Roadblock River

After everything they had been through, with punishments and rewards in place and rules established that most people could accept and follow, the troops' bearing changed noticeably.

They became more spirited and imposing, looking like recruits in a regular army rather than a rabble of bandits and thugs.

An army's bearing mattered a great deal. It determined both its floor and its ceiling.

As discipline improved, the distance they covered each day increased dramatically. On the fourth day, they reached the border between Bohemia and Bagnia, a day sooner than Chris had expected.

"Isaac, start setting up camp here. The ground is flat and sheltered from the wind, and it's high enough that it won't flood. Post sentries and set up a security perimeter."

Chris left those tasks to Isaac, who nodded and went off to see to them.

Having been a junior officer before retiring, Isaac was thoroughly familiar with this sort of work and needed no further guidance from Chris.

In fact, the players needed to learn from Isaac's experience and techniques, since military knowledge from the age of firearms might not apply in a setting that mixed firearms with cold weapons.

The versions weren't compatible. Forcing things wouldn't end well.

After Isaac left, Chris turned to look at the river a short distance ahead of him... It was over fifty meters wide, with a relatively gentle current. It didn't look very deep, but it certainly wouldn't be easy to cross.

Why would this river be so difficult to cross?

Chris approached it and looked down at a translucent chunk of ice roughly half the size of a person. It struck a rock on the bank with a bang, scattering shards of ice, and he drew in a sharp breath.

That was the main reason Chris thought it would be hard to cross.

This was a river fed by melting ice, after all. Its water was freezing cold and littered with chunks of ice of all sizes.

Even if the current wasn't swift, wouldn't anyone struck by a larger chunk of ice while crossing lose their footing and fall into the water?

Without someone to pull them up in time, who could get back on their feet in that freezing water?

"Little Mia, how did you cross this river back then?"

Chris turned toward his little guide, who was crouching by the river, stirring the icy water with her hand.

The little girl who had once stood outside Chris's tent with a big white pig and startled him no longer wore a homespun dress or had a pale, bloodless face.

Now she wore her hair in two little braids, and her cheeks were rosy and glowing. She had a gray wool hat on her head, a gray padded coat over a thick wool shirt, leggings under fleece-lined children's trousers, and small hiking boots on her feet.

By the standards of this era, Mia looked fashionable and wealthy. No one would have guessed that just a few days earlier, she had been a displaced wanderer who couldn't even get enough to eat.

"Cross?"

Mia stood up, squinted upstream and downstream for a while, then bent over and whispered something into the big white pig's ear beside her feet. The pig strained to lift her head and grunted back at the girl.

After the girl and the pig communicated in their peculiar way for a while, Mia confidently raised her hand and pointed downstream.

"Over there. Aisha told me the riverbed is very flat over there, and there's a rope. That's where Mom, Dad, and I crossed."

Aisha told her? Flat? A rope?

Chris froze for a moment. He scratched his head and looked at Mia's earnest face, deciding to believe her for now.

It sounded a little unbelievable, but Chris had seen plenty of strange people and happenings. Besides, this world apparently had magic and witches.

He had only heard about them and never seen them, but the Bohemian Empire's court did indeed have official posts for court mages.

Under those circumstances, Mia's ability to communicate with a pig wasn't all that hard to accept.

"How far is that place from here?"

Instead of answering right away, Mia held out her hand to Chris and waggled it.

Chris looked down at her palm, then back at her, not quite understanding what she meant.

"Candy. I want candy."

Well, look at that. Mia was trying to extort Chris himself!

Chris put a hand on Mia's head and gave it several vigorous rubs, mussing up her hat and hair. Only after thoroughly enjoying himself did he withdraw his hand as Mia indignantly shooed him away.

"Give me candy!"

"All right, all right, you horrible little extortionist!"

Smiling, Chris pulled a white milk candy wrapped in edible rice paper from his pocket.

Before he could hand it over, Mia eagerly snatched the candy from his palm and popped it into her mouth without even removing the rice paper, chewing with a blissful expression.

"Keep eating that much and you'll get cavities!"

Chris tried to scare Mia for her own good, but she turned a deaf ear to him and even fixed a hungry stare on his pocket.

Still, looking was all she did. Mia didn't try to reach into Chris's pocket.

Just then, the white pig blessed with the lovely name "Aisha" lifted her head and gently nudged Mia's calf twice.

Mia looked down at Aisha, and the big fat pig strained to look up into her eyes, blinking her small, shiny black eyes.

Mia hesitated, then reached into her mouth and reluctantly pulled out half a piece of milk candy, trailing sticky strands, and tucked it into Aisha's open mouth as the pig stretched her head upward.

Soon, the big white pig was squinting just like Mia, smacking her lips in delight.

Chris watched their interaction with a smile. Only after Aisha finished the candy under Mia's watchful gaze did he ask his question.

"How far do we have to walk to reach the crossing?"

Mia raised her hands in front of her and began carefully counting on her fingers. After counting for a while, she looked up at Chris.

"We'll get there in fifteen milk candies."

Fifteen milk candies?

That was certainly a strange unit of measurement.

Chris thought about how long it took Mia to eat a milk candy... Hmm, from the moment she put it in her mouth until she stopped, how long was that again?

Damn it, it's not like I had nothing better to do than keep track of that.

Chris looked at Mia in frustration for a while, then sighed. Under her expectant gaze, he reached into his coat pocket again and pulled out another milk candy.

Mia took the candy and popped it into her mouth once more, chewing blissfully. After waiting for a while, the big white pig at her feet nudged her knee with her snout.

Mia pulled half the candy out of her mouth and put it into the pig's mouth. Now it was Aisha's turn to enjoy it.

From the moment Mia began eating until Aisha stopped chewing, Chris silently counted the time. It took about two minutes.

Fifteen candies meant thirty minutes, or roughly half an hour.

Half an hour. That wasn't very far!

Chris turned and shouted.

"Over here! A few of you, come with me! We're going downstream to take a look!"