War World having believed what our instructors had told us.
"Those look beautiful Bathar. You have the arrows to go with them?" D'ar'Beth asked.
"Of course," Bathar replied, removing a larger bundle from his cabinet. When he unravelled that, it revealed sheaf of metal-tipped arrows.
"[Don't say anything until we are alone. Just go along with me for now, ]" D'ar'Beth sent to all of us. No-one had made any move to say a word, all of us being too shocked by this sudden revelation to know what to say.
D'ar'Beth negotiated a price quietly with Bathar, while I turned over this new development in my mind. If my guess about D'ar'Beth's nature was correct, she had been around for a long time and had a lot of experience. If she thought that we needed projectile weapons, then there must be a reason for it. I started considering how this idea fit into the information that we had received so far.
I had been uneasy with a number of the things that we had been told during training, and the concept of projectile weapons had been one of them. I had bought into the idea of the Finger generating a shield as part of the mental tools that we had learnt, but remembered being uneasy at the time about what would happen if someone did use weapons like these when we didn't have the shield operative.
D'ar'Beth finished up with Bathar and we all greeted him as we left the shop. D'ar'Beth was in much less of a hurry after that and we strolled around the market for over an hour, picking up some travel food and a few items that would make our lives more comfortable while on the road. These were mostly common sense, but one thing I hadn't considered was salt. D'ar'Beth and Greta both recommended that we each buy a large packet of salt as they said we would need it more than we thought and it wasn't easily available away from the markets on the coast. Greta pointed out that it was essential for preserving any meat that we hunted for ourselves, especially when it was not possible or wise to either stay in one place for too long or to build fires that could announce our presence in an area.
When I protested that we would be with the wagon train of the Hand, D'ar'Beth pointed out something that I should have thought of; that if we were used as scouts, we could be out of contact with the column for long periods of time. We bought the salt and a few other things and eventually made our way back to the Inn.
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