Harrison was being a bit shameless towards Sheina as he got to know her better. She was after all the one at fault with constant innuendos flowing his way. He liked her a lot even though they spent only two entire days together. She was his first friend in this world and it did not hurt she was stunning in appearance and so far he could find nothing negative about her character either.After breakfast they continued with their lessons and Harrison was writing words as Sheina told them out loud. Paper and scrolls were quite expensive in this world so they used a part of the courtyard with fine sand and a short stick for a medium.
Harrison"s vocabulary was increasing at an astonishing rate and he seldom made mistakes since the words Sheina spoke were very distinct not like some languages like English where some words needed to be learned by heart to for you to write them correctly.
His high intellect and systems learning ability made the language lessons feel like a piece of cake to him.
The lunch hour quickly came and Sheina was more fatigued from the lessons than he was. Lunch was an unknown stew with something resembling bread. Shalmoon was not home, so it was only Sheina and himself. They pa.s.sed the time while eating by Sheina asking him words trough the sphere and Harrison translated them into the local language. He did not make any mistakes except a few curveb.a.l.l.s Sheina threw at him. She asked him words he had not yet learned so all he could do was stare at the mischievous girl.
With everything that happened yesterday and the morning Harrison didn"t pay much attention to the cutlery but he looked at the somewhat heavy spoon in his hand now. They made the crude spoons of some silvery metal. They didn"t look nice, but they did their job. He had a feeling he never ate with such ugly cutlery in his entire life.
After lunch Sheina excused herself and returned the sphere to Harrison. As he had nothing better to do, he went to bother the cooks. Harrison slowly went through the door he saw the waiter using to deliver the food to the dinning room and found two cooks scrubbing pots and pans.
As he looked around they haven"t noticed him as they were too concentrated on their work and also made a lot of noise. The cooking tools were a crude like you might find in the European households before electrification ad use of gas. There was an enormous fireplace that looked like a pizza oven and a wood stove with a big metallic surface for pots. The two cooks were at a sink filled with water scrubbing the pots with brooms without a detergent.
As he came closer, they finally noticed him.
"Aka sha!" Harrison greeted.
Both cooks looked at him with fear as the only time such well-dressed people came into the kitchen was to yell at them or had unreasonable demands.
The shorter and fatter one had grey hair and red cheeks and had put on a friendly smile.
The tall one had black hair, thick black eyebrows, and he looked concerned at him.
"Aka sha!" They both said in unison bowed and looked at eachother then back at Harrison.
Harrison gave the one with a friendly smile the sphere and the cook nervously accepted and looked at it.
"Is this some kind of egg he wants us to cook? What is this? Who is he?" All sorts of thoughts were running through the cook"s head.
"h.e.l.lo, I am a guest of Shalmoon and Sheina and this is a translation sphere. It translates what I am saying into your language. The other cook probably can"t understand me, so could you please translate it for him?" Harrison explained.
The cook with the sphere was frightened, and the other one looked at Harrison with a dumbfounded expression. He soon got an explanation from the cook with the sphere.
"Sir, my name is Gordo, and this is Fergun. What can we do for you?" The cook nervously said.
"I was wondering if I could cook dinner here?" Harrison said.
"You want to cook dinner? Did you find our meals unsatisfactory?" Gordo asked with concern.
"No. No. The food was quite good. I just want to surprise the baron and Sheina with something I cook myself as a way to say thank you." Harrison replied even though his first meal was far from good.
"Sure. Sure I am sure his lordship will appreciate your gesture." Gordo said with reluctance.
He was unsure of the cooking skills of this twelve-year-old boy but since he was a guest of the baron, he could only concede to his demands if they were not totally over the top.
"I will bring the main ingredient shortly. Can you prepare some knives to butcher it?" Harrison asked with a smile.
"Sure. You can bring the carca.s.s here and we will butcher it according to your requests." Gordo said.
"Do you have a sack I could borrow?" Harrison remembered the animal he was thinking of was still probably dripping blood.
Gordo found a somewhat clean sack, and Harrison left them. Gordo hurriedly explained to Fergun what the intruder wanted and got strange looks in return.
Harrison left the kitchen then went outside and found a secluded s.p.a.ce where no one could see him and put one of the wolfbit, as he named them, carca.s.ses directly into the sack and went back.
The animal must have weighed 40 kilograms, and he was holding it in front of him so he would not dirty his clothes with the blood that was still coming out of his skull. Even though he could clean his clothes fast, he didn"t want to waste energy which has now become a limited resource.
He gasped by the time he came back into the kitchen. The feat might be easy if he carried the sack on his back but was inconvenient to carry in front of him.
Gordo pointed at a worktable they used for butchering and Harrison swung the sack on it.
"It is a marakash. A fresh one too." Gordo exclaimed as his eyes seemed to twinkle.
Fergun"s reaction was similar but he stayed quiet.
"A marakash?" Harrison asked.
"Yes. They are vile beasts that hunt and move in packs but their meat is delicious. They are hard to hunt. We don"t get to cook them almost ever since the hunters sell them to traders from the bigger towns at a much higher price than Engil is willing to pay. Even our guards will sell them to the traders before to our lord. The only way we can get them is if the lord goes hunting but he has no time for it." Gordo explained.
"Can you skin it and clean it up? I will go look for more stuff I need in the meantime. Leave it one piece though. We are going to spit-roast it."
Harrison explained feeling relieved the meat was so highly praised.
Gordo looked at him with a weird expression. He could not understand what spit-roast means. He nodded and explained to Fergun what to do, anyway.
Harrison went outside again this time he took the rope and salt out of his inventory. He also found a long stick in the backyard. As he came back in the entrails were already in a bucket and the marakash was already skinned by Fergun.
"What should we do with the entrails?" Gordo asked.
"If you want them, you can take them." Harrison said, and he could see Gordo"s eyes light up.
As Fergun got the translation from Gordo, his reaction was similar to Gordo"s although on his stoic face it looked less prominent.
"Make a fire in the oven." Harrison said and pointed at the enormous pizza oven.
Gordo got to work and made soon started a big fire as Harrison salted the marakash and tied it on a stick.
He inspected the kitchen for any spices but other than something that tasted a bit like c.u.min he could not find any. He went back outside from the back entrance where Gordo and Fergun were fetching wood from and found two logs with were higher than the marakash"s carca.s.s and a short stick. He made some indentations on the logs using an axe that was in the woodshed and brought them back in. The fire was burning fiercely, and the oven was getting hot.
Both Gordo and Fergun were sweating near the oven as Harrison tied the short stick on the end of the spit.
After a while the fire was dying down, and there were only hot embers remaining. Harrison moved the embers to the sides of the oven and rolled in one log. Gordo and Fergun looked at him with amazed expressions.
"Do you have any vegetables that are good baked?" Harrison suddenly remembered he forgot about that.
Gordo quickly went to the pantry and brought back a basket full of something that looked like potatoes. They already cleaned them and all that was needed to be done was to cut them into smaller pieces. As they did so Harison put the salt and c.u.min-like spice over them and put them on a metal platter which he showed in the oven. After that he lifted the spit with marakash tied on it into the oven. One end was on the log, and as Gordo was holding it Harrison slid in the other log.
Then he showed them to turn it by the short stick he attached. They looked at him in amazement and nodded. The charcoals that still had heat were still giving it off and the bricks of the oven were still hot from the big fire that burned before.
The meat on the marakash was changing color rapidly, and as they turned it, the color was uniformly changing all over it. After a while the fat on it started to sizzle, and it dripped down on the potato-like vegetables which gave them extra flavor.
Harrison left the kitchen when he saw the two cooks were doing a good job and checked if Sheina was anywhere to be seen. She was still absent from the lower floor so he went back.
"Excuse me. Could you tell me where you got the marakash?" Gordo asked with embarra.s.sment.
"Oh. I know a hunter." Harrison lied.
"Can you get more?" Gordo asked with antic.i.p.ation.
"If he has them sure. But you know yourself how hard they are to hunt so I can"t guarantee anything." Harrison said.
"Please try then if you can. We sometimes have guests that complain about our cooking. The lordship doesn"t say anything but we know we are an embarra.s.sment to him. We are partly at fault for not being learned cooks but also the ingredients we can get are mostly subpar so even if we were better cooks there would not be much difference." Gordo anxiously explained and even Fergun looked with sad eyes at Harrison. It must have been something they both decided on to ask him.
Harrison suddenly thought that his benefactor was not really that well off as it seemed on the outside. He didn"t want to put them in a tight spot and make them gossip so he just nodded and ensured them he will try.