Simon woke the ferryman and paid the drunk a full silver to take him across the river before sunrise. Judging from the way the maed, immediately switg from fused ao helpful friendliness as he judged the , Simon was sure that’s he’d over paid, but he didn’t care. He just wao outrun whatever the sequences of sparing that woman’s life were going to be.

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

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

  “Whie’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 t, So I’d say it’s about the same.”

  “I guess I’ll just flip a 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 w or the dies?”

  Simon just looked at him bnkly at that, making the man ugh so loudly that he’d probabll.ly woken up people in town. “I know, I know, none of my business. I’ll just shut up now before I say somethih 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-mirip, but he did learn a few things worth knowing without ing off as too much of an outsider. They were apparently in some pce 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 sting 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 excmation mark over his head telling him where to go whinoyed Simon for reasons he didn’t fully uand.

  On the other bank, Simon thahe man curtly a while he was still talking about whatever sprang to his mind and ughing 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 alohough he did pass by a few merts that eyed him suspiciously like he was some kind of highwayman.

  That night his instincts were proven correct as he listeo some men chattiween drinks at the iopped for the night at. It seemed that lots of meraries were traveling north and expeg work to be ing sooner rather than ter. “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 aold the man sitting across the trestle table from him between mouthfuls of roast chi.

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

  Everyo the table ughed at that, and Simon joihem even if he didn’t think it was funny. He just wao stay out of it. He’d done more dying than everyone else in the room bined, and he was certain that wasn’t a good enough reason to take sides in a brewing civil war.

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

  “Me?” Simon asked. “I’m going to sit this o 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 on room acked with meraries 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 p 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 t 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 northerrao the pce, but there were no city walls attached to it. Instead, it was a few acres of nd sheltered between two rivers, and a squat ugly castle on a hill l over the whole p 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 pce struck him as having more in on with a squatters 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. Uhe charming little vilges he’d seen along the way, this definitely wasn’t a pce that Simon po stay long.

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

  He purchased a fiher 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 sed water skin to use for beer, a 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 fmethrower.

  That night he agonized over whether he should stay another few days, so he could have someo out his leathers a little, so they would finally fit right, but the food wasn’t so great, and that night someoried to break into his room. The shief 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 uhing his sword was enough to send the man running for his life dowairs.

  . . .

  The pce Simon slowly worked his way south through several vilges before he found the little town of Sny, just big enough for a few amenities, an inn, and a local Lord. Simon only found out that st detail ohird day when he was io the Lord’s manor for dihe following evening, which he accepted, but only because he feared the alternative.

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

  Simon was on his best behavior and stuck to the character he’d spent st night iing for himself. He retending to be a traveling merary and schor, and figured that between his ability to read and write and his encyclopediowledge of monsters would make it an easy role to pull off.

  And it did, for a while. Simon mao create a little restrained ughter wheold them about his only enter with a wyvern. He even got the hint reasonably quickly that he shouldn’t talk about things like the carrion crawler with a dy present, but he was taken pletely off guard, when lord Corwin asked, “It’s iing that you say you’re from Schwarzenbruck, because I have an aunt from here, and her at is pletely different from yours.”

  For a moment Simon thought they were going to see through his flimsy disguise and summon the guards t him to the dungeons even though he was fairly sure there was nothih this manor more threatening than a wine celr. Then as he could feel the beads of sweat starting to form on his forehead he mao choke out, “Well - I’ve been traveling most of my life.”

  Just like that, a gentle murmur of ughter 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 on o Simon, so it was entirely possible that it was the same Schwarzenbruck, though he didn’t see how, si was on a pletely different floor of the dungeon. Did things loop back around like that?

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

  After that the versation turo the King's health, and the baron hoped he lived another hundred years, and then problems with the region and in particur the silver mihat was the Baron’s main source of ine.

  “We talk about that ter though,” he cautioned his son who had brought it up. “That’s not fit dinner versation 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 yers of thin pastry alternatiween yers of jam, but he ate it just the same, and would have sed if they’d been offered.

  It was only once all that was dohat he, the lord, and his eldest soreated to the study for snuff and brandy. Simon deed the snuff, but took a tumbler full of the golden liquid. He drank it while the Lord finally took the time to expin what the real problem was, and why he’d invited Simon in the first pbsp;

  “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 wo 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 merary in the area I ask to hahis 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 pyed it cool. “I mean, yeah, I could probably hahat for you, but what’s in it for me?” Simon asked. He wasn’t afraid of fag down a few goblins, but that was what a merary 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 lions share of the credit, though.”

  “I don’t care who gets the credit,” Simon answered, “And I don’t really he moher, but I do need a pce to stay for a whole and 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 make arras for something like that,” the Baron said, shaking his hand. “In times like these I’m happy to keep ara man or two whose good with a sword around.”