Cry for the Wolf, Chapter 5. by Richard Walker

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I dare say, with all due prayers to the Goddess, She Who is Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Beyond Comprehension, that this will give me sufficient time to return. Oh, yes! Mallos has hinted that he should like to see the Eastern Kingdoms as well, so it is likely that ye shall have a chance to meet him. He has been the finest of boon companions. I know ye will like him.
In the meanwhiles, I would take it as the most gentle and charitable gesture if ye would save me the expense and possible delays of a second courier and tell father for me that an acquaintance of ours has been in Meiderhof and made up a consignment for me of 37 tons of metals altogether, in various barrels, rods, blanks, and blumes, for the which he will need a good lot of barrels to ship, in respect of which ye might send a note for £4 or £5, along with three dozen trade packs of Cartesian thread in partial consideration for the good he has done us in this matter. If he can't send the last, I shall have to negotiate for them myself. being farther afield from Meiderhof now than he and lacking the resources he has at his disposal. I've been advised to have the goods packed during midwinter, no later than the start of February, so he'll want to make arrangements before the ghetto closes for the holy season, or face the difficulty of finding a courier to pass yer missives to through barred gates. It's blessed hard to find someone ye can trust with business letters sight unseen. I pray to the Goddess most fervently that he'll be at the quay to see to the receipt of the shipment in his own person, 'lest something go awry. We are advised not to attempt shipping before the end of March, so it would be best to try to get it on to one of the first ships of the spring season, sailing to Fallon for the Shanrian All-Feast. Looking down at all this, it would likely be easier for ye to pass this letter on to Father to read. Benisons and orisons to the Goddess for ye ever after for this great kindness, an it please ye. Otherwise I fear much wealth and material will go to waste, or worse yet, sit and do none any profit.

Written in haste in Andiamo on the shores of the Threndarian Ocean on this sixth day of November, in the ten thousandth, two-hundredth and sixty-ninth year since the Great Flood.
Your poor brother and humble beadsman so long as I shall live, Coris Danse.

P. S : This date is based on the reckoning of the locals, adding the usual differential for our own calendar. They use a different calendar here and I seem to have lost count along the way. I most fervently wish the Goddess would direct me to a merchant who deals directly with the East so I could find out exactly what the difference in the calendars is.

But for the small sounds of Nature, the barely audible whisper of the ceaseless breezes, the broken mournful cry of a lone gull wandered too far inland from the not-too-distant sea, and the steady thip-thump of the hooves of two isolated horsemen's own mounts on the lone dirt track, the air was silence. Nature only minding its own.