Chapter 138: Chapter 121 – Trip towards the Tundras

"Head towards the south-east in Jötunberg, and you shall find the land where trees refuse to grow. A land of ice and snow, where only summer allowed any warmth to pass through the clouds, and even then just for a brief few months. Yet deep in these frozen lands, lie some of the most beautiful sights known to man, where the glaciers and frozen waterfalls form a wonder of nature, a palace of ice in the land of winter." - Harald Steffenson, Jötunbergian explorer and bard.

 

For this journey into Jötunberg, Cal had set a different itinerary than usual after they left Flokisvet on their fifth day after arrival. When she was younger, her father's tales of the lands he travelled had always been her favorite, and one of his favorite memories were of the waterfalls of Madginfjord, deep in the tundras.

 

She wished to lay eyes on such a sight herself, and thus the itinerary she had set were a straight course towards the tundras. If the maps were correct, they would only pass a city shortly before they reached the tundras itself, and the rest of the trip would be mostly through wilderness, other than the occassional villages along the way.

 

For Elaina and Sidonie, she had rented mounts - the mounts were to be returned on a different branch of the company in the city they will pass -, since otherwise she would have needed to slow her pace too much. The mounts commonly used in the warmer regions of Jötunberg were reindeers, and the two she rented for her nieces were docile and well tamed.

 

As mounts went, the reindeers were not quite as fast of horses, but they had superior stamina, and easily maintained a fast trot all day long. Cal easily kept up with her nieces on foot, whereas her nieces gingerly massaged their thighs and buttocks after a day's ride, as they were quite unused to riding that long.

 

They spent dinner feasting on simple but hearty fare, and spent the night in Cal's tent, which was more than large enough for all three of them together. Her tent was enchanted with wards and alarms however, not against heat and cold. Cal found the cold temperature just pleasant for her, but her nieces were cold and slept while they cuddled each other for warmth.

 

As they continued on their journey, they spent most of their nights outside in a tent, while occasionally they rested in a village when their path happened to cross one.

 

The two week journey itself was relatively uneventful. The only time some wildlife bothered them was when a local variant of a wyvern - more akin to the sort Cal saw back at Knallzog, a winged lizard with long neck and tail - tried to snatch one of their mounts.

 

Instead, Elaina and Sidonie brought the wyvern down efficiently with a well-thrown pair of magically charged javelins, which tore apart the beast's wings right at their bases. Cal had not even needed to lift a finger, as her nieces struck the creature while it dove at them, and the fall instantly broke its neck and ended its life.

 

They had wyvern meat for dinner that night, and this local variant proved to be a more delectable one as well, as it had plenty of stored fat which it would have needed as insulation to survive the cold. Unlike its cold blooded Alcidean brethren, this wyvern was warm blooded.

 

Its fatty meat tasted excellent though, and the three of them thoroughly enjoyed their feast. Despite the simple cooking - the meat was simply broiled with some dry spices rubbed on it -, the fatty, marbled meat proved to be an unctuous treat that melted in their mouths, and coated their tongues in its sweet savoriness.

 

Cal had also tried to grill a skewer of the creature's thick, nearly transparent fat, and when she bit into the result, she nearly moaned with pleasure. The fat was sweet and rich, and tasted far milder than most she had ever tasted. After she gave Elaina and Sidonie a taste of it, they immediately agreed with one another and roasted more of the wyvern fat.

 

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Nights like these just made Cal glad she insisted that they harvest the wyvern for its meat and other valuables earlier, as training for her nieces, as well as to ingrain the habit into them.

 

On the fifteenth day they arrived at Vanirsdain, a city in the jarldom of Hevos. Once inside the city, they turned in their hired reindeer to a local branch of the same company they hired them from.

 

Cal and her nieces spent another two days in town, as they gathered information for the next leg of their journey. It would be approximately another two weeks of travel to reach Madginfjord, as the famed waterfall was located close to the south-eastern end of Jötunberg. They would reach it right at the tail end of summer, but the locals assured them that the sight was worth it regardless of season.

 

This time, the mounts she rented for her nieces were a pair of large goats, easily the size of smaller horses. The goats would prove far more useful in the tundra, as they were not only capable of scaling mountains, but were also the very antithesis of picky eaters.

 

Compared to the reindeers, the goats were faster, but they also had less stamina. Cal divided their trip into two legs, one in the morning, followed by lunch and a few hours of rest for the mounts, then another until the sun had set. They kept a good pace that way without unduly tiring their mounts.

 

Where the plains were cool and windy, the tundras were biting cold, and the winds blew with violence. The treeless land merely had resilient strains of grass and shrubs growing there, as well as various moss and lichen that prospered on the surface of the rocks.

 

The goats ate all of those happily, which was one reason they were amongst the favored mounts for the region.

As the cold got worse, Elaina and Sidonie shivered even with their warm winter wear on, though for Cal it was just a refreshing breeze. Late in the night, as they went to bed in her tent, both girls basically intertwined with one another for warmth.

Cal smiled warmly as she looked at the sleeping girls with fondness in her eyes, and fished out a well-treated bear's pelt - one she had hunted early on in her journey, that her orcish hosts at the time insisted her to keep - and covered the girls with the warm pelt as a blanket.

 

She herself then tucked in for the night and fell sound asleep on her own bed.

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