by Arthur Stone
“We’re transporting wine. I’m sure they could spare a barrel for the cause,” Rycer moaned again, then added resolutely. “Go on, do it!”
“Wait!” I nearly screamed, though a second ago I wasn’t even going to open my mouth.
Krol, who was about to grab the arrow’s tail, turned toward me.
“What is it?!” he barked viciously.
I raised my hand, displaying a broken piece of arrow found in the sand. One of the many that the archer had shot at Atami.
I proceeded to explain, picking my words carefully.
“See the tip? It’s not held by glue, but rather mounted on the shaft. And mounted well. The arrow nearly made it to the temple—see the bump from it pressing from inside the skull? It’s wedged tight in there. If you pull on it, the tip will remain. And that means death.”
“The kid is right,” Rycer drawled with resignation. “I won’t make it with a piece of metal in my head.”
“The trading station has a healer, he’ll take care of you,” Krol reassured him, though his own tone was far less than certain.
“The arrow is enchanted. It’s doing something to me, I can feel it. The magic is ruinous, it’s draining the life right out of me.”
“But the healer—”
“Shut your trap already!” Rycer blew up, then groaned from the flash of pain punishing him for the sudden stress to his vocal organs. “I told you, it’s draining the life out of me. And it’ll keep draining for as long as the tip is inside. Even if I make it to the station, what then? There ain’t no healers there, that’s why they use potions. And potions are expensive. Treatment there would cost me more than what I earn in a year. And, again, the metal is enchanted—it ain’t some rusty nail in my backside. I ain’t got many options. I’m too far from my home village and our healer. So, it’s either death or bondage...”
“So what are we going to do...” Krol threw up his arms in frustration.
At that, I offered a suggestion. “Take the tip out from the other end.”
“What? How?”
“Easy. The arrow went into the eye-socket and through to the temple. It must have missed the brain, considering that Rycer is still alive. The temple bone is broken, I can see the tip from here. If you push on the arrow, the tip should pop out of the temple. Once you remove or saw off the tip, you can pull it out like you were going to before.”
“Push it further into his head? Are you nuts?!” Krol gasped.
Cursing mentally at the dunderhead, I tapped into my reserves of patience and explained again.
“His head is already pierced through. You merely need to finish the job. A new hole in the temple beats an arrowhead stuck in the skull, every time. But I’m not here to argue. It’s just a suggestion, do with it what you will.”
“Grow a pecker first before you start spewing suggestions!”
“I was born with one that’s bigger than yours.”
Another gasp, this one more from rage than surprise. “What did you say?! Why, I’m gonna...”
“Shut up!” Rycer barked anxiously. “Before you start measuring. Both of you are assholes!”
“But he—” the coachman persisted, still aghast.
“I said shut up!” Turning his surviving eye my way, Rycer added firmly. “Go on, kid!”
“What?”
“Do as you said. Take out the tip. Krol can’t do it, his hands are shaking. Yours ain’t shaking, so you do it.”
“I’m no healer.”
“So what? Go on.”
“My hands are about to start shaking, too.”
“Why? They ain’t shaking now, so keep’em still.”
“They always shake when I remember about my ‘misplaced’ coin purse.”
“Listen, kid. If you don’t take out this arrowhead, I’m going to take out your eye with my free hand. You’ll end up just like me. Now hurry up, I ain’t got much patience!”
The soldier was indeed on edge—that much was clear. And with his size, one hand would be more than enough to make me a cripple.
I didn’t have much choice in the matter.
Surgery was not my strong suit. The only operation I had ever borne witness to, in which my own heart was cut open and extracted, hadn’t afforded me much practical knowledge. Nothing that I could apply to this situation, anyway.
The one thing I had going was that I wasn’t afraid of blood. My hands weren’t shaking, though that alone wouldn’t do the job. Weak as I was, the force that I was able to apply wasn’t enough to push the arrowhead through the temporal bone. I pushed and pushed, Rycer groaned and gritted his teeth, but nothing was happening.
It was time to change tactics. Shifting my position a bit, I pressed my full body weight into the warrior’s arm, only using my hands to hold on to him. He began to yell about being shredded alive—which wasn’t an unfair assertion—but we were finally making progress. The temple began to swell until the skin broke and blood streamed from the open wound.
I kept pushing until, at last, the arrowhead popped out all the way with one final crunch of the temporal bone. I pulled on it, but it held firm to the shaft, so I turned to Krol.
“I can’t pull it off. You try—or saw it off, if you want.”
Watching the proceedings with wild eyes, he handed me a knife.
“Chaos take me! You saw...” he muttered hoarsely.
The caravanner’s hands shook so badly that I nearly cut myself taking the weapon from him. But there was more to it than that. In this absurd world, any item you wanted to handle had to conform to you. A degenerate like me could use only the plainest items, and in limited ways. And so this blade with an ugly wooden handle objected to being defiled by the touch of my hand, making it hard to operate.
But there was even more to it than that. I realized that, in addition to everything else, my hands were too unaccustomed to complex motor functions. It had been years since I performed any kind of challenging manual task, so now it was all I could do to wiggle my fingers like a newborn. The amulet’s boosts were helping, but not sufficiently so.
I had a long way to go to master this body.
The sawing process was long and painful. Figuratively painful for me, and quite literally for Rycer. Twice the poor merc nearly passed out from the pain, and a third time when I finally pulled out the arrow shaft sans its tip.
Bandaging the profusely bleeding forearm also fell on me, Krol having entrenched himself fully in the role of spectator who could do nothing but “ooh” and “aah” and grab his head with both hands in horror. When the time came to swab the gaping, oozing eye-socket, I didn’t even bother asking the man for help.
As soon as I finished, something happened that I had never before experienced. The world went dark for a moment, immersing me in a state similar to the one I had entered when looking within.
Words flashed before my eyes, rendered in the same strict font I had used when systematizing all the information that had been revealed to me earlier today.
You have potentially saved a human life! You receive:
Lesser Symbol of Chi x2
Personal Talent Mark, Novice Healer x1
Trying not to betray the bemusement that took hold of me, I left the wounded in Krol’s care as I made for the river, anxious to wash off another person’s blood and mull over what happened.
So shocking and unexpected was this development that I had forgotten all about my fear of arrows, though I’d make an easy target now for any archer hiding in the bushes. Relax... The bank is fully secured.
The assurance helped. Besides, caution was a luxury now. It was imperative to make sense of... myself.
The fact that I was seeing information presented in letters and numbers wasn’t too far fetched. Simply put, I had converted the visual forms favored by the natives into strict data, which I found easier to work with. It was as natural for the residents of Rock as text on a computer screen was for humans of Earth, only the former didn’t need Wi-Fi to access the network. The sam
e higher forces whose presence permeated every single physical particle in the world—as well as concepts and events without physical form—neglected nothing and no one under the Rock sun. It was what the locals referred to as ‘the Order.’ Truthfully, I found it pretentious as hell. It wasn’t enough to capitalize the word, no—you had to use all capital letters, and accentuate each letter in a specific way. Alas, I couldn’t think of a way to recreate the unique spelling of the term in any human language I knew.
At any rate, it was the foundation of everything in this realm. It was precisely the Order that kept Rock and all of its constituents from sliding into the abyss of absolute Chaos. My own world was halfway to the same infinite chasm, so this one was somewhat more fortunate.
Now, don’t ask me how something that’s infinite could have an end. The local philosophers could spend days on the subject, throwing around a million theories and conjectures and still not arrive at a plausible explanation.
Even realms of Order had room for Chaos, and my second life was a prime example thereof. Deprived of the ability to interact with the parameters of the Order, from the vantage point of the locals, I was an absurdity to be pitied. Something akin to a harmless circus freak. All of mother’s great efforts to fix me had been for naught. She had only flushed the last of the clan’s savings down the drain, pushing the Crow past the point of no return. She might have even deemed the arrival of the band of assassins a mercy, allowing her to leave the stage with honor—a fine solution for a noble.
But then something unexpected had happened. Pitiful degenerate that I was, on some very basic level I had somehow managed to connect with the Order. And the invisible controllers that governed this reality had somehow recognized my affinity for processing information differently from the natives, and allowed me to customize my interface not in visuals as they did, but using strictly numbers and letters.
And now, another unexpected development. The higher powers had apparently decided that successfully treating the wounded soldier was a significant enough achievement as to merit a reward.
Turning away from the caravan while leaving one hand in the water, I used the other to find the pouch on my neck. I loosened the string, opened the mouth, then looked inside, giving each item a focused stare. And it almost didn’t surprise me when the world faded once more as information about the contents displayed before my eyes.
Lesser Symbol of Chi x17
Medium Symbol of Chi x4
Lesser Essence of Stamina x2
Lesser Essence of Agility x1
Lesser Essence of Equilibrium x11
Lesser Essence of Melee Combat x10
Lesser Essence of Iron Skin x10
This was Rock’s universal currency. And it was more valuable than any coin, which was why it had merited being stored in this clever container. In the good old times, it used to be filled to the brim, but those times were long gone—mother had spent way too much on experiments trying to make me whole. Still, even this was enough to last a few months of living modestly.
Too bad the treasure was of no use to me. If ever I flashed it anywhere, it would suffer the same fate as the coin purse, leaving me with nothing and bringing me a few months closer to certain death.
As soon as the amulet lost its charge, I was a goner, for despite all the recent developments, I remained a nonviable invalid.
And I hadn’t a clue as to how to correct that.
Not just yet.
Chapter 10
Dead Man Walking
Degrees of Enlightenment: Unknown
Attributes: none
Skills: none
States: none
The convoy was led by two people: Kashik and Atami. The former managed everything not related to security while the latter handled only security. It wasn’t obvious which of the two was the other’s superior. So clear was the division of responsibilities between them that it might not have even mattered. They each saw to their own affairs, and didn’t get in each other’s way.
Kashik had a lousy reputation, and the people didn’t feel shy voicing their distaste for the men publicly. Still, if he gave an order, everyone obeyed.
So when I was informed that the man himself wanted to see me, I had no choice but to satisfy his wish.
Needless to say, I didn’t want to go. What the hell did he want with me all of a sudden? Rock was a world of strict hierarchies, in which anyone who rose higher than the level of a baseboard was almost obligated to spit on the heads of the scum floundering below. Kashik should have no business with a small fry like me. And even if there was something to say to a broken foundling, he should have passed the order down the chain of command—for his underlings to relay to me. Summoning me for an audience that would involve direct communication was a violation of unwritten hierarchical principles. A representative of the Three Axes deigning to entertain a worm like me suggested that something extraordinary was in play.
And considering how likely even ordinary developments were to snuff out my pitiful existence, I would do well to give a round berth to extraordinary ones.
Alas, when faced with a direct command from someone so highly above my station, I could hardly afford refusing it.
Kashik wouldn’t even look at me. The fact that he was speaking to me directly was honor enough.
He simply pointed to the river and said in a squeamish tone.
“There’s a sack of spices left in that wagon. Bring it here.”
So it wasn’t quite an order, but a suicide mission. But what was I supposed to say? That I didn’t feel like walking into a river teeming with kote? Or argue that, with my meager strength and stamina, I wouldn’t be able to carry my own body back and forth, let alone a full sack?
Kashik knew all this even without my saying it. I was a nobody to him. A weakling nobody knew or cared about, lucky to have been picked up on the side of the road. There was no one here to stand up for him, so he was free to do with me as he pleased. Here in the Wild Wood, getting injured or killed was par for the course. But spices were valuable cargo that needed to be salvaged. Or, at the very least, you needed to provide proof that you had done all you could to salvage it.
So why not try and solve the problem by risking the least important person in the caravan?
Refusal would not be accepted. I would either complete the task or die trying. And if I tried to object or wriggle out of it, I risked injury or death right here and now.
After quickly surmising the situation and assessing my limited options, I nodded my agreement.
“I will do my best to try and retrieve your spices, my lord. For that, I’m going to need the bloodied rags used to wrap the wounds inflicted by kote attacks. Please issue the order to supply me with several. The dirtier, the better. I’m also going to need a stalk of wild blueleaf and a knife. I shall return the knife before going out for the spices.”
Kashik couldn’t resist giving me a heavy askance look. Apparently, my calmness combined with the unusual request surprised him.
Not that it mattered—he wouldn’t be budging off his decision anytime soon.
I was still going to have to get into the river.
I didn’t know much about wagons. As such, I could only guess as to how that one had managed to get stuck where others had passed without issue. All I knew was that whenever a wagon would get stuck, the caravanners would push it up and forward to get it going again.
But in this case, the people were too busy fighting off the kote to push the wagon. All the while the coachman was probably whipping the crap out of the horse to keep moving, possibly causing the panicked animal to jerk hard enough to break the wooden joints connecting the axes to the wagon. Especially if the horse was turning to get back to the nearer shore instead of pushing forward to the farther one. That would be my guess, looking at the lopsided wagon half-buried in the river floor, the way it might stand on solid ground if it had only one wheelset remaining.
Some of the cargo had spilled out and either sunk underwater
or gotten carried away by the current. Of the load that remained, however, Kashik had spotted something too valuable to leave behind.
Even if his own greed allowed it, he was beholden to his masters’ will—and they would demand that all efforts be made to salvage such precious cargo. After all, if he failed to deliver to the station something essential yet relatively inexpensive, the locals might be tempted to cover the shortage with higher-end substitutes, like those produced locally. That would be bad for business, and merchants greatly disliked things that were bad for business.
The process of developing one’s degrees of enlightenment, attributes and skills was a complex one. The surest, most reliable way to squeeze maximum value from it involved eating not randomly but sticking to a very particular diet that included special substances extracted from plants, animals, mushrooms and certain minerals. I had dubbed all those extracts “spices,” but only to myself, as Rock’s residents were adamantly against generalizing or abridging anything in such an important field.