by G. R. Cooper
He started dragging his foot through the thin, brown grass that dotted the slope, trying to clean the stool from between his toes. He noticed Bear moving away, upwind of him.
“I don’t suppose you want to lick this off of me, do you buddy?”
The dog just snorted and moved off further.
Wulfgar pulled off his belt and began unraveling his covering, taking care not to get any of the shit on it. After he was naked, he stood, taking in his own, new body. He looked to his crotch and his mood improved - his arms and shoulders weren’t the only things larger than his previous body. Smiling, he put his fists on his hips and looked around, trying to find some way to clean himself. A gurgling mountain stream - maybe with a convenient waterfall - would do nicely.
No such luck. He continued to drag his foot over all of the fresh grass he could find, until it was, more or less, clean. That left his leg to be cleaned. He couldn’t see anything such as leaves he could use to wipe with. Nothing. Finally, he bowed to the inevitable and dropped to his ass and began sliding around on a patch of grass that he hadn’t yet befouled.
“Shoes,” he muttered, “I have to get into the city and find a pair of shoes. And pants.”
He re-wrapped the long, dingy un-dyed muslin around himself. He knew, instinctively, just how to roll it around his body and bunch it up in the back before securing it with his belt - creating a passable kilting. He then pulled the longer portion of the blanket, bunched in the back, over his right shoulder and tucked the loose end into the belt at his belly.
As he looked up, he noticed that Bear had once again approached him. The dog seemed to be smiling.
“Hilarious, right?” Wulfgar muttered as he turned to face the city walls in the distance and began trotting toward them.
It took an hour, but Wulfgar finally reached a dirt road, built on top of small causeway that pointed toward the city a couple of kilometers distant. He paused after climbing up onto the middle of the road, and, for the first time, took in his surroundings. Still near the eastern mountain chain, it dominated the view to the north and the south, and it was matched by a twin, parallel line in the distant west. In between the two, a bright, verdant valley stretched as far to the north and the south as he could see. It was dotted with small farmsteads and the ordered fields that surrounded each.
To the southwest, the slightly elevated roadway ran until it entered a small village. As he looked around, he thought he could make out similar, tiny hamlets dropped, seemingly at random intervals, around the valley floor. Occasional copses of trees - he couldn’t tell the type, but they looked like oak - some almost large enough to be called a forest, sat among the small hills and hollows that made up the valley floor. Lines of trees could be seen here and there, and he assumed they grew on the banks of small streams or rivers. All in all, he thought, it was a very pleasant place, not unlike the Shenandoah Valley back home.
Home, he thought, suddenly. Where is that now? He realized that he would probably never return to Virginia - or maybe even Earth - and that he was in need of some new place to think of as home. Surprisingly, he found the thought comforting - freeing. His options were open and infinite. He felt no responsibilities, no pressing need to do anything at all really; except find Shannon.
He looked up as an ox drawn wain approached from the city and smiled at the driver, a farmer of late middle age. The man just scowled at Wulfgar as he drove past, and spit to the ground on the side of the cart away from Wulfgar.
“Highlander,” the man muttered derisively, just loudly enough for Wulfgar to hear, then he flicked the switch against the rump of the ox, who continued its measured, slow pace to the southwest.
Wulfgar moved back into the center of the road after the cart passed, shaking his head.
“Guess he doesn’t like us much, Bear,” he said softly. The dog snorted in agreement.
They turned up the road and approached the city.
The city wall loomed above as Wulfgar approached the gate. A pair of guards, on either side of the portcullis, stood examining travelers as they entered or left the city. One saw Wulfgar approach and motioned him to the side, away from the streams of travelers and toward the guard post.
“What’s your business?” he asked brusquely.
Wulfgar smiled as broadly as he could, “To make my fortune in the city!”
The guard guffawed, loudly, drawing the attention of several passersby.
“Not if I have anything to say about it, boy.”
He looked Wulfgar up and down, not bothering to hide his disgust.
“First, you’ll have to show me some means,” he said, “something that shows me that you aren’t going to wind up becoming nothing more than a beggar on a street corner.”
Wulfgar looked down at himself, he had nothing. He pulled the small leather bag off of his belt and opened it, showing the guard a handful of the flowers that he’d picked that morning.
“I have some Shepherd’s Piss to sell,” he said hopefully.
“And what,” growled the guard, “are you going to do when you don’t have any more piss to sell? That,” he pointed to Wulfgar’s hand, “might get you through a day or so. You’ll have to do better than that.”
“It’s all I have,” muttered Wulfgar, “but I’m a hard worker.”
“So go work on a farm. Leave the city, boy.”
Wulfgar’s temper began to rise.
“Why aren’t you asking any of the other people these questions? Why am I the only one?,” he stood tall, trying to physically intimidate the guard. “Let me through.” Wulfgar then heard his inner voice.
“Intimidation failed.”
He stood, shocked, as the guard darkened and moved toward him.
“Because,” the guard growled as he backhanded Wulfgar, knocking him to the ground, “none of these good people look,” he screwed his face up in disgust, “or smell like they’ve just rolled down a mountain of shit.”
Wulfgar gathered the blooms of Shepherd’s Piss, dropped as he fell on his ass, and his anger grew. Stuffing the flowers back into his sack, he stood and turned back to the guard, his rage burning, turning the periphery of his vision red. He moved on the guard, intending, he realized, to settle this with his fists.
He pulled up, suddenly nauseated. He realized that it wasn’t just the periphery of his vision that turned red, a bright red aura had grown around the guard as well.
Wulfgar thought for a moment, then understood. The guard was obviously a much higher level than Wulfgar, and he had little or no chance of defeating him in combat - and he would certainly be slaughtered by both guards if he decided to turn this into a physical confrontation.
He backed away, shamed as the guard laughed and turned his attention back to the crowd.
“Fucking Highlander,” the guard muttered, then he forgot Wulfgar.
Wulfgar moved away from the gate and began to wander, while thinking, along the outside perimeter of the city wall. He wondered about the message he’d received, “Intimidation failed”. He didn’t knowingly try to activate any skill, but he didn’t know how else it could have worked.
He looked down at Bear, who was following him through the short grass.
“How do you intimidate someone?”
Then, weirdly, he knew. Intimidation was an automatic check, done when either party tried to initiate it. It factored in each party’s level, their Personality and Reputation, and determined the probability of one or the other being able to stare down their opponent.
Wulfgar realized that his first level, zero Personality and no Reputation put him at the bottom rung of any kind of scale he could think of.
“I wonder if I could even intimidate you,” he said scratching Bear’s neck.
As if in response, Bear snorted, moved away a step and lifted his leg on a small bush.
While he waited for Bear to finish, Wulfgar began to wonder how he was going to enter the city. He looked around, trying to find some sort of inspiration. All he knew was that he hadn’t given up h
is life and entered this world in order to become a farmer. He felt Bear brush up against his thigh as the dog returned, then they continued, walking around the outside of the city wall.
As they reached the halfway point between the gate and the mountain face, Wulfgar stopped and looked back and forth between either end point. There was a guard station above the gate and another at the wall’s end, at the mountain. That made sense to Wulfgar, though the wall was sheer at that point, the angle between the wall and the mountain would make for easy purchase for a skilled climber. He was sure that once he got close, he’d be able to discern an easy path to climb at that point.
He started, shocked at his oversight.
He could just climb the damn wall!
Wulfgar looked to the wall in front of him - halfway between two guard posts gave him, he thought, the best chance of getting over undetected - and willed himself to look for a route up.
He found one, as a bright orange line stretched up the five meter high wall. He looked closely at the fortification. It was made of finely hewn, large blocks of a white stone - granite maybe - that seemed to have been placed on top of each other without any sort of mortar other bonding method. The workmanship was excellent, indeed, as far as he could tell, flawless. He would have to, slowly, work his way up the wall face using the minuscule lines between the blocks. It would be difficult and, he was sure, impossible once his Climbing level returned to normal in the morning.
But that still gave him plenty of time.
Wulfgar moved back, away from the wall, and sat, with Bear. He looked at the wall and began to wait. For darkness.
“Stay,” said Wulfgar as he stood into the dark. He moved away from the dog and toward the wall, a looming shadow in the moonless night, as quietly as he could.
“I wonder,” he thought, “if there even is a moon above this world.”
He waited. The answer didn’t come to him. Apparently, just wondering wasn’t enough to make any piece of information about the world or its rules become a part of his general knowledge. He shrugged, putting aside that factoid as he reached the wall.
Climbing the wall was simpler than he’d feared. His skill gave him indications on the way up where best to place his hands and feet for surest purchase. Wulfgar marveled at the seemingly impossibly small nooks between the almost perfectly laid blocks that he was able to grip with his fingers and toes. He moved slowly, surely, until he found his way to the top. He pulled himself, slowly, between two merlons on the crenelated parapet, and dropped quietly to the walkway.
“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Climbing!”
Laughing inwardly, he looked to his skill chart. It now showed his Climbing skill at level thirty. Just that easily, he’d gained, however temporarily, an additional ten levels. He looked back through the opening and down the wall. The route he’d just taken up had changed from orange to green. He could probably run up and down that wall without breaking a sweat, now. At least, he could until morning, when the Billy Goat’s Rope wore off and he returned to level two.
He smiled grimly as he looked back and forth along the wall for any sign that he’d been discovered. Since taking his place in the bushes that evening, he’d seen that guards had patrolled the wall like clockwork - once an hour a soldier from each of the guard towers met where he was now standing, halfway between the two structures. He still had, if their schedule remained the same, about half an hour until their next meeting. Plenty of time.
Wulfgar surprised himself. He would have thought that doing something like this would have been a nerve wracking experience, but he was actually enjoying himself immensely.
He began to work his way toward the tower above the southwest gate, trying to stay low, in the shadows, and moving as quietly as possible. He spent most of his time trying to scope out ahead and behind for the sudden arrival of guardsmen, as well as any routes down from the wall into the city itself. The only way that he’d seen, so far, was to hop off onto the roof of one of the small huts that sheltered up against the wall. It wouldn’t be a difficult route down, even if he wasn’t able to find any stairs to speak of.
After only a few minutes, he reached the door to the guard tower. The tower itself was only a single story square of blocks that topped the wall above the gate, which was still open allowing traffic to move freely, even at this late hour. Wulfgar frowned, he wondered if he’d have had a simpler time in approaching the gate when it was less busy. He shrugged, and looked back to the tower and its wooden door, opened to allow him to peer through the simple room to the similarly open door at the other end. The light of several lanterns, sitting on simple wooden tables, shone out into the dark night, casting elongated door shaped patches of light onto the parapet.
Wulfgar moved forward until he was just outside of the reach of the lantern light and looked through, into the guard post. He couldn’t see anyone to speak of, but could hear movement on the lower level. Apparently the guards took turns - one each climbing the wall and meeting their compatriot along the wall every hour. It was an easy job - it probably only took fifteen minutes of the hour, the rest of the time was spent watching the crowd.
He tried to remember just how much time he had left before the next scheduled patrol. He thought he had plenty, at least fifteen minutes.
Wulfgar moved into and through the light, and into the guard tower itself.
The room wasn’t huge, maybe ten meters on a side, and the route between the doors to the continuation of the parapet was through the middle. The tower, he assumed, must hang off the front and rear of the wall. Toward the outside of the wall, the room had several slits - obviously for archers - that overlooked the approaching road. The opposite, interior, wall, was bare but for a few unused torch holders. The floor had, on the outer side, several hinged wooden doors that lay closed, flush with the rest of the stone floor. Murder holes. Anyone attempting to storm the gates below would find themselves rained upon with any number of deadly attacks - rocks, boiling water, burning oil. Wulfgar had seen enough movies to be able to picture the slaughter that would ensue. A similar hinged door lay open on the interior side of the room. The ladder up from below.
Wulfgar looked to the nearest table, it was bare but for a lit lantern near the center. Another table, toward the back of the room, was similarly laid out. The third, however, seemed to have a few coins and some small rectangles of paper - a few spread fan-like on either side of the table with a larger stack near the lantern. An interrupted card game.
He approached the table.
Four silver shaded coins were strewn in between the hands.
He thought for a moment, then reached for the coins and scooped them up.
“Alignment changed. You are now Unlawful Neutral.”
“I’ll be sure to help a little old lady cross the street tomorrow to make up for it,” he muttered as he began to move back toward the door.
Then he froze.
He could hear grunting from the opening in the floor. Someone was coming up the ladder.
Frantically, Wulfgar looked around. He might be able to run out one of the open doors - but he didn’t know which way the guard was going to go. If he’d misjudged the timing, the guard could be going out the route that Wulfgar had taken in. If not, he might be going out the other door for a similar patrol in the other direction. Wulfgar cursed under his breath - he’d forgotten that there were two ways that guards from this central post could patrol. That changed his safe one patrol an hour to a perfectly on schedule two patrols an hour.
He was not only not supposed to be in the city, he was standing next to a card game that was missing four coins - coins that would be easily discovered in his pouch among a largish collection of Shepherd’s Piss.
Wulfgar decided, leaned forward to blow out the lantern nearest him, then backed into the front corner and made himself as small as possible.
A head appeared through the floor in the opposite corner of the room. It was the same guard who’d knocked him down earlier.
Wulfgar felt fear well up throughout his entire body, and his skin became clammy as a cold sweat broke out.
The guard pulled himself erect, then looked back down through the hole.
“If those bastards get here to relieve our watch while I’m gone, don’t you be coming up here. I want you down there with them when I get back, not up here changing your cards or checking mine. I’ve got a days wages on this hand, and I’ll take no nonsense on your part,” he growled, then spat onto the floor.
“And don’t think I won’t ask the relief if you’ve been with them the whole time,” he yelled as he moved away from the ladder, into the room, “cause I will!”
With a start, Wulfgar remembered, just as the guard turned in his direction, to activate Stealth. He wasn’t sure that it would help him, since he wasn’t moving, but he hoped that it would. Hoped that it would prevent the guard from noticing him. From his memory, he thought that he had ten seconds until the effect - whatever it was - was spent. He hoped it was long enough.
The guard stormed through, intent on finishing his last patrol of the day’s watch, and never looked in Wulfgar’s direction. After the lumbering brute had left the guardroom - in the direction opposite from the one that Wulfgar had entered - Wulfgar waited, silently, for ten seconds. Then another minute, just to be sure.
Finally feeling a sense of relief, he stood and made his way, as quickly as he could do so while remaining silent, to the door that he’d entered. He made his way back out onto the parapet, and sped into a jog, trying to get away from the tower as fast as he could. He passed several rooftops before finding one that had a small alleyway in between it and the next hut along the wall.
Wulfgar lowered himself and, after testing the firmness of the thatched roof, dropped his full weight onto the hut, then immediately dropped into the alley. He stood, silently, waiting for an alarm to break out, some sign that his movements had been noticed and frowned upon. After a minute’s silence, he moved inward, up the alley toward the lane that paralleled the wall. He looked to his left then his right, up and down the street.
