blueteamnovel Chapter 7 : Chapter 7
Chapter 7 : Chapter 7
༺ ???? Chapter 7 ???? ༻「Translator — Creator」
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“Off to pasture, are you? Hard work, that.”
The village guards at the eastern gate stepped aside after checking the flock and the shepherds.
“Yes, sir. Take care,” Tauga said as he passed through.
The flock followed him in a steady stream.
An older guard, watching them idly, furrowed his brow as something peculiar caught his eye.
A sheep.
It was unusually large, its wool oddly voluminous, almost comical in its fullness.
The sight nagged at the old man’s instincts — it didn’t look right.
“What’s with that huge one? Why’s it so big?”
“That one’s strong — and mean,” Melduk answered quickly, stepping in to block the guard’s line of sight. “We can’t shear it because it thrashes like a demon.”
"How bad-tempered must it be that you can't even shear its wool?"
The guard took a step closer, catching a strange herbal scent wafting off the massive sheep. He tilted his head, puzzled.
Then, right on cue, the large sheep let out a loud bleat and sprang up in place, hooves pounding the ground.
Startled, the guard stumbled back a step.
“Whoa, don’t get too close,” Melduk warned. “If that one gores you with its horns, don’t say I didn’t warn you. We’re not liable.”
“Wait a minute… is that medicine I smell? Why’s a sheep reeking of an apothecary?”
“It got caught up in that mess with the Forest Men the other day,” Melduk replied smoothly. “Took a hit. We had to rub it down with ointments. Whole ordeal.”
The guard still looked skeptical, but by then Tauga had already led the flock out of the village gate, and the rest of the sheep surged after him.
It would’ve been difficult to force his way between them now.
“If that’s all, may we go on ahead?”
“…Yeah, fine. Off you go.”
The old guard didn’t see any real reason to push further.
“It’s your last day herding, right? Watch yourselves out there. Don’t get into trouble.”
“Don’t worry—we will,” Melduk replied.
He let out a breath of relief once they were clear, then casually herded the sheep as they slipped out beyond the village boundary.
Behind him, the old guard watched their retreating forms, an inexplicable discomfort still scratching at the edge of his thoughts.
“Strange… no matter how you look at it, that wool just ain’t right.”
????
The sheep’s plateau.
A pasture where sheep grazed freely and young shepherds grew into their lives.
With the help of Melduk and Tauga, Hunbish and Dawaa arrived safely.
“Phew, my mouth’s full of wool.”
Dawaa peeled off his sheepskin disguise and sneezed repeatedly, flinging the woolen cloak aside.
From atop another sheep, Hunbish also unwrapped himself and carefully slid down to the ground.
“Thought I was going to fall off for a second there. That one’s stronger than I expected.”
He rubbed the spot where the sheep had bitten him in protest earlier and gave it a small apology.
“Still, it got us out of the village.”
As Melduk and Tauga began herding the flock across the pasture, they walked over to Hunbish.
“So what now? Are you heading up into the mountains?”
“That’s the plan.”
“You’re borrowing one of our horses, yeah?”
Dawaa, already holding the reins of Melduk’s horse, chimed in as he guided it toward Hunbish.he two sat down on a rock nearby to rest.
“Thanks for helping all day, even though you’re still not fully recovered.”
“It is no big deal. I’m enjoying this, actually. But… what about tomorrow?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
This was just the first step.
The one blessing, if it could be called that, was that while everyone else was busy, Hunbish remained unassigned. That gave him freedom, room to act, to keep trying.
Ironically, the very reason he had that freedom was because he was trying to assigned.
“Y’know,” Dawaa said, “people keep talking about how the Forest Men might swarm down and attack the village. Maybe instead of catching martens, we should be catching them.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong.
But if Hunbish distinguished himself in battle, if he earned a real accomplishment, maybe the exile order would be lifted.
“Yeah… That could work.”
Still, Hunbish didn’t get his hopes up.
No matter how much he fought, without coordination or recognition, he’d be overlooked.
It’d only end in disappointment.
That was his honest judgment.
“Crisis is opportunity, right?” Dawaa grinned. “I’ll bring you all the info you need. You just come up with the plan.”
"Wait, shh!
Hunbish’s eyes narrowed. Up along the ridge, the brush rustled.
At first, he didn’t catch it clearly. But then — again, and again — similar movements flickered past.
“…Scouting party.”
Hunbish quickly hid the large horse behind a tree.
Dawaa, quick to catch on, tucked their gear beneath a boulder and ducked into the shade of the trees.
Fortunately, the scouting party seemed to have passed along the ridge without coming down to the valley.
"Whew. Looks like they're gone now. It's lucky we didn't run into them on the ridge."
"Right. Now that we're done with our work, let's head down too."
"Yeah."
But crossing this ridge led to the plateau where the sheep grazed.
Hunbish could only pray that nothing would happen to Melduk and Tauga.
????
"Where's that bad-tempered sheep the old man mentioned?"
One of the scouting party members was grilling Melduk and Tauga, pressing them with direct, point-by-point questions. And the two weren’t doing a great job answering.
“C’mon, is that really worth digging into?” Tauga said, trying to brush it off with a nervous laugh.
But the soldier turned toward Melduk now.
"Melduk, looks like you need to take better care of your horse."
"What, what?"
"I happened to see it by chance. Fortunately, no one else saw it."
Melduk and Tauga froze.
If he’d seen that much, then this wasn’t someone they could easily bluff or avoid.
The only small relief was that this particular soldier — menacing as he was — had already sent the rest of his unit back to the village. He’d returned alone.
Maybe he was someone they could reason with. They hoped so.
With a glance exchanged between them, Melduk and Tauga came to a wordless agreement.
“Alright, Jab. We’ll tell you everything. But you can’t breathe a word of this to anyone else, got it?”
With that, Tauga launched into a full confession, laying out everything in detail. By the end, Jab’s expression had grown unreadable, weighed down by a storm of thoughts.
“…I’m going to need to talk to Hunbish.”
“Wait, you’re on his side, right? You two go way back, don’t you?”
“..............”
Jab didn’t answer right away.
He found himself hesitating, caught in a space between silence and loyalty — staring down the widening gap between the man he’d once known and the delicate position he now occupied.
He realized, all too clearly, how precarious his standing had become.
The silence was more than enough to make the two shepherds restless.
“Alright, let me just make this clear,” Jab finally said. “I don’t want Hunbish getting into trouble. That’s why I sent the others back and came here alone.”
At last—the answer they had been hoping for.
Melduk and Tauga both exhaled, relief washing over their faces.
“But I can’t just ignore what he’s doing either. Things aren’t exactly normal right now.”
One of them — probably Tauga — let out a pained groan.
“Come on! You think Hunbish went up the mountain for fun? You’re his friend. Can’t you at least understand that much?”
“Calm down,” Jab said, his voice cool and unreadable. “This isn’t something I should be discussing with you two. I need to talk to Hunbish directly.”
Realizing the conversation had run its course, Jab shifted the topic.
“Anyway, you said Dawaa’s with him, right? That’s good to hear.”
“Why bring up Dawaa?”
“He’s been temporarily assigned to my unit.”
“What? Your unit? Don’t tell me… you’re a Decurion now?”
“…Yeah. Temporarily.”
Tauga could only stare.
While he’d been stuck out here, living as a shepherd after failing to make it into the scouting party, his peer Jab had climbed the ranks and earned a command position. Even if it was temporary, the sting was sharp.
He could tolerate Tamir — he was nobility, after all. But Jab? Jab was just like him. Or so he thought.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Jab added quickly. “I’m only filling in while Tamir’s out leading the search parties.”
“Tamir’s the search corps commander now…”
But instead of easing the tension, Jab’s words only deepened it. Tauga’s shoulders sank even lower.
Jab looked like he wanted to say something else, to fix what had just gone wrong — but then thought better of it and gave up.
“Anyway, I need to see both of them. Let me wait here with you. I promise, today’s conversation won’t leave this spot.”
“…Well, if you’re saying that much, sure.”
With that, the three of them settled in to wait for Hunbish.
Melduk found himself caught between a despondent Tauga and a silent Jab, enduring a long, painfully awkward stretch of time.
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