Rest day began in the dark, with an axe.
Tam was in the woods before the cocks were up, in the clearing he'd made his first night there. It was bigger now. He felled an ordinary tree, and then another. He sat on a stump with his knife and made ten shortbows for the store. Then he whittled shafts until his Fletching came up to 10. On the twenty-fourth log it did.
Congratulations, you just advanced a Fletching level. Your Fletching level is now 10.
Longbows, he thought.
A longbow was a log and a knife, the same as a shortbow, only longer. It gave twice the experience. The knife ran down the whole length of the log. Then he was holding a tall, plain stave that came up past his shoulder, notched at both ends.
+10 Fletching.
Ten for one log. He grinned at it in the dark.
Then he had a problem. The general store would only take ten bows of one kind a day, and he already had ten shortbows set aside. He could keep ten longbows for tomorrow. Any more had nowhere to go: each bow took a whole square, and his inventory was nearly full.
He made another longbow and laid it down on the leaf litter beside the stump, and then another. Within three minutes the first one was gone, with no sound and no message.
Fletch and drop, he thought. Every ironman who ever lived.
The experience came from making the bow, so he made them and laid them down, and made more. The old ones vanished from the bottom of the heap as fast as he added new ones on top.
It hurt a little, the first fifty.
He kept ten longbows back, for tomorrow. When the sky was grey he went home for church, with ten shortbows, ten longbows and the smell of sawdust on him, and Woodcutting 26.
* * *
Lumbridge church was full again, and Father Aereck preached about patience. He only dropped his book once.
Sigmund sat straight on his cushioned bench at the front, in his long blue robe. Halfway through the service his head turned a little, and his pale eyes went over the church. This time they stopped on Tam. They stayed there for a breath. Then they moved on.
Tam kept his eyes on his hands until it was over.
Outside, in the bright cold churchyard, Jory caught his sleeve.
"There's fox cubs," Jory whispered. "In the bank by the bottom field, under the thorn. Four. I saw them yesterday. Their mum brings them out in the afternoon. Will you come and see?"
"This afternoon?"
"After dinner. You have to be really quiet. Will you?"
"Yes," said Tam. "Sure."
Jory let go of his sleeve and went back to Gillie, glowing.
* * *
The general store opened for an hour after church. Tam was the first through the door.
"It's rest day," said the shopkeeper.
"I know. You're open."
"For an hour. For folk who need a tinderbox." He watched Tam turn his back and lay ten shortbows on the counter, one after another. He sighed through his nose. "Who's buying all these? That's what I'd like to know. A carter took the lot yesterday, for a man in Draynor who says he's going to shoot at the wizards. I told him he'd want strings first."
He paid fifty-six coins, the same as before. Tam laid the shears down after them.
"Nothing," said the shopkeeper.
"That's fine."
"I'm sure it is." The shopkeeper swept the shears under the counter. "Anything else, while you're giving things away?"
Tam thought about the longbows in his inventory and decided the shopkeeper had suffered enough for one rest day. "Tomorrow."
"I was afraid of that."
On his way out, he stopped in the doorway and looked down the alley at the back of the shop.
There were two oak trees there, in a strip of grass between the shop's back wall and the next yard. In the game, those two oaks had been famous. New players in Lumbridge chopped them as soon as they reached Woodcutting 15, because they were the nearest oaks to anything. They were big and old, with wide, low branches. There was a bench under one, and a washing line strung between them with the shopkeeper's shirts on it.
Stolen story; please report.
Tam stood and looked at them for a moment, thinking about oak logs.
Behind him, the shopkeeper said, "Don't you dare."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were looking at them like you look at my counter."
"I was admiring them," said Tam, and left.
* * *
The woodcutting tutor stood south of the furnace, where he'd stood in the game. He was a man with a short sandy beard, a blue-and-white checked shirt and an axe over his shoulder. He was eating an apple. He watched Tam walk past with the bronze axe in his hand and the ash handle sticking out at a slight angle.
"That's a farmer's hang," he said.
"So I'm told."
"I give axes away, you know. Bronze. To anyone that's learning." He nodded at the bronze axe. "Looks like you're past learning."
"I'm going to Bob's," said Tam. "For a steel one."
The tutor stopped chewing. He looked Tam up and down.
"A steel axe," he said, "is for a man who's cut a lot of trees."
"I've cut a lot of trees," said Tam.
The tutor thought about that, and about the sawdust on Tam's shirt. He took another bite of his apple. "Wilfred," he said, with his mouth full. "Remember who told you to go careful."
"Tam."
"I know," said Wilfred. "The drowned one. Go careful, Tam."
* * *
Bob's Brilliant Axes was at the south end of the town. Bob was in, even on rest day, because he lived behind the shop and couldn't see the point of going anywhere else. He was sharpening something when Tam came in.
"How's the pick?" said Bob.
"Sold it."
Bob looked wounded.
"I'll buy another when I need it," said Tam. "I need an axe today. A steel one."
Bob put down what he was sharpening. "Two hundred coins, a steel axe."
"I know."
Tam turned his back for a moment and counted two hundred coins out of his inventory onto Bob's counter. It took a while. Bob watched the pile grow with his mouth slightly open.
"That's a lot of money for a farm hand," said Bob slowly. "That's a month's wages for a farm hand."
"I make bows."
"Do you." Bob counted the coins himself, twice. Then he took a steel axe down from the wall and laid it on the counter. Tam picked it up himself. It was heavier than the bronze, darker, and the edge on it was the kind you could shave with. The handle had been fitted by someone who knew how.
"And this," said Tam, and put the bronze axe on the counter.
Bob picked it up and looked at the head, and the hang, and the head again. "Who made the head?"
"Me."
"Who hung it?"
"Also me."
Bob set it down. "Good head. Nine coins, for an axe. Six, for this hang. I'll hang it again myself before anybody else touches it."
Tam took the six.
"Goblins on your farm, I hear," said Bob, as Tam turned to go. "Groats'. Taking hens."
"A few."
"Vermin," said Bob, with great feeling. "Every one of them. Somebody should do something about it, that's what I say. The Duke won't."
Tam stopped in the doorway.
"Somebody's always saying that lately," said Tam.
"Because it's true," said Bob, and went back to his sharpening.
* * *
The oaks were east of the river, past the farm's east fields and deep into the woods. Five oaks stood together on a rise. More grew beyond, in the wild part of the woods where hardly anyone went. The woods here went on far past the edge of anything the game had drawn.
He started on an ordinary tree first, because his Fletching wasn't ready for oak yet. Then he swung the steel axe for the first time, and laughed out loud.
It bit like the bronze never had. The bronze had chewed. The steel just went in, deep and clean, and came out, and went in again. The tree came down so fast that he had to jump out of its way. The logs came off the trunk one after another and went into his inventory, and came out again as longbows. The longbows went onto the leaf litter and vanished.
In the game, a better axe meant more logs an hour. Here it meant the same thing, and he could feel it in his arms.
Woodcutting came up while he was still laughing. Then it came up again.
At Fletching 20 he moved up to the oaks. Oak logs gave more experience to cut, and oak bows more to make. At Fletching 25 he could make oak longbows, which gave the most of all. He kept ten oak longbows back for the store, because an oak longbow was worth more at the counter than any bow he'd made yet.
He worked all afternoon without thinking about anything else. This part of him had been doing this for fifteen years, in a chair, in another world. It was good at it. Cut, whittle, drop. Cut, whittle, drop. The levels came and he read them later.
When he finally stopped, it was because the light had gone gold, and he couldn't see the grain.
He sat on an oak stump and opened his skills. Woodcutting 36. Fletching 27.
Four days ago he had been Woodcutting 1.
* * *
He didn't go home. He took the last of the light down to the stony bank below the cow field, where there was nothing to catch. There he burned logs instead of whittling them. His Firemaking was ten, and that was embarrassing. Every log he lit, his feet stepped aside, west. By full dark there was a line of little fires along the whole bank, each a pace from the last.
He was lighting the last of his logs, with the fires behind him, when he saw Jory.
Jory was sitting at the top of the bank with his knees pulled up and his arms around them, watching Tam.
Tam stopped.
Fox cubs, he thought. After dinner. Under the thorn.
He had said yes in the churchyard, and meant it. Then he had gone to the shop, and to Bob's, and into the woods, and forgotten all about it. He'd been playing.
He climbed up the bank and sat down next to Jory. The fires crackled down below them, in their neat line.
"Did they come out?" he said. "The cubs."
"Yes."
"Were they good?"
"Yes." Jory looked at the fires. "I waited. You have to be quiet or they don't come. I was quiet for ages. I thought you'd come and I'd have to tell you to be quiet. Then they came out and you weren't there, so I didn't have to."
"I'm sorry."
"You said."
"I know I did."
Jory didn't say anything else. That was the worst part. Jory usually said something else.
Tam sat there and looked at his line of fires. He thought about the fifteen years in the chair. One more log. He had said it a thousand times, in the other world, to people waiting for him in other rooms. Some of them had stopped waiting.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Before the cows. Do they come out in the morning?"
"Sometimes. Early."
"Then early. Before the cows. I'll come."
Jory looked at him sideways. "You said that about today."
"I know." Tam held out his hand. "Get the hammer out."
Jory hesitated. Then he took the hammer out of his belt, the plain iron one that had stayed, and held it out on his palm. Tam put his hand on the head of it.
"On the hammer," said Tam. "Before the cows."
Jory thought about it with great seriousness. Then he nodded and put the hammer away. He leaned against Tam's arm, and they sat and watched the fires burn down.