by Arthur Stone
A glance toward Beko confirmed that he was wholly engrossed in the process of cutting down wild leek stalks. With one basket already full, he was working on the second. The ghoul was clearly enamored with the tool, and it would be cruel of me to deprive my colleague of his newfound joy.
My time would be better spent resuming my battles with flint.
This time I needed a special billet. A dozen blocks later, I still didn’t have the desired result.
Having given up, I selected five shards closest to the required shape, and tried to chip away at them with careful, precise strikes. The first three ended up breaking, but the fourth finally resulted in what I wanted.
By then, Beko had both baskets tightly packed with stalks. Returning back to me, he stared at the billet and shook his head with disappointment.
“That knife is dull. No good. Make another one.”
Studying the hefty wedge, I mused.
“This isn’t going to be a knife, but a pickaxe.”
“Why do we need a pickaxe? Nobody is sending us to the mine. And even if they did, we’d get an iron one. This one won’t work. It’ll break right away.”
“It’s not for the mine. This is going to be our weapon.”
“A weapon? What for? We’re not soldiers. Or hunters.”
“Do you plan on picking wild leeks for the rest of your life?” I asked, then gave an immediate answer, mostly for myself. “This is a job for losers who can’t do any better. It is not our path. We’re going to grow up strong and dangerous. And this scary stone pickaxe is going to play a vital role.”
“Then hurry up and finish it,” Beko begged anxiously, as if suddenly realizing that the pickaxe was all that stood between his presently wretched existence and a decent life.
The handle took even more time and effort. I suspected that a slipshod product wouldn’t be accepted by ORDER, which meant I had to approach the work with maximum earnestness.
Then I took a long stroll along the riverbank, littered with garbage washed ashore by the river. After finding a suitable snag, I used the flint shards to file it down before breaking it. All on my own, refusing Beko’s help, because I wanted to conduct a pure experiment.
It took another two hours with the stone knife to fashion a proper notch. Once done with that, I secured the flint beak in the wood, perpendicular to the shaft, then wrapped the joint tightly with interwoven wild leek stalks.
You have crafted a pickaxe with a flint wedge and a handle of mountain ash.
You receive:
Lesser Symbol of Chi x2
Personal Attribute Embodiment, Strength x1
Personal Talent Mark, Novice Stonecutter x1
Personal Talent Mark, Novice Carpenter x1
There it was, the missing piece of the puzzle. And the prizes from the Order were nothing to sneeze at.
Everything I knew about the subject matter suggested that my rewards for treating Rycer, wounding the kote, crafting the knife and the pickaxe were beyond generous. Given the insignificance of these feats, a few symbols of chi would be a commensurable reward. Anything beyond that, such as a personal mark to unlock a corresponding talent, let alone a personal attribute embodiment, would be truly great luck.
The kind of luck that happened once a year. If that.
My experience, however, flew in the face of all that knowledge. I had been raking in rewards well beyond the expected, and that was certainly strange considering the fact that, aside from the past few days, I hadn’t had luck on my side pretty much ever. Yet, here I was, hitting the jackpot again and again. The second knife had been an aberration, and I had an idea as to why. My creations were worthless. Lowest quality materials combined with amateur craftsmanship, without using any unlocked talents. The Order might reward such wretchedness as an incentive to encourage further growth, but only the first time around. Recreating the work in hopes of similar prizes would be a fool’s task.
And today, after working my hands nearly to the bone, I had earned, among other things, four small symbols of chi, bringing my in-progress zero-degree bar to a total of ninety units. If I managed to make something similar to a knife or a pickaxe, yet original enough to merit more rewards, I might compensate for my daily leakage.
The path was too tough and labor-intensive to be worth it long-term. How many unique creations could I fashion from the meager resources of this pebbled beach? A spear, a club, a spiked mace, a boomerang, a sling, a bow... A good plenty of things if I put my mind to it. Even a proper rope woven of old wild leek might fetch something.
But then what? Assuming that our daily task going forward would be picking plants or some other menial work, Beko would need to toil for the both of us while I strained my already wan physical abilities. All to cover the losses of my perpetually vanishing chi. I might prevent or at least delay nullification with such a strategy, but I wouldn’t progress in any meaningful way.
Or would I? Suppose I started unlocking attributes. What if they turned out to be OK, and wouldn’t be decreasing every day? Alas, even then I would need to spend chi to unlock them—one hundred units per attribute if memory served me right. An exorbitant price. Only the attributes bestowed at birth—your base Strength, Stamina and Agility—were exempt from this rule.
How unfortunate. I had to assume I’d need to be paying for everything. And I didn’t have enough chi for a test activation of even one of the three attributes in my possession. Nor was I likely to accumulate the required amount in my circumstances. I might delay my nullification by a good stretch by pouring everything into my hole-ridden bucket of a vessel, but in the end I would still collapse into the old wreck that I was when my amulet finally lost its charge.
And that would truly be the end.
The thought prevented my itching fingers from using the received four units right away. The step would be tactically sound, yet strategically foolish.
And I couldn’t afford such missteps, having only just gotten a taste for life. I felt as if all these years the blood in my veins had been running cold, like a dead man’s. And now, at long last, it frothed and boiled and urged me toward great, heroic feats. Absurd though it was, I felt powerful enough to turn the whole world upside down.
Then again, a cripple only yesterday didn’t need much to feel euphoric today.
But if I lost this, that would be the end. Whatever miracle may occur afterward, it wouldn’t be enough to raise me from the dust. It would break me beyond repair.
I was even more adamant on protecting my Order-endowed gains than whatever the ghoul was keeping up his sleeve.
I needed it to survive.
“Hey, Beko, are there any traders in the fort? Somebody who sells clothes, thread, stuff like that?”
“You can buy anything, as long as you have the money. But I don’t have anything. Nothing at all,” the ghoul grasped at his chest nervously, where he kept his mysterious treasure and his newly acquired knife.
I handed the pickaxe to Beko.
“Here. This one’s yours as well.”
“Mine?! Really, truly mine?!”
Oh, how little some of us need to be happy...
Chapter 16
The Art of War, Carps and Catfish
No Stat Changes
With each step taken, the degree of Beko’s resolve dropped. It had been close to zero already, so the moment we started our ascend up the path, it plummeted into the negative.
“Maybe we should wait until it gets dark?” the ghoul offered a timid suggestion. “We could hide in the driftwood where you got the handle for the pickaxe.”
“Hide? As I understand, you had already tried hiding, but that didn’t work out too well?”
“Well, yes. It’s not a good hiding place. They always find me. Those stinkers.”
“No, Beko, that won’t do. Did you forget? We’re strong and dangerous guys. And strong and dangerous guys don’t hide from small fry.”
“Carps can get pretty large,” the ghoul objected.
“Su
re, they can get large and fat. That’s a good thing. I like myself a fat juicy carp. And you will, too. Besides, we must deliver the wild leek now if we want porridge for dinner.”
“We still have some bread and lard,” said Beko in a dreamy drawl. “We can finish it before they can it away. The Carps are there, past the second turn. They often play in that area while waiting for me.”
“Why there? Why don’t they come to you at the pebbled beach?”
“They would have to carry the baskets all the way from the beach, but this way I bring them nearly to the wall myself. It’s convenient.”
“We’re going to have a little fun with them,” I promised ominously. “Hold on to your pickaxe and look like you’ve got a thirst for blood that hasn’t been satisfied in a century. But you’re about to fix that.”
“But I don’t want to drink blood.”
“Pretend that you do. Like you’ve always wanted to. They want to take what’s yours, remember? Only they don’t know who they’re messing with. You want to bite into the throat of Little Tatai. That smooth, sweet throat of a child. And then break Satat’s skull with the pickaxe. You want to smash it hard enough for his eyes to pop out of their sockets and hang there by a thread. Another blow and Tashi goes down, his face bloodied as he howls with pain and collects his teeth from the ground. And there’s Jakos, looking at all this and feeling his pants become wet and heavy.”
“If I break Satat’s skull, he will die. And Ash will put me on a stake for murder. Or hang me under the bridge if he’s in a good mood.”
“Don’t kill anyone. Merely imagine that’s what’s going to happen. As you look out before you, that is the picture you need to see. You must believe that we can tear these Carps to pieces. And not even Ash is going to punish us.”
“Why wouldn’t he punish us?” Beko sounded doubtful.
“Because today he’s in the best possible mood.”
“That doesn’t sound like him.”
“Plus, he’ll be too scared to mess with me.”
“Why would he be scared?”
“Because I can read and write. And I have my clan magic, called the ‘blacklist.’ Whoever I put on it is going to die a long and painful death.”
“How?” the ghoul inquired fearfully.
“First, he’s going to start rotting. Cadaverous worms will come out and start devouring everything that sticks out of his body: fingers, nose, ears, hands, feet. Then—”
“Enough, I don’t want to know the rest,” Beko grew pale, something that I didn’t think his chalk-white skin could do.
The heartfelt conversation helped to while away the time as we walked. And as we finally rounded the corner, I saw the Carps—a group of teens playing some weird game, tossing short sticks over three longish ditches. The four of them were so engrossed in the process, they didn’t notice us right away. Maybe we make a run for it? We could be fifty feet up the path by the time they realize what happened.
No, that wouldn’t work. My Agility was well below Satat’s. If Beko had a hard time escaping him, I would be all too easy to catch.
Besides, you can’t win a war with perpetual retreats.
So I quickly dismissed the thought to either speed up or slow down, but kept the same pace as we approached the four teens. Taking advantage of their backs being turned to the path, I executed a cunning kick to the back of the knee of one of the older three. I added another one as he stumbled out of balance, right in the center of his gray-trousered behind.
The combo worked wonderfully as the teen flew face forward, smashing into the ground between the game ditches with a satisfying thump.
“What kind of idiotic games are you playing on my path?!” I growled, still advancing. “If I see you here one more time, it’ll be your funeral.”
The move was both bold and too primitive. But these were just peasant kids left to their own devices. Zero education and simple minds. People like that knew by the tone when being addressed by a lord, and not some ragamuffin. And my speech was properly sophisticated—I was, after all, a noble of this realm. The key was to press them right away and withdraw before they got a chance to recover. If they figured out the ruse before then, no amount of persuasion would save us.
In a fair fight, the two of us couldn’t handle the four of them. My body remained as gaunt as ever, and my joints ached as though they had been put through the rack—the consequence of a sharp bump in the amulet’s parameters. Whenever an attribute experienced rapid growth, the reservoir tried to adapt to it as quickly as possible, notwithstanding any negative sensations. So despite euphoria flooding my mind with grandiose possibilities, everything below my neck was woefully unequipped to back them up with actions.
The only scary thing about Beko was the pickaxe, which he was likely to dump so as to run faster than actually use for combat.
Our foes weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. While the prostrated kid ate dirt, the others kept shifting their flabbergasted gazes from him to us and back again.
Finally, the smallest among them, presumably Little Tatai, squealed like a little girl.
“The freak! The freak is leaving! There he is!”
Naturally, he was pointing at Beko.
I turned back, pointed to my companion and added in the same tone of irrefutable superiority.
“Shut your trap. This one is with me.”
“Oh... I... I didn’t know...” Tatai babbled.
“Now you know,” I said dismissively as we kept moving up the path.
This was going to go one of two ways. Satat could analyze the situation quickly enough to try and stop us. I had a contingency plan in mind for this scenario, but I wasn’t eager to put it to use. So though I walked on with dignity, my pace wasn’t exactly slow.
The second scenario relied on Satat’s brain lacking sufficient operating efficiency to see through the ruse and overcome the shock of Beko’s new companion’s implausible bravado.
When we made it to the wall, I chuckled without turning around.
“He took the second scenario.”
“What are you saying?” Beko asked under his breath.
“I’m saying we’re strong and dangerous. Did you see how we trounced them back there?”
“Yeah! That was great, how you whacked Jakos. I was going to hit him, too, but then I felt sorry for him.”
Behold, the great power of fortress walls. As soon as Beko was safely behind them, his courage grew tenfold in an instant.
* * *
The merchant’s name was Guppy, which I found amusing following our recent victory over the Carps. Though I would have dubbed him ‘Catfish’ for his luxuriant mustache and portly frame.
The merchant wasn’t exceedingly welcoming.
Immediately upon sighting us on the doorstep of his warehouse slash trading post, the fat man barked irritatingly.
“Get lost, both of you, before I make you cry!”
“Master Guppy, we come to you to do business.”
“What business can you possibly have with me? Looking to nick something, I bet? Go ahead and try. I won’t even call Hugo’s boys—I’ll tear your hands off my own damn self.”
“We wish to buy something from you,” I kept my tone polite, though it was becoming increasingly difficult.
“Is that right? You’re here to buy? Ha! It’s my lucky day to entertain such esteemed customers. If only twerps like you had any money to pay with. Now scram before I lose my patience!”
“Do you not accept small symbols of chi as payment?”
The trader’s expression changed, betraying the slightest interest. My deductions had been correct. He was right that we didn’t have any money, but the Order was famously unpredictable in terms of how and to whom it awarded chi. Sometimes even a great feat would fetch a big fat nothing whereas some trifle would net a unit or two. Even the feeblest losers weren’t immune to earning some chi, and their gains were theirs to dispose of as they pleased. Some used them for self-development while oth
ers looked for a suitable trade opportunity.
It was breaking my heart to part with something I so badly needed. But this was an investment in my future, and perhaps the only thing that could help me escape the gloom of hopelessness.
With a little luck.
Guppy nodded slowly.
“I do, of course. But they’re not worth much, being only small symbols and all. Whaddya need?”
“Do you sell fishing hooks?”
“Of course. What kind?”
“Can I look at all your stock?”
