On rest day the whole farm went to church, and Tam went with them.
He had told Father Aereck he would. It seemed like the least he could do for the man who had buried Tam's parents. So he walked down the east bank with the Groats and the farm hands in the cold bright morning. He was barefoot, in his only shirt, with sixteen coins and a dagger in an inventory nobody could see.
Lozar's house went past on their left. It was quiet. Smoke rose from somewhere inside it, thin and grey. The smell of roasting chicken drifted across the path.
Seth didn't look at it. He walked a little faster.
Tam looked at it all the way past.
* * *
Lumbridge church was old grey stone, with a square tower, a bell and a graveyard full of leaning headstones. It was packed. People stood at the back and down the sides. When Tam came in with the Groats, heads turned all the way down the aisle, and a murmur went around.
"That's him."
"The Fallow boy."
"Saradomin's mercy."
He sat on a hard bench between Jory and Gillie and tried to look like someone who had been coming here every rest day for eighteen years. Jory held his sleeve the whole time, as if Tam might float off.
Father Aereck preached about mercy. He looked straight at Tam twice while he did it. Near the end he lost his place, apologised, found it again and dropped his book. The whole church waited patiently while he picked it up. Nobody seemed surprised. Tam liked them all for that.
A neat, narrow man sat near the front, on a cushioned bench of his own. He wore a long dark-blue robe with a red belt, a white cape, and a green stone on a chain at his throat. He sat straight, with his hands folded, and he didn't sing. He looked at the people around him the way some people look at mud on their boots.
Tam knew him the moment he saw the back of his head.
Sigmund. The Duke's adviser. In the game, he was the man in the castle who turned out to be one of the leaders of H.A.M. He had tried to start a war with the goblin people who lived in caves under Lumbridge. He very nearly managed it.
Sigmund turned his head, just slightly, and his pale eyes passed over the church. They passed over Tam without stopping. He was just a farm boy in a crowd of farm folk. Tam guessed he wasn't worth stopping for.
Tam looked down at his hands until the service was over.
* * *
After church, the town square filled up with stalls and people. Seth went to argue with a man about a cow. Gillie went to look at ribbons. The brothers went to the Sheared Ram. The old man sat on a wall in the sun and did nothing, which seemed to be his rest day treat.
Tam told Jory he was going for a walk, and walked straight to the general store. Gillie had said it opened for an hour after church.
The bald shopkeeper looked up as he came in. "Shrimp boy."
"Knife, please."
"Seven coins."
Tam put seven coins on the counter, and the shopkeeper put the knife beside them. It was a plain iron blade as long as his hand, with a wooden handle bound in wire. With a knife, he could cut up whatever he killed and get at the bones. Tam picked it up, and it stayed.
He had nine coins left, a knife, and a plan that would make Seth Groats very angry.
Seth said it wasn't the kind of order he joked about, Tam thought, walking back across the bridge on his own. He meant it.
He kept walking anyway.
He knew why. The hens mattered, and so did any coins the goblins might carry, because he needed coins badly. But mostly it was the night in the Groats' yard, when a goblin the size of Jory had shown him its teeth and his legs hadn't moved.
If he didn't go now, he thought, he never would.
* * *
He came at Lozar's house from the south, through the dead trees.
The trees were grey and bare, and black at the bottom where the fire had reached them. He crouched behind the thickest one, about thirty steps from the house, and looked.
The house had been built of stone, two rooms deep, with a slate roof that was mostly still there. The walls were scorched black above every window. Most of the windows were broken. There was a doorway in the middle of the front wall, with no door left in it, only a black gap with charred posts on each side. Smoke came out of a hole in the roof. Somebody inside was singing. It sounded like a cat being stepped on, slowly.
One goblin sat outside, on a heap of rubble by the wall, chewing a bone.
In the game, if you examined a goblin, it said: An ugly green creature. That was all.
It was small, about as tall as Jory, with grey-green skin and long arms. It wore a scrap of brown armour, tied on with string. A short spear lay across its knees.
Okay, he thought. In the game: one goblin, level 2, five hitpoints, hits for one. You've got ten hitpoints, a dagger, and five shrimp.
He took out the dagger and equipped it. Then he opened the combat panel. With the dagger equipped it showed new choices: stab, lunge, slash and block. In the game, stab trained Attack, lunge and slash trained Strength, and block trained Defence. At the swamp, the setting he picked had decided which skill got the experience, not what he did with his hands. He'd see if goblins worked the same. He picked stab, for Attack. He took a breath.
Then, before his legs could have an opinion, he stood up and walked out from behind the tree.
The goblin saw him at once. It dropped the bone, grabbed its spear and came at him across the yard in a scuttling run, screeching.
He had thought about this all night. He had a plan for the first one. Let it come. Watch the spear. A goblin attacks, pulls back, attacks. Wait for the pull-back.
The goblin jabbed at his stomach. He jumped back, clumsy and much too far. It jabbed again. This time he stepped sideways. The spear went past him, and the goblin was off balance for a second.
He stabbed it in the shoulder.
It shrieked, spun around and whacked him across the shin with the spear shaft.
Hitpoints: 9/10.
It hurt, a bright cracking pain. He kept his eyes on the spear. Jab. Pull back. Now. He stabbed again and missed. He stabbed again and caught it in the side. He missed twice more. He hit it in the arm, then in the leg. It stumbled. It swung wildly. He ducked, badly, and stabbed down.
The goblin fell over and didn't get up. It had taken five good stabs, and a lot of bad ones.
He stood over it, panting. His hand with the dagger in it was shaking. The goblin lay on its back in the dirt, very small, with its yellow eyes open.
One, he thought. That's one.
He had done it. He let himself grin.
Then the singing inside the house stopped.
* * *
They jammed into the narrow doorway, all four of them, and burst out one after another, pushing and shoving.
The first two had spears, sharpened sticks with flints tied to the ends. The third had a club made from a table leg. The fourth was bigger than the others, nearly as tall as Tam's chest, with a battered metal pot jammed on its head like a helmet. It held a long spear in both hands. The spearhead was real bronze, gone green with age. All four of them looked at the dead goblin on the ground. Then they looked at Tam.
The big one howled something in its own language. The other three screamed and charged.
He tried to do what he'd done with the first one. He watched the spear of the nearest goblin and waited for the pull-back. But there wasn't one spear. There were two spears and a club, coming from three directions at once.
The club caught him on the hip.
Hitpoints: 8/10.
He spun toward it and stabbed, and a spear jabbed him in the back of the arm.
Hitpoints: 7/10.
"Okay, okay, this is fine, this is totally fine, four goblins, it's four goblins, I've killed literally..."
A spear in the thigh.
Hitpoints: 6/10.
He swung the dagger in a wide wild arc to make them back off. They backed off, for a moment. Then they came in again, from both sides, giggling.
A goblin hits for one, he thought. But three of them hit three times as often.
He stabbed one in the arm and it squealed and dropped back. The one with the club hit him in the ribs.
Hitpoints: 5/10.
He was turning in circles now. When he faced one, another got behind him. The big one with the pot on its head hadn't even joined in yet. It was standing by the doorway, watching, as if this were a show put on for it.
A spear jabbed his calf. The club hit his elbow. His whole arm went numb, and he nearly dropped the dagger.
Hitpoints: 3/10.
He stopped talking.
He turned and ran.
He ran flat out through the dead trees and across the rough field toward the river, barefoot, with his leg bleeding. Behind him the goblins screamed and laughed. They chased him for maybe twenty steps.
Then they stopped. He heard them jeering at his back. He didn't stop until he reached the riverbank. There he fell down in the long grass behind a bush, out of sight of the house, and lay there.
He was shaking all over. His leg was wet with blood. His arm, his ribs, his hip and his back throbbed, all of them at once.
Hitpoints: 3/10.
Three. Three more jabs.
Six years of Hardcore had put one rule into his bones: the moment your hitpoints were low and you had a breath, you ate. You didn't think or look around. You ate. He got a cooked shrimp out of his inventory. His hands were shaking so badly he nearly dropped it. It was still hot, as hot as the moment he had cooked it four days ago.
In the game, a shrimp healed three hitpoints. He had no idea what it would do here.
He ate it.
He felt it work at once. It was like warm water running into all the places that hurt. The stab in his thigh pulled closed, slowly, as he watched. The bleeding stopped. The deep ache in his ribs eased to a dull one.
Hitpoints: 6/10.
He stared at his thigh. A minute ago there had been a hole in it. Now there was a pink, shiny mark, like an old scar.
Food heals, he thought. Fast.
He ate another one.
Hitpoints: 9/10.
Then he lay back in the grass, nearly whole again, and the shaking came back worse than before.
Three. He had been three hits from lying in the dirt with his eyes open, like the goblin in the yard. Three jabs from one of the weakest monsters in the whole game.
In the game, a goblin couldn't kill a new character. It just couldn't. It hit too weakly, and you had time to walk away. He had known that for fifteen years. He had said it to chat a hundred times.
But that was one goblin. And in the game, you respawned.
He thought about Seth by the graves, and Jory holding his sleeve in church. He thought about the cold river, and the headlights before it.
He didn't joke.
* * *
After a while he sat up. The last hitpoint had crept back while he lay there. He had three shrimp left. That was nine hitpoints of healing in his inventory, if the game's numbers were right. Nine hitpoints was a lot of goblin jabs.
But food only helped if he had time to eat it, and with four of them around him he hadn't had time to do anything.
The trouble was four at once. One at a time, he could handle.
He sat still and thought about it. What does it do? Where does it come from? Where can I stand?
The goblins all lived in the house. The windows were small and high, too small to scramble out of in a hurry. The house had one doorway, the black gap with the charred posts, wide enough for one goblin at a time. Two, if they squeezed, and goblins didn't seem like they'd squeeze politely.
If he stood right beside that doorway, against the wall, anything that came out of it would come out one at a time. It would have to step through, turn and find him. And he'd already be there.
One at a time, he thought. One goblin at a time, I can do. I just did.
He stood up. His legs didn't give.
He went back.
* * *
This time he came at the house from the side, along the wall, where there were no windows. He pressed his back against the scorched stone right beside the doorway. Inside, he could hear them. They were arguing, a lot of squeaky chattering, and then a burst of laughter. They were laughing about him, probably.
Laugh it up.
He picked up a stone from the rubble at his feet and lobbed it through the nearest broken window.
There was a crash, a squawk of fury, and running feet.
The first goblin came through the doorway at a sprint, spear first, looking straight ahead for the person who had thrown the stone. It didn't look to the side.
Tam stabbed it as it came past.
It turned, too slow, and he stabbed it again. It jabbed at him. He stepped back against the wall, and it missed. He kept stabbing and kept watching the spear, and it went down.
The second one was already in the doorway, behind it. It had to step over the body. It tripped. Tam hit it while it was tripping.
That one fought back. It caught him on the wrist with its club.
Hitpoints: 9/10.
But it was only one, and he only had to watch one thing. Swing. Pull back. Now. He waited for the pull-back and stabbed. He waited and stabbed again, and again. The second goblin fell across the first.
The third goblin stopped in the doorway and looked at the two bodies. It screeched and backed into the house.
Tam waited by the wall. His heart was going so hard he could feel it in his teeth.
Nothing came.
He picked up another stone and threw it through the window. Somebody yelped. Then there was a lot of angry chattering. Then the third goblin came out, slowly this time, with its spear held out in front of it. Behind it, the big one with the pot on its head was pushing it out with the butt of its own spear.
The third goblin came through the doorway and turned toward him, and he was ready. It was a hard, ugly fight, but it only took a minute. Early in that fight, the level-up warmth ran down his arm, and words flared up at the edge of his sight. He didn't read them. He watched the spear. The fight cost him one hitpoint.
Hitpoints: 8/10.
And then there was only the big one.
It came out of the doorway on its own, and it took its time. It stepped over the three bodies without looking at them. It turned to face him and lifted its long green-headed spear.
Up close, it was much bigger than the others. Its arms were thick and knotted, and it had scars across its knuckles. The pot on its head was dented in three places. It didn't giggle. It looked at him with small, cold, careful eyes.
It's a goblin, he told himself. It's a level 2 goblin. Five hitpoints. Hits for one.
The goblin lunged.
He jumped back, but not far enough. The spear went into his shoulder, deep, and it hurt more than anything the others had done.
Hitpoints: 6/10.
Two, he thought, in total disbelief. That was two. A goblin's maximum hit, the most it could do to you in one blow, was one. Everyone knew that.
This one hadn't read the wiki.
He backed along the wall. The big goblin followed, jabbing, patient. It didn't swing wildly like the others. It didn't waste a swing. It jabbed, pulled back and jabbed again. Each time it pulled back, it watched to see what he'd do.
It was doing exactly what he was doing. It was waiting for his mistake.
He nearly made one. He stabbed too early and it slid past the blade, and the spear shaft cracked him across the side of the head. Stars burst across his eyes.
Hitpoints: 5/10.
He stopped thinking about anything except the spear.
It jabbed. He stepped left. It pulled back. He stepped in.
He stabbed it under the arm, where its scrap of armour didn't reach. It grunted. It jabbed again. He twisted, and the spear scraped along his ribs without going in. He stabbed it again in the same place, and again. It took more than any of the others.
It dropped the spear. It looked at him for a moment, almost surprised. Then it sat down hard against the wall of the house, under the burnt window, and slowly fell over sideways.
The pot rolled off its head and wobbled in the dirt.
Tam stood with his back to the wall, breathing in great ragged gulps. Blood ran down his arm from the shoulder. His head rang.
The words were still hanging in the air, waiting for him, as they did in the game until you clicked them away. Now he read them.
Congratulations, you just advanced an Attack level. Your Attack level is now 2.
He looked at the words.
"Thanks," he said, quietly. That was all.
He took a shrimp out of his inventory and ate it, standing there. Then another. He watched his shoulder close. That left one. When his hands had stopped shaking, he looked around.
Five goblins lay in the yard of Lozar's house. One out in the yard where he had killed the first, three in a heap by the doorway, and the big one against the wall under the window. The smoke still drifted out of the roof. Inside, the house was quiet now.
He went to the first body and knelt beside it. It was so small. If goblins here carried anything, it was still on them. So were their bones. And he couldn't leave five bodies lying here for Seth to find. He felt sick.
He had never tried to put anything this big in the inventory. He didn't know if it would go. He thought about it anyway.
Nothing happened. No square filled. The goblin lay in the dirt, small and heavy and dead, and the grid stayed exactly as it was.
He tried the next one, in case. Nothing.
Not bodies, then, he thought. In the game, a goblin had never been a thing you could carry. It left its drop on the grass, and the rest of it simply went away. Here the rest of it stayed. He would have to carry them, all five, in his own two arms.
Then he picked up the big one's green-headed spear and put it away. He picked up its dented pot from the dirt, turned it over in his hands, and put that in his inventory too. They were his now. Nobody else was going to want them.
His legs felt heavy as he stepped up into the doorway of Lozar's house and looked into the dark. It smelled of smoke and chicken, and of something older and sadder underneath.
He stepped inside.