Back to the problem I'm worried about in the coming winter. Winter is not only cold and poor diet, but it is also snow, the one that used to sweep snow drifts over the chest, and in which traces are very visible. And if with snowdrifts, firstly, it is not clear yet (is the winter here decorative-European?), and secondly, it is possible to reconcile, that fact of the presence of traces makes to think.
I have been in this world for a good couple of months already and still knew disappointingly little. On the one hand, in general, it does not want to force the events, as they say, "we are well fed here, too," so why take the risk, going somewhere else? But on the other hand, it's not like I'm sitting in the woods, growing mud and slowly returning to the roots of the Stone Age, is it? If we conduct exploration, we should do it now, while the snow has not fallen out yet and my way can not be traced "as if walking along the avenue. And the opportunities opened as if especially, pushed to active actions, with any, and telepathy to study the local language should be much easier than without it. It is risky. Absolutely. But not too many people more than sitting in a cave, waiting for some random hunter to come across you, or worse - a magic creature. I haven't seen the latter, as well as the first ones, but I've never seen the magic energy around me, but I've been observing it myself and I'm constantly feeling that it hints gently - such a meeting is quite possible, and I don't want to find out the gastronomic preferences of magic creatures by empirical means.
In general, I should have gone for a sortie. There was only the problem of the sun, but I'm used to coping with it, at least just by sheltering myself in deerskin.
The way to the memorial road, where the merchant caravan rested, took exactly five days. I did not dare to go directly and made a small hook so that to enter the robber's camp from the far side of the one where I once left. Partly I was curious to look at the results of my adventure of the past with the attack on the camp of armed thugs, which I still sometimes remember not only as a result of confusion but still more interested in this place as a famous landmark.
Polyanka met me with a virgin emptiness and a carpet of fallen leaves. I would not say that I found it with ease, but two months of life in the forest will teach anyone to navigate in it, I have not complained about this skill before, in contrast to the same hunting and silent movement. But it wasn't easy to find any traces of bodies, goods, or horses, which I frankly left to die.
I would like to say that I did it for some paranoid reasons, but in reality, I just forgot that once again proves some inadequacy of my then state. I'd have at least taken one horse with me, if not for movement, like a self-propelled wineskin with blood. And it would be more humane than leaving them tethered animals to the predators to tear themselves apart.
Now, that day was reminiscent only of the oblique remains of the ataman's hut, and the barely noticeable black spots from the fires on the ground. Someone cleaned everything up very well and if, say, the bodies would have been eaten by the forest dwellers without any questions, although some bones would have stayed, and I had some doubts about the gastronomic attractiveness of the mummy in the shack, then only reasonable bags of goods and vantages could have been taken away. Apparently they also took care of the remains. The picture is expected - it is silly to expect that the whole camp, not so far from the road, would have stood idle for two whole months, and yet a little pity...
Sitting down at the place where once lay piled prey, I smack the top layer of fallen leaves and see a fragment of an old bag. The last doubts about the loyalty of the place were dispelled.
Well, the task returns to the previous configuration - to find people, preferably colleagues of the former inhabitants of this place, to take a closer look at them and, if possible, to take the tongue. Apparently, the road does not stand idle and people walk in the woods around it, although I do not see any fresh traces, but it does not say anything. So we will look for...
Fortunately, the road turned out to be busy enough for a different rabble to be declared on it stably, but not enough for the owner of local lands, whoever he is, to allocate funds from the treasury to comb the roads and catch the "romantics". Three things testified to this: the first one was the state of the road itself, which, although it looked like a natural desert primer, in the end, was not overgrown. And this is without any vehicles. Second, I didn't meet a single patrol looking after these lands. And thirdly, it is the most important thing - I have achieved my goals.