They both looked up at Braun but the sullen driver refused to look back at them. Lowil shrugged and drew his finger along the map. “Given our late start, we’ll be lucky if we reach the hills. If it starts to get dark, we may have to make camp just off the road and call it a night.”
“I haven’t left Mintas in a few years,” Kre mused. “Last time I did we visited Fort Cowl.” His father took him during one of the Fort Cowl’s open house days, to showcase their accomplishments to families and hopefully entice the children to seek a career in the realm’s military force. It was a fun day, with lots of parades and enjoyable activities. Kre got a chance to see the horses that his dad trained as well as understand a bit more about how the military protected and investigated historic ruins throughout Tehyn.
It was one of their main duties really, securing those ruins that dotted across the realm. In decades past, they also served to protect citizens against the native aggressors that lived here before the First Migrants came, but since the peace talks their need to defend the population from the natives became redundant. There was still a need to provide protection, especially in the frontier region of Milo and most especially up near the Jayde Line, across the sea.
Aggressive beasts, untamed wilds, and savage bandits roamed the uncivilized parts of Tehyn… and even some of the civilized parts. Given that the Milo region was the most recently settled as well as being the main transit hub for the North Shore and the Jayde Line, it was easy to understand why the military was needed here and the reason why Fort Cowl was now the largest military base in the land.
The military’s other purpose, and a more recent addition to their portfolio, was the oversight and management of Tehyn’s heritage sites. That was a phrase that irked Kre.
Heritage sites.
They were nothing more than glorified ruins from an age before the migrants came, before the native peoples controlled the lands, and possibly before the first dragons flew the skies. Most of the heritage sites were simply ancient buildings, uncovered during the plowing of new farm lands, or the digging of new wells. Some were more culturally important, especially when scrolls or books in any condition were found. Scholars, like what Landar was training to be, were still working to decipher them. There were a few sites, probably a dozen in all, that were more complex in both size and structure. Miles of halls, hundreds of rooms, and unknown predators of every kind that made their homes in the ruins.
In the past, before the military needed a new project to focus on, they contracted the job of exploring and securing the heritage sites to free-lancers. It was a dangerous job and few survived their first foray into the deeper ruins. Only a handful managed to retire and only after enduring some of the more dangerous delves that netted the highest pay.
Now, with the free-lancers out of jobs and with too much adrenaline to spare, most of them turned to banditry. So the same folks once hired by the military were now being hunted by their former employers. The irony was not lost on anyone.