The Unicorn's Forest

"Tchisa, got some new intel," a woman with dark green hair and a single light blue eye said, startling Tchisa out of her nap.

"This better be good," she warned softly. "You know how hard it is to get a good nap around here."

"My apologies, but the Duchess Versith is sending a merchant caravan north with a batch of young slaves for the market and another merchant is heading down to Versith's duchy with the usual fare," the woman said, backing towards the entrance of the cave.

"And when are they supposed to pass us by, Riewis?" Tchisa asked, closing her purple eyes again, briefly wondering if she should brush out her silver hair. "After all, that other slave caravan you said was supposed to be heading south never showed up."

"My apologies, but I still have no idea what happened. It's like they just vanished. The only person we saw at that time was that single girl heading towards Veristh's duchy."

"Yes, I'm aware of what we saw. I was there, but you're not telling me when they're supposed to pass us by."

"Of course," Riewis said turning to look out of the small cave they'd been using for an occasional waypoint in the Forest of the Lost. "The caravan heading south should be here in a week while the caravan heading north should be by in a few days."

"Any information on if they have any good slaves? Or are they the usual fare that's heading up to the auction by the capital to see how much they'd fetch?"

"All I could gather was what the basic wares were. Though, from the looks of it, mostly smaller children, so there's unlikely to be anything of any real interest to us. Unless you want to try your hand at the slave trade."

Tchisa got up from where she was laying swiftly, to the point it almost seemed like she merely used magic to move to anyone who might have been watching. "We might as well see what there is," Tchisa said, grinning. "You never know what you might find among children."

"Do you plan on striking both of them?"

Tchisa considered the idea for a moment before shaking her head as she started to stretch. "No. If we did that, we might as well announce we're in this forest to stay. If the queen is able to fill that job with a mercenary company, you can bet they'd likely start hunting us down if we did things like that."

"That request has been up for years," Riewis argued, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "No one wants to risk getting taken by the Lost."

"Then what're we doing here?" Tchisa asked dryly. "If we're not scared of the Lost, it's only a matter of time before a mercenary company appears that isn't either. The only problem with that is we don't know when that might happen."

Riewis shook her head. "You realize that kind of talk is just going to keep us from living the good life, don't you? Most of the time we're barely scraping by with what we're able to sell from what we can get. If we took both caravans, I bet we could be set for a month at least."

Tchisa shook her head sadly. "If we did that, you can bet the duchess would send her soldiers up here and you know they're not afraid of the Lost."

Riewis scoffed at the mention of the Lost. "You know as well as I do that the Lost were made up. Probably to explain why someone got lost in there and ended up missing for half their life after that."

"No, the Lost are real, I'm sure of it," Tchisa commented, her gaze growing distant.

"And there you go again. Saying stuff like that," Riewis complained. "If you keep that up, we're going to need to find a whole new band again."

Tchisa shook her head. "Don't worry. I've learned my lesson from last time. They're not going to go anywhere this time."

"Killing any of them isn't going to keep the rest from leaving. It'll only get them to leave faster."

Tchisa laughed. "I'm not talking about that. I just know none of them have even thought of trying to leave just yet. When one of them does, I'll pull her to the side to talk with her about it. Convince her why it's in her best interest to stay with us."

Riewis sighed. "And there you go talking like that again. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear you had wild magic."

Tchisa shrugged as she finished stretching. "Maybe I do. Half the time I don't even know how I know some of the things I do. Other than the fact that I can even see that right now you're thinking of that twig from the last village we last scouted out before those soldiers got stationed near it."

Riewis glared at Tchisa. "I was not," she protested indignantly. "I was thinking about what I'd like to do once I'm able to get a nice fat purse to work with."

Tchisa laughed. "Yeah, with that twig, I'm sure. Though, you know as well as I do, when I know these things, they're real. They're not just me playing around or just guessing. Not with how many times I've been proven right. If that was just chance, then-

"Tchisa, Jiasha just returned. She said she thinks she found the missing caravan," a voice called out from outside the cave. One of the young women they'd put on lookout duty.

Tchisa thought for a moment, trying to see if she could learn that information the ways she sometimes was able to, but nothing came to her at the moment. "Well, should we take a look?" she asked Riewis, gently pushing past her at the cave entrance.

"Would it matter if I said 'no?'" Riewis asked rhetorically as she followed Tchisa.

While she didn't care for the disrespect in Riewis' tone, Tchisa didn't care enough to say or do anything about it. Not when she was her second in command. Part of which kind of required her to question every decision Tchisa made. At least, so long as she didn't do it in front of the ret of their band.

Yet, even though she'd said what she had about the forest and the Lost, she hadn't told anyone, but just being in the forest creeped her out. She couldn't say if it was from the lack of animals she could see in the forest, despite being able to hear them. It sometimes seemed like hey were merely always out of sight.

"You know, maybe we should cut one or two of these trees down," Riewis commented as they walked towards where their sentry was located. "No one could question where we got the blackwood from. Not to mention just how much there would be. It might even be enough for the entire band to live in comfort for an entire year."

Tchisa paused and looked up at one of the giant trees. "Do you want to make the effort to do that?"

Riewis felt her breath catch in her throat. Of course she wouldn't care to do that herself. That would take a lot more effort than she'd care to expend at all. Not to mention what kinds of tools they'd likely require to be cut down in the first place.

Tchisa didn't care if Riewis replied or not. She was the person who knew Tchisa the most, the only person she would be willing to call a friend. Even though shew as confident that Riewis would one day turn on her. Just like everyone else she'd known in her life had.

When they reached the sentry, Tchisa saw the girl, just barely old enough to be able to hold a sword, let along use it, standing next to the sentry trying to catch her breath.

"What'd you find?" Tchisa asked, not caring the girl was having trouble speaking. After all, no one had shown her that courtesy before. So, why should she worry about it doing that for others?

Tchisa knew the girl was aware her thoughts on the matter, so she wasn't surprised when the girl started gasping words out in-between breaths. "Wagons…empty…no one… even… bodies… there."

Tchisa partly wondered if she maybe should have let the girl finish catching her breath since almost her entire sentence didn't make any sense. At least other than the fact that the wagons had been left empty. Though, even that almost didn't make sense to her.

Why would the wagons have just been left abandoned in the middle of this forest? Not to mention where those slaves that were supposed to be in those wagons. They couldn't just disappear into thin air, right?

"Get her something to eat. I'll want her to tell me exactly what she saw later on," Tchisa ordered, not caring who carried her order out. As long as someone did, then she'd be able to avoid exacting a price from those who thought that her orders were optional or mere suggestions.

"If those wagons were left empty, then we should probably get an ambush set up before they'd reach those wagons. It might make them raise their guard. While the caravan coming from the north we should just ignore this time."

"Forgive me for saying this, but you know those slaves aren't going to be worth near as much as what that other caravan holds. The merchant might even have a solid supply of coins for us to procure."

Tchisa shook her head. "It might be the better idea, but we'd have to head north ourselves and try to get an ambush setup before they'd reach where those wagons are supposed to be."

"What if the slaves are too heavily guarded?" Riewis asked, recalling a few times they'd had to abort an attack from that reason alone.

"Then we'll need to leave the forest again. North of the forest would be the best place, I think. There's more caravans that can be found there than south of the forest."

Whatever else happened, she was confident that they'd be able to find something when they left the forest. Though, the main reason she didn't was because she hadn't been able to find a good enough place to hide outside the forest as within it. Besides, they'd only been in this forest a couple of weeks. They'd known that the duchess was going to have the slaves she'd purchased at the last auction heading down through here.

Only as that caravan seems to have disappeared, she wasn't sure what that might mean overall. Even if another group of bandits got the drop on them, there'd at least be signs of it. Not just empty wagons and no bodies. That was something straight out of old stories told around a bar with good drink flowing. Not out in some unknown place along the road in the Forest of the Lost.

Still, like many things in her life, Tchisa could only take them one at a time. When they came up for her to deal with. Just like she'd taken everything one day at a time. Ever since she'd returned to her home after having been taken by the Lost.

_

After a week of getting a feel for everything that's being done for the settlement, Jenn feels like she has a good idea of where they might be able to improve on things. Such as when she'd found the plants that were like the breadfruit she'd once heard Wes mention out of the book 'Mysterious Island' by Jules Verne. The only difference between this and what she'd learned about breadfruit since then was that this was clearly not a tropical plant, nor did it grow on anything resembling a tree. Instead, it grew more like radishes and onions with a bulbous root where the starchy part was that was easy enough to grind into a flour.

The find was almost in the middle of the area they were currently developing and had nearly been destroyed without them realizing how useful it would be for their food supply. Not to mention that they'd been able to secure a good number of seeds from those plants, which was something they could plant when they had a better sense of the seasons of this world.

Other than that, Jenn still hadn't been able to work out a way to resolve a few of the other problems that they'd been facing. Such as the lack of a source of metal for them to work with as well as hardwoods to use in construction as well as tools. Jenn suspected that part of the problem was that they weren't going out very far to look. Mostly they wouldn't go out so far that they couldn't return on that same day. Which rather limited the area they'd be able to look.

While Jenn understood the reasons behind not going farther, she had a feeling that they wouldn't be able to find any of those materials until they ventured farther out than they had yet done. Which meant that she'd need to get them to accept the need to travel farther than they had been comfortable with.

Though, that felt like it was going to take a good amount of time on its own. As unless Jenn herself directed it, no one seemed to want to split off from the rest of the group. Which didn't make any real sense to her, nor was it something that she had been able to come up with a way to change.

Then the other part that had happened was that a herd of horses had been seen near the settlement. While Laer mentioned to her about them being able to sell the horses for a good amount of cash, Jenn had other thoughts in mind about them.

Such as if they could domesticate the horses, then she could see them helping with farming and other simple tasks that would benefit the entire settlement. Not that anyone else seemed to understand how that would work. As the general assessment had been that the horses were only good to be used as a military creature.

Which made it another item Jenn knew she'd have to work at to get others to understand just how they could be used in other means. Which merely had been something she knew about from another book that she had once read with her mother, back when she was in elementary school. While the book was about something else, the part that she was thinking of had to do with 'horse collars' and how that would put the weight on the horse's shoulders. Which then would allow it to work more efficiently than the methods that Jenn could see available to these people. As the book had mentioned that the horse collars were what allowed the horse to become used in more than military affairs.

Given that horses frequently roughly five times as strong as a person, but at five times as much as well. Yet, when the weight was put on their shoulders, they were able to handle a lot more than they had before. Which was what Jenn was hoping to be able to recreate here.

The only problem Jenn had was that she hadn't a clue as to how a horse collar would be made. Just that it was something that would help these people out a lot, whether they realized it right now or not.

Yet, despite that, Jenn felt her time would be better spent at the moment to do her best to start working on other things. Such as recruiting a band of bandits to join so their numbers could increase and some of Jenn's other plans could start to move forward.

Besides, she'd already given approval for the people to try and catch the horses while she was gone. Though, she partly wondered what methods they might try. Partly out of curiosity and partly because while she had ideas of her own, she didn't want to limit their thinking for fear that she might inadvertently make them reliant on her more than they already seemed.

The people who had been going out hunting had occasionally found a few animals, though the horses were the largest seem so far. Although, predators hadn't been seen either. Which Jenn hoped wasn't something that would be a problem later on, such as if this was an area that could have avalanches or other natural disasters commonly occur. Despite the growth of the trees around the area, at least.

Jenn had also made it clear to the others that she wanted to leave the next morning, to search for a band of bandits to recruit, but she seemed to be encountering difficulties with that declaration as a result. She couldn't help but wonder if it was because the people there were uneasy about letting her go out where they felt she could get hurt. She knew that she'd have to take risks with some of her ideas, but she had a feeling that while these people were willing to let her decide any number of things, they weren't happy with the thought of her going into any amount of danger. Not that she could argue that point, given she didn't like walking into danger herself.

However, she had a feeling that whatever might come down the road, it would at least be helpful to this settlement for them to become comfortable with her taking these measured risks. If only so that she didn't become a prisoner here, as she had been feeling like that a little during the past week at times.

"You can't go," Jianopra complained as Jenn was checking the supplies she'd had them set aside for the trip in the building where things seemed to be centered in the settlement. "You haven't even gotten what you said you would about how we could know who would be in charge while you're gone."