Death After Death

Simon woke the ferryman and paid the drunk a full silver to take him across the river before sunrise. Judging from the way the man reacted, immediately switching from confused anger to helpful friendliness as he judged the coin, Simon was sure that he’d over paid, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to outrun whatever the consequences of sparing that woman’s life were going to be.

Soon enough they were on the water and being poled across at a speed that was barely fast enough to fight the current while the ferryman yammered on and on.

“In a hurry eh? Where are you off to then?” he asked, slurring only slightly. “Liepzen or Hurag?”

“Which one’s closer?” Simon asked.

“Well Liepzen is the bigger city, so it has better roads, if you head straight east,” the ferryman opined, “but if you bear south along the river you’ll eventually get to Hurag, So I’d say it’s about the same.”

“I guess I’ll just flip a coin then,” Simon answered. “One is just as good as the other.”

“Ah,” the ferryman gave him a knowing nod. “So this is the kind of hurry where you’re eager to be away from somewhere, not to somewhere. I see. Which is it? The law or the ladies?”

Simon just looked at him blankly at that, making the man laugh so loudly that he’d probably woken up people in town. “I know, I know, none of my business. I’ll just shut up now before I say something we both regret.”

He didn’t of course. Whether because of the beer he reeked of or because of his nature the man prattled on and on the whole ten-minute trip, but he did learn a few things worth knowing without coming off as too much of an outsider. They were apparently in some place called the Kingdom of Brin, and that things had been going well for as long as anyone could remember, but that the king was sick, and the ferryman worried that things might not be lasting much longer.

He tuned most of the rest of the details out as he realized he was obviously getting closer to some quest. The man might as well have a golden exclamation mark over his head telling him where to go which annoyed Simon for reasons he didn’t fully understand.

Once on the other bank, Simon thanked the man curtly and left while he was still talking about whatever sprang to his mind and laughing at his own jokes.

At the first fork in the road Simon decided to go south. A sick king in a big city just seemed a little much for him, and he wasn’t looking for the spotlight just yet. He spent much of the day walking alone, though he did pass by a few merchants that eyed him suspiciously like he was some kind of highwayman.

That night his instincts were proven correct as he listened to some men chatting between drinks at the inn he stopped for the night at. It seemed that lots of mercenaries were traveling north and expecting work to be coming sooner rather than later. “The way I hear it, the King’s son is paying more, but only because the King's brother has far more men,” a swarthy man with an axe told the man sitting across the trestle table from him between mouthfuls of roast chicken.

“So what you’re saying is I can be a well paid dead man, or I can get just enough coins to keep me from starving to death? Sounds like business as usual to me,” a red haired man in chain mail answered.

Everyone at the table laughed at that, and Simon joined them even if he didn’t think it was funny. He just wanted to stay out of it. He’d done more dying than everyone else in the room combined, and he was certain that coin wasn’t a good enough reason to take sides in a brewing civil war.

“What about you,” the burly man next to Simon asked while he was trying hard to mind his own business.

“Me?” Simon asked. “I’m going to sit this one out I think. I’m going to… visit family in Hurag.”

“Well, I think they’ll be safe there,” the man nodded, “But it’s good that you’ll be there for them just in case.”

It struck Simon as more than a little odd that the common room was packed with mercenaries that had already decided who they were going to serve, but they had no problem eating with men they might be killing in a week or a month. The inn was all out of rooms, but after he’d finished eating and shared a couple drinks with the crowd he found himself a place in the hay loft above the stables and called it a night before things got too rowdy.

It took Simon two more nights to get to the outskirts of Hurag. It might count as a city in this world, but Simon would have been surprised if it had more than 5,000 people in it. The city gates were merely a gate at the end of the bridge that formed the northern entrance to the place, but there were no city walls attached to it. Instead, it was a few acres of land sheltered between two rivers, and a squat ugly castle on a hill lording over the whole place on a low rise.

The southern part of the city that wasn’t sheltered by the rivers seemed to have a city wall of some sort, but mostly the place struck him as having more in common with a squatter's camp or a shanty town than the sort of fantasy city he was used to seeing in his games and movies. The homes were pressed close together to use every scrap of space, and the streets reeked of sewage. Unlike the charming little villages he’d seen along the way, this definitely wasn’t a place that Simon planned to stay long.

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Still - it was the first time he’d seen more than fifty people at once since he’d come to the Pit, so he told himself he would stay the night at least, just for the novelty of it. After a little searching, Simon found a place that was willing to let him stay the night near the river, where the smell wasn’t quite so bad, and then he spent the rest of the day looking around. Eventually, he found the market, and after haggling with a merchant decided to make his first purchases of this miserable life, so he could finally be outfitted as a proper adventurer.

He purchased a fine leather backpack because he was tired of carrying a sack everywhere he went. Then, once he has somewhere to put his things, he also bought a bedroll, a second water skin to use for beer, a coin purse, two shirts that mostly fit, and a tinderbox and flint which he couldn’t wait to learn how to use so that he could stop lighting campfires with a flamethrower.

That night he agonized over whether he should stay another few days, so he could have someone let out his leathers a little, so they would finally fit right, but the food wasn’t so great, and that night someone tried to break into his room. The sneak thief had either been trying to get to know him better or rob him blind, but his paranoia about what had happened a few days ago was still fresh, and the sound of him unsheathing his sword was enough to send the man running for his life down the stairs.

. . .

Simon slowly worked his way south through several villages before he found the little town of Slany, just big enough for a few amenities, an inn, and a local Lord. Simon only found out that last detail on the third day when he was invited to the Lord’s manor for dinner the following evening, which he accepted, but only because he feared the alternative.

The next evening he was announced as Simon of Schwarzenbruck because he could think of no other city name that sounded even vaguely appropriate, before he was introduced to Baron Corwin, his wife Elanna, and his three sons: Gregor the third, Harver, and Scott.

Simon was on his best behavior and stuck to the character he’d spent last night inventing for himself. He was pretending to be a traveling mercenary and scholar, and figured that between his ability to read and write and his encyclopedic knowledge of monsters would make it an easy role to pull off.

And it did, for a while. Simon managed to create a little restrained laughter when he told them about his only encounter with a wyvern. He even got the hint reasonably quickly that he shouldn’t talk about things like the carrion crawler with a lady present, but he was taken completely off guard, when lord Corwin asked, “It’s interesting that you say you’re from Schwarzenbruck, because I have an aunt from near there, and her accent is completely different from yours.”

For a moment Simon thought they were going to see through his flimsy disguise and summon the guards to drag him to the dungeons even though he was fairly sure there was nothing beneath this manor more threatening than a wine cellar. Then as he could feel the beads of sweat starting to form on his forehead he managed to choke out, “Well - I’ve been traveling most of my life.”

Just like that, a gentle murmur of laughter passed through the room, and the Lord’s eldest said, “Quite so,” and all the tension vanished just in time for the soup course, giving him ample time to think about what he’d just learned. Where he was - the people knew of Schwarzenbruck. Somehow that didn’t feel like a very common name to Simon, so it was entirely possible that it was the same Schwarzenbruck, though he didn’t see how, since it was on a completely different floor of the dungeon. Did things loop back around like that?

After the squash soup came a white wine and an herb braised lamb. Though it wasn’t something Simon ever saw himself trying, he was surprised at how good both of them were, though he chalked that up to living on a steady diet of bread and cheese for the last eternity.

After that the conversation turned to the King's health, and the baron hoped he lived another hundred years, and then problems with the region and in particular the silver mines that was the Baron’s main source of income.

“We can talk about that later though,” he cautioned his son who had brought it up. “That’s not fit dinner conversation and must wait until after dessert.”

The aforementioned dessert turned out to be a cake that was too dry, and not nearly sweet enough for Simon’s tastes, with layers of thin pastry alternating between layers of jam, but he ate it just the same, and would have seconds if they’d been offered.

It was only once all that was done that he, the lord, and his eldest son retreated to the study for snuff and brandy. Simon declined the snuff, but took a tumbler full of the golden liquid. He drank it while the Lord finally took the time to explain what the real problem was, and why he’d invited Simon in the first place.

“It’s goblins,” Baron Corwin said, “I’m fairly certain, even if no one has yet produced a corpse of the missing or the things making my workers go missing. This wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been found in the silver mine, but with the… shall we say, troubles, in the capital, it would seem that you are the only mercenary in the area I can ask to handle this little problem for me. Time is money after all, and I’ve had the Pit shut down for a week now.”

The choice of words almost made Simon spit out his drink, but he played it cool. “I mean, yeah, I could probably handle that for you, but what’s in it for me?” Simon asked. He wasn’t afraid of facing down a few goblins, but that was what a mercenary was supposed to ask, wasn’t it?

“I’m prepared to offer you half a shilling per ear which is the going rate I believe, I’d be willing to offer a little bonus on top of that though, If you could take young Gregor here, keep him safe, and make sure he gets the lion's share of the credit, though.”

“I don’t care who gets the credit,” Simon answered, “And I don’t really need the money either, but I do need a place to stay for a while to work through some things. I don’t suppose you have a spare cottage around you could loan me for a few weeks or months.”

“I’m sure we can make arrangements for something like that,” the Baron said, shaking his hand. “In times like these I’m happy to keep an extra man or two who's good with a sword around.”