Legend to Farmer: A Slice of Life Fantasy, page 5
Once he had swept out the house as well as he could, he started to haul out the completely rotten and unusable logs from the wall. Valdis was glad in a way that Lydia and Lorcan were off hunting. It was one thing to know that a man had used magic on himself to attain superhuman strength and speed, but it was another thing entirely to see that man hauling a two-thousand pound log out of a wall all by himself. That could sometimes rattle a person. He had performed such feats during his fighting days and seen how men gave him a wide berth from that time on.
“If he can rip a boulder out of a hillside, just think what he can do to a man,” he’d hear them whispering.
Valdis dumped the useless logs off to one side. They could be used as firewood, or repurposed for some other building practice, or to make raised vegetable beds for the house, he was sure of it. In that environment, you didn’t want to waste a thing.
It took him a couple of hours to haul all the busted and useless logs out of the walls. Luckily, he didn’t come across any that were set between two sound logs. That would have been a pain in the neck. They were mostly logs set up toward the derelict roof, which made sense as the roof would have been broken by the weather and the damp would have gotten in from there.
Afterwards, Valdis Wolfbane stood with his hands on his hips, surveying his handiwork.
It was immediately apparent that he was going to have to go into Timbermere sometime soon and get replacement handles for the tools and axes that were in the barn. While he could use his hands to knock down the smaller trees, trying to bring down a tree whose trunk was a foot or two feet thick with nothing but his brawn was a foolish errand. Though his muscles had been bolstered by the magic Valdis had used in his youth, that was not to say that he could use them indefinitely. The mana that infused the fibers and sinews of his body could be exhausted just as regular energy could and he would find himself having to stay in bed for a days at a time to recover if he wasn’t careful.
And that’s not going to be ideal when I don’t even have a bed.
Valdis had already resolved on letting Lydia have the main bedroom until they had the main farm house sorted. Sleeping outside under the stars didn’t bother him in the least. He had done it for most of his adult life.
The roof over the main bedroom had plenty of holes in it. It would need to be totally replaced as soon as they could. But, for the time being, Valdis contented himself by stripping out all the rotten wood and replacing the beams with straight saplings that he found nearby. He covered these saplings with dry fur branches until he had a weatherproof mat that would at least keep the snow and wind off.
You learned to do a lot of things being a soldier on campaign and Valdis knew how to construct a log cabin thanks to a siege that had dragged on for nearly two years. Wooden shingles would be needed for the roof. That would be key. He had noticed the odd cedar dotted amongst the pine woods and those would be perfect for such a task. However, that sort of thing was laborious and time-consuming work. He would need to cut down the trees, prepare the logs, split and shave them, and then fashion them into the correct sizes for the roof.
Or else find someone who can do it for me, he thought. For a price.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Val,” he muttered. “One job at a time.”
Valdis was just refreshing himself with another cup of tea when Lydia and Lorcan returned. Lydia had a brace of limp jackalopes, one in each hand. The creatures were almost identical to the common hare, though they were slightly bigger and had small antlers protruding from their foreheads.
Valdis smiled encouragingly at her. “The mighty hunters return.”
Lydia narrowed her tawny eyes and blew a raspberry at him, but returned his smile.
“Oh ye of little faith,” she said.
“That pair should see us through the evening, and probably for breakfast too,” Valdis said, nodding at the limp jackalopes.
“That might be so, mate,” Lorcan said. “But the golden-eyed lass here didn’t just take down these two speedy pests.”
“No?” Valdis asked.
“No. There’s a bloody big ghost elk buck lying down there in the trees, awaiting your attention.”
“Awaiting my attention?” Valdis asked.
“Unfortunately, I had my hands full,” Lydia said primly, holding up the swinging bodies of the jackalopes. “Lorcan will show you where the elk is while I skin and dress these two little fellows. Off you go.”
Valdis had spent most of his life as an adult human being ordered around, but never by someone as attractive as Lydia Vale. It was quite the novelty.
Although she was joking, there was a ring in her tone that hinted that she was used to giving orders. Was this another facet of her mysterious character? A little glimpse into her past? He remembered how the sky pirates had said something about her father being the one who had employed them to bring her back. Who was she, and what was she running from?
Valdis kept his thoughts and his theories to himself.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Come on, Lorcan. Show me where this elk is.”
Chapter 9
The ghost elk was a magnificent specimen, a huge buck that must have weighed over half a ton. In death, its bright white coat was fading to a dusky silver.
“Bloody hellfire,” Valdis swore.
“Those were my sentiments exactly,” Lorcan said.
“How did she manage to…?” Valdis started to say, but then they got closer and his eyes caught up with his mouth.
There was a sharp root jutting from the frozen ground. Rich soil, so dark as to be almost black, lay in a wide circle, showing him where the root had burst forth from the frigid earth. It was mingled with the vivid red of the elk’s lifeblood.
The root had pierced the ghost elk right through its throat, thrusting out through the back of its neck.
Valdis gave the pooka a questioning glance. The creature returned his look with the kind of inscrutable gaze that is unique to goats, sheep, and the very best town bailiffs.
“Hell hath no fury…” he said. “Worth remembering, mate.”
Valdis hoisted the one thousand pound or so creature over his shoulder with a grunt, and together he and Lorcan trudged back to the farm. They found Lydia sitting by the fire, sharpening her belt knife on a whetstone.
She had skinned one of the jackalopes already and gutted it. Valdis looked at the hare-sized carcass. It wasn’t the neatest job he had ever seen.
Lydia must have caught him eyeing her work, for she said quickly, “I’m a little out of practice, and my hands are cold.”
Valdis nodded, giving her an understanding little smile. “You’ve not done much of that sort of work before, have you?”
It looked for a moment as if Lydia was contemplating telling him a lie, as if she were worried that he might want to get rid of someone who couldn’t dress an animal, but then she thought better of it.
“No,” she said. “In truth, I’ve only done it a handful of times. I’m afraid I’m a little bit… Well, crap at it, I suppose. Where I came from I never had much call to do it.”
Valdis dumped the ghost elk near the fire in a patch of clean snow, then came over to squat next to where she was sitting on a tree stump that she’d rolled over from somewhere. He examined the jackalope that she had dressed.
“Would you care for a little advice?” he asked tentatively.
Valdis had never been much for teaching anyone anything before, and wasn’t quite sure how to go about it without sounding condescending.
“Please,” Lydia said. Her earnest tone gave Valdis confidence.
“When you’re doing opening cuts on any kind of animal,” he said, taking one of the jackalope’s skinny forelegs in his fingers to demonstrate, “never cut down from the outside in.”
“Why?”
“Because what you end up doing is cutting all kinds of little hairs and that’s going to get all over the meat.”
Lydia nodded.
“Always go like this,” Valdis said, running his hunting knife up the thin leg, the edge of the blade facing up toward the sky. “Cut outwards because that way the knife blade finds its way up through the hairs without cutting any of them, you see? Always cut hide out toward hair, never hair in toward hide.”
Valdis took the second body of the jackalope and laid it in the clean snow belly up. Then he grabbed his hunting knife up from where he had stuck it in the snow. It was a bit large for the work, and without asking, Lydia proffered him her own smaller belt knife.
“Thank you,” Valdis grunted.
As he took the knife, their fingers brushed, and he felt a thrill run up his arm. It might have been his imagination, but he rather thought the dark elf’s hand lingered for a second longer than was normal.
“Thank you,” Valdis said again, staring hard at the jackalope.
Valdis picked up the second corpse and then patted down the snow next to him so that it made a hard, level, clean surface.
“We want to do this in a place as clean as we can manage,” he said. “Make sure we minimize the dirt that can get into our nice, fresh meat. We want to show the animal as much respect as we can. That’s important.”
Valdis could feel the dark elf’s gaze on him. It took a concerted effort not to look up at her but concentrate on the task at hand.
“Now, we start by making a shallow cut around the… I mean, there’s no pretty way to say this. You cut it… You cut it here…”
This is a lot less funny and more awkward than doing it in front of a bunch of soldiers.
He made the incision.
“Ooooh, blimey, I bet that little beggar is glad he’s dead,” Lorcan said. The goat-shaped pooka was wincing. “Right in the posterior passage!”
Studiously avoiding Lydia’s eye, and ignoring the pooka, Valdis made another cut.
“Carefully cut from the ass to the chest, avoiding puncturing any internal organs. You do that, and you’re going to make a mess of the meat as well as cause a stink.”
“Eloquently put,” Lydia said, watching him work.
“Gently pull the skin away from the body to expose the underlying muscles and internal organs, like this.”
“Okay,” Lydia said.
She was leaning in next to Valdis, and he couldn’t help but notice just how close she was. He was also aware, thanks to his magically heightened senses, of how she smelled. Cloves and ginger and other warming spices, was his initial appraisal. With something that might have been honeysuckle running like a riptide under it all.
He gave himself a little mental shake.
“Now, getting rid of the offal,” Valdis said. “We start by removing the organs in the chest cavity. Use your fingers to carefully locate the diaphragm—that’s the thin muscle separating the chest and abdominal cavities. Here. See?”
Lydia nodded, and Valdis felt a lock of her hair tickle the side of his face. He swallowed.
You’re going to look like a real fool if you cut off a finger, Val, he told himself. Concentrate.
“How do you know all these fancy names for all the jiggly bits?” Lorcan asked me.
“The army surgeons,” Valdis said. “I made a habit of helping them out.”
“Very conscientious of you,” Lydia said as she watched Valdis’ scarred fingers probing inside the jackalope.
“Honestly,” he growled, “it was more about knowing where all the organs were so that I could aim for them in a fight.”
“Ah.”
“Now, make an incision along the diaphragm and carefully remove the heart and lungs like this,” Valdis said, and he removed said organs. “The heart’s worth keeping in small game like this.”
Lydia made a little squeak in her throat.
“Then, reach into the abdominal cavity and locate the stomach, intestines, and bladder—that’s the rest of the jiggly bits as our learned goat friend calls them,” Valdis said.
“Right,” Lydia said.
“Carefully cut around these organs to free them from the body cavity and then use your knife to trim this bit of tissue away so that the colon is released.”
He made a couple of small nicks inside of the little pelvis.
“Blimey, that’s got to smart,” Lorcan hissed. “Not satisfied with slicing its bottom hole, you’re now peeling it out. Amazing.”
“Better than getting sh— Better than getting muck all through the meat,” Valdis said. “Now, we want to skin this thing as well as take the antlers, I think. We’re not exactly flush with supplies and anything we can use for trade in Timbermere will help. The antlers are good for knife handles and the like.”
Lydia looked as if she wanted to object to this for a moment, but then nodded.
“These little creatures are easy to skin,” Valdis said. “Just make cuts on the legs. Here and here. Then take off the head, and then rip the skin down like this.”
In one fluid movement he had torn the skin from the now headless jackalope. It came away in a single neat piece, as if the animal had been wearing a suit.
“The key is being sure and strong,” he said to Lydia. “Be confident. Respect the animal.”
Lydia nodded, looking thoughtfully at the naked animal Valdis was holding out to her.
“Now, if you wash out the cavities with snow, we can chuck them both on a spit and roast them over the coals,” Valdis said. “Be sure to bury the offal, though. I’m not sure if they have frostcats in this part of the realm, but I’d prefer not to draw them to us if they do. Nothing like an eight-hundred pound killing machine trying to eat you from the inside out in the middle of the night to disturb your slumber.”
Lydia took the carcasses of the jackalopes from him.
“You don’t teach people things much, do you?” she asked.
Valdis ran his tongue over his teeth and shook his head.
“You should,” the dark elf said. “You’re good at it.”
She walked away to do as Valdis had instructed her to so she didn’t see the look of grateful surprise that he felt spread across his rugged countenance. He watched her go, hips moving in that lithe, captivating way that was unique to women of all races—and even more so when it came to elves.
Did she mean that? Valdis wondered. Or was she just being polite? Did she mean I should teach her more things?
He gave his head a little shake.
A new life seemingly came with fresh mysteries to unravel.
Chapter 10
The rest of the afternoon Valdis spent butchering the ghost elk.
He worked in just his shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, despite the chill. He used, more or less, the same method to gut the huge ghost elk as he had demonstrated to Lydia with the jackalope.
The same painful—had the creature been alive—cut to the back passage was made. Then he carefully sliced the skin down the chest until he reached the stomach cavity. He opened the animal up, snapping the bridge to the pelvis as he worked with his bare hands, and then tumbled all the guts out of the carcass. He was careful to remove the kidneys, liver, and heart and place them in a patch of clean snow.
Once that had all been done, Lydia had taken away the guts to be buried, and he had removed the tenderloins, Valdis washed out the inside of the animal with snow. Then, to make the butchering easier, he took a coil of rope from his bag and strung the animal up from a handy tree branch by its neck. The tree gave a little ominous creak but the branch held.
Valdis used his hunting knife to make five simple cuts; up each of the muscled legs, and then another up the brisket, around the neck, and behind the back of the ghost elk’s ears. The beast was so big that Valdis had to stand on a handy tree stump to do the neck, but he managed it in the end.
Once that was done, his hunting knife and enhanced strength allowed him to make quick work of taking off the forelegs at the knees. Glancing over at Lydia, Valdis saw the dark elf give a little shudder as he ripped the forelegs off and then did the same with the rear legs.
Once more Valdis was visited by the thought that, wherever the black haired elf felt most at home, it probably wasn’t in the wilds.
He paused and waited for her to finish securing the second jackalope to the spit.
“Hey,” Valdis called to her once she saw she was done, “this hide will be handy either for us or for trading when it’s cured. Do you want to learn how to take it off the animal?”
To her credit, Lydia dusted off her hands and came over. “Sure, though I think it’s better you do this one and talk me through it. I wouldn’t want to put a hole in it.”
Valdis inclined his head and set to work.
“All right, so, there’s a couple of ways we can do this. One of them is quicker, but usually you need a horse or a mule to help you with it.”
Lydia looked pointedly over at Lorcan. The pooka was sprawled out against the farmhouse wall in a patch of sunshine.
Valdis gave his head a little shake at the sight of the lazing beast. “Never mind him,” he said to the elf. “It’s better how to show you the long way. Just in case you ever need to do this out in the wild lands.”
“Plus, you have the strength of a mule in those arms, anyway, don’t you?” Lydia said.
Valdis inclined his head again. “There is that, but we’ll be taking it slow all the same.”
Lydia gave a theatrical little put that was none the less attractive for being put on.
“Fine,” she said. “Let the learning commence.”
“We’re going to start at the cut I made around the neck,” Valdis said, standing up on the tree trunk and sliding his hunting knife into the incision he’d made. “I want to start peeling back the hide, carefully separating it from the meat as cleanly as possible. Like this, you see? Nice and slow and steady and careful. There’s nothing to be gained by rushing this.”
Lydia’s playful smile had been replaced by a look of utter concentration as she squinted up to watch Valdis’ knife at work.
