"You're supposed to be resting," said Seth.
"I rested yesterday. All day. I'm very rested. I'm the most rested person in Lumbridge."
It was early morning, and the yard was grey and cold. Seth stood by the barn door with a pitchfork over his shoulder.
"Gillie says you were gone from morning to dark."
"I had things to see to."
"Hm." Seth looked at Tam's bare feet, which were filthy, and then at his face. Whatever he saw there made him grunt. "Fine. You want to work, work. Muck out the cow shed." He held out the pitchfork.
Tam eyed it.
"Don't hand it to me," he said. "Please."
Seth frowned. "Why?"
"Because if you hand it to me, I'll drop it. And if you lean it on the wall for me, I'll probably drop that too."
"That's daft."
"It's very daft. I agree with you. Hand it to me and see."
Seth held out the pitchfork. Tam took it.
The pitchfork slid out of his grip and fell in the mud between them, and the old message came up in front of Tam's face.
Seth stared at the pitchfork. He picked it up and held it out again. It fell again. Seth's face went slowly red.
"It's not the cold," said Seth. "Is it."
"No."
"And it's not your hands."
"Not exactly."
Seth picked it up a third time and leaned on it. Tam waited to be shouted at. He would have shouted at himself.
"Can you hold anything?" said Seth at last.
"Things that are mine." Tam half turned and brought out the hammer he'd bought with his own coin. He held it up. It sat in his hand like a hammer should. "This, I bought. This stays."
"Huh," said Seth. Then he said, "Well, there's a coop wants mending, and you've got a hammer," and walked off into the barn.
That was the whole conversation. Tam stood in the yard holding his hammer.
* * *
It turned out a lot of farm work didn't need tools at all. It just needed hands and a back. And nobody on the farm could understand why the hands kept dropping things.
He could carry anything he picked up himself, it seemed. He worked that out by the middle of the morning. A hay bale he picked up from the stack stayed in his arms. A hay bale one of the brothers tossed to him fell through his arms and burst open on the ground. The brother gave him a long, slow look. So he picked things up himself. He carried hay and firewood. He stacked logs. He drove the cows out to the far field with Gillie, waving his arms. The cows went where Gillie wanted them to, not where he did.
The coop was the worst job and the best one.
The goblins had torn six boards off the back of it on their last visit. The boards lay in the nettles where they had fallen. Seth's box of nails sat on the chopping block.
If I pick up a board, he thought, is that taking? Or is that borrowing?
He picked up a board, and it stayed.
He picked up a nail. It stayed too.
Okay. So it's about hands. If nobody hands me anything, I'm fine. He thought about it a bit more. As long as I'm not keeping it. I'm putting Seth's nails into Seth's coop. Nothing's changing hands. It just goes from his pile to his coop, through me.
He decided not to think about it any harder, in case the rules were listening.
He held the first board in place, and his hands took over. They set the nail and drove it home in three strokes. That's odd, he thought. My hands only know skills. Mending a coop was never a skill.
Then the board was on, and a little number floated up at the edge of his sight.
+22.5 Construction.
Tam stopped with the hammer in the air.
Construction, he thought. For a coop. In the game, you trained Construction by building furniture in your own house, out of planks, with a saw and a hammer and nails. There had been another way too: going around other people's houses and repairing their broken chairs and shelves for a company in Falador. Repairs had given a little less experience than building. That was about the size of the number in front of him.
Repairs, he thought. Maybe it counts as repairs. The next board gave him the same number. He started to grin. I'm doing a contract. For a chicken.
On the fourth board, the words came.
Congratulations, you just advanced a Construction level. Your Construction level is now 2.
The warmth went down his arms, and his hands got quicker.
He mended the rest of the coop with his own hammer and Seth's nails. A number rose for every board. Jory, who had come to watch, sat with his chin in his hands and his mouth open.
"You're good at that now," said Jory.
"Thank you, Jory."
"You were rubbish at the fence last summer. Seth said you couldn't hit a nail if it sat on your nose."
"I know, Jory."
"Is it because of your hands? Because they work different since the river?"
"Something like that."
Jory sat on an upturned bucket and swung his legs. "Can I hold your knife?"
"It's a dagger."
"Wren said it was a butter knife."
Tam stopped hammering. "How do you know what Wren said?"
"Everyone knows. Her dad told Gillie when he came up to swap fish for milk this morning. He said Wren came home laughing, and Wren never laughs." Jory considered. "He said you made a butter knife."
News travels fast, Tam thought. Nobody in Lumbridge can keep a secret.
He turned away for a moment, took the dagger out of his inventory, and handed it to Jory, handle first. Jory held it in both hands. He turned it over, checked the hammer marks, and tested the edge with his thumb, carefully.
"It's good," said Jory. "It's a good knife."
"Dagger."
Jory handed it back.
Tam took it. For half a second he braced for it to fall. Feoras had handed it back at the smithy, and it had stayed. He wanted to be sure that wasn't luck.
It stayed.
So it's still mine, he thought, whoever hands it back. He had made it from rocks. He felt a stupid rush of relief, and put it away.
He finished the coop by evening. Every board was square and every nail went in true. There wasn't a gap in it a hen could put her head through. When Gillie shut the hens in for the night, she stood in front of it a while.
"Dad built that coop," she said. "It never fitted that well when he built it."
"Beginner's luck."
"You've never been able to hammer a nail straight in your life, Tam Fallow."
"I've been practising," said Tam. "In my sleep."
She giggled, despite herself. Then she stopped. "You never used to talk like that," she said. "You never used to talk at all."
He didn't know what to say to that.
* * *
The goblins came that night.
He woke to the hens screaming.
For a second he didn't know where he was. Then he heard it again, a terrible flapping, squawking racket from the yard. Under it was a high giggling noise that wasn't a hen at all. He was out of bed and down the ladder before he had thought about it.
The yard was dark. The moon was behind clouds. He could see the coop, the one he had just mended. Its door was hanging open. Small dark shapes were scurrying away from it toward the river, carrying something white and flapping.
He took his dagger out of the inventory. His hand was shaking.
"Hey!" he shouted, and ran after them.
They scattered. Two of them kept running toward the river with a hen each. The third stopped and turned.
It was smaller than him, maybe as tall as Jory, with long arms and big feet. Its eyes caught some little bit of light and shone yellow. It had a short spear in one hand and a hen by the legs in the other. The hen was still screaming.
They stared at each other. Neither of them moved.
Goblin, he thought. He had ten hitpoints, a bronze dagger and no shoes. This wasn't a screen, so there was no health bar over its head. It was dark, and there might be more goblins behind the barn.
The goblin hissed at him. It showed all its teeth.
He didn't move.
He wanted to. He told his legs to. They stayed exactly where they were, as if they'd been nailed to the yard.
Then a door banged behind him. Lantern light swung across the yard, and Seth's voice roared out like a bull's.
"GET OUT OF IT, YOU THIEVING LITTLE..."
The goblin turned and ran. It went over the fence, hen and all, and vanished into the dark toward Lozar's house.
Seth came pounding across the yard in his nightshirt, lantern in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. He reached the fence and stood there, breathing hard. He shouted several things into the dark that Tam was fairly sure Father Aereck wouldn't like.
Then he turned around, and saw Tam standing in the middle of the yard with the dagger in his hand.
"What were you going to do with that?" said Seth.
"I don't know," said Tam. It was the truest thing he'd said since the river.
Seth looked at the coop. Three of his hens were gone. The door was hanging open, but the latch was still whole.
"You did a good job on the coop," Seth said gruffly. "They'll have come in over the top. Not your fault." He put a heavy hand on Tam's shoulder for a moment, and then took it away. "Go to bed, lad."
Tam went back to the loft. He lay on his bed with the dagger in his hand and stared at the beams.
He had frozen. In the game he had killed ten thousand goblins without looking. Here, one had shown him its teeth, and he couldn't move.
Next time, he told himself. Next time I won't.
He didn't believe it. He lay awake until it was light.
* * *
In the morning a man came to the gate.
He was a thin, sour-looking farmer of about forty, with a long neck and a coat too big for him. His name was Hobart, Gillie said, and he farmed the land up the river past the Groats' top field. Tam had a feeling Gillie didn't like him much.
"They had two of mine as well," said Hobart, leaning on the gate. "And a lamb last month. Bold as brass. Right under my window."
"Three of my hens," said Seth. "Over the roof of a brand new coop."
"Something should be done."
"Something should," Seth agreed. "The Duke's guards..."
"The Duke's guards." Hobart spat in the road. "The Duke's guards don't cross the river for a few hens. No. But I'll tell you who would." He leaned closer over the gate and lowered his voice, as if the cows might be listening. "There's a fellow been drinking at the Sheared Ram this week. Buying rounds for anyone who's lost stock to the green beggars. Says there's people in this town who are sick of it. Proper people. People who'd see every goblin gone from Misthalin, if folk would only stand together."
Tam had been carrying a bucket of water across the yard. He stopped.
Oh, he thought. Oh, no. Not you.
In the game there was a group called H.A.M. It stood for Humans Against Monsters. They wore magenta robes and hid in a cave under a ruin on the road to Draynor. They hated goblins, ogres and anything else they called a monster. At first they had been almost funny. Later, in the longer quests, they tried to start a war, and people died.
Here, apparently, it all started with free drinks at the pub.
"I don't drink with strangers," said Seth.
"He's not a stranger. He's a Lumbridge man. Says he works up at the castle."
Tam's stomach went cold. Works at the castle. In the game, one of the Duke's own men had secretly been one of H.A.M.'s leaders. He didn't know yet if that was true here. He did know that people in Lumbridge wouldn't believe a farm boy who said so.
In the game, it hadn't mattered. A hero came along to stop them: thousands of heroes a day, one after another. Here, there was nobody like that. There was him.
"I still don't drink with him," said Seth. "I've got hens to count."
Hobart shrugged and pushed himself off the gate. "Suit yourself, Seth. But you'll be counting fewer every week, the way it's going." He walked off up the road.
Seth watched him go. He looked thoughtful, and not happy about it.
"That one," said Gillie quietly, beside Tam, "would join anything that bought him a drink."
Tam said nothing. He picked up his bucket and carried it on. But he looked back at the road for a long time.
* * *
That evening was the end of the farm's week, and Seth paid his hands.
He did it at the long table at the end of supper. He had a leather bag of coins and a little book. He called each hand up by name and counted coins into their palm. The two brothers got theirs and pocketed them without a word. The old man got his and bit one, as he did every week. Gillie rolled her eyes.
"Tam," said Seth.
Tam went up.
"Full hand's wage, now you're eighteen," Seth said. "Eight a day, six days." He counted the coins out in a stack on the table. He did it slowly. Gillie watched, smiling a little. Jory watched with his mouth open. It was more than twice what had been in Tam's jar.
Forty-eight coins.
"Seth," said Tam. "I didn't work six days."
"You nearly died, lad. I'm not docking a drowned boy."
"I worked one day. And a bit."
"Take your money." Seth pushed the stack across the table toward him.
Tam had a bad feeling about it. He picked the stack up carefully, as if that might help.
Forty-eight coins poured through his fingers and spilled across the table. The old message hung over the table, where only he could see it. The coins rolled into the bread and the gravy, and onto the floor. The two brothers looked up. The old man stopped chewing.
Seth looked at Tam. Then, slowly, he gathered the coins up, stacked them again, and held them out.
They went through Tam's hand again, with the message again.
"It's not my hands," Tam said. His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "It's... I can't take things I haven't earned. Anything I'm given, I can't hold. Not gifts. Not loans. Maybe not pay I didn't work for. It just falls through. It's been like that since the river."
Nobody said anything. Jory was staring at him. Gillie had both hands over her mouth.
Seth rubbed his beard. Then he said, "So if I pay you for six days, that's a gift."
"I think so. Because I didn't work them."
"And you can't take a gift."
"I can't hold one."
Seth counted sixteen coins back out into a smaller stack. "Two days," he said. "Yesterday and today."
Tam picked them up.
They fell.
Seth's eyebrows went up. Tam felt his face go hot.
"I dropped a lot of things," Tam said. "Yesterday. And I wasn't really... I mended one coop and carried some hay. And I froze in the yard. That's not two days of a grown hand's work. It isn't, Seth. You know it isn't."
Seth's mouth twitched, as if he might laugh.
"I have never had a hand argue his wages down," said Seth.
"I'm very special."
Seth counted out ten coins. He put them on the table in front of Tam and folded his arms.
"Ten," he said. "For a day and a half of bad work and one good coop. Pick them up."
Tam picked them up.
They stayed.
He stood there with ten coins in his hand. They were warm from Seth's bag. They were his own pay, for his own work.
"Thank you," Tam said.
"Don't thank me. You earned it. Apparently that's the only way you can have it." Seth swept the other thirty-eight coins back into the bag. "Next week," he said, "you'll do a proper week. And you'll get a proper week's pay. And if it falls on the floor, I'll know you slacked."
"Deal."
"And after rest day," said Seth, "you'll take the milk and eggs up to the castle kitchen of an evening. The cook's door, around the back. You can carry, at least, if you pick it up yourself."
"I can carry," Tam agreed.
The two brothers went back to their food. The old man started chewing again. Gillie took her hands away from her mouth and frowned at him, as if something about him didn't make sense.
* * *
He caught Seth alone later, by the coop, where Seth was checking the latch by lantern light for the fourth time.
"I want to go to Lozar's house," said Tam. "Tomorrow. After church."
Seth didn't look up from the latch.
"No."
"They took three of your hens. They'll take more. I've got a dagger now, and I..."
"I saw you with your dagger last night." Seth straightened up. In the lantern light his face looked older than it did in the day. "You stood there like a post. A goblin the size of Jory, and you stood there."
Tam had no answer to that, because it was true.
"Your father was the same age as me," Seth said. "We were boys together. I stood by your father's grave, and your mother's. I stood right behind you while Aereck said the words, because you were eight, and I wasn't leaving you there alone. Then, not a week ago, I stood on that riverbank, and you were lying there blue, and I thought, that's the third. That's the third Fallow I'll bury."
"I'm not burying a third," said Seth. "You'll stay out of that house. That's an order. Not the kind I joke about."
He picked up the lantern and walked back to the farmhouse. He didn't wait for an answer.
Tam stood by the mended coop in the dark.
At supper, Gillie had been planning tomorrow out loud. It was rest day: church in the morning, then the market and the shops, which opened for an hour after the service. Then home by the middle of the afternoon, if Seth didn't start arguing with somebody about cows.
Seth had said no. But the others would be in town until the afternoon, and nobody would notice if Tam slipped away after church. He had made up his mind to go to Lozar's house then.