Over the next few days, Adrian focused on recovering while putting together a simple campsite.
At the same time, he gathered food and collected whatever useful resources he could find nearby.
The shelter did not need to be elaborate; it only had to be livable.
He built a frame against the rock face using fallen trunks, wove branches horizontally between them, and packed the gaps with dried grass and moss.
For the roof, he laid down two overlapping layers of fern from the bottom upward so rainwater would run off instead of seeping inside.
The interior was not high enough to stand in, but there was enough room to sit upright.
It was also deep enough for him to lie flat and stretch out his legs.
He raised the floor with a layer of pebbles and covered it with thick, dried grass.
It was hardly comfortable, but at least he was no longer sleeping directly on the damp earth or exposed to the wind and rain.
The wound in his left shoulder was healing slowly.
Every morning, he removed the bandage, rinsed the edges of the injury with river water, and wrapped it again with a clean strip of cloth.
The bandages made from the old shirt had already been used up, so Adrian tore several more strips from the hem of his linen tunic.
The wound no longer bled, and most of the redness and swelling had faded.
Although he could not stitch it closed, keeping it compressed and clean allowed the flesh to gradually seal on its own.
During the day, he went out in search of food.
He had already become familiar with several stagnant pools along the river where fish tended to gather.
Whenever he found one, he lifted a heavy stone and smashed it into the water with a dull thud.
After the mud settled, pale bellies would rise to the surface.
Adrian kept the fish that were about the size of his palm and threw the smaller ones back.
He gutted the catch, then placed the fish over the stone stove outside his shelter to smoke slowly.
The stove was built in the same style as those he had seen in Northumbria.
Several stones formed the firebox, while flat green slabs were laid across the top to support the fish.
The flames had to remain low.
If the fire grew too strong, the outside would burn while the flesh inside remained raw.
Adrian smoked the fish until the skin tightened and darkened from gray-white to deep brown, becoming almost as hard as old bark.
He then threaded them onto willow branches and hung them from the rafters inside the shelter.
He did not neglect wild vegetables either.
He gathered dandelions from the sunny slopes along the river, water celery from the damp mud beside the stream, and newly sprouted wild garlic from the edge of the forest.
The tender plants were eaten the same day, while the tougher ones were spread across stones and left to dry.
Once they had lost their moisture, he crushed them and stored them in a cloth pouch.
He also collected whatever wild fruit he could find.
The blackberries growing among the bushes were shriveled, but they still tasted sweet and sour when chewed.
A few raspberry bushes also grew nearby, their fruit bright red, though Adrian pricked his fingers several times while picking them.
After several days, a row of smoked fish hung from the rafters, dried vegetables were stacked beside the stone stove, and a small pouch of dried fruit had been filled.
It was enough food to sustain him for some time.
Adrian did not rush to cultivate the land, partly because his injury had not yet fully healed.
He could manage to swing a short axe while cutting wood, but repeatedly lifting a hoe to break the soil was still beyond him.
He had also begun to realize that he did not need much farmland for the time being.
Farming alone was too inefficient.
Even if he used methods such as drill sowing, crop rotation, or wood ash to adjust the acidity of the soil, the amount one person could produce remained limited.
Clearing a single acre would require cutting trees, digging out roots, removing stones, turning the soil, and sowing the seed—a process that could occupy him for dozens of days.
If he spent those same days hunting instead, the goods he obtained could be traded for far more food and supplies.
The riverbank was more open than Blackthorn Village, and the surrounding forest was dense with game.
In only a few days, fishing and gathering wild plants had already allowed him to build up a modest reserve.
There were larger animals in the forest as well.
Adrian had seen hoofprints in the soft mud beside the stream, likely left by red deer, and they were even wider than those he remembered from Northumbria.
He had also found traces of wild boars rooting beneath the trees, leaving the earth around the roots completely churned up.
If he could kill even one of those animals, the meat could be smoked into jerky, the hide tanned into leather, and the fat rendered for storage.
Anything he could not use himself could be traded.
Salt, iron, and cloth were all things he could not produce on his own and would always have to obtain from others.
Before the Vikings reached Mercia and while these mountains remained relatively peaceful, he needed to gather a stockpile of valuable goods.
Smoked fish, smoked meat, leather, and fat.
Once he had accumulated enough, he would follow the river downstream, find a market town, and trade for the supplies he truly needed.
Iron nails, iron bars, salt, and linen.
A fish broke the surface of the river, its scales flashing silver-white before it disappeared beneath the water again.
Adrian tucked the short axe back into his belt and rose to his feet.
He would catch a few more fish today, then venture deeper into the forest tomorrow to see whether the animal that had left those hoofprints was still nearby.
Before long, he returned carrying three fish.
His luck had been good; after striking only two pools, he had managed to collect three fish roughly the size of his palm.
He gutted them beside the river, threw the entrails back into the water, and carried the cleaned fish to his shelter.
The fire inside the stone stove had burned down to dark-red embers, making it ideal for smoking.
Adrian laid the fish across the stone slabs and watched as their skin gradually tightened, changing from grayish-white to a scorched yellow beneath the heat.
He then placed two damp branches over the embers to weaken the fire and produce more smoke.
Thick smoke curled around the fish, slowly drawing out their moisture and replacing the raw, fishy smell with a dry, savory aroma.
Adrian sat with his back against the rock face and watched thin wisps escape through the gaps in the stone stove.
He could not leave the fish unattended.
If the fire grew too strong, the outside would burn while the flesh remained raw, but if it became too weak, the smoke would fail to penetrate the meat properly.
His stomach suddenly growled.
Adrian reached up, pulled down one of the previously smoked fish hanging from the rafters, tore off a piece, and began chewing.
The meat was as tough as old bark and took a long time to soften in his mouth.
Its saltiness was so faint that he could barely detect it, and after chewing several more times, he confirmed that it was not simply his imagination.
The fish truly had almost no salt.
Adrian instinctively reached toward his waist.
The salt pouch was still there, but it had been empty ever since he fell into the ravine.
The leather had been soaked through by the river, dissolving and washing away all the salt inside.
For several days, everything he had eaten—fish, wild vegetables, and porridge—had been nearly saltless.
He knew that without enough salt, his strength would fade and his wounds would take longer to heal.
He needed to obtain more.
Adrian looked toward the forest.
This mountainous region was far from the sea, and there were neither salt pans nor salt wells nearby.
Buying salt from a market town would be the simplest solution, but the nearest one lay a day and a half south of Blackthorn Village, making the journey at least three days there and back.
His current supplies consisted of little more than a dozen smoked fish and half a bag of dried wild fruit.
Even if he carried everything with him, they would not trade for much salt.
More importantly, Adrian did not want to leave the riverbank so soon.
He had only just finished building his shelter, and the wound in his shoulder had not completely healed.
If he left now, there was no guarantee that the camp would remain untouched until his return.
Since he could not buy salt yet, he would have to find another solution.
Wood ash.
Adrian lowered his gaze to the ash beneath the stone stove.
After several days of use, a thick layer of gray-white powder had accumulated there, mixed with pieces of unburned charcoal.
Wood ash contained alkaline substances, and although they were not true salt, they could provide a faintly salty, astringent taste.
It would not be pleasant, but it was still better than having nothing at all.
He raked the ash from beneath the stove and piled it onto a flat slab of bluestone.
Once it had cooled completely, he sifted through it with his fingers, removing the black fragments of charcoal one by one until only a fine gray-white powder remained.
Adrian scooped up a handful of river water and poured it over the ash.
The liquid seeped slowly through the powder, darkening it from gray-white to gray-brown.
He added another handful until the ash was thoroughly soaked and water began leaking from the bottom of the pile.
The liquid that emerged was cloudy and carried fine particles of ash.
Adrian guided it into a shallow depression on another stone and left it beneath the sun to evaporate.
Once the water had dried, a very thin gray-white residue remained on the surface.
He dipped a finger into it and touched it to his tongue.
A powerful astringency immediately seized his mouth, tightening every taste bud.
Beneath that harshness, however, lingered the faintest trace of saltiness.
It was so weak that it was almost imperceptible, but it was still better than nothing.
Adrian scraped the remaining ash from the stove, removed the charcoal, and piled the clean powder onto the bluestone.
He poured more water through it, directing the resulting ash water into a natural hollow in a nearby rock.
The depression was small, capable of holding only a handful of liquid.
After filling it, Adrian sat nearby to rest while the sun slowly drew away the moisture.
As the hours passed, the water level dropped and left a pale ring around the edge of the stone.
By evening, the liquid had completely evaporated, leaving behind a thin gray-white crust at the bottom.
Adrian scraped off a little with his fingernail, crushed it between his fingers, and tasted it.
The astringency was stronger than before, but the saltiness had also become slightly more noticeable.
He carefully gathered the residue and stored it in the leather pouch at his waist.
The pouch had originally carried salt, and a few genuine grains still remained trapped in its seams.
Adrian poured the wood-ash residue inside and shook the pouch to mix them together.
It was enough to add the faintest salty taste to a single pot of fish soup.
However, Adrian did not need salt for only one meal; he needed enough to last through the summer, help his wounds heal, and restore his strength.
Wood ash alone would never provide enough.
The next time he traveled deeper into the forest, he would search for sumac trees.
Their berries grew in clusters and were sometimes coated with a pale residue that carried a salty taste.
If he could find them, they would be far more useful than wood ash.
If he found nothing, however, he would have no choice but to make the journey to the market town.