51: Middenland

So mum, we spent the night in Der Kutsche, in the Dove Inn courtyard. It wasn’t that different from sleeping in the captain’s cabin of Das Moot, except it didn’t rock so much and we didn’t have the sound of the water to lull us to sleep.

We went into the inn for breakfast, though, as the food there wasn’t that bad. And to be honest, mum, I think having all this money makes us a bit lazy. So we can get some extra sleep, and get some breakfast, and be travelling earlier than we would if we had to cook breakfast ourselves. I know bigs don’t understand proper halfling diets and the food isn’t as nice, but as I said, mum, I think that lots of money leads you into temptation. Still, you should see my new uniform and my big feather.

When we went into the inn, Guido and Blume were already there. I bet Guido still gets up early and does all his exercises and gives all his money to charity. Anyway, they had the crate in front of them in the common room, and I think they were still arguing over whether to open it or not.

It was bacon sandwiches for breakfast which were fine, but they didn’t have any tomato sauce. I think the landlord was a bit offended when we asked for it, and he told us we would have brown sauce and like it. I think it might be a cultural difference between Reikland and Middenland (even though we hadn’t even reached Middenland, yet) where they express their provincial pride by arguing over which is the best sauce. A bit like when they say in Sauerapfel that Gipfel pasties are nasty. Anyway, I prefer salad cream.

Blume offered to take the crate back to the wagon, which is unusual for her, of course, to be helpful. And she asked me to help her and that was because she knew that I wanted to open it as well, but I think she made it pretty obvious and so everyone else suspected us of crate based shenanigans and so everyone followed us out on the pretext of seeing to the horses.

Guido told us off, and Willow told us that we should be careful, and we should consider all the options before opening it. Blume said that nothing good had ever happened to us since we had been travelling together and everything had been nefarious, and so it was a certainty that there would be nothing good in the box and it would probably be nefarious, and I think she had a point, but on the other hand, if we did open it we would owe Matthias Blucher a lot of money.

Once we got going, Guido went on the first scoutabout but he told Dreamy to keep an eye on Blume and make sure she didn’t open the crate. And then Willow got quite emotional about the whole crate thing. I didn’t realise it was affecting her so much but she did get very upset and she shouted at Blume not to mess with it (I was at the end of my tether – Willow).

Dreamy did say to Willow about getting one of her potions to put Blume to sleep and then they wouldn’t have to deal with her, but Willow had already promised Guido not to do that again, after he told her off for drugging him.

Willow was driving Der Kutsche, now, because I wanted to make some salad cream (I still use your recipe, mum), which meant we had a lot of time to talk about what might be in the box. We thought that it might contain a proper nefarious, and then I had the idea that Isaac Graksk might be hiding in there. And then we thought it might be a daemon and as you know mum, if you call out a daemon’s name three times it has to come and grant you a wish, so we started calling for daemons but that didn’t work (I told him not to be summoning no daemons, Mrs. Chard – Willow).

Then, I think mum they decided that divide and rule was the best policy and I had to drive so that Willow could talk to Blume about not opening the box (I sang her The Cauliflower’s Fluffy – Willow), and Guido came back from scouting and told me off for being easily led by Blume, and doing whatever she said. And he might be right, but I think it was still my decision to want to open the box and not just because Blume said.

Anyway, that was our day’s travel and we reached Kutenholz safely before dark and we stayed at the Wolf’s Head. And now we were actually in Middenland. We noticed there were loads of Castle Rock coaches staying at the inn on their way from Middenheim to Altdorf, and it was pretty rammed, even though we hadn’t seen much coach traffic coming down the road towards us. Guido said they might be travelling in convoy for safety.

We decided to sleep in the wagon again, but Blume and Guido got rooms at the inn. I don’t know why they keep doing that as Der Kutsche is much more cosy. Guido did check for us that it would be fine to use the protection of the inn but sleep on the wagon but I don’t think they would have minded anyway given that they were so packed out with Castle Rock coaches. And everyone seemed to think it would be fine as long as we bought food and drink and stabled the horses.

Guido still didn’t want to leave the crate in the wagon, and so he carried it up to his room but the room was so small he had to climb over it to get to get out again. Then Guido went down to the bar and started talking to the travellers to see if he could get more information on this massacre of Sigmarite with hunters he is so obsessed with. Some people there were saying that the emperor's mutant edict was an attempt to avoid war between Altdorf and Middenheim, though I’m not quite sure how that works in practice. To be honest the whole of imperial politics is beyond me and I’m not very interested in it, anyway.

He asked about the massacre but evzone was a bit vague, they seemed to think it happened up north and someone said maybe it was Delberz. But the man Guido was talking to had only heard it from some bloke he sat next to on a coach, so that’s not very reliable.

Meanwhile, Willow asked me if I wanted to come into the bar and I said I wasn’t allowed because Guido had told me off for always doing what Blume tells me. And Willow said that blume was a bad influence and she suggested I should tell her to stop and that I will make my own decisions, which is easier said than done.

Meanwhile, Blume went to Guido’s room to check out the crate, but he had locked the door, and so she tried to pick the lock with her knife, but she couldn’t. I think picking locks is a very difficult and specialist skill that takes a long time to learn and so I was surprised that Blume thought she could just do it like that.

So we did go into the bar and ordered dinner. I brought in the salad cream I had made that day, to help the dinner go down. And as we were eating we noticed that a lot of the clientele were staring at us. It could have been because you don’t see that many halflings this far north and they might have just been a bit curious about us, but it might have been because they had never seen salad cream before.

Anyway, mum, we had a pleasant enough night’s sleep, but when we woke up there was a bit of a chill in the air, which was a bit unseasonal as it is getting towards summer, but they say it’s always cold up north, don’t they, and we are kind of getting up north.

For the next part of the journey Blume drove. It was unusual to have her doing some work, and to be honest, she wasn’t very good at it. She seemed to be driving into pot holes on purpose to make the journey as bumpy as she could.

Willow decided she wanted to make pigeon in a blueberry jus with spring greens for lunch, but she realised she didn’t have any pigeons, or blueberries, or spring greens, so she got in a bit of a panic and shouted for Guido to come. And Guido was guarding us so he came running as quickly as he could and drew his sword thinking we might be being attacked, and was a bit annoyed to find that he was only wanted to fetch some ingredients. But anyway Willow told him to go and forage for all that and in a while he came back with some greens, but that was all.

Meanwhile, Dreamy was outriding, and he met some riders heading south. And it turned out they were road wardens, so had lots of news. They said there was increasing trouble up north these days with streams of refugees coming down from Middenheim way. And because of this there were a lot more bandit attacks, and that’s why the coaches were travelling in convoy. They were a bit curious about what we were up to but Dreamy’s story about us having to deliver a crate to Middenheim was quite convincing because it was entirely true.

I think the road wardens wanted to recruit Dreamy but he made it clear he was long-retired from the forces. And they said something about dropping shillings into unsuspecting people’s drinks which meant they were officially recruited because they had taken the emperor’s shilling, but that didn’t seem very fair to me, even though I have taken the emperor’s shilling, or at least Hisme Stoutheart’s shilling, myself.

Then the road wardens reached Der Kutsche and they asked us questions too, and when we told them we were off to Middenheim they said to make sure we went to the carnival which is what we intend to do anyway, and when Willow told them about the rat town they doubted there would be one, which is a shame.

Then we asked about mystics because there was a mystic at the Schaffenfest, remember. And if there is a mystic at the Middenheim carnival we could get them to see inside out box. Blume said mystics were all nonsense, but Willow said they were real and told her all about Great Aunt Lavallin Thinkettle setting fire to her bed with her pipe (you remember that, mum). And despite that, they tried to recruit us for the road wardens but we said we were busy.

Guido asked them about the massacre at Delberz, and they told him that he might have got his story mixed up, and according to them what actually happened was that the witch hunters of Sigmar had strung up seventeen cultists there, which I think made Guido feel better about things, for some reason.

Once the road wardens went on their way, we continued on ours and had a chat about how all our names were named after plants, because Dreamy’s really name in Hartpetal, and my full name is Haricot (you know this, mum) which is a bean, and although Willow’s full name is Wilomena, willow is a tree. And Blume means flower. And then Guido said Guido wasn’t his real name either, his full name was actually Asparagus. I think it was a joke, though, mum.

And eventually we reached our inn. It was called the Forest Hearth. It had a really high wall all around it, and I guessed that this as a dangerous bit of the forest even at the best of times so now it would be particularly dangerous. Apparently their speciality food was fried potatoes with milk curds and a meat sauce. And then Willow and Blume had a big argument over whether it was best to have meat sauce of spice island kuri sauce with your fried potatoes and curds. And this went on for longer than you might think. And then Willow made Blume promise to come to the Mootland and try a proper Mootland fried potato with milk curds and meat sauce supper, but I don’t think she will.

Guido got a room and took the crate up to it like he does every night. And I think Blume took a room near his, again. But this time Guido didn’t lock the door and came down for dinner. But Blume didn’t come down and so Guido told Dreamy and Willow that he bet that Blume was breaking into his room and trying to open the crate, and so they went up to surprise her. But they didn’t ask me to come, because I think they thought I was on Blume’s side.

And sure enough when hey got up to Guido’s room Blume was already there standing over the crate. She was inspecting the seal, wondering how she might remove it without anyone finding out. But when Guido and the rest turned up, it surprised her so that she accidentality pulled the seal off (that’s what she said about it, anyway, I’m not sure if that was true). And so faced with a crate with an open seal, Blume thought there was no point in not opening it. We had already broken our part of the contract and therefore would not be paid, and we probably owed Matthias Blucher the seventy-five crowns advance he had given us. And so she opened the crate.

And you’ll never guess what was in the crate, mum. Well, you might, I don’t know. But I’m not going to tell you what it was until my next letter, so that should give you and the girls something to look forward to. I’ll write soon so as not to leave you in suspense for too long.