Seth's pipe lay beside his porridge bowl, unlit.
He ate his porridge. He told the brothers which field wanted harrowing and the old man that the coop door was sticking again. He didn't light the pipe, and he didn't put it away either. It just lay there by the bowl.
Gillie watched it the whole meal. So did Tam.
"How was the Ram?" said Tam, when the brothers had gone out.
Seth looked at him across the table.
"They talk sense," he said, "some of them."
He got up, put the pipe in his pocket and went out to the cows.
Gillie looked at Tam. Tam looked at his porridge.
Some of them, he thought. Great. That's how a man starts listening to the wrong people.
* * *
He mucked out the cow shed with his own spade, as he had every morning for two weeks. Then, when nobody was looking, he leaned on the spade and opened his inventory.
Twenty-one cowhides, one to a square, folded flat and stiff, and smelling faintly of the island. With the coins, the knife, the axe, the tinderbox, the arrow shafts and the clue, that made twenty-seven squares full. The twenty-eighth was the spade's, and the spade was in his hands, so that square was free for now. One free square.
In the game, a full inventory was the most boring thing that could happen to you. You couldn't cut a log or mine an ore. Here it was the same, only worse, because the hides had weight. He could feel them dragging at his shoulders.
He did the sums, leaning on the spade.
Every hour he carried the hides was an hour he couldn't gather anything else. He could drop them, but twenty-one hides was twenty-one cows, and that was most of an hour on the island.
Or he could walk them to Al Kharid. Distances here ran longer than in the game, so on foot it was probably two or three hours. If he went tonight, straight after the castle round, he'd be there by dark.
A maxed player would go tonight. He knew that the way he knew his own name. Both of his names.
But I told Harlan the day after, he thought.
Harlan had said it on the hill, with the last of the light going. Rest day tomorrow. The day after, then. And Tam had said it back to him. The day after.
It wasn't a promise, exactly. Harlan hadn't asked for one. Nobody would put him in the river if he didn't turn up.
He thought about it all morning, mucking out.
One more day, he decided. The hides can wait one more day. The drill can't.
He didn't like it. He did it anyway.
* * *
At midday Jory found him at the water trough, and knocked on his chainbody with his knuckles. He did it every time he saw it now.
"Still real," said Jory.
"Still real."
Jory sat down on the edge of the trough, swinging his legs. He was eating an apple from last autumn's store, wrinkled and brown. Most of it ended up on his chin.
"The brothers say you talk in your sleep," he said.
Tam stopped with his hands in the water. "Do they."
"They say you said Al Kharid. Twice." Jory looked at him sideways. "That's the desert. Past the gate. Seth says there's men there who sell their own grandmothers."
"I'm not buying anybody's grandmother."
"Then what's in the desert?"
"A tanner."
Jory thought about this. "Is that a monster?"
"It's a man who makes leather."
"Oh." Jory looked disappointed, and then thought of something else and cheered up. "Why do you need leather?"
Tam looked down at his feet in the mud by the trough. They had been bare for three weeks. The soles had gone hard and black, nearly like boots. They still found every stone.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"Boots," he said.
Everyone on the farm had stopped seeing his bare feet, because Tam had stopped mentioning them.
"Can I come?"
"No."
"I've got my hammer."
"You've got your hammer," Tam agreed. "And you've got the hens tomorrow, and the calf pen. And if I took you to the desert, Seth would bury me under the dung heap. Alive."
Jory considered this, and seemed to find it fair. He finished the apple, core and all, and wiped his hands on his shirt.
"Bring me something back," he said.
"Like what?"
"Something from the desert." Jory hopped off the trough. "Sand," he decided, and ran off to the hens.
Sand, thought Tam. Easy. Finally, a quest I can do.
* * *
He did the castle round in the evening: the milk churn, the egg basket, the servants' door down three steps from the yard of barrels. The Cook was too busy stirring a stew that smelled of onions to scream at him. Then Tam walked up the hill north of the castle in his bronze. The kiteshield banged against the backs of his legs the whole way.
The tutors' hill was full of noise again: the same two ragged lines, step, cut, step back, guard. Harlan watched them all from the top, with his hands behind his back.
Wren was at the end of the front line, as before. Her black hair swung at her jaw as she turned. Her iron sword never stopped. She didn't look at him as he came up the hill.
But she missed one step. Just one. Her feet stopped for half a breath, and then went on.
She thought I wouldn't come, thought Tam. He didn't know why that made him so pleased.
Harlan watched him come all the way up the slope.
"Fallow," he said.
"The day after," said Tam.
Harlan grunted. He pointed with his chin at the sacking and twine by the barrel. "Wrap it. Back line."
* * *
His feet were still bad. But they were less bad.
He noticed it on the third pass. Step, cut, step back, guard. His feet did it in the right order. He didn't step on the boy behind him, who looked almost disappointed. When he cut, the scimitar went where he meant it to.
He knew why, and it wasn't all practice.
Two days ago he'd had Attack 9 and Defence 1. Now both were at 10. He'd trained them on the island's cows yesterday, a level at a time, until the words came. In the game, those numbers decided whether your blows landed and whether you blocked theirs. Here, it seemed, they decided something about how the drill felt in his hands. The sword knew a little more about where it was going. His arm knew a little more about where to put the shield.
"Fallow!" shouted Harlan, from the top of the hill. "Your feet have stopped arguing!"
Tam nearly fell over in surprise.
"Now they're only sulking," said Harlan. "Again."
* * *
Harlan called them into pairs when the light went red.
"Wren," he said. "Take Fallow."
Wren walked down the line to him and lifted her wrapped sword. Up close she smelled of the river. Her eyes were dark and level.
"Fallow," she said.
"Wren."
"Ready?"
"No," said Tam. "But slightly less than last time."
She came at him.
He saw it this time. Not all of it, but enough. She cut high and came in low. His shield was already moving. It caught her wrapped blade with a dull thud, and she wasn't there anymore. She had stepped around him like water around a stone. His feet were three steps behind the rest of him.
The grass hit him in the back.
"One," said Wren.
The second time took her longer. He caught one cut on the shield, and then another. Once he even turned a thrust with the scimitar, a quick, clumsy flick that his arm seemed to know before he did. Wren's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. Then she hooked his ankle and dropped him on his face.
"Two."
The third time was quick. He went down on his back, staring at the red sky.
"Three," she said. "That's the round."
He lay there for a second, in the wet grass, and looked at the edge of his sight. No number rose. He'd known none would.
He got up.
"Again," he said.
Wren lifted her sword.
This time he didn't wait for her. He went in first, high and then low, as she did. She blocked the high cut without looking at it. The low one, she didn't block. The wrapped scimitar thumped into the padding over her ribs. He had meant it.
Wren stopped.
For a moment neither of them moved. Then she dropped him so fast he didn't see which foot did it.
"One," she said. But she said it slower than before.
They went on until Harlan called the end. She put him down nine times in all, three rounds. He landed one more touch, by accident. That one didn't count, and they both knew it. His shirt was mud again, and there was grass inside the full helm.
He didn't care.
* * *
Tam sat on the grass and unwrapped his scimitar.
Wren sat down a little way off and cleaned her blade with a rag, as she had two days ago. He was starting to think it was something she did so she wouldn't have to look at anyone.
"You came back," she said.
"I said I would."
"People say things." She ran the rag down the blade. "Dad sees you come over the bridge at midnight. Most nights. He sits up mending nets." She turned the sword over. "He says you smell of cows."
"I fight cows."
Wren looked at him then. It was a long, level look, the kind she gave the river before she went in.
"Where do you go?" she said. "Evenings."
He could have said nothing. He was getting good at saying nothing, and he hated it. But he was so tired of it. And it was Wren, who had pulled him out of the river and wouldn't even be thanked.
"Tomorrow, the desert," he said. "Al Kharid. There's a tanner there."
"The desert," said Wren. "In an evening."
"Two or three hours east, I think."
"I know where it is, Fallow."
From the top of the hill, where he still stood with his hands behind his back, Harlan said, "Tomorrow, then."
He didn't mean the desert. He meant the drill.
Tam opened his mouth to say yes, and found he couldn't. The hides were sitting in his inventory like a stone in his chest. Tomorrow the desert. The day after, the ore, if he was going to get Smithing to 15. The day after that...
"Not tomorrow," he said.
Harlan said nothing at all.
Wren stopped cleaning her sword. Then she slid the blade into its sheath, stood up and walked off down the hill toward the river without a word. She didn't look back.
That's fine, Tam told himself. It's one evening.
It didn't feel fine.
* * *
Osric's hut stood quiet by the water, with the long grey nets hanging on their poles. A lamp was burning inside. As Tam passed, the door creaked open a hand's width, and then shut again.
He went up the field to the farm in the starlight, with the hides dragging at his shoulders.
Tomorrow, the desert. The tanner, a needle and thread, leather, and then gloves, because gloves were the first thing his Crafting level would let him make. Boots at Crafting 7.
Then one more ore run, and Smithing 15. In the game, Smithing 15 added one more place to the Minigame Teleport's list: a giant's forge on a plateau east of Al Kharid, past the toll gate. If the teleport worked here, the edge of the desert would be one spell away, any evening he liked.
If, he thought. Everything here is if.