Dream

by RW Krpoun

  Shad hefted the sack. “Nope. Short-changing is too petty for a man like you.”

  “But murder isn’t?” Culverhouse smiled lazily.

  “Not if there was enough money in it. But I don’t think a hundred Marks is enough.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “Lucky for a lot of men here today.”

  “There’s that,” the sun caught the Trade Master’s gold teeth again as he grinned. “Mainly its because good help is hard to come by. If I had a few better men a hundred Marks would be plenty.’

  “I don’t doubt it.” Shad sketched a salute. “See you around.”

  “That seems likely.” Culverhouse caught the kitten’s attention with his grass stalk.

  The walk back was twice as long; Shad forced himself to control his pace and appear unconcerned, something that was a good deal harder than it looked. “OK, we’re golden. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “I leveled last night,” Sam announced at breakfast. “I was just on the cusp when you guys dropped the Ultimate Master.”

  “Great,” Shad examined the contents of his bowl. “Is this chili?”

  “More like a bean stew,” Jeff thoughtfully masticated an experimental mouthful. “Or bean and bacon soup with potatoes.”

  “It has red beans,” Shad observed to no one in particular. “I hope you took a level in a combat class,” he said to Sam.

  “I didn’t need to,” the Bard shrugged. “I took fencing and the sling, both class-permitted.”

  “Good.”

  “We got a sword-rapier yesterday,” Derek observed, tearing a chunk off a rye loaf. “Man, I miss sliced bread-I get why the old-timers use that expression. If it turns out to be OK that will set you up.”

  “Speaking of which, get that gear checked out today,” the Jinxman observed.

  “It’ll take a couple hours.”

  “That’s fine. The rest of you get our field gear and rations lined out, but first thing is to order our bang-sticks. Once we know how long they are going to take we can get a plan sorted out.”

  “How many do we want?” Jeff asked.

  “Ninety Marks’ worth, I figure. I’m going to work on gunpowder, charms, and rune-ink until we roll. I doubt we’ll get more bang-sticks than we can carry.”

  “No shares?” Derek sounded disappointed.

  “We’re trying to get home,” Jeff shook his head. “Anything we buy or capture is going to be left behind when we un-borrow our butts out of this armpit.”

  “Yeah, OK. Force of habit.”

  “Sam talked the Dwarf into twelve bang-sticks for ninety-five Marks,” Jeff reported as the Black Talons sat down to a lunch of steamed slabs of snow-white river-pike, dark rye bread, and baked potatoes. “He’s really good.”

  “That’s what a Bard does,” the little student executed a seated bow.

  “Perfect. When will they be done?”

  “The day after tomorrow.”

  “Did you explain the importance of a consistent bore diameter?”

  “Yeah, the sticks should be about .75 caliber.” Jeff carefully extracted a bone from a piece of fish. “We won’t need a bullet mold, Sam knew a jewelry-maker who gave us a deal on undrilled brass balls that are about .30 caliber; the sticks should load them like buckshot, say six per load. Wadding and the accessories were cheap, too, because there’s a bunch of artisans who owe our little buddy from his career as the F. Lee Baily of this dump.”

  “OK, I’ll have the powder mixed by the time the sticks are ready, and still have time to replace the rune-ink I burned getting the stuff. How’s the money, Derek?”

  “Going fast,” the Shadowmancer grimaced. “The bang-sticks, powder makings, shot, and associated supplies ate up Culverhouse’s reward and some of the merchant’s as well. The day-to-day expenses and field rations will use up the rest of the reward money and the money you grabbed at the skull. We’ll end up a few shillings poorer than we were before we started the lizard-man job.”

  “That’s OK,” Fred grunted. “It was a means to an end.”

  “Exactly,” Shad nodded. “What about the gear we captured?”

  “The bracers confer armor protection to the torso, a little better than a leather shirt, two of the pendants protect from bugs the way your charms do and the third wards against poison and disease. The sword is Dwarven-forged but not enchanted, and the gloves are just gloves.”

  “The bracers should go to Derek since he can’t wear any armor, and Sam needs a sword,” Jeff pointed out; the others nodded. “Dice for the rest?”

  Sam and Derek were excluded from the dicing, and Shad won the better pendant.

  “Well, these will save me two charms every week,” the Jinxman observed. “Sam, make sure you pick up plenty of sling bullets.”

  “I hope I don’t need them,” the Bard observed solemnly.

  “That would be nice, but this place has been one atrocity after another. The revenants won’t let us pass, and I expect that getting to the tomb won’t be any cakewalk, either. If we’re lucky it won’t involve us killing Humans, but that’s about as good as it gets.”

  “I don’t know if I could kill a person, you know, a Human being,” Sam admitted.

  “First time’s the toughest,” Shad wiped his bowl clean with a hunk of bread and then ate the bread.

  “You ever feel bothered by it?” Derek asked.

  The Jinxman shook his head. “Not really. I’m not sure if I’m completely insensitive or down deep I’m just a real bastard. Could be I don’t have the imagination to really get a grip on it.”

  “Empathy,” Fred muttered. “Not imagination.”

  “Plus you are a complete bastard,” Jeff added helpfully.

  “True, although I didn’t see you guys weeping over the bodies. Derek’s the only one who showed any remorse.”

  “Its that some were so young,” the Shadowmancer shrugged. “Younger than we were. And the kids who got it from supporting fire or IEDs.”

  “The kids were bad,” Shad agreed. “The entire business was like a machine that was running out of control.”

  “That’s what war is,” Jeff nodded.

  “And its like this place-we have been drafted into someone’s war. Its win or die.” Shad stared unseeing at the tabletop. “Iraq was better in that regard.”

  “At least we volunteered for Iraq,” Fred sighed.

  “There it is.”

  “If they had made the pitch to you, would you have volunteered for this gig?” Derek asked Sam.

  “Are you kidding? No way in Hell.”

  “I would have,” the Shadowmancer said thoughtfully. “Shad would probably be up for a war, Fred likes to fight, and Jeff’s too stupid to say no.”

  The Night-grifter shot him the finger. “I wouldn’t leave you guys in the lurch; that’s not the same as stupid.”

  “We volunteered for Iraq,” Shad reminded him. “A war that generated less media interest than Paris Hilton’s jail time. Smart we’re not.”

  “Tell that to the Fedayeen,” Jeff grinned.

  “No shit,” Fred nodded. “We kicked some serious ass.”

  “We did,” Shad conceded. “And Derek had sex with a goat.”

  “I did not.” Derek rolled his eyes. “I was feeding it a cookie.”

  “Pictures don’t lie.”

  “People who interpret them for their own agenda do.”

  They left two days later, Ula trotting bravely under the load of disassembled bang-sticks and two small kegs of gunpowder. “Who’s a good girl?” Jeff gave the solemn little jenny a fresh carrot.

  “She is a solid addition,” Shad scratched the donkey behind the ears.

  “I never think of you as liking animals,” Derek observed as they set off the road, Ula still masticating her carrot.

  “Why?”

  “Well, because of all the dogs and camels you shot in Iraq.”

  “I wasn’t shooting them for fun; those damned skinny mongrels seriously spooked me-I saw th
em eating corpses a couple times. And half the camels I shot produced secondary explosions-the Hajis were using them to move munitions.”

  “What about the half that didn’t produce secondary explosions?”

  “I don’t like camels.”

  “You don’t like many things.”

  “Not true: I am just inclined to voice my negativity, and I have a very caustic wit. Its all a stress-reduction process.”

  “Or you might just be an utter bastard.”

  “That is one way to describe it,” Shad conceded. “On the other hand I am, and have always been, very stress-free.”

  The five caught the ferry across the river and took the South Way, which was actually running west through the Direwood.

  “This is the way we came to the City-State,” Derek observed. “Seems like a year ago.”

  “How long has it been?” Jeff wondered.

  “Today is the forty-fourth day since we came through,” Shad threw a rock at a rook on a nearby branch; the raven squawked and flew off, uninjured. “I figure we’ve missed ninety minutes of the real world.”

  “Except for Sam,” Derek pointed out.

  “Yeah, he’s got a twelve hour lead on us. What day did you leave on?”

  “Sometime Friday morning; before noon for sure.”

  “He disappeared twelve or thirteen hours before we did,” Fred said suddenly. “Everyone did. They had to.”

  “Huh.” Jeff thought about that. “Yeah, makes sense. Its sort of like time travel.”

  “That explains why we never heard anything about gamers vanishing,” Shad picked up another rock and tossed it from hand to hand.

  “The intruders came through seven local years ago-that means, what, Tuesday? Monday night?” Derek mused. "Time distortion is weird.”

  “I wonder what happens to the bodies of the dead, outlander dead.” Shad threw the rock at a tree and missed. “Whats-her-face said that they go back, but not necessarily in the same condition as what killed them, but she could have been lying.”

  “The bodies do vanish,” Sam shrugged. “That much I’ve confirmed. What they look like back home I can’t say. If there aren’t any changes there’s going to be a lot of unsolved murders back there. I bet fifty gamers have been brought in, maybe more.”

  “Any of them not Americans?”

  “Yeah, a lot of the older groups are Brits or Europeans. Lately its all Americans and Canadians.”

  “Rotation of Earth,” Derek said thoughtfully. “I bet they can only access a certain facing, so as it rotates they grab gamers from their target window. Like a surveillance satellite.”

  “Night,” Shad suggested grimly. “The New Testament mentions those who shun the light and love the darkness.”

  The group trudged along in silence as the road wound its way through the forest. “Maybe they’ll make it look like a heart attack or something like that,” Fred suggested after a while.

  “Why would they care? Its not like someone will find a gamer geek with sword or teeth wounds and figure out the truth of this place,” Shad disagreed.

  “The rules aren’t set by the Council,” Sam explained. “This is a prison, a place of banishment. The time difference, for example: that’s deliberate, a feature not a bug. I expect that the corpses will show natural causes when they get back.”

  “Valid point,” Shad conceded. “I keep forgetting that the Council is just pulling the ultimate rules-lawyer ploy.”

  “Hey, remember when Mallory tried to have his character have a flamethrower effect by tossing whiskey into the air and igniting it with the muzzle flash of his revolver?” Jeff asked.

  Shad grinned. “Well, look at all the smokers who burned to death drinking whiskey.” He caught Sam’s look. “Guy who gamed with us sometimes, great role-player but hell on trying to weasel around the rules.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Fred grinned. “He has red hair, and everyone knows gingers have no souls.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The South Way swung due south at a ford, and the Black Talons spent a wet half-hour porting their gear across, as the water was too deep for Ula to cross fully loaded. The little jenny, sans her pack saddle, crossed first and wanly watched the five men haul the equipment, her soaked coat making her look sadder than usual.

  “Well, that was the pits,” Jeff observed as the Talons removed their boots to dry and powder their feet. “I miss boots with drain holes and synthetic materials.”

  “No joke.” Shad pulled on dry socks and began to drag on his wet boots. “These will take forever to dry out.”

  “Why are you putting them back on?” Sam asked as he dug into his pack.

  “Because leather shrinks when it dries. If you don’t let them dry on your feet you’ll play hell tomorrow,” the Jinxman explained. “You’ll have blisters before you get them loosened up again.”

  “Crap.” The Bard stowed his extra boots and began to work his feet into his wet boots.

  “I’m not enthused about walking in wet boots,” Jeff said. “What about calling it a day here?”

  “We covered about twenty miles of road, and there’s lots of grass for Ula,” Derek observed. In fact the jenny was already taking advantage of the greenery.

  Shad looked around; the forest on the river’s south bank was thinner and travelers had cut down enough trees to leave a clearing nearly a hundred yards square. There was a fire pit lined with rocks surrounded by sections of tree trunks, and even an untidy pile of firewood. “Yeah, what the hell. No point in suffering unnecessarily-we aren’t Marines.”

  Fred predicted a clear night so setting up camp was brief; the four original Black Talons had reverted to the military habit of minimalistic unpacking, and counseled Sam about the practice with a variety of insults and disparaging remarks.

  Fred and Shad took turns with the group’s axe, cutting down a six-inch oak and then converting the trunk and large branches into firewood lengths. Derek had picked up some fishing arrows and quickly lost two before snagging a pike with his third and then blasting it with two bolts of arcane force.

  “I don’t think that’s how arrow-fishing is supposed to work,” Jeff observed as the Shadowmancer dragged the dying fish, which was four-tenths Derek’s body weight, ashore by main force.

  “Screw how its supposed to work,” the slender Texan heaved the pike’s head further up the bank. “I killed the damned thing. Gimme a hand before I pop the rod out of my back.”

  The Talons sat around the fire Jeff had kindled in the fire pit and discussed the best way to cook the slabs of white pike flesh. They settled on the frying pan after Fred’s finely crafted multi-tined cooking spit caught on fire, and argued as to why the spit had failed for a while before turning to an in-depth discussion of Peter Jackson’s three-movie treatment of The Hobbit.

  “The real weakness was that they found three great Elf-forged weapons in a troll-hole, two of ‘em legendary weapons, and never even considered finding the bones of the heroes who must have been carrying them,” Shad pointed.

  “Or checking around for other gear,” Derek agreed. “You figure a guy who rated one of those blades would have had other enchanted gear on them.

  “Trolls would have eaten the bones,” Fred countered.

  “Doesn’t explain not looking for other gear,” Derek objected.

  “And what’s with the glowing blade on Sting?” Shad mused. “Orcs and Goblins fight at night or underground by preference, so why make your sword light up like a neon tube when they’re close?”

  “Maybe it’s a hero thing-I’m so badass that I make sure the enemy knows how to find me,” Jeff suggested.

  “It’s so you never have to fight them in the dark,” Fred shook his head. “No matter when or where the fight happens the Orcs and Goblins can’t use their superior night vision to gain a significant advantage.”

  “From the books it was to warn you that they were near,” Derek pointed out.

  “If that’s the idea, then its like tra
cers: they tell you where you’re shooting at, and they tell everyone else where you are shooting from,” Shad jabbed a finger at the Shadowmancer. “If you’re right somebody didn’t think the thing through.”

  “Yeah but...,” Derek was silenced by Fred holding up a hand. “What?”

  “People,” the barbarian jerked his chin towards the road.

  In the growing twilight Shad saw movement on the paler strip of the South Way, and moments later could see figures. “Five and a mule, looks like.” The Jinxman instinctively checked the flanks and rear as the others stirred.

  “Six, one smaller,” Fred corrected him.

  The group on the road slowed when they spotted the sparks arcing up from the fire pit, and then angled over towards where the Black Talons. “Hello the camp!” one of the figures called.

  “Jeff,” Shad said quietly, and then raised his voice. “Come on in.”

  The Night-grifter casually stood to set a well-dried chunk of firewood onto the bed of coals and then strolled over to check on Ula as the newcomers came across the clearing. Flames swiftly climbed the wood, illuminating the approaching group.

  The man who had called was apparently the leader, a big man running to fat clad in stained and foul-smelling fighting leathers, his wide belt supporting three bone-handled knives and a short axe. He had shaved his scalp, which was tattooed in a pattern Shad couldn’t make out, and wore a thick walrus-style mustache and a few day’s growth of beard on a grimy face.

  His four companions were rough-looking men who stank of blood and long-unwashed bodies, and who each carried several knives in addition to axes or maces. The remainder of the group consisted of a skinny overloaded mule that was limping on its left front hoof, and what appeared to be a self-propelled bundle of foul-smelling furs.

  Walrus Mustache dropped onto a log section with a satisfied grunt. “Long day. I’m Ulrich.”

  “Shad. We’re the Black Talons. You headed to the City State?”

  “Only place this road leads,” Ulrich grinned, revealing strong white teeth. “Something smells good.”