“The first thing you have to do is to practice your ability over and over again until you can control it entirely — just like Anna.”
These aren’t empty words. Then from now on I will start to… Wendy took a deep breath and focused all of her attention on creating the wind.
Although the wind was not perfectly balanced, the sails were still bulging, and under the steady stream of wind, the mast gave off a squeaking sound, and the bow began to turn right.
“It’s really moving!” Carter exclaimed.
“His Royal Highness was able to turn stone into a boat, and let it float on the water,” Sir Pyne laughed and asked, “Is there something he can’t do?”
Little Town moved farther and farther away from the shore, gradually moving towards the middle of the river.
Wendy could produce wind out of nothing, but she wasn’t able to make the existing North wind disappear, so the wind came from two directions, making it impossible to have the ship move in a straight line by only using her power. So, they also had to rely on steering to adjust the direction of the ship. Lightning wasn’t able to teach Brian by words only, this was something Brian had to experience himself. In order to let him master this feeling as soon as possible, the little girl’s first orders were to change the direction of the ship often so that he could learn the relationship between the rotation angle of the steering wheel and the swing of the bow while she herself only made small adjustments.
After navigating for more than one hour over the Redwater River, Wendy wasn’t able to hold on any longer.
It wasn’t that she ran out of magic power, but instead it was her body,that had reached its limit.
Even though her body was wrapped into so many layers that she looked like a dumpling, it still wasn’t able completely resist the invasion of the cold wind. A layer of snow had already accumulated on top of her cotton cap and she already could no longer feel her hands and feet while standing on the shaky roof. If it wasn’t for Lightning who saw her sway strangely, maybe she would have fallen into coma.
So Lightning quickly flew towards Wendy and seized her body while shouting to Brian that he should sail back towards the docks.
The latter steered the wheel into the right direction, letting the ship slowly turn leftwards. Lightning flew down from the cabin while carrying Wendy. Down on the deck, they only had the sails to save them from the wind, but at least it wasn’t as cold as before so they were able to save their body temperature. Moreover, when they wanted to reach the shore, it would need a person with fine control, and Lightning would never dare to let a rooky take over this important task — even though she had never done it herself.
When they finally landed and the river bank collided with the hull, creating a loud sound, all the people’s hearts on board began to race. Even though it sounded alarming when the hull collided with the shore, it didn’t look too bad in the end. The sailor quickly folded the sails together and put up a gangplank to climb ashore.
Fortunately, they weren’t able to sail in a straight line during their trial journey, so thanks to their U-turn training on the spacious river, they weren’t so far away from Border Town.
Lightning flew towards the castle while carrying Wendy. Carter looked at the stone ship and loudly sighed. Without the help of a witch, he didn’t want to try to sail the ship back to the docks.
Chapter 83 The Northern Coachman
Winter was the time of no harvest for most people of the North, especially near the Hermes Plateau. The Months of the Demons not only brought endless wind and snow but furthermore brought cold, hunger, and death. However, for “False Leg” White, Winter meant something different. Every winter, the Church’s envoy would come to his door to let him drive several turns to the west border of the kingdom. On the way to the border, he would collect suffering orphans with his carriage and bring them to the old Holy City.
For him, this was a good deal since he would almost earn twenty silver royals for each trip to the border. What was even better was that he could also accumulate merits of doing good work. It was almost the end of this year’s Months of the Demons, so this turn should be the last run of this season.
“Your honor, please go back to the carriage and stay inside. Outside, it will still snow for a long time, so you don’t need to eat the wind and drink the snow every day like I do you aren’t allowed to freeze.”
“This is nothing,” the Church’s messenger contradicted White and took a big gulp out of his jug before continuing, “In the new Holy City it can be much colder than it is here. At the plateau, leather clothes and armor aren’t able to stop the cold. If you are there, the cold will come through every opening and drill into every part of your body. Without the usage of cold pills, no ordinary people can survive at that place.
“What you said should be right,” White nodded, he hadn’t been to the new Holy City, and he also didn’t plan to go there. Since only the cold and the demonic beasts existed there, why should I go there? However, as an experienced coachman, it was easy for him to find another topic to speak about, a subject that would be preferred by the envoy. “Your gloves should be made from the leather of the wolves native to the west border of the Kingdom of Graycastle, right?”
“Oh? You can see that?”
“Hey, my lord, I’ve been doing this work for thirty years,” White proudly said, “first for the baron, then for the countess, and later even for the Wolfsheart Kingdom’s little princess. If it were not for the accident when I broke my legs, maybe I would still be working for the count’s house. They had nothing besides plenty of gold royals and paid excellently for Graycastles’s fur and silverware, jewelry from the Kingdom of Eternal Winter, and the fjord’s handicrafts. They demanded so much that I could never deliver enough.”
“So,” the Ambassador nodded, “this is the origin of your nickname? In what kind of accident were you involved in?”
“Well, it was a refugee riot. The group of thugs didn’t stop for anything as long as they could get something to eat from it,” White disdainfully answered. He spat on the ground, “When they surrounded the carriage, I had no other choice than to urge the horse to run if I wanted to save the countess. But, it got frightened, threw me down, and turned over the carriage.
“So you broke your leg?” the Ambassador curiously asked, “but what happened to the countess?”
“She got away since there were many cushions and thick quilts inside the carriage, so she got some light bruises,” White barked, “She just crawled out of the carriage and left me on the road to die. On my broken leg, I dragged my body home.” He slapped his hand against the brass stick that showed from under his cut-off trousers.” However, the count’s house threw me out on the pretext that I could not drive anymore, those damn aristocrats!”
“What a pity,” the Ambassador paused, “but God did not abandon you, now you are driving for the Church.”
“Yes sir.” Answered White, but inside, he thought, No. If God were merciful, he wouldn’t let me do this. Instead, he would have saved me when I needed him the most.
At this moment, the cry of a young girl could be heard. “We need a little pause.”
Hearing this, White pulled at the reins so that the two horses gradually stopped. At the moment the carriage had stopped, the ambassador jumped down and went to its back. Soon, a whip crack could be heard from behind the carriage.