The blacksmith wasn’t in front of his place banging away. The forge still burned fiercely but nobody seemed to be about, or so I thought until I saw a young guy sitting on a stool near the back, dozing. I really wanted to have a proper look around the place, but the guy looked pretty beefy, and I didn’t fancy getting caught snooping.I moved on to the leather store a little further along. This place also seemed deserted. Maybe everyone was off having lunch, or possibly they had a siesta type culture like Spanish people, afternoon nap and then back to work in the evening when things cooled down. Either way it was very quiet, although I suspected the girls who had been working in the back were probably still around.What I was interested in didn’t need me to go inside. I casually walked closer, scanning the floor for any off-cuts or strips of discarded leather. There were actually quite a lot of them. I took a brief look around, dropped to one knee like I was tying my laces (hard to do
The blacksmith’s apprentice folded his arms. “Making a weapon without a hammer won’t be easy. What sort of thing were you thinking?” He raised his hand and rubbed his chin with a calloused thumb.The truth was I wasn’t thinking of anything. I had come up with the idea he could make me a weapon just so I could get something for free. I certainly had no plans to go looking for a superior beast. I had visions of talking gorillas hunting me down on horseback with nets.“Erm, well, what about something with a sharp point? If I could stab it in the eye or the ear I might get lucky and kill it in one shot.”He nodded. Apparently he knew what I meant, even though I was making it up on the spot. He moved over to a box on a table and clinked and clanked through it until he found a metal rod. It looked pretty old and worn, roughly the length of my forearm. A railing from a garden gate or something like that.Over the next half hour he heated up the middle of the rod in the forge, pulling and
Just before I walked through the shed door, I had a sudden urge to make a sharp 180 and go off on my own. Whenever I played an MMO on my computer, I chose to play solo. Online games are designed to be a social activity. You can speak to people as you play, plan out and coordinate your attacks, chat about this and that. You share the highs and lows, the laughter and the tears.Not me. I liked to explore alone and try to deal with monsters on my own. It took longer, but it was just a lot less stressful that way. Of course, I would occasionally join a group to do a dungeon or a raid, but more often than not you’d run into a bunch of arseholes.People who took the game too seriously, swore and screamed at anyone who made a mistake or didn’t already know the mob attack patterns, and generally used the game as their personal venting platform. And then there was the whining when it came to rolling for loot...Playing solo meant you could do what you want, make as many mistakes as it took,
We left the shed and headed east. Everyone was very impressed I knew which direction east was, but I told them how I found out, quickly lowering their expectations.I could have let them believe I had an innate ability to know where I was going, but then they might have started relying on me to tell them what to do. Some people like that sort of thing — being looked up to, asked their opinion, admired. Best way to make yourself look an idiot, in my experience.We quickly came to the fields of wheat Kizwat had mentioned, ringed by a wooden fence. On the way into town, Grayson had made it clear fields were to be walked around, not through. Apparently, only in movies is it considered acceptable to run through a field trampling all the crops.It meant it would take us longer to get to the other side, but we needed the time to get used to the slings.The person who had most problems was Flossie. She would get it whizzing around her head and then be unable to get it to stop. She would tr
We finally worked our way around the wheatfield and reached the other side. A fallow green field on a gentle slope led to the top of a low hill, beyond which there was a huge open area of grass, completely flat and disappearing into the distance in all directions.The country was called Flatland, and I guessed this was why.And everywhere you looked there were rabbits. Hundreds of them.They didn’t look exactly like the rabbits back home. They were about the same size — brown, black and a few white ones — with long, floppy ears, but they had elongated faces, and instead of a pom-pom tuft, a pinkish stub for a tail. They didn’t hop, either. More scurried about.“Aw!” said Flossie. She walked up to the nearest one and picked it up.She picked it up! I was stunned. If it was going to be this easy we’d have five daggers each by sundown.Of course, it was not going to be that easy.The rabbit turned its fluffy face to look at Flossie and then snarled at her, revealing not a cute Bugs
As soon as we got back to Probet, we headed for the tanner’s store, proudly carrying our one rabbit like it was a great accomplishment. Which it was for us, so not surprisingly we felt a little pleased with ourselves.The tanner soon brought us back to earth.“We don’t take the whole thing, just the skin.” He was outside his shop, slicing up a stiff looking piece of leather that had come from some huge animal.“How do we skin it?” Maurice asked. The fact someone spoke other than me was an indication of how far we’d come. At this rate, we’d hit normal in a couple of months.The tanner paused long enough to give us a disparaging look, then continued with cutting the leather with an incredibly sharp pair of shears.“If you show us how to skin this one,” I said, “you can have the skin for free.” It seemed a fair trade. We wouldn’t get any money (although I’m not sure we’d be able to buy a whole lot with one chob), but we’d have learned a new skill, and that was much more important in
It was evening, and the light had started to fade by the time we returned to the shed. Captain Grayson was sitting on the edge of his desk with a stack of grey blankets next to him.“Welcome back,” he said. “I see you’ve been...” His voiced trailed off as he saw the rabbit and he pulled a strange face I couldn’t quite place. “Here, you’ll need these. It gets a little chilly at night.”He handed each of us a blanket. They weren’t very big — more shawl than cloak — made of a scratchy, wiry material. We happily took them from him.“Do you have anything we can use to carry water?” I asked him.He raised an eyebrow at me and then jumped off the desk. He walked over to a wall that had a large cloth hanging over it, which turned out to be curtains. He parted them enough to reach in and pulled out another box. This one had a bunch of water skins in it.I felt a bit irked that he hadn’t told us about them before, but it seemed like it was kind of a test to only give us certain things when
Getting a fire going was pretty easy since the logs were already smouldering nicely. We piled them together, added a few smaller bits of wood, and hey presto.We focused on getting the rabbit cleaned and organising a way to cook it. I could feel eyes on us, but made sure not to respond. There was no doubt in my mind that the issue was not over yet. At some point we would be made to pay for my outburst, but for the time being I intended to eat dinner and plan for tomorrow.It’s worth mentioning that while out little dispute was ongoing, the Cool Kids totally ignored us. I don’t mean they watched quietly, I mean I don’t think they even noticed. Whatever they were talking about must have been far more important and interesting than what us plebs got up to.Cooking the rabbit was kind of tricky without utensils. Although we’d probably find out later that Captain Grayson had a drawer full of spoons, forks, pots and pans. I emptied my stew into one of the other dishes and placed my dish o