He'd figured that, with it snowing as often as it did, any signs that he'd been anywhere would quickly be covered up with the next batch of fresh snowfall. He hadn't anticipated that there would be lawmen coming to inspect the state of the town so soon after his own leaving.
Besides, the state that he'd left the fur trader's body in was likely too casual. He didn't regret it, because of the stats he gained from it, but he was well aware that he should avoid making such mistakes again, to the best degree that he could.
Now he'd committed a more serious crime. He'd killed men of the law – four of them. Their slaying would not go undiscovered. To kill a lawman was taken to be an act of violence on the Earl himself. When they found the bodies – which Vol was certain they would – an even larger force would be summoned to investigate it. A force that he wouldn't be able to take on alone.
Though the fighting had been fun, and he'd stood to gain much from it, he needed to choose the battles more carefully, especially as he got closer to habited towns again.
For now, he settled on lightly reprimanding himself, with the idea that he would be more cautious in future. Though, something deep inside of him knew that he would likely not listen. This was not who Vol was, to tread so carefully. He'd spent fifteen years treading carefully, whilst his body developed, and his strength grew. Now was the time to exercise that strength, and make proper use of it, to make life more convenient and to chase his goal.
As he searched through the cloaks of the lawmen for anything worth looting, he quickly found the results of such convenience. Coin, and food – a good bit of it. They were supplies of the same type that the fur trader had carried, with dry meat and hard bread in bundles inside their coats, but given that there were so many of them, they made for quite the handsome feast.
He tucked the food within his own pack. It would be more than enough to keep him full on the journey to the next town. In fact, it was more food than he could afford to buy for himself ordinarily from work. Somehow, in slaying these men, and having his town burnt down, he'd ended up better fed than he had at any point during his life.
Not only that – his coin pouch was far heavier. With the copper coins that he'd gotten from the fur trader, he got even more coppers from the lawmen, and a whole silver coin from their leader. His wealth now exceeded two silvers, a rich amount, as far as he was concerned. He could have lived on it for a couple of months if he was careful.
After looting them, and refilling his supplies, there was the matter of what to do with the bodies themselves.
Burying them… that could be one thing. He phrased such a thing as a question to the System, but it did not respond favourably. In fact, there was no response from it at all. It seemed more content to see him attempt to solve the problems himself, and then criticize him for it afterwards.
He would have complained, but if the restrictions placed on the System were as stringent as it said they were, then it made sense. The more Vol grew as himself, as a person, and as a problem solver, then the more the System could do for him.
That line of thinking made him feel suddenly younger again, as though he was being chastised by Jok.
And in truth, he was young. For fifteen, it was a mighty difficult situation that he'd gotten himself into. He might have felt lonely, when weighing the magnitude of it. If they caught him, then they would kill him. And for what? The sake of a few extra coppers, and some food?
But he shook his head, ridding himself of such thoughts. They were a weakness. This was the Yarmdon way. Take what was necessary, and use the strength that you had to deal with the consequences.
Chapter 3 – Blood and Strength
In the end, Vol did not do much with the bodies. He decided to simply leave them where they were, and instead clear up all the signs around them that implicated him. For all his lengthy talking, the red-haired man had taught Vol a few useful bits of information, about what the lawmen were looking for when they discovered the bodies, and Vol did as much as he could to obscure that.
He got rid of his shelter, making it look as though it had never been there. In the same instance, he got rid of his fire. When they looked at the bodies of the lawmen, they would likely see the missing food, and coins, and probably judge it to be a robbery to that degree. There was nothing much Vol could do about that, for he didn't have the time or the patience to get rid of the bodies completely.
He knew that the fact that the men had disappeared would be evidence in and of itself. They would find the campsite that the lawmen had used the night before, and in attempting to follow them, and being unable to find them, they would declare them dead. Or perhaps they would see in the body of the fur merchant the same thing that the slain lawmen had already seen.
Either way, he decided that his best course of action was likely to obscure his tracks, to make his destination less obvious. He'd been going north, initially, but now, after breaking camp and leaving the bodies behind, he headed west, towards where he knew the frozen river to be.
The pack felt light on his back, and the run felt easier than it had any right to be. There was a good reason that he was running, and that was the quest that he had been delivered earlier, demanding that he run five miles.