Kinderling 39

 In case you are interested in starting this story at the beginning, Kinderling 1 can be found here:

The Tricycle of Thought: Kinderling 1

Please don't judge the story or the writing too harshly, this story is written with little to no editing.  It is just meant to get me writing regularly for practice.  

Now back to our story, already in progress...

Not knowing what else to do, because I sure hadn't come up with a plan and if Flower had one, she wasn't talking, we decided to follow the slaves.  

Well, I decided, and Flower followed along without trying to stop me, so I took that as a "we decided".

The platoon marched the slaves down the road South, which had them pass not far from where Flower and I were hiding.   Each slave was manacled and they were all chained together in a string.  Flower and I kept to the rocks paralleling the road.  That put us walking and climbing over rocky, uneven ground, but the slaves looked to be in poor shape, so they were slow.  

Of the platoon, one squad of Gorf soldiers marched ahead of the slaves, and one squad marched behind.  The third squad walked on either side of the slaves and prodded them along to keep them moving.  Like usual, the platoon was accompanied by three better dressed Gorfs who were in charge.  Also like usual, the Gorf soldiers were mostly dull, staring off into nothing.  It seemed to me like this platoon was even worse than the others I had seen, and definitely worse than the Gorf soldiers I saw in the village.

After about an hour's march, one of the Gorfs in charge called a halt in front of a cave entrance and the slaves were marched inside.

"That cave must be larger than it looks from the outside, because they all fit inside."  I said.

"Grumble grumble." Flower said, although it did sound like an agreeable grumble grumble.  Still, for all I knew she was saying how dumb it was to judge the size of a cave by the cave opening.  Flower didn't roll here eyes or anything, so I'll go with agreement.

We found an out of the way vantage point and sat and watched.  There wasn't a lot to see.  The Gorf leaders came out every so often and then went back in.  They didn't go anywhere or do anything, so I could only guess they were coming out for air.  

"At least we know they haven't gone anywhere."  I whispered to Flower. 

I kept trying to come up with a plan.  Could we sneak in and hide among the slaves?  Could we attack?  I still had my arrow chucker and some arrows.  What would happen if I managed to kill the three overseers?  Would that render the Gorf soldiers useless, or get everyone killed?

A few hours later, the Gorf soldiers, slaves, and overseers all came out.  The slaves, still shackled in a line, each carried a sack on their back that were bulging full of something.  The overseers efficiently got them all into line and the precession started on it's way back up the road from which it came.

Once they were out of sight I scurried over to the cave entrance and entered.  The cave itself wasn't very large, but lead to an excavated tunnel that sloped down into the mountain.  The slope wasn't too bad, so it was easy for Flower and I to follow although not far in, it started to get dark as the light from the cave entrance didn't reach this far back.  I pulled one of my lights from my pack and we proceeded down.

I knew what this place was before we reached the bottom.  Mushrooms have a distinctive smell, and it's one that any Kinderling would recognize.  So far I don't think I know enough about Gorfs.  I know very little in fact, but one thing I do know is that Gorfs and Kinderlings share a love of Mushrooms.  At the bottom of the tunnel, there was a huge natural cavern housing a sizable mushroom farm.  And I can tell you, this mushroom farm was impressive.  There was an underground stream flowing down the middle of the cavern, providing just the right amount of moisture, and the Mushroom beds were bursting with mushrooms.

Now I'm no mushroom farmer, and I'm barely a passable cook.  However, I do know some good mushrooms when I see them.  Mizzy went through a phase last year where she went out and got the best of the best mushrooms to hone her cooking skills with.  Of course, she used me as a very willing stand-in test husband as she often did when expanding her cooking skills.  She said it had to do with knowing that I wouldn't lie to save her feelings.  I never had to, Mizzy is probably one of the best cooks I have ever known.  After the meal, she laughed when I proposed, knowing that I was joking.  I did that a lot.

As I looked over the farm, I started to recognize some of the mushrooms being grown.  This place was a veritable smorgasbord of all the very best mushrooms.  Here were Goldencaps, there were Towering Bonnets.  I saw a variety I didn't recognize but by the way Flower was staring at them in awe, they had to be good.  I went over and took a sniff and almost giggled.  The first thing I thought of was taking some home to Mizzy, the second was wondering how to get some spores to take back to Bez for the mushroom garden under the garrison.

A closer look around, and I could see how and where these mushrooms were being carefully harvested.  I can imagine, my first instinct would be to just chop a big path through the middle, alternately stuffing mushrooms into a bag and into my mouth.  These weren't harvested that way.  They seem to be being harvested by someone who really knew what they were doing.  Picking each mushroom specifically based upon I had no idea what criteria.

"Flower, our food supplies are low, we should take some." I said, "But we need to be careful not to make a mess of it since we don't know when someone might be back, and we don't want to give away that we were here."

Nod.

I took out my small knife and got ready to try to emulate the care that was used by those who were here before me.  Who did the harvesting?  The Gorf soldiers wouldn't have been able to do this, I get the impression they are only able to accomplish simple tasks while being controlled by the harness.   and I don't think it would have been the Overseers, they were outside too often and didn't look to be the type that likes getting their hands dirty.  That left the slaves.

Flower's people are Forest Gorfs.  Nothing wrong with that, but being Forest Gorfs they don't have the background.  Flower obviously recognized some of the swankier mushrooms, but that almost had to be Watcher's influence.  Unless her tribe was unique among the Forest Gorfs, they wouldn't have farmed mushrooms, they would have found them in the forest using their noses.

I found a nice out-of-the-way batch of mushrooms - some Brown Caps that were familiar because they were a family favorite - and carefully gathered enough to fill my small backpack.  It would only be enough to last us a couple days. Hopefully that would be enough, or we could come back for more.  I thought about fashioning my spare shirt into a bag and taking more, but decided not to be greedy.  Besides, looking at myself, with how smelly and tattered my clothes were at this point I would probably be needing that shirt before long.

As I was finishing up packing the mushrooms, and fretting over dirty shirts, I got grabbed from behind and dragged behind one of the mushroom beds.  I was about to start fighting for all I was worth, when I recognized Flowers sniff-grumble in my ear.  

With that, I hurriedly shut off my light and went limp and quiet.  Flower wouldn't have grabbed me and dragged me behind something for no reason, and I was pretty sure that reason wasn't going to be that she remembered her long-lost forest Gorf love for Kinderling stew.  She didn't even have a stewpot.

As I listened, I noticed the sounds of Gorfs and the clank of chains.  The slaves were back!  We were in deep trouble.

Glancing around, Flower motioned me to follow and crawled deeper into the cavern.  The whole cavern was covered in mushroom beds, and I quickly gathered that what Flower had in mind is if we hid behind the mushroom bed in the very back of the cavern, maybe we wouldn't be seen.

We managed to find what I hoped was a good hiding place in some rocks beyond the last mushroom bed.  It was also a pretty good place to observe what was going on in the cavern.  We couldn't see the whole cavern, but we could see enough.  The Gorf soldiers removed the chain that tied the slaves to each other, but each slave still had chains on their hands and feet.  The Kinderling slaves, the two Dwarves, and a couple of the Gorf slaves were going from mushroom bed to mushroom bed, using a small implement to harvest  mushrooms that were ready.  Then they deposited the mushrooms into sacks carried by one of the other slaves.  Nobody spoke much, just pick, deposit, as if they had been doing this job every day of their lives.

"Hey, what ya got there?" came a quiet, male Kinderling voice.  I startled and almost screamed, but managed to stifle it.  One of the Kinderling slaves had managed to sneak up on us!  Flower looked like she was ready to brain the guy with a rock.  

"Flower wait!"  I whispered, holding my hand out in front of her.

"Are you going to turn us in?"  I whispered to the Kinderling slave.

"Not if you're here to rescue me, although you're noting but a wee slip of a girl, so I don't have a lot of hope."  He said.  The Kinderling had as odd accent, and I didn't recognize him from the village.  I didn't know everyone from village, but I could usually recognize people when I saw them.  This guy didn't even sound like he came from the village.  I had never heard anyone talk like that.  

"Who are you?  Where do you come from?"  I asked.

"No time for that lady,"  He said.  "The soldiers don't come all the way back here all that often, but they will eventually notice I'm not where I'm supposed to be.  Stay hidden back here until we are gone and get out of here... come back with an army if you can and rescue us."

"And I wouldn't be caught with those mushrooms if I were you, the Gorf King does not like when anyone touches his stuff.  Last guy caught poaching mushrooms was skinned alive, quite literally."

With that, he walked off and started picking mushrooms again.