Bajötvár CH4

Chapter 4
The shipment Kitakör was supervising had yet to arrive so Istvárok set
himself to work around his home cooking a lunch of sausage, bacon, buttered toast, radishes, and chopped, roasted onions.
He was a decent cook, especially by male standards but it didn't hold a
candle to the cooks at the inn 2 hours down the road. The farmers in the region specialized in livestock and root vegetables, so it was only natural that his village specialized in soups and stews. It did however have to source spices and grains from out of the region. It was too steep for wheat and too cold for most spices to be produced. Istvárok’s grandmother had taught him a delicious recipe for spiced meat stew. It consisted of buying lamb, beef, and veal from local herdsmen. Next, Istvárok would walk with his grandma out into the garden (most families in the village had a garden) together they would pull up carrots, celery, potatoes, garlic, parsnips, and onions. They would trade some of this with merchants for spices and bread, and bring the rest inside and lay it on the table. All the grandchildren would then be pressganged into cleaning the vegetables, a task that Istvárok found boring but therapeutic, until the mountain of vegetables was scrubbed and, in the case of celery, carrots, and parsnips, shaved of their tough outer skin. Oil from pressed vegetables, produced at the local apothecary, was poured into a kettle which was put over a small flame until it popped and sizzled, meanwhile potatoes were set in a bucket of water so they didn't have stiff cores when cooked. Chopped onions would be dropped into the kettle and cooked for a few minutes until half brown. Then, cubed beef, lamb, and veal would be dropped in over top of the onions while more firewood was stuffed into the fireplace. The meat would cook until the drippings were halfway up the meat pile, a fistful of paprika, a few pinches of salt, and a pinch of black pepper would be sprinkled over top and stirred into the ingredients. The potatoes were then drained and added in along with the other vegetables. The water was added last, just barely covering the ingredients if the desired effect was stew and all the way to the top of the cauldron if soup was what was wanted.
Istvárok woke up with a jolt, he had fallen asleep in his daydream. He
walked over to the pit dug into the ground for making charcoal and got to work on making the remaining fuel he would need for his project. He had made an equation for how he made his charcoal: 3 parts densespruce to 1 part straw. He began to split the logs, setting each log on a special table made from a stump. Istvárok didn't use a stump outside because he didn't want his charcoal production to be weather or time dependent, he wanted the ability to split logs at 3 o'clock in the morning with freezing rain outside if he so chose. He put a log on the table, THUMP, the axe sliced clean through. He turned the axe sideways and in a haymaker swing, knocked the split pieces into a basket next to the table. He loaded another log, CHOP, haymaker into the basket. Another log, THUNK, basket.
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Kitakör stumbled along the path, his throat on fire. He had outrun the
bandits, but his health began to take a turn for the worse. It began with a migraine, then diarrhea, projectile vomiting, and, finally, a fiery, unquenchable thirst.
Kitakör spotted a pool just before the next ravine and slowly made his
way over, attempting not to trip in his delirious state. He failed. He dashed his knee against a rough stone and skinned it, but no other damage was done. He crawled the rest of the way.
When he got to the edge of the pool he didn't even bother to get out his
waterskin, he simply jammed his face into the water and drank deeply.
A steely razor point was applied lightly to the small of his back, not an
attempt to harm him but to let him know the spear’s owner was behind him and not taking any chances. I was accompanied by a voice, “Son, did you kill the man further down the path?”