Gratitude

Roran awoke with a start, it was already light and he could hear the villagers talking while they worked. Dressing into some work clothes and a pair of leather shoes, he fixed himself up in the scrying mirror, which, like every other morning, had shown nothing but his reflection. He grabbed the shovel leaning against his tent pole and started walking towards the knot of villagers centred around a big trench. The accommodation he was staying in, although it could hardly be called that, was about a kilometre away from where they intended to rebuild Carvahall. The accommodation in question was a cluster of huts, with a few basic facilities and a main base tent for meetings and other important stuff. In many ways it was like staying with the Varden again, poor, simple accommodation, lots of comradeship and a strong desire to see a goal accomplished. Although act of destroying a whole empire and the construction of a small town do not hold much in common.

They had decided instead of rebuilding Carvahall in the exact same way, they would move it deeper into the valley than it had been before. For the first two weeks since they had arrived they had drawn up plans for the town all the way out to the inner wall, and in foresight, they had also allowed the town plenty of room to grow. The design for the town was quite simple on a plan, but in reality it was yet to be seen if the plan would hold true. Although the plan had been substantially altered since the one they had drawn up on the first day, it still retained some of the basic elements. The Tierm-style tiered housing would still be implemented, the barricade slots and an outer wall. However, it was there that the similarities ended, instead of just an outer wall; there would also be an inner wall and a small wall surrounding the stone structure at the centre of town. In the outer section of town there would be some shops and structures that were unimportant in emergencies such as inns, taverns and market stall. In the inner section there would be the housing, a wide open space separating the centre of town and the most important buildings in sieges, such as blacksmiths, tannery's and carpenter shops. Finally, in the centre of town, there would be a stone structure, not a castle but neither a church or cathedral. This stone structure would be surrounded by a stone wall, and built into it would be a behemoth of various buildings. To the best of his knowledge, it was scheduled to contain a granary, armoury, bell tower, barracks, communication rooms, jail cells, a court house and all manner of rooms needed to suit the various kind of things that would be conducted within the safety of confined walls.

This kind of project would be beyond their ability to build, so once they had finished the inner section of the town and were well into the construction of the outer area they would contact Nasuada and arrange for her to send a human engineer to oversee the construction of the stone structure. Otherwise, failing that, she would secure the help of either the elves or the dwarves. Although to do this, they would probably need to pool their resources to pay the elves or dwarves in some meaningful way. But they were a long way from that, there were many obstacles in the way, principally being, as of yet, the villagers were still trying to find a viable source of stone large enough to provide for the entire town's needs. By the time he had finished mulling over their quandaries; his feet had carried him to the knot of men, standing in a large dike that stretched a few hundred meters away to the right in an arc. They were all shovelling furiously, each having the strength of two men, yet they were making pitiful visible progress. For every three scoops of dirt that they dug out, another scoop of dirt trickled in. Ten metres behind the first group, was a second group that could hardly be seen, they were widening, deepening and compacting the sides to make the moat more effective at stopping would-be attackers. Not that there would and should be any for a while, but it would be comforting to have a degree of security, no matter how small or insignificant it might be, especially after the months with the Varden where they had lived in constant fear of an unfriendly dragon appearing on their doorstep. Which became all the more scary when Saphira, and to a lesser extent, Eragon left the camp, which was a lot more than seemed necessary. They were so lucky that Murtagh or Thorn had not attacked when they were away, if they had the Varden would have been destroyed. Grabbing a shovel, he headed to the second group, which looked like it was short of numbers and started digging, careful to pile the dirt on the inner edge of the dike and far enough away to stop it from falling back in again..

Sitting down on a nearby log, next to Horst, I admired their progress, since the start of the day they had dug around 30 meters along the circumference of where they were planning for the outer wall to go. It had been back breaking work but it was deeply satisfying. All across the plain I could see numerous sticks sticking out of ground; it was like someone had tried to make a crude imitation of trees but had gotten bored at the braches and left it like it was. I was about to ask Horst why there were about a thousand sticks sticking out of the ground, but Horst had somehow read my mind and jumped to the answer without the need to ask to the question. "The sticks, if my sources are accurate, are a rough sketch of where the streets and houses will go. According to my wife, she and some of the women, managed to get about two thirds of the town planned and mapped out. They will finish the rest of it tomorrow, when it is light." Considering this, I reflected on the wisdom of this and came to the conclusion that it was a good idea but it was still strange to see what looked like a whole army had practiced their spear throwing, and just threw them everywhere the eye could see. "After all those sieges I would have thought that I would become immune to pain" Horst said, I nodded my head in mutual consent, "yet here I am, on the verge of complaining about my back. Maybe the Varden has softened me," I snorted, "Yeah right, you were always soft" I managed to say with a straight face. Horst clapped me on the back; a thumping movement that made me almost smash my own head into my knee, and said "Someday, when you are older you will learn about what being an old man entails, ever present pain in your joints, and then you will look back and think, I wish I listened to Horst and respected him." Laughing, I clapped him on the back in a return of his gesture and then stood up as I heard Katrina say in the beautiful voice I knew so well "Soup is ready."

Leaving Horst to his less than merry thoughts about how his body was coping with the day's events, I wandered over to the kitchen tent and grabbed my bowl soup, I was about to take a seat just outside of the main tent but then I spotted Katrina walking away to our small tent which was a few hundred metres away. I ran to catch up to her, and by the time I had, I was out of breath and my back was aching slightly. "Look who it is" said Katrina, "it is my little trench digger, maybe he did an honest day's work for once." Grinning, I gave Katrina a little peck on the check, and said "I always do honest work, name one day where I haven't" I knew one day where I hadn't but I didn't expect Katrina to remember that trivial detail, as she wasn't there. To my surprise she answered with "Maybe when you tricked that fellow with the barges out of a few hundred crowns," a startled look must have appeared on my face because she continued "Didn't think I would remember that, now did you." I grinned sheepishly and turned my head away so she couldn't see my reaction, careful to keep the soup from sploshing out of the bowl. "At the time, I must have thought, this is the perfect ace to hold my sleeve, so to speak, so it was then and there that I locked that little trivial detail into my memory, and now it has proved its usefulness and I even might be able to play that card again." I was startled by the way she knew me so well and could easily guess at what I was thinking about, and this time some of the soup sploshed out of the bowl and onto the frozen ground below. Cursing, I covered the top of the bowl of soup with a piece of clothing, until I noticed that we were only a few metres away from our tent. I walked into our humble abode and sat myself down on my bed, no, our bed, and earnestly started drinking the soup, before it got too cold. It still amazed me how I had somehow managed to win Katrina's heart even though I was one of the poorest families in the old Carvahall, in the new Carvahall it was a different matter, I was one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest, members of the community. Katrina was watching me and knew what line of thinking I was following and she said "It does not matter now; we have the choice to start anew and that is all that matters." I knew she wanted to say more, but I shushed her and gave her a hug, "I am so thankful to you, you have made my life worth living, take my gratitude" I said and then I buried my head in her beautiful hair.

Orik walked out of the tent, he had just finished briefing the knurlan commanders upon the situation, none of them were too pleased with the result but they did acknowledge it could have been a lot worse. Not for the first time he wished Eragon was here, he would have made short work out of the Raz'ac and there would have been not as much bloodshed. Many of the warriors had left a few days ago and were on their way back to their homes, where he was sure that many of wives waited in anxious states. Well at least, he mused, he would have something to tell Arya and Nasuada when they contacted him, or he contacted them, whichever way it was around.

All around him he could see the dwarven army packing up the remnants of their temporary camp. They still had a few things to do, and which would occupy them for the rest of the day, so Orik, accompanied by a few guards of course, went on a walk into the forested mountains that surrounded Orthiad. If he looked hard enough and in the right direction he could just see the white tipped, sharp-edged points of the Beor Mountains. One day, if he ever saw a dwarven dragon rider within his lifetime as king, he would ask if he could ride the dragon and see the tops of the Beors from up close. Although it might be bordering on impolite and the dragon might refuse for understandable reasons, so the chances of it were happening were pretty dismal. His authority as Knurlan king held no jurisdiction over the dragon riders, even though may be knurlan in blood, and thus he could not force the dragon to obey his edict, and even if he could he wouldn't, dragons made dangerous enemies and he was not that rude. He should have asked Saphira when she was here in Farthen Dur to fly him up to the tops of the mountains, of course with her and Eragon's consent. But back then, he hadn't known he would come to play such an important role in the shaping of Eragon's life, he just thought they would merely be acquaintances forced together by the troubles of war, not staunch allies and great friends.

As he wandered through the forest with his guards, he began to catch the smell of smoke, tinged with a disgusting smell he couldn't quite place. He turned the guard obviously in charge; his rank was probably a captain and had probably never been addressed by someone so important, and asked "Do you know why I can smell smoke, or am I just imaging things?" The captain turned, startled at being addressed, "No, your highness, you are not imagining things" said the captain "it is the smoke from the pyre which they are burning the Raz'ac on, that is why it smells so bad." Now he could place the smell, it was the smell of war and carnage, of many sentient beings, much of them lifelong allies and friends, internal organs disembowelled and lying on the ground for all too tread upon. He had not thought that he would take a whiff of that smell again for a long time. It brought him back to the days in the Varden and the sieges of human cities. Thankfully, he was distracted from that train of thought by the captain adding, probably as an afterthought, "Please call me Thorin, King Orik." He nodded his head in consent and said "Thank you, Thorin", it was the least he could do to be polite, and a King, especially a Knurlan King, had to maintain a high stand of decorum with his subjects.

After a few minutes of walking in contented silence, with his five guards, their heads wearied by the unwarranted bloodshed they had just been present at, they came across the pyre. It was quite a large bonfire, but all of the firewood was on a large stone block, so the forest did not have any chance of catching alight. Now that would be a true disaster, but then again it was winter, so it probably wouldn't go on for too long, just long enough to kill the king and his guards, he thought morosely. On top of the pyre was the two Raz'ac bodies, somehow they had managed to scratch together a few scraps of animal fur to provide some clothing and decency. From here, he could just see the Raz'ac's beaks, and he thought it might have twitched, but it must have been a trick of the light.

Standing next to the pyre, keeping watch, were two dwarven guards, although they maintained a safe distance from the Pyre, probably to avoid the occasional sparks that flew off the fire and the disgusting spell that persisted through the cool mountain airs. It was then that one of the fur coats caught fire and the fire momentarily expanded, bringing an accompanying roar. Deciding that he had enough time spent inhaling the smell of burning, and hopefully dead, raz'ac, he bid the knurlan guards good day and walked away from that pillar of death. It would take the rest of the day for the bodies to burn, the dwarven guards to spread the ashes out and stamp out the remnants of the fire. By that time the remaining dwarves back at Orthiad, should have fully packed up and they would be ready to move out by twilight. He disliked the idea of walking in the dark, but he even more disliked the idea of staying out here in an abandoned dwarven city for another night, liable to be attacked by a shade and all sorts of creatures that prowled this ancient part of Alagaesia.

Thankfully, when they had gotten back to the encampment, a few enterprising dwarves had managed to catch a few deer and were currently cooking them on a makeshift spit. The thought of freshly caught, spit-roasted deer was mouth-watering enough, let alone the smell of it. He hurried to the privacy of his spacious tent, and offered a quick prayer to Guntera. Mainly about his gratitude for the wonderful meal he was about to have and allowing them to quickly kill the Raz'ac without so many lives lost in the process. After he had finished his prayer, he hurried outside, ready to have a share of that wonderful smelling deer, gratitude was one thing, but a full stomach was on a whole other level.

A/N Hello, as you can probably guess this is probably a filler chapter (However that is not too saying it is bad and useless.) I experimented with two different POV styles, first person and third person, although I must say that writing in third person is a lot easier than writing in first person. I also tried to keep to one style of POV at a time, thank you for that constructive criticism from that reviewer, and I will continue to try and do it. I was going to do Nasuada's POV this chapter as well but I thought it was better to upload the chapter sooner rather than later. I will probably do Eragon's and Nasuada's POV next chapter. I will also update the Introduction and POV list. If you have any questions, criticism or suggestions please do not hesitate about giving reviews.

The Villains so far are:

Two raz'ac (Now they are dead)

Dwarven shade (Roaming around in the mountains somewhere)

Elven Shade (Still yet to come, it might just be a human shade but an extremely powerful one, one that is two to 3 times more powerful than Varaug)

Unnamed Shadow (Exists, but is not in Alagaesia and is not a threat at the moment)

Thanks for reading, please review and so long for now.

P.S. Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Inheritance Cycle, those belong Christopher Paolini, and his publishers. I do however own the characters that I will come up with and the story (maybe stories) that are yet to follow.

Thus, do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself.

P.P.S. This chapter is dedicated to the people who fight fires, save lives and police crime