The men might want to peek up her skirts he knew. Tor did, as inappropriate as it would be, so who could blame them for just glancing up? She went to change and apparently had to dig through her own trunk to find something that would work. It took a while at least. It wasn’t until they got outside that he realized she was clearly scared half out of her mind.
“Oh! You rode in the transport so well yesterday that it didn’t even occur to me that you might be afraid of heights or flying… I…” Tor didn’t want to shame her in public or anything. She should learn to fly anyway, it was a good skill to have, and when you noticed a fear it always paid to face it down, but maybe they could go a ways beyond the wall to practice, so no one would hear if she screamed or cried or something.
“It’s not that. It’s just… I know I kind of said that you needed to pay attention to people that were making overtures towards you but I didn’t mean you had to give me a gift like this. It’s… Thousands of golds worth of stuff Tor. I just meant that you should flirt back a little, or have sex with a few people. Or at least hint that you might be interested… Give out a few more hugs or something.”
Tor shrugged.
“Relative value Ursala. To me what you’re wearing represents about a quarter silvers worth of materials and about twenty minutes worth of time, once I break it all down. A few pennies of leather and some twine. Less than that really. A nice flower arrangement would cost about the same or more in the Capital.” He grinned.
“Besides, if you’re willing and Sara isn’t back when we finish up you can explain some of this sex stuff to me. That’s certainly worth this little bit of junk, information is priceless after all.”
For some reason that Tor didn’t understand, his attempt at “playing back” got a low and meaningful chuckle from the girl.
“Alright. I think we can work something out in… trade, that way if you want.”
Tor didn’t know for certain, but he suspected she wasn’t talking about the same thing he was at all.
Chapter fourteen
Ursala wasn’t bad in the air, once she’d agreed that trading whatever it was she intended as an exchange, was of equal value to what he’d given her. To distract the Countess he told her about how he’d managed to get himself trapped in a tub earlier with two of the women of industry.
“Ha! Oh Tor. You told them that? I…” She laughed a little as she floated in the air about five hundred feet up. They’d already made a large circle of the area, practiced turns and landed several times for the exercise of it. This hovering was mainly so that she could get used to just being up in the air. He’d found that raw time was the best thing for getting people used to being up high and trusting the gear.
“That’s really sweet… Um, who’s that?” She started to point with her left hand and shot forward and down a little bit before she recovered, nearly half a mile away. Unconcerned, Tor followed. Ramming full speed into the ground would suck, but she pulled up well enough before anything could happen. Ursala even slowed down smoothly enough that the whole thing probably looked like she’d done it on purpose from the ground. Tor grinned at her back.
While they’d been circling a decently large group of people had set down in front of the large gate. They’d probably flown in, Tor realized, because if they’d been in wagons or walking he would have seen them on their last pass, probably all their passes. Out here any movement on the ground kicked up dust, even a group of people walking.
They were all large, and wearing half a dozen different kinds of clothing, mainly types of fighting leathers. The man in front was slowly walking forward towards Godfrey, who’d come out to meet him, backed by about fifty men in black military uniforms that all had excavation units on, holding them like they were weapons.
They wouldn’t make wonderful projectile devices, but then anyone holding a metal object towards you with a field on it could be ready for anything. He still had a “poison detector” that would make any sane person run in fear if they knew about it. Or soil themselves. It was around his neck on a cord if he needed it. Right now though, strangers or not, politeness seemed to be in order. After all, if they were as big as they all looked, and flew in, they’d have to be nobles.
As he approached, wearing the old student browns he’d put on to go and bake earlier, he waved the much more attractively dressed Ursala to set down behind him. He hoped he didn’t have to tell her to keep her shield on right now. She wasn’t stupid, but there was an off chance that she might think of the shield as being something only for flying. Rolph always kind of did, and Tor had flat out told him to start wearing his shield most of the time. Fake masked Wensa had taught Tor that lesson well enough at least.
He was out of line of sight when he set down, just inside the wall. That way he could walk out and not spook anyone overly, dropping on them from above. When Tor got about fifty feet away he caught the sound of a familiar voice, even if the face was obscured by black cloth covered backs of the men standing in a long single line in front of him.
“We mean no harm and only wondered if you might have food or water that we could buy. We don’t have vast resources right now, so anything would help. Thank you.”
Tor patted one of the men on the shoulder so that he’d step out of the way, looking a little scared he looked down and seeing who it was smiled.
“Thank god. We can let the wizard handle these monsters. What are we supposed to do, build them furniture?” The man muttered softly. Looking down Tor noticed that this man had a concentrator on, probably having scrambled straight from work doing exactly that. Tor nodded and spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“Yes. They’re friends, don’t worry.”
Ursala didn’t miss a step and walked up right behind him, which normally would have been incredibly stupid, but should work out all right this time.
Tor didn’t scurry up, as much as he wanted too. Everyone seemed tense for some reason right now, so he ambled slowly a smile on his face. When he got next to Godfrey he nudged the man’s arm slightly with his hand. The guy jumped, but not having a weapon didn’t try to kill him or anything. Good, that would have looked awkward.
“Hey everyone! Looks like you made it in good time. We don’t have time today to build proper structures to house you all, or well, maybe we do, it doesn’t take that long, but if not, we’ll have to squeeze you all in someplace or have you camp out for the night. Sorry about that. Oh, um, everyone,” He waved at the combat giants, most of whom he knew from school and included Kolb in the gesture, since Tor knew him better, or at least longer, than some of the others.
“This is the military base commander who lives at my house. Major Godfrey. Really nice guy. Clever too. Try to get him to take you up in one of the transports if you get a chance, it’s even faster than flying yourself. Godfrey and um, everyone else?” Tor waved at the fifty men behind him, calling out a little loudly so that they might all hear. He still wasn’t up to producing really good volume, his lungs not having fully recovered from the poison yet.
“Well, you can all introduce yourselves, since we’re all friends here, don’t be shy about it or anything. This man out in front is Baron third, Martin Kolbrin. He’s also a Knight and one of the toughest fighters in the kingdom. More to the point, he’s one of the very best trainers in the kingdom as far as that goes, possibly the world. We, ah, didn’t know these people would be by this soon, but the King wants them to set up a special training division here, so we need to build that on to the back. I’ll be going out in the next few days to, uh, make sure we have the water we need and make sure the King is all up to date on this.”