Tam mucked out the cow shed first, in the half dark. The month of mucking out didn't stop for his days off. Then he went.
Monlum held out a hand, palm up, before Tam had even reached the stump.
"Story," said Monlum.
Tam had a good one this time. He sat down on a rock, after checking carefully that it was a rock, and told Monlum about the sand crab.
He left out the island. He left out the teleport and the cows and Nomad. He said he'd sat down on a rock on a beach, and the rock was a crab the size of a barrel, and it bit his leg, and he went off it like a cork out of a bottle.
Monlum laughed so hard he dropped his pipe. He was still wheezing when Tam started mining, and every so often he said, to nobody, "A rock."
* * *
It went like this, all day.
Twenty ores, with his back to Monlum: every square left over from his coins, knife, axe, tinderbox, spade, arrow shafts, pickaxe and hammer. The reeds. Fourteen seconds. The castle courtyard, where the day guard on the gate watched him appear by the fountain. By the fourth run, the guard seemed to have decided that the Fallow boy was simply something that happened, like weather.
The furnace. Ten bars. The rusted anvil. The general store, around the corner. On the fourth run Monlum took his pipe out of his mouth. He asked how a boy got to town and back with a load of ore in the time it took the old man to smoke a pipe.
"I know a shortcut," said Tam.
"Nobody knows a shortcut that short."
"Then I run."
Monlum looked at Tam, and at the path, and put his pipe back in his mouth. "Bring me that story too," he said, "one day."
Every run ended with the long walk from town back down to the swamp. Home Teleport only went one way and needed a rest between casts, and the walk gave it that rest.
On the first run he made scimitars, because they were the best thing he could make. Smithing 7 came on the last of them. On the second run he stood with two bars in the tongs and thought about a full helm. His hands moved. The helm covered his whole head, with slits for his eyes and a ridge down the middle. It was much better than the med helm he'd been wearing. He swapped them in the smithy. The med helm went to the store with the full helms.
"How many is that?" said Feoras, who had given up on his own work by the third run and was just watching.
"Runs, or things?"
"Either."
"Three," said Tam. "And about twenty."
"I make twenty things in a week," said Feoras.
"You make them properly," said Tam. "I make them for the numbers."
Square shields came at Smithing 8, warhammers at 9, which he would never use, and battleaxes at 10. The general store took everything, a few of each kind at a time, at a price that slid down a little with every one. The shopkeeper had stopped saying anything. Once, when Tam laid down three warhammers in a row, he put his face in his hands.
At Smithing 11 Tam made a chainbody: a shirt of tiny bronze rings, all linked together. It hung to his hips and weighed as much as a full bucket. He put it on over his shirt, right there in the smithy. In the equipment panel, the body slot showed a little picture of it. The slot had been empty for seventeen days.
At Smithing 12 he made a kiteshield. It was long, shaped like a kite, with a ridge down the middle. When he equipped it and put it on his arm, the number for blocking blows went up. In the game, a shield was either on your arm or in your bag. Here it had a third place, his back. It hung there on its strap while his hands were free, and banged against his legs when he walked.
He made more kiteshields after that, for the experience. The store took eight.
On the ninth run, as the light went gold, Smithing 14 came.
He stood in the smiths' building and looked at himself. Bronze helm, bronze chainbody, bronze kiteshield on his back, bronze scimitar at his side. His trousers were his own. His feet were bare.
"Full bronze," said Feoras slowly. "Near enough."
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"Near enough," said Tam.
"You're the strangest thing that ever came through that door," said Feoras. "And I've met Sani, and he's the best smith in Varrock."
* * *
He walked home over the bridge for the evening delivery, because he'd promised. He clanked.
The brothers were bringing the cows in. They stopped. The cows stopped too, as if the brothers had told them to. Two brothers and twelve cows stood in the lane and stared. Tam was walking toward them in full bronze, barefoot, with a kiteshield banging against the backs of his legs.
"Are we at war?" said one of the brothers.
"No," said Tam.
"Oh," said the brother, and looked a little disappointed.
Jory came out of the barn and stopped dead. Then he ran straight at Tam and knocked on the chainbody with his knuckles, hard.
"Is it real?"
"It's real."
"Can I have one?"
"You're ten."
"I'll be eleven at harvest."
"Ask me at harvest," said Tam.
Seth came out of the farmhouse and saw him and stopped on the step. He looked Tam up and down, slowly, from the helm to the bare feet.
"Well," said Seth at last. "At least you'll not get your shirt dirty."
That was all he said. But Tam saw him look at the kiteshield for a while longer. Then Seth looked up the road toward Varrock, and went back inside.
He carried the churn and the egg basket up to the castle for the evening delivery.
The Cook was worse. Tam came in at the kitchen door. The Cook turned around from the Cook-o-matic with a ladle in his hand and screamed. It was a short scream, quickly swallowed.
"Saradomin preserve us," said the Cook, with his hand on his chest. "I thought the goblins had come for my kitchen."
"It's me."
"I can see it's you, lad, now." The Cook put down the ladle. He came over and looked at the chainbody, and then at the full helm under Tam's arm. He shook his head. "Did you make all that?"
"Today."
"Today." The Cook looked at him. Then he said, quite gently, "You don't do anything by halves, do you."
"Not any more."
"Well." The Cook went back to his range. "When you've the hands for cake, lad, you bake it here, on my range. And I'll stand by and not panic. I owe you that."
"I'll hold you to that," said Tam.
* * *
The next morning he sold his hammer and his pickaxe to the general store for nothing.
"Again?" said the shopkeeper.
"Again."
"You'll buy them back."
"Yes."
"For a coin each."
"Yes."
"Lad," said the shopkeeper, with real feeling, "I don't understand a single thing you do."
He'd told Seth at breakfast: "Cows again." Back at the farm, he cast the Minigame Teleport from the loft, with the hatch down. He stood on the grass above Nomad's camp in the wind off the western sea.
Nomad was standing by his portal. He turned his skull mask toward the clank.
"The little magician," he said. "Back again. In bronze."
"Back again," said Tam.
"Mind where you sit," said Nomad, and the imp at his side laughed.
* * *
The cows were where he'd left them, on the slope above the beach. The hides from last time lay in the grass, already half gone to the foxes.
He set the scimitar to slash and the shield on his arm, and went to work.
It was easier in bronze. The cows' horns rang off the kiteshield more often than they found him. When one did get through, the chainbody turned most of it. Strength first, until the scimitar hit for four. Then Attack, so the hits would land. Then Defence. Fighters in the game trained in that order, more or less, because the numbers said to.
He fought, skinned, cooked and buried, and moved along the herd. Strength came up, and came up. Somewhere past a hundred cows, as the sun stood high over the sea, it came up to 21.
Congratulations, you just advanced a Strength level. Your Strength level is now 21.
He felt the difference on the next cow. The scimitar went in harder. It hit for four.
He opened the combat panel and set it to chop, for Attack. The scimitar didn't change. But now when he swung, it was his Attack that climbed, a little number at a time. The cows went down a little slower, because chop didn't hit as hard as slash.
Accuracy now, he thought. Then damage again.
Past the hundred and twentieth cow, something came out with the bones that had never come out of a cow before: a little roll of paper, tied with a scrap of string. It lay in the grass beside the hide, and when he picked it up, the inventory took it, one square.
He took it out again and unrolled it. There was one line on it, in a neat, spidery hand.
This anagram reveals who to speak to next: AN EARL
Tam sat down in the grass and laughed.
A clue scroll. A beginner one. In the game, cows dropped them, one time in a hundred and twenty-eight, and you followed them from step to step for a casket of rubbish and the joy of it. An earl. He had solved that one a hundred times. Ranael, who sold skirts in a shop at the south-east end of Al Kharid.
The desert again, he thought. Everything's in the desert.
Who wrote the clues, in a real world? Who tied them to cows? He didn't know. He put it away with great care, because in the game you could only carry one at a time. Then he went back to work.
He stopped fighting when the sun was well down the sky, because he'd promised Seth the evening delivery. A hundred and thirty-three cows. Strength 21 and Attack 9. His combat level had gone from 3 to 15 in an evening and a day.
On the way back to the camp he stopped at the edge of the island's mine.
Three iron rocks, together. He was Mining 19 now, and iron needed 15. Iron gave twice the experience copper did. With a pickaxe he could have mined it and dropped it, as he had the bows, and come away with levels.
He had sold his pickaxe that morning, for nothing, so that the island would only be about one thing.
One goal, he thought. Cows today. Iron's another day.
He walked past.
* * *
He came home by Home Teleport and made the delivery in his bronze. Then he walked back over the bridge, smelling of cow and smoke.
Gillie was on the dairy step with the lantern, scrubbing a churn that didn't need scrubbing. She watched him come up the yard. He clanked. He couldn't help it.
"Where were you?" she said.
"Fighting cows."
She put the brush down and looked at him in the lantern light.
"You don't even walk like yourself any more," she said.
Tam didn't say anything. He couldn't think of a single thing that wasn't a lie.