His thoughts returned to his character. Fishing and cooking were useful, but a Sunwalker had learned considerably more than that.
Oliver went still. He could remember the combat abilities too. Not their places on an action bar, or which keys he had bound them to. He knew how they were meant to be used.
For a few moments he forgot the half-finished hole in the cliff, the empty food bag, and how far he might be from another person. With powers like those, surely he could make a living. Superheroes didn't generally have to worry about finding enough for the gas bill.
Then he remembered the invitation.
Whatever had put this knowledge into his head had also asked him to save a continent. The more useful the gift, the less reassuring the bargain seemed. He hadn't the faintest idea where to begin.
There was, however, a snail within reach.
He fished it out of the water and set it on a stone. Holding his right hand toward it, he tried to summon the solar power he remembered, following an instinct as clear as the one that had guided his fishing.
“Ha!”
A cool evening breeze passed over the river. The snail shifted on the rough stone.
Oliver tried again. “Ha! Ha!”
The snail rolled off the edge and splashed into the water.
“Oh, sod off.” He punched the surface, throwing up a spray that did considerably more than the spell had.
Was that it? A world with too little magic to let him use any of it? Perhaps no magic at all. He stared at his empty hand. Without the sun's power, a Sunwalker was a man with weapons, and he had just failed to impress a snail.
At least the weapons were something he could use. When he reached for the knowledge, sword and shield techniques came as readily as cooking had. So did the handling of a two-handed weapon. The movements that depended on strength alone seemed to have become instinctive.
He considered his size, his newly acquired skill, and the equipment he had brought from Azeroth. That ought to give him a reasonable chance of staying alive in a violent world.
Ought to.
Once he was settled, he would spend several hours a day practicing. Having a memory was useful; he wanted these movements to belong to him before somebody gave him a reason to need them.
The cliff still required attention. After several more rounds of fire, water, and work with the pick, he had cut a recess about two meters long and one meter wide. It was large enough to hold him. If he curled up, it would also hold his equipment.
He looked from the recess to the armor. Sleeping folded around a heap of metal was hardly what he'd had in mind.
Oliver pushed the equipment to the back, wedged himself in front of it, and put his pack under his head. It took some shifting to find a position he could bear. Once he did, the prospect of spending a night lying down outweighed every objection.
* * *
He slept well. The cold breeze off the river was the one serious flaw in his new accommodation, and by morning his body was stiff enough to give it priority.
A wall first. Then fish traps, so he wouldn't have to spend every spare hour holding a rod. Some pottery would be useful too, if he could manage it. He was rather short of household utensils.
The wall and traps both needed flexible binding material. He took the short sword into the woods and cut vines about as thick as his little finger from the trunks they climbed. Stripped of leaves and side shoots, they made tough lengths of cord. He gathered a substantial bundle, then cut thumb-thick branches into lengths roughly equal to his forearm.
He planted the sticks in a circle and wove the vines between them. The first trap took shape with a broad middle a little over twenty centimeters across and narrower ends. He closed one end, then made an inward-pointing cone for the other, leaving an opening about the width of his fist. A fish could find its way in more easily than it could find the way out.
Oliver tested the entrance with his hand. He could put it through, but when he clenched his fist, it caught as he tried to withdraw it. Satisfied, he set the trap aside and started the next.
By the time he had five, much of the morning was gone. He gathered more snails, crushed them with a stone, and mixed the remains with yellow mud. A few balls of the mixture went into each trap as bait. He carried the traps into the river and weighted them with large stones to keep them in place. Now they could do the fishing while he did something else.
The sun was nearly overhead. If he wanted a warmer night, he had to start on the wall. His stomach would have to wait.
A proper timber wall would have been good. Wood held warmth well, and logs fitted closely together could make a comfortable little house. They would also require him to fell and shape dozens of trees. That was a project for rather more than the afternoon he had left.
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He needed a windbreak tonight. Thin sticks woven into a lattice, coated in mud, then another lattice and more mud: it would be less elegant, but he could build it now. Branches and leaves over the outside would help conceal the entrance.
The mud mattered. It needed to be fine, evenly wet, and free of the leaves and other rubbish that would leave weak spots as it dried. Near the forest edge, he dug with his pick, scraping the littered topsoil aside until he reached the yellow earth beneath. He brought water from the river and mixed it in.
Getting it evenly worked was harder than he had hoped. Oliver looked at the armor lying nearby, put it on, and stepped into the pit.
The extra weight helped. He tramped through the mixture until the lumps broke down, then repeated the process until he had enough. After that came the weaving and packing: a framework of sticks, a layer of mud pressed into the gaps, more support, more mud. The afternoon disappeared into the wall.
When it was finished, he crawled into the recess and lay down. Through a small opening he had left in the screen, he could see the river and the quiet bank beyond. The wind no longer reached him so easily. For the first time since arriving, he was looking out from somewhere that felt enclosed, somewhere he had made for himself.
Toward dusk, he went to collect his dinner.
Five traps produced seven small fish.
Oliver laid them out and counted them again. Enough to eat, just about. Nothing to store. Perhaps the traps were not the answer he had hoped for.
He looked downstream, toward the sea.
He had watched enough coastal foraging videos back home to know what people could find. If they could fill baskets on shores already picked over by half the population and subjected to everything industry poured into the water, this untouched coast ought to have something for him.
Tomorrow, though. He had done enough for today.
He laid a flat stone over the fire, cleaned the little fish, and cooked them on its heated surface. They lacked the smoky flavor of the previous evening's dinner, but they were good in their own way. There simply weren't enough of them.
* * *
The next morning, he took his largest trap to the beach and found the tide out. At least that worked much as it did at home. Different stars overhead, but a sun, a moon, and water that left useful things behind when it withdrew.
He searched the mud, rocks, and wet sand, following remembered demonstrations with a clarity he had never had while watching them. Shellfish came out of crevices. Crabs hid beneath stones; there were shrimp and seaweed too. Growing up in Sheffield had hardly made him a coastal expert, but it hadn't put him off seafood.
In a little over an hour, the basket was full. He had enough for the day.
Oliver stood looking into it. All that work on five fish traps, and the sea had been doing this a short walk away. Still, the basket had found a use. There was something to be said for eating what the place could provide instead of insisting it provide what he had first thought of.
Back at camp, he lowered the basket into the river to keep its contents from drying out while he prepared the fire. Then he fetched his helmet.
Pottery could wait indefinitely. He had a crystal bottle to drink from and a perfectly serviceable metal container to cook in. Epic equipment, admittedly, but he doubted its dignity would improve the soup.
“Sorry,” he told it, setting it over the fire. “Should've brought you a spare.”
There had been a whole pile of equipment in the forest. Surely one of the helmets had been rounder, better suited to a quiet life as a saucepan. Too late now. He ate his seafood soup, picked the remaining meat out of the broth, and spread it on a clean, flat stone to dry in the sun. Finally, something to put aside for later.
His days settled into a pattern. Water and a wash, then the beach to collect food as the morning tide withdrew. Afterward, he stayed where he could watch the horizon for ships. While he waited, he practiced with his weapons, working the remembered movements into his body and trying to leave out anything that depended on the sun's uncooperative power.
Around noon on the eleventh day of this new life, he was practicing with sword and shield in full armor when the horizon darkened.
Clouds spread across the distant sea. Beneath them, a gray wall of water swallowed the surface and advanced toward shore. Oliver stood still for a moment, watching it grow.
Then he ran.
At camp, he snatched his dried food and the bottle of drinking water from the stick rack, gathered the tools he had left outside, and scrambled into the cliff shelter. Rain was already hammering the ground. Thunder broke overhead, and wind drove the downpour past his little window.
The river rose. He watched it through the opening and thought, rather late, about all the rock above the place he had chosen to sleep. Another meter or two would have been sensible. What if the water reached him in the night?
He kept watching. At the river mouth, the flood had somewhere to go; the level rose, but stayed well below his recess. Rain worked through the woven door in places, though the sheltered rock face kept the worst of the weather outside. He and his stores remained mostly dry.
There was little else to do. He ate the dried fish, watched the rain, and waited. By the early hours of the second day, the storm was easing. At dawn, both wind and rain had stopped.
He pushed the door open. Water covered the bank where he had worked, and the flood had swept away nearly every sign of his efforts. He waded and half-swam across, stood the fallen rack upright, and cleared the stone hearth. Only one fish basket remained.
The food he had stored had kept him fed through the storm. Now he needed more. Perhaps the waves had brought something substantial ashore: a tuna, one of those extraordinary long oarfish, even a whale. If he could find fresh meat, cut it up, and dry it slowly over a fire, he might build a reserve that lasted.
He took the basket to the beach.
Oysters. He'd had quite enough oysters for the moment. A dead crab lay in his path; he nudged it aside with his foot and kept looking. There were jellyfish stranded on the sand. He considered drying those, perhaps dressing them with salt and wild greens.
An oak barrel lay farther up the shore. That might be useful for—
A barrel.
Oliver dropped the basket and ran. Half-buried in sand, it lay open to the sky. He bent over it and found nothing inside except a little seawater.
A ship had been wrecked.
He knew what that meant for the people aboard, and felt a brief stab of shame at his own excitement. But a ship meant people. People who built things, carried goods, went somewhere. He wasn't alone in a wilderness with no civilization to find. If there were ships, there was a place he might reach.
There might also be supplies among the wreckage. Well-packed goods could survive a wreck. A cooking pot, for instance. An actual cooking pot would be lovely.
He followed the line of debris farther along the beach. Broken planks lay among it, then lengths of shattered mast. Between two relatively intact pieces of timber, he found a pair of barrels lashed together.
A brown-haired boy was tied to them. He was unconscious.