Hawk found them another good cave for the night, large enough to be comfortable, but small enough to be easily heated with the door blocked by Rae’s silk.
Tonight, they went one step further, since they were in a snow-covered area, and they had Remi keep a [Blizzard] spell active for half an hour after the entry was covered, obliterating their tracks, and piling snow over the entry points.
This cave had three, which wasn’t optimal, but they were all small enough that the Frost Giants couldn’t get in. That was the important part, as nobody expected the escorts for the supply convoys to be wandering in the woods and looking for hiding spots where ambushers might be waiting for them.
Lotus and Tessa started cooking, which got Tori panicked again, but the two clerics only laughed.
“Hawk is still out scouting, and Rae is in the tree outside. If there is anything coming for us, we will know. There is no reason not to eat well while we’re out in the field, and it saves us from having to return to refill our rations every ten days.
In fact, we haven’t touched any of the ones in our packs, so they’re likely frozen solid right now.” Tessa explained.
Tori nodded. “That’s what happened to ours yesterday. Even after the heater stopped working, the food was still almost cold, but not frozen anymore. We even had to get the priest to create water so we could have something to drink, as we couldn’t thaw our canteens.”
“Your other mages had fire magic, why not just get some heat going? Even if you just defrosted everything first, it would have been better.” Tessa asked, with a gesture to Karl’s sword, which was currently doing double duty as room heater and hot grill for the cooking pots.
The blonde mage giggled and flashed a suggestive smirk at Karl. “Well, nobody in the other team was packing the same sort of impressive weapon that you’ve kept hidden away.”
Dana and Tessa gave her matching disgusted looks, while Karl chuckled and Tori shook her head with a rueful smile. “Sorry, it’s become a force of habit. My mother always told me, use what you’ve got to get what you need, and I might have gone a little bit overboard with the technique.”
Tessa’s frown faded into a malicious smirk, and she laughed as she tossed cut vegetables into the pot. “Might have gone a bit overboard? You nearly got killed because your group only came along hoping to get laid. They didn’t even have any intention of doing their jobs. That’s more than a little overboard. But we won’t hold it against you as long as you are trying to act right.
Our group has a magical contract to travel together for the next year, and we don’t need drama or infighting. Besides, if you lose the favour of the beasts, you’ll lose the strongest defensive magic that we have right now.
We’re happy to have extra hands in battle, but the easy girl routine doesn’t make friends with the clergy.”
Tori looked somewhere between mortified and humiliated, and Karl thought that she might actually bolt out of the cave in embarrassment, but after a moment, she began to calm, and wiped a tear from her eyes as she nodded at the War Cleric.
“I understand. Thank you for keeping me around. You have my word, by the time that we get back to one of the bases, I will have it together. Karl, I apologize for how I am. Dana, I apologize for flirting with your man.”
Now it was Dana’s turn to blush bright red, but she didn’t say anything to refute the accusation.
Lotus put strips of sliced pig meat on a pan, causing a sizzling that distracted everyone.
“I’m glad we got all that out of the way early. Now, the food is almost ready, and then we will set the night watches. I will take the first, who has second?” She asked with an impish grin on her face.
“I will.” Dana agreed.
“And I will take the third shift.” Karl decided.
That would put him on watch when everyone woke up for breakfast, which was the best time to send Hawk out to start their morning scouting missions.
Karl got Rae to attach all the hammocks to the cave walls with her silk, and then turned down the flames on the blade a little, so the back of the cave would stay comfortably warm, but they wouldn’t melt the snow that had built up around the exits after Remi’s blizzard.
“Hammocks? That’s different.” Tori mumbled as they got set up.
“We didn’t bring an extra, but it’s warmer if you share and zip two sleeping bags together. One goes over you, and one under the hammock. Shared body heat makes for a comfortable night.” Lotus suggested.
Ophelia nodded happily. “Then you’re with me. I’m the odd one out, and I was planning to sleep in bear form, but we can share.”
Tori was skeptical about the idea, but once it was time for bed and she unequipped her boots to climb into bed, she learned that there was a reason nobody else had volunteered to welcome Ophelia by swapping spots.
Bear was a hugger, and she had the mage thoroughly wrapped up in the arms of a sleeping berserker thirty seconds later. Fortunately, she didn’t snore, but there was no way that Tori was escaping without a struggle against the superhuman strength of a berserker.
Karl woke up briefly when Dana left for her watch, and then again a few hours later when she woke him to take over.
[Hawk, Rae, have you spotted anything?] Karl asked as his shift came to an end as the sun was about to come up.
[Nothing, just silence. Even the small animals are gone, the blizzard scared them off.] Rae replied from a small fort in the trees outside.
[I will go see where the morning food is.] Hawk replied, meaning the supplies that the Frost Giants would be expecting that morning.
Tessa woke up early to get started on breakfast, carefully sneaking out of her hammock without waking Lotus. Of course, that didn’t last long, as once the small priestess began to get cold without the extra warmth, she was awake as well, but it gave Tessa enough time to get the cooking utensils set out and the oatmeal heating.
“What’s the word from Hawk?” Tessa asked as she chopped the fruit that Lotus was creating.
“Nothing so far. They might have taken a different route than yesterday’s targets as well, so Hawk is still scouting.” Karl shrugged.
For another half hour, Hawk searched before he began to get frustrated.
[They have to be eating something. Where are all the supplies? There aren’t even extra weapons coming down the road.] He ranted as he continued to fly a search pattern over the hills.
“Hawk can’t find anything. There are no unnatural snowstorms, spots where he can’t see the ground, or other issues, there’s just nothing on the road today, and not on any of the other nearby roads.” Karl explained as everyone eagerly awaited a new update.
Tessa took out her notepad and began to write down math calculations on it, periodically looking off into the distance, as if that would help her remember some fact or figure.
“How big do you think the average boar we harvested was, by weight?” She asked.
“About two tonnes, give or take a little. They’re bigger than Thor, and fat.” Karl replied.
She wrote a few more figures, then nodded in satisfaction as she began to add them up.
“You see, Frost Giants don’t eat as much as humans do, compared to their size. Most Magical Beasts don’t. They use mana instead, so they don’t over hunt their territory. With the rough numbers we are getting from the radio on the main line, my calculation is that each of those convoys should have supplied them for two days.
So, there might not be a shipment today because we took out four days worth of their food supply yesterday.” Lotus explained.
Dana looked excited for a moment, then concerned. “Then what do we do today, and what are the odds that a large group comes looking for them?”
Karl considered that. “I would say the odds are it will be a scouting group first, not a large combat unit. They don’t have any reason to think that there is a large military unit here, so they won’t waste resources. As to what we do today, I say we wait.
They will send giants looking for their missing dinner, and we can eliminate those as well.”
