The sky was just turning orange, the sun yet to rise, when Barza had managed to arrive at the small wooden palisade that defended the town of Iv that was the closest to her own Ninaide village.

  This time, there were guards patrolling the entrance, and so Barza had to act natural in order to not seem suspicious.

  She gave some time to Tumbly the warhorse to rest up, as she hopped off, Barza’s legs hurting since she wasn’t used to riding horses.

  The redhead had at least been taught not to fall of from one, however she was much more accustomed to working with horses or other animals in the fields, rather than riding them at high speeds.

  Leading forth Tumbly by the reins, his grey mane getting her face with every gust of wind, Barza nevertheless tried to appear as normal as she could be, as she approached a pair of guards that were pretty unhappy from having to exit their warm guardhouses.

  “Who goes there?” said the first guard, and with a surprise, Barza realised it was a woman, even an elderly one.

  “Ain’t seen you before girlie, you from nearby villages?” asked the second guard, this time a youngish man, possibly even more green than Barza.

  Realising that for once fortune smiled upon her, having not chanced upon the guards that knew her or her father, Barza smiled, adopting a most naive look that she could.

  “Oh, it’s just that I had been sent by my mother to acquire some more supplies, that with there being a wedding over at our village.”

  For an added effect, Barza pouted - judging by how the young guard was staring, she was doing a good job selling her story.

  “Wait a moment, something doesn’t add up - we were freezing here all night for the first day on the job, and you should have what, ridden out in the middle of the night to get here at sunrise?” - asked the woman guard, suspicious.

  “Err, well…” thought Barza for a hot moment.

  “Didn’t you two have a carriage pass by here in the middle of the night - well, it was supposed to carry supplies, but then got lost in the snowdrift, the riders decided to start partying a bit early…” Barza then made to skip forward, almost getting into the face of the young man.

  “Please, I really need to make some purchases - and here’s the fee for the passage” said Barza, as she took out a copper coin from her pouch, and gave it to the scowling old maid.

  “Is that horse at least yours? Seems like it would fetch a good coin” threw the elderly woman as they parted ways, Barza finally allowed to get through.

  “Oh, me and this good boy - we are such good friends, although I doubt you would be a guard for long with this kind of attitude, Ma’am” said Barza, in a condescending way, as Tumbly the horse tugged on his reins, as if asking for a snack.

  Her meagre coin supply made even smaller, Barza continued on her way through Iv.

  Rows of wooden two-storied houses lined the streets, as stone buildings all-too expensive, and well, cold in this climate, at least for this small town.

  The streets in the spring always turned mud catastrophes in the making if you were wearing a nice dress, that Barza from the few times that she visited.

  Now though, a film of rather dirty, condensed snow lined the streets, as even now, when people were just starting to wake up, the contents of chamber pots were getting thrown through the windows of second stories, unlucky passerby getting in the splash zone.

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  Thankfully, Barza was very much awake right now, thanks to being from a village where people were already raring to go the moment sun was out, and had hurriedly made her way to the Iv’s town-centre, while there was mostly no-one in the streets besides some homeless folks.

  The green-eyed woman’s destination was that of an Adventurer’s Guild - the place where her father had frequently gone to just to reminisce about the old times, and to sometimes meet the old companions of his.

  Barza’s plans didn’t include registering as an adventurer right of this moment - for once, everyone in Iv’s Guild knew of her, both from the embarrassing stories Gregarius told about her childhood and the familial resemblance both held.

  Which was why Barza was determined to have no one from this branch of Adventurer Guild see her - despite hearing already laughter and sounds of merriment come from within the Guild’s doors that also doubled as an inn and an eater, Barza tied down Tumbly together with few other horses in the small adjacent stable.

  Not many would dare to steal a horse right near the place where armed people stayed, and considering it was an arm, and not a leg that Barza’s father lost, it should maybe be an hour or two before he came running and found Tumbly, all hearty and safe.

  Despite of Tumbly’s neighing and kicking up a fuss for missing on a carrot despite all the hard work he had done, Barza still had to part ways, but not before hugging the loyal horse.

  Turning her hood even lower, Barza had then made for a nearby market, as more and more people emerged from their homesteads, the merchants already setting up their wares and preparing for a busy trading day.

  Barza’s plan, now that she had decided to not risk Tumbly’s wellbeing and was once again without the means of transportation, was to join a departing caravan.

  Not that Barza was altogether too sure about having the right skills for a life on the road, since unfortunately she was a bit daft when it came to music to impersonate a travelling bard, and nor did she have an adventurer’s card to advertise herself for a guard position.

  But nor were any actual caravans, both arriving or departing, nor the gates on the other side of Iv seemed to be open, for some reason.

  Moseying over and trying not to be seen, Barza saw a peculiar, large carriage trundle through the Iv’s exit towards the Kingdom’s heartland.

  Barza had to do a doublestop, as she recognised the drivers of the carriage to be Rotslaann, a kind of humanoids her mother was.

  Legends, as told in the Temple that Barza had to attend here at Iv, was that once upon a time, the humans of one country had chosen to be ruled by Monsters instead of fighting them, and have therefore adapted the features you could see in beasts.

  Barza’s own mother had both horns and a long, strong tail - when Barza was born, it was quite a relief for both of her parents that Barza turned out looking quite normal - at most, her green eyes glowed in the night a bit.

  Nevertheless, there was quite a lot of persecution and suspicion going on with Rotslaan, and this might have been the reason why Barza wasn’t taken to the Temple more frequently, despite it being one of the few places where lots of books were available freely.

  This was why Barza didn’t act all too concerned when the carriage with two Rotslaan rolled by - they were probably adventurers, for both were quite heavily armed, and in their carriage, that was covered with a tarp, Barza could see the outlines of a cage, and hear something large moving in it.

  Perhaps indeed these were the adventurers coming from a quest to capture some sort of a Monster, however the glance the two Rotslaan men gave her was quite unfriendly, one could say even glaring.

  But nevertheless they passed by quickly, seeing the merchants start to appear more in force, before the trading square became unnavigable.

  Barza hurried towards the closed gates, and was even more surprised to see no one there manning the heated guard post, a half-finished card game left on the table - perhaps the guard pair she didn’t meet yet had gone off to notify the captain of the guard about the new arrivals, or something?

  Skipping through the little-known backdoor behind an armament rack that Barza knew thanks to Gregarius having had been a guard Captain of Iv a few years in a row when Barza was small, the redhead once-again resumed her adventure, while taking out a snack and biting into the salty jerky.

  As the town of Iv gradually disappeared as road took a bend, Barza was once again as she had started this little adventure of hers - except now that her father suspected that someone had stolen the family horse, and would be even more perturbed once the news of Barza’s disappearance reached him.

  Hopefully it would give the young woman a few days of respite, so that she could travel far away so that searching for her became a full-time business, maybe her parents coming to understand her choice and let her strike on her own.