Road to the Crown

9th march 1574

Just like I expected, reaching the city of Mielec while having a spare riding horse each, wasn't a task posing any real difficulty for either us or the horses. In just eight hours since departure, we already crossed the gates and could finally allow our mounts to rest in the stable while moving to the Tavern and enjoying a few drinks ourselves.

Waking up with the first ringing of the city bells, instead of rushing to the horses in hopes of reaching Sandomir at this very day, I managed to reform my plan a bit in my head. If I wanted Peter to catch me, there was no need to rush! With the month of preparation period necessary for all the other pieces of the puzzle to fall in their place, meeting with the governor had to happen in the few next days, not necessarily today!

And to be honest, if we rushed our horses to no end and even managed to reach Sandomir before it would close its gates… Asking for a meeting with a governor at such time could only be considered as a great disrespect!

"I miss your beer."

After being served a hot, chicken soup with various items that pretended to be pieces of vegetable floating in it, only the use of MGS that I had in abundance on me saved us from the prospect of either forcing ourselves to eat this joke of a meal and starvation.

But there was no way for me to just grab a fistful of grains and other ingredients and just pour a beer from my seemingly empty hand to their cups! While Commonwealth was really tolerant in terms of religion, doing so would either see me getting announced as a saint of my times or being one of the insanely rare cases for the fiery stakes that appeared on Polish lands!

"You know it's reserved for the governor."

While the beer I brough to the Pilzno was all dried up before we even reached it, I somehow managed to create a single garn of it and sneak it as something I hid for special occasions. After all, giving a new, unknown spice as a gift for our meeting with the governor wasn't the greatest idea, especially with how such a fine, whiteish powder could be easily misunderstood for poison!

With that said, even though my hands were itchy to open it up and make our morning a little better, we were forced to stick with the piss of a drink that this backwards tavern offered.

"At least the soup is not that bad. Not that we can thank the cook for that."

This time it was Al's turn to throw a hateful glance towards the staff of the tavern, safely hidden behind the thick wood of a counter. But in fact, we only had myself to blame, since I was the one to insist on picking up such a cheap place. After splurging on the ring in Pilzno, the number of coins in my pouch was already limited, and as long as I wouldn't find another merchant in Sandomir interested in buying out a small stock of MSG, we had to simply save as much as we could!

Not like there was anything we would have to really pay for on the road!

"Let's just finish this and move out. Nothing good will come from wasting our time here. At least, the jerky isn't that bad."

Strips of dried or smoked meat was one of the primary food stocks that we took on our journey. Small, light and filling, when smeared by a light layer of my spice it could even be called tasty. If we were to fancy something more filling, we could always stop on the road, pick some wild vegetables that were growing all over the country, add some water from the nearby river and just boil it all to get something aking to a light soup.

"You guys really are not used to travelling…"

Out of nowhere, Elia called us out, with a proud smile on her face. With her story of running away from the henchmen that her family sent after her for over three years, it was no wonder she was used to the harsh reality of these times. But it wasn't like we were new to this game either! Both Al and I had a history of taking part in a crown's war effort!

While it didn't really apply to me since my mentality came from relatively peaceful times, where travelling from Pilzno to Sandomir would take one-two hours at most…

"Get off our heads. Let's go, there is nothing good in staying here any longer for us."

After finishing the bland soup in a hurry, we swiftly left the tavern, without even leaving our mugs empty. That beer was simply too bad for us to drink it!

Picking up the horses from stables was yet another costly process in terms of time, since not only we had to tend to their needs ourselves, clean their fur, pick all the small stones stuck in their hoves and make sure they were all well-fed, but just leading them away from the city took us a nice thirty minutes!

While we all woke up with the first ringing of the city bell, when we were leaving, I could call it singing its usual tune three times in a row already!

At least, as soon as we left the city, we could finally pick up the pace. Even though we didn't really hurry our horses too much, the great, sunny weather that finally showed the signs of chasing the winter away from the land only encouraged both us and our mounts to travel at a healthy rate.

In just about an hour, we managed to reach the bank of the Vistula river. In the current day and age, it was one of the most important trade arteries for the entire country, with most of the grain trade tunnelled into it, and finding an outlet in the trading city of Gdansk all the way to the north (Danzig for german and WW2 folks).

While in the past, the banks of the river might be still covered in bushes, small forests connecting to greater woodlands that would later be acknowledged as the national natural treasure, with how busy this trade route was, even if no one would go to an extent of calling it a road, it would suffice to say that we could let our horses run as freely as if they were on the steppe!

But just as the sun reached its highest point of the sky and started slowly descending down, Al spotted a huge group of people, gathered just by the edge of a nearby forest. In just a few moments later, I could see the details myself, recognising big, metal spikes that people of this age used to set up grill parties.

It seemed that there was some hunt going on just beside us!