Born a Monster

Chapter 35

Long Journey Home

We didn’t know what we were in for, so we set off at forced march. Basically, one hundred twenty paces of marching, followed by the same at a jogging pace. It takes practice to run in formation, practice that most guild members just didn’t get.

Whatever my reservations against the background of Melchidore’s troops, they proved themselves disciplined soldiers that day. How she kept picking such candidates from the recruits the guild provided her is beyond me.

I checked and saw no such abilities – wait, they were within a Social class called Officer. I didn’t have time to look just then, we were jogging again.

I’m not joking when I say it takes discipline; I had to run beside the formation.

.....

The other thing it demanded was stamina, not just a high fatigue meter.

“If you can’t keep up, we’ll leave you behind.”

“I’ll catch up. For the guild.”

A sorrowful look crossed her eyes, and then she said, “For the guild.” She collected my shield, and my guild gear. At first, I stayed close, then they were at a distance, then still visible, and then gone.

Your movement speed is based off your Might, Eihtfuhr had once told me. My Might was 2; adult humans averaged at 3. I just couldn’t keep up.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t getting home; I just needed to survive in the wild, surrounded by forage.

When Hattan fell, some idiot decided to salt the earth. It was poor land for crops, but life always finds a way.

Fashioning a straw hat is a bit more involved than just a simple woven grass mat; but I wouldn’t make it home if I got sunburned in the broken hills the Uruk called home. It wasn’t a great hat, and the brim wasn’t wide, but combined with the bandages it would suffice.

My System map confirmed that I was just over two days from Narrow Valley. Wilderness survival didn’t bother me, hadn’t I been doing that since I was born?

While broken lands aren’t an easy place to find sharpened rocks, I did find an almost sharp rock, with enough of an edge to help with harvesting the bitter grasses common to this land.

It was hard work with my eyes mostly closed; maybe I should travel by night?

I walked, working the bark loose from a gnarled root with my teeth.

Watching for a Crimson Hand patrol, it was easy to spot the Uruk, assembling on a nearby hilltop. They might be curious why I had been separated from the rest of my patrol.

No sense in making them come to me. I set off up the hillside, placing the rock into my inventory.

What was the proper greeting in goblin? “Greetings, brothers of the Black Fist. I, Rhishisikk, bearer of shields, seek to exit your lands. I need only such land as to set my feet upon, and only for the time it takes me to pass.”

“Kobolds are no brothers to our kind. Explain yourself, or die.”

Riiight, it was going to be one of THOSE discussions.

#

“I am not a kobold.” I said.

They reacted with laughter and spittle; at least they were in a good mood.

“I am a Protean, or shapeshifter, in the service of the Guild of Guardsmen, Porters, Drovers, and Linkboys. I am also a Truthspeaker. Ask me your questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

“A shapeshifter? Can you become a bear?”

“Will a goblin suffice?”

When he nodded, I began the process. The sixteen-minute timer started, but under less than a minute:

[You lack the biomass to assume this form, returning you to your default form.]

“I cannot complete the transformation in my current state.” I said.

They were silent for a long time. Had I offended them by screaming as my bones broke and flesh shifted?

“I accept that you are a shapeshifter. For all your human coins, you may pass through our lands.”

All of my earnings, all of my savings? No, wait. This was the negotiation phase.

“For half my coins, you will grant me passage and food worth ninety points of nutrition.”

“Food is NEVER part of these negotiations!”

“Then half my coins for passage and right to forage.”

“Show us your coins.”

I emptied my inventory. “This rock I need only to help me forage, I will gladly return it the next time I enter Black Fist lands.”

He snorted. “This is what you offer us? I should kill you now.”

“Do you have one whose System allows for the checking of another’s inventory?” I wasn’t about to use the word thief or bandit, and didn’t know the goblin word for pickpocket.

They went through my inventory, lamented on my poverty, and eventually accepted everything I owned, and return of their rock (a part of their land) in exchange for passage and forage rights.

“Look to the south.” He said.

I saw twenty-two men and women, moving at forced march, behind a banner of black emblazoned with a red hand-print.

“We are sworn neutral in this fight between you humans. But you are no human, so I advise you to descend along the far slope, and stay out of sight of these others.”

“I thank my brothers of the Black Fist for their hospitality.” I clasped my fist to my chest, and extended my open hand. We shook hands to seal the deal, and I snuck away.

A more noble soul would have worried about his fellows, or rushed ahead to warn them. My comfort was that Melchidore had hardened her squadron into soldiers, and they were also on forced march, and already clear of Uruk lands.

Plus, there was a stream visible on the backside of the hills, a camp on its bank. In the stream, young orcish children played.

I could use a bath, I decided.

#

I will not say that all Uruk women are niggardly and negotiate like hags, but Lagantha most certainly did. The price for my bath was an entire day’s labor, chopping the warped stalks of panaka shrubs (known as henbane to humans) into firewood.

Both the harvesting and infusion worked without much hassle, and I think I even did so without overly lowering the quality of the axe they loaned me for that purpose.

She had balked, and rightly, at the amount of food I needed to consume, but they let me borrow some flat stones to cook upon, and the river was home to all manner of paltry fish.

In the morning, I set off east, toward the graveyard of Hattan. I would need to replenish my stores of coin, and harvesting graveyard herbs was safe enough during the day.

The spirits of the graveyard were already restless, making it was easy to top off my Death aspected mana as well.

Half a day’s work, and I camped well north and east of where we had divided goods on my first visit to the graveyard. I kept off the path that the Crimson Hand was likely to use. This meant I was pioneering, or pathfinding, or whatever you want to call it when you’re going where your System map hasn’t seen the area before.

That night was rainy, and when it passed, I removed my soggy bandages to lower my risk of disease for being exposed to the elements.

One would think when developing a new statistic level through the System that it would enhance your sub-statistics first, the same as you would raise a statistic naturally. Sadly, that wasn’t how my System did things, and I got to spend the next two days in a delirium. I ate enough to remain alive, if barely, and stayed generally on course for Narrow Valley.

Either I was very delusional, or I wandered with a pack of plains-cats for part of the way, arguing whether fur or scales was the better skin covering.

The guards at the city gates were being problematic; it was the next day before I found one who recognized me, and granted me entrance to the city.

I sold the herbs before going to the guildhall, and filled my stomach with food. I only had eight tin when I reached the guild doors.

“You look like hell.” Labrys said.

“I’m going straight to Sandru.”

“Not sure I would have hurried back to the guild after being left to die in the field.”

“Guardsmen are hired for their skill and resolve, not their intellect.”

“Ah, now there’s a truth.” He opened the door. “Inside with you, then.”

There were stares and mutterings about my still-open wounds, between the knitting patches of skin, but nobody stopped me with questions.

Sandru wasn’t in the infirmary; in fact, only three of the eight beds were taken. I just picked a vacant bed and plopped myself down on it.

OUT, OUT insisted Black Snake. She was growing; I needed to find her a bigger home.

And then I was asleep, just as if someone had hit me in the head with a club.

#

I wakened exactly when the moistened cloth first touched my exposed flesh.

“Sorry.” Said Enterope, “Your wounds are inflamed, and need cleaning.”

“I thought – Stevedore?” I asked.

She giggled, “A lot is in motion, Rhishi. We all serve where we are needed.”

“Sandru?”

“He’s out and about with the town heroes. Seems there are an awful lot of spiders in the west.”

.....

Of course, there were. Now there were spiders, probably laden down with gold from raiding caravans. I didn’t envy Sandru his work – making tailored antivenoms requires a lot of the venom to be countered.

“Chalcopiye?”

“I don’t know who that is. Did you mean Melchidore?”

“Yes, what did I say?”

“You’re just feverish. She got back, was broken up about leaving you. She’ll be glad to hear you made it back, even in this shape.”

“Doesn’t feel that bad. Survived worse.”

“Somehow, I doubt that. Sandru says you eat a bale and a half of hay each day?”

My stomach growled its desire. “Please.”

“Cleaning and bandaging of wounds first, gluttonous stomach after.”

She went on with news. Melchidore had reported the location and the size of the Crimson Hand town. Reynald had petitioned the city council for military support, and they had instead sent a diplomatic team. Reynald had sent a messenger to the distant town of Whitehill, but it would be a month before any response arrived.

Spiders, rumored to have been pushed out of the Greywood, were infesting lands to the west and northwest. I had never realized how scary that must be for the small villages, given that spiders could just walk over their walls.

Auguries from the temple of Ares indicated upcoming war; the city was raising and training troops, particularly archers. Contracts to repair the city fortifications and siege engines were under way. The city had need of every bearer and drover and cart the Guild had to offer. Nythia had stepped up, and mustered the Rejects into a pair of carts. Part of a convoy bringing stone and an enchanter from Whitehill.

Centaurs from the Skyhoof clan had become offended, and were denying passage through their plains to the villages out that way. The city had yet to send someone to calm them back down.

People convicted in courts were increasingly choosing service to the city rather than to the Guild. We’d been active in recent months, and our casualty rates reflected that. There were rumors that Reynald had sent false trade convoys to the north and east, in hopes of drawing out bandit gangs in that area.

There were also rumors that the Guild was running short on coin, and that the convoys were genuine.

Only a few staff were currently being housed in the guildhall itself; most of the members had only a day to recover, if that long, before being needed. There were no urgent needs fees being collected – yet – but such things had been discussed where Cosimo could hear them.

The fever broke on the same day I gained Might level 3. What had once seemed impossible was now mine! As a bonus, the new, darker level 2 skin had also knitted over my head and shoulders, and the transformation was making its way downward.

Alas, the next assignment was also waiting.

#