The next morning, there was no attack on their section of the line, but the Hill Giants tested other sections further west down the border. It was oddly serene, with the artillery in the distance giving a steady thunder, nearly below hearing, setting a rhythm for the day’s activities.
Physical training, a rotation on the front line, where Karl waited patiently for something to happen, and then classes in the afternoon.
The following day was an afternoon rotation on the line, so he had classes in the morning.
The third day he was off the line again, so he had the morning free to train and work on his meditation to build the strength of his beasts.
By the sixth day without an attack on the line, it was becoming a smooth routine, but Karl was becoming nervous. They hadn’t hit the Hill Giants that hard, so they weren’t retreating because of the casualties. No, they were up to something, and their Earth Magic kept the Golden Dragon Army from sending scout planes far enough inland to find out where they were massing troops.
Every tiny village had at least one Elder who had been taught the trick to anti-aircraft fire, and it didn’t take much to shoot down the scout planes.
“You look twitchy.” Tessa noted as they finished dinner in the fort. They hadn’t eaten dinner in the mess hall since the first day, only breakfast and lunch, so that they would be able to keep up with the news and orders more easily. The food was mostly canned everything. Even the bread came from cans. The idea was that it would lessen the strain on the clerics, so they could just heal and not worry about dealing with the food supply, but the quality of the long duration preserved foods wasn’t always all that great.
Some things were. The preserved eggs cooked as well as any, and the barbecue beans were just as good as they were fresh out of the pot. The canned potatoes were fine, but the green beans were atrocious, and everyone avoided them like the plague unless they had been heavily spiced or drenched in a sauce.
In comparison, the dinner that Tessa and Lotus came up with was always fresh, including the meat that Karl donated to the process. Some of the meat sources hadn’t been as good as others, but there were still quite a few of the giant pigs, and those were outstanding.
Karl had considered sharing one with the line, but Hawk was resistant to the idea, and they had eventually come to a compromise. It was Karl’s birthday in two more days, and Hawk had agreed to donate a pig to the meal, so the line could throw a proper party.
Nobody in the Mines could really afford birthday parties that were more extravagant than a cake with friends, so that was their tradition. But with a whole Academy full of Elites, they could throw a full on barbecue, and trick the students into eating up one of the Rocs, which Hawk found entirely too stringy for his tastes.
They tasted vaguely like chicken, and weren’t unpleasant, but if you didn’t marinade and deep-fry them, their natural state was almost a jerky. That meant Hawk, who liked his food raw, was out of luck. The frying was an essential step to making them edible.
So, on the seventh day after their arrival, the day before his birthday, Karl went to talk to the mess hall’s leader, the Professor from the culinary arts department.
“Professor Pom, could you spare me a moment? I would like to make a request and a donation for tomorrow’s lunch.” Karl greeted the aging chef.
She smiled at him, but the look on her face was full of suspicion, and she was ready to tell him to get the hell out of her kitchen at any moment.
“Tomorrow is my birthday, and I have saved one of the giant pigs from the Frost Giants, as well as the body of one of the Rocs. I would like to have the Roc brined and deep-fried, and the pig slaughtered and smoked for a barbecue feast at lunch.
I know that we have plenty of beans and salad to go with it, and everyone loves a good barbecue.” Karl explained, before she could yell at him for wasting her time.
“Put the pig on the table and let’s see it. We’ve got a thousand mouths to feed here.” She insisted.
Karl looked at the prep table and shook his head. “It is a Giant Pig from the Frost Giant nation. It’s larger than Thor, and it certainly won’t fit on the table.”
“Then the floor over there. That tarp has been sanitized.” She offered.
Karl brought out the pig, and the chef gasped in delight, before realizing that they didn’t have nearly enough smokers to accomplish the task.
They could make some of them easily enough, as they had hundreds of raw metal barrels that were used to transport ammunition and supplies for the artillery units. Or, they could wrap it and pit smoke it. That seemed like it would be the easier option.
“I will get the workers on the smoke pit right away. Did you say that you still had one of the bodies of a Roc? We’ve gone through the one that was brought back to me after the battle already.”
Karl nodded. “It’s not plucked or anything, but it has been in the equivalent of stasis, so it’s still fresh.”
The cook nodded slowly, lost in meal planning. “I will get the kitchens on the salads after breakfast, and the meat will need to be in the smokers by midnight, but if you cut me off a hundred kilos of breast meat from the Roc, we should have plenty to cover for a party. The smoked meat will be the main attraction, the students get enough fried chicken equivalents in their daily meals, and that’s the only way those birds are edible.” Hawk gave a smug squawk as the chef agreed with his opinion, then sliced off a large slab of meat for Karl to pass to the chef.
This one fit on the table, though it took most of it, and Professor Pom nodded in satisfaction. “I don’t know how your preservation system works, but that looks as fresh as if the beast had just died.
However, that giant pig hasn’t been cleaned or gutted, so I need to work. Get out of my kitchen and come back tomorrow.”
Karl had been expecting that. She had wanted to kick him out from the moment that he had entered, and there had to be some satisfaction in doing it now, even if she was going to help him with his request for an Academy wide birthday party.
Sure, it seemed excessive, but with the majority of the Academy here on station, he couldn’t really leave anyone out without looking like a massive jerk, so he had to prevail upon the main kitchens to get his barbecue.
It didn’t take long for word of the party to spread through the camp. Karl knew that nobody actually cared that it was his birthday. But they did care that there was going to be better than usual food for them.
The army wasn’t going to send tonnes of fresh boar meat to them, likely ever. That wasn’t the sort of thing that you got on the front lines, where most of the meals were prepackaged and came with instructions for cooking in the standardized Company Kitchen.
The Academy could have brought their own gear, but the army already had supplies ready, so they had chosen to use what was available.
The only one that Karl hadn’t gotten on board with the “Let’s party for my birthday” plan so far was Morgana, who insisted that having a birthday was no excuse for skipping an entire day of training. They had a good, reliable schedule, and he would get all the attention that he could handle during the lunch break.
So, it wouldn’t be a full day of slacking, but a morning shift on the line, and then a barbecue, before he had to go back to history lessons. Or perhaps Geography, though the lines between the two did seem to get rather blurry when you were discussing how the Geography had been changed.
Still, Karl settled into his hammock with a relaxed mind, ready to begin the precious few weeks when he could claim not to be the youngest person in the camp. Until her birthday, Dana would have that honour.