ã€ŠAccidental Merlinã€‹


 chapter 1, Things begin at birth

    Hello, let me introduce myself. My name is Emris, Emris Smith, and this is my story.

    I suppose it all started when I was born, I was born near Calcutta India, in town called Krishnanagar, in the middle of a monsoon season, that according to my mom has not been surpassed. I was born to an Indian mother and an English father.

    I had what I thought at the time was a normal childhood, my mother a proud strong Indian woman was the main breadwinner of the family, supporting my dad¡¯s craziness by being a science teacher and also tutoring private students to make sure everything was paid for. My father, an undoubtedly clever man with 2 PhDs, was always restless, looking for the next thing. We moved around a lot during our childhood, him finding one job only to find another ¡°better¡± one in six months or a year, we moved 5 cities by the time I was 4.

    I think finally my mom had enough of never settling down, if only to give me a stable childhood, we settled down in a city on the opposite side of India, in Gujarat. We bought an apartment and settled down, he never really settled completely going from a pharmaceutical engineer to¡­ something I didn¡¯t pay attention(I was 6 years old) and then to a professor of a masters level chemistry at a very respected university. Like I said; a clever man.

    But like I also said he was a restless man, I think he just got bored and sometime around the time I turned 10 he decided to wander yet again. This time he went big, he decided to move back to England, and so of we went.

    I now realise I haven¡¯t actually described myself. I was a perfectly boring introvert, slightly dusky toned, average looking, and 5¡¯11¡± by the time I turned 19. Slightly overweight, not really athletic. With weird and eclectic interest: I liked rock music, I was into anime, really into blacksmithing spending a lot of my time scouring YouTube learning about how to forge metals into weapons. I even spent hundreds of pounds on courses to learn the basics of blacksmithing.

    I grew up pretty normal, playing cricket in with the local kids in India, then playing football when we immigrated to England. I am not ashamed to admit it, I was terrible. I mean not the worst player in any group but towards the bottom third. I actually wasn¡¯t that bad at cricket indoors, be it in the cricket nets or even on concrete when we played in the car parks, but put me on grass an all of my velocity and control went away. I personally blame it on the bad footwear, i didn¡¯t own a pair of Nike''s till I was 18. My mom would rather spend the money on paying down the mortgage faster; I wish I had her wisdom.

    I think I was 17 the first time I noticed my ability, I mean I might have noticed earlier that I HAD FUCKING SUPERPOWERS if it was something obvious like super strength, speed the ability to fly; but no, sadly my ability was much too subtle for a teenager to notice. I had the MASSIVE, TERRIFYING, AMAZING POWER OF making small objects disappear.

    Seriously, I made small objects disappear.

    I mean I was (and still am) extremely messy, so how could I have been expected figure out that I had ¡°disappeared¡± the right half of my favourite pair of socks, or a pair of cheap poundland headphones or even my old mp3 player (no my mother would not buy me an iPod, this was I think some no name 32gb mp3 player that was powered by AA batteries, that I saved up the money for and bought from Argos) . Things like that go missing all the time and a messy teenager like me can¡¯t really be blamed for not figuring it out, can I? Plus who reading this hasn¡¯t misplaced something small like their keys or phone or their glasses. See this is the reason it took me so long to find that I had an ¡°ability¡±, my power was devious. Sometimes, my powers would make the missing things reappear nearby, so to me it just seemed like I had misplaced my keys or phone and I found them again after an half hour of desperate searching.

    I realised I had an ¡°ability¡± when I lost my wallet on a student university trip to Nottingham university, it was a weekend long stay/course to give students an experience of what life in university would be like, to give us an experience living in dorms away from our parents, without supervision. There were lectures, tours and meetings with professors and some of the older students. There were also parties, drinking (a lot of us were already 18) and whatever follows partying and drinking. Which is a polite way to say; that my wallet wasn¡¯t the only thing I lost that weekend. I wouldn¡¯t have even cared that much that I lost my wallet (there was maybe ¡ê5 inside) if it were not for the fact that my dad had loaned me his NatWest debit card in case of an emergency. He didn¡¯t actually give me his pin number which made the card useless, but it¡¯s the thought that counts. But there I was on an away trip and I had ¡°lost¡± my dads debit card. After what must have been 6 hours of searching by me and about 5 of my schoolmates that were also on the trip with me, we called it as a lost cause. I did the dreaded phone call to my parents, there was screaming shouting and promises made of a royal ass whooping, and then my dad was put on the phone. He chewed me out for what felt at the time for at least a half hour and threatened horrible things if any of his money went missing. The card was cancelled and obviously none of the money was spent. I returned home the next day, took my whooping like a wuss and continued on. Also a key point, my mom went through my bags herself to search for the missing wallet and I caught another whooping because some of clothes smelt of alcohol. So two weeks later when I magically found my wallet in my back pocket I was surprised, and I caught another whooping for making my parents cancel the card.

    So if you are keeping count, my power has so far made me lose a bunch of stuff, made me late to school a bunch of times because I couldn¡¯t find my keys and made me catch at least 3 whoopings. What a great ability.

    But that event did make me confused and cautious, I started noticing more and more of my little items disappearing and reappearing. I actually thought I might be being haunted or losing my mind or something. It took me about a month to realise I was the one causing the items to disappear, and a further 4 months to gain some semblance of control. I told no one and didn¡¯t even attempt to look up my powers on a computer; I had seen enough movies to be more than a little paranoid. The range of my powers seemed weird: I could only store objects smaller about 1cubic foot in size but the internal space on the other side seemed infinite, and the concept of time didn¡¯t seem to apply. I found that out when I secretly stored some of my dad¡¯s awful failed chicken curry experiment so that I didn¡¯t have to eat it. Then, when I threw out the curry on my way to school the next morning, to my surprise it was still steaming hot.

    I think my paranoia may have saved me. No not from some secret government organisation, I don¡¯t know if they exist, they¡¯re a SECRET. No it saved me from myself, I realised really fast that my power would have many criminal applications. Could you imagine how easy it would have been for me to become an international super mega amazing jewel thief, I wouldn¡¯t even need to be in the same room as the object to steal it, as long as it was within 10ft of me I could make the object disappear. Two things stopped me from the criminal path:

    No1. My paranoia told me that being a thief in the UK, the CCTV camera capitol of the world wasn¡¯t a particularly smart idea, at some point someone was going to notice ¡°the fatman¡± (my imagined Interpol codename) in multiple the CCTV footages of the various jewel heists. And ask some pointed questions.

    No2. And this is how you know I actually thought about it. I was a lower middle class, grammar school boy, from the suburbs. I didn¡¯t know anyone who could actually fence the jewels; I didn¡¯t actually know any criminals, not even the local weed dealers. So I didn¡¯t know what I was going to do after I got the jewels, I didn¡¯t think cash4gold was going to accept stolen jewellery without reporting me.

    This didn¡¯t mean I never stole anything, quite the opposite actually. I didn¡¯t actually have full conscious control of my powers, even after I realised my powers, it still continued to disappear all manner of things from around me and occasionally reappear them in and around my room. Over the six months since I realised my powers I found many things in my room that weren¡¯t mine. A lot of pens (I never had to buy a single pen since I came to England, in hindsight that should have been a clue), used cutlery (ewww), keys, an old French 2 franc coin(WTF? They weren¡¯t valid since before I moved to England), two bike pumps (I didn¡¯t own a bike), a football, a wallet (which I turned in to the school lost and found) and the thing that had me the most confused in terms of the actual how and also the thing that got me into the most trouble, a size 28 B bra(dark purple and lacy, you perverts).Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    Actually it wasn¡¯t found by me, which is why it was trouble. It was found by my mom on the tri annual ¡°your room is too messy and I am going to clean and reorganise it according to my own system¡±. This happened to me thrice a year, usually during my mom¡¯s school term breaks: I would go out to meet my friends and go play football or go to the movies, and return to my room completely different than that morning, including my bed and book shelves in a different location of the room and all my books arranged uselessly according to size rather than my by subject matter and frequency of use.

    Anyway, that particular time, my mom moved my bed and found the bra under the bed. And she went ballistic, you have to understand my mom is a very traditional Indian woman, she believes that sex is for after marriage (I still haven¡¯t had the bird and the bees talk, in fact that particular biology class in year 7 came as quite the shock), she believed that girlfriends were to be introduced to you by your mom 6 months before the engagement and the marriage ceremony conducted a year later. So when she found that lacy purple thing she naturally assumed the worst and I was going to be lucky if I was able to walk after that beating. I had to barricade myself in the bathroom and explain to my mom that I went to a grammar school, and up until this past year was an all-boys school and only had 20 girls in my year group compared to a 120 boys, and a slightly overweight, geeky, introverted broke Indian guy had no chance of ever getting a girlfriend. Also my school was an hour away in a much more affluent area, and that I would never bring a girl to this part of town (this actually didn¡¯t help much). I think the bit that finally got her to calm down and realise my innocence was my dad (who didn¡¯t actually care if I had a girlfriend) pointing out that I got home AFTER my mom gets home from her school and there was no way I managed to sneak a girl into the house without her noticing. So I didn¡¯t catch a beating for the bra, which got blamed on the neighbour¡¯s cat which sometimes liked to sleep in my room. I did however catch a beating for barricading myself in the only bathroom in our house. Sometimes you can¡¯t escape that beating.

    I did learn my lesson though and I was much more careful in controlling my power. Around the same time the whole world went through a zombie fad, and things like ¡°prepping¡± gained some mainstream attention. Prepping as far as I understood it was rednecks either preparing for the ¡°inevitable¡± zombie apocalypse, or hiding from the ¡°man¡± so that Obama couldn¡¯t get your guns. And although I didn¡¯t like the whys, I was interested in the hows. I watched an lot of videos on guns, knives bush craft, multitools reviews emergency wood craft and all of the various aspects of ¡°prepping¡±. All of these tools did require money, which I had very little of. And this is where I got very incredibly lucky.

    My parents were very strict with the internet parental protections in our house and I realised fairly quickly that one of the easiest ways to bypass the parental locks was the tor network. This worked, and it also introduced me to some of the aspects of the deep web. So I was fairly early to hear about bit coins. Around the time I started thinking about needing money bit coins were being sold on the Mt.Gox exchange for around 9.52$ a coin and bit coin mining was still an option without a dedicated farming server. I bought 20 coins with all of the savings I had, and started actively farming coins. I got stupidly lucky and managed to find a lode of 50 coins within the first two months of farming, by the time I graduated high school I had 73.453 coins.

    This was also around the time when the new stupid government tripled the college tuition. So I decided to go into the workforce for a year and save up money for university. I managed to get a job at a hospital which actually let me earn a degree on a part time basis whilst working. So, I entered the workforce. This event changed my life forever. I moved out of our house, moved to a new city into the hospital dorms, working my 37.5 hrs a week at ¡ê6.75 an hour. I was a cog in the big NHS machine and I was fairly good at it. I worked a full time job whilst doing part time university degree, I made new friends, I learnt how to drink, what to drink, what I enjoyed (peated scotch) what I didn¡¯t like (Irish whiskey). I joined a gym and started working out a bit. Lost some weight, I even managed to find time for a few casual relationships, all in all a pretty normal life as a working student in middle England.

    I also continued in my prepping hobby and my blacksmithing which was fast becoming a passion, I forged myself a beautiful kukri knife at a blacksmithing course, it took me a whole week of vacation time. I spent the week forging the thing out of 1095 steel, spending 2 days just forging and spending almost as long (not included in the forging time) grinding the excess steel and hardening and tempering the blade, then I was guided through the process of making and attaching a handle and finally the blade was blunted so that it could be classified as a prop and given to me. I also saved up money to buy a Leatherman surge, I bought an emergency medical kit, and I also bought a lot of non-perishable items like salt sugar and an unholy amount of spices. All of these I items including the now sharpened kukri were stored by me in the void space (which is what I started calling my power). Over the years I had started to use my ability to store things so that I would not have to carry them. I had also been misappropriating some hospital stocks so that I wouldn¡¯t have to buy them, nothing serious or expensive, a box of burn cream, a couple of boxes of antibiotics, some gauze, minor things to add to my emergency medical kit.

    So continued my life for 2 years, by this time the price of bit coins was close to 200$ a coin, and the FBI was starting making a lot of noise, I decided that I was going to make some purchases and cash out. I decided to do something highly illegal but in hindsight it was the smartest decision I may have ever made. I decided I wanted to buy guns. Actually I decided to buy 4 guns, because I was worth it. This required patience. First I got myself a couple of fake IDs delivered to a dead drop site, which was a bin in an open park. Then using those IDs I opened a couple of PO boxes at a parcel storage site, I used one of the IDs to buy the guns one at a time interspersed with other Knick knacks and the other ID to buy the ammo(about 2000 rounds). I was constrained to hand guns by my individual package space but I also had $15000, so I spent my money on 2 glock 17s and 2 extremely illegal glock 18s with the extended mags I even managed to get myself some spare parts a pair of threaded barrels and a suppressor. After all that spending I was still left with about 8000$ which I promptly converted to pounds through Mt.Gox and used the ¡ê5700 to buy a nice laptop and ¡ê5000 in gold. Not that I didn¡¯t trust the banks, it just made more sense to me that gold would appreciate in value faster than an ISA and I already had a secure storage vault inside my void space (I had fixed the issue of items randomly dissapearing and reappearing).

    I somehow managed to do all this without being arrested or questioned by the police, Scotland Yard or MI5. And my life continued on without incident for another six months. And then it all went wrong. And my 2 years of money wasting, prepping hobby all came good. It actually started of normally, I was sent to Leicester to attend a 3 day course on new hospital protocols. This was being held at the holiday inn near DeMontford University. I got there from the train station by navigating using subway sandwich shops, I kid you not (out of the train station, turn right and use the crossing, go straight to the subway shop, turn left walk straight to the end of street passing 2 subway shops, turn left walk to the next subway shop walk further down the street till the main road and somehow make your way to the middle of the roundabout). The hotel was in the middle of the roundabout with only one crossing which was very hard to see. I arrived there after 3 hrs of travels at the appointed time of 9am to find out that the conference actually didn¡¯t start till 11am. Luckily I had managed to convince the lovely lady who handled appropriations to book me a room at the holiday inn itself and not the godforsaken Travelodge across the road; I didn¡¯t know if I could have managed crossing the roundabout every morning. I checked into room 308 overlooking the roman ruins across the street.

    The conference went as these conferences do; a thinly veiled advertisement campaign by some former hospital management who now works for the pharma company as a sales manager, extoling the virtues of a system you have already bought and not actually explaining what is different and how to operate the new system. There were stale croissants, weird tasting coffee and dry sandwiches: a typical cheap corporate buffet lunch. So by the end of the day we were getting fed up and needed to blow off some steam. I had some high school friends who were doing their degrees at the University of Leicester, we decided to meet up and go to a couple of pubs to share in some good times. It was a good night and we parted ways around 11pm I made my way back to the hotel, again navigating by subways. I was tired, slightly tipsy and passing by the roman ruins. In almost a dazed state I walked straight to a stone that was glowing, something about that otherworldly glow was beckoning me I don¡¯t know what made me use my powers but as soon as I used my power, the world went a blinding white and then black. I was knocked out.

 Chapter 2: For the walk is all there is

    So that¡¯s how it all started, a drunken walk back to a conference hotel, a weird glowing stone and my powers acting on its own again.

    I woke up in what can only be described as a blank space. I was surrounded by a sea of white: The ground was white. The sky was white. The horizon, white. White, white, white, white, white.

    I chose a random direction and started walking, I don¡¯t know how long I walked for, but I walked until I couldn¡¯t walk anymore and then when I got tired I stopped, and took a rest. This became my routine, walk, stop, and rest, repeat.

    At some point I started marking the number of days on my hand using a pen I found in my right trouser pocket. I stopped doing that when the ink ran out.

    I kept walking, my clothes started to fade in colour. I kept on walking, my shoes were worn through, I kept on walking. I never stopped walking. I had a lot of time to think while I was walking. I thought about anything and everything: why I liked listening to jazz on TV but never listened to it on my stereo. Why Jenny Carpenter went out with Dean Smith when Dean was the most gormless stupid looking buffoon to ever set foot on earth. If we live in an infinite universe, then the laws of infinity state that another earth also existed in which everything that I did were also done by an exact replica of me, and if the universe started to repeat itself was it an infinity or just a massive Mobius loop back to the original. But mostly I thought about my regrets, of what I could have done to change my life to make me and those around me happier.

    By this point I was convinced I was dead and this was my personal hell, walking forever, pondering the useless mysteries of the universe, and what could have beens. At some point I stopped needing to rest, I just never noticed. I just kept walking. I forgot how to think and I kept on walking. I forgot who I was and I kept on walking and kept walking until, suddenly, after I don¡¯t know how long I collapsed and slept. I felt my soul evolve, like I had finally realised some fundamental law of the universe, I felt the pain of bone deep tiredness, the pain of all those years of walking. But I also felt soul deep nourishment, better tasting than the best food I had ever tasted, more pleasurable than the best sex, it was rapturous.

    I woke up to that blinding pure white light, knowing my torment had not yet ended. Suddenly I heard ... no more like felt ... something or someone near me, I sat up as fast I could, this caused my blood pressure to drop and I felt dizzy and had to lie back down again

    ¡°Careful there lad¡± I heard, the voice was that of a man, not young, low slightly gravely. There was a joyous undercurrent in his voice, but also something more ... profound sadness and loneliness.

    I tried to speak up, but I couldn¡¯t remember how, it had been so long since I had to speak, I tried to remember words, they were there just out of reach. It was like I was a little boy again, in my grandma¡¯s back yard trying to pick mangoes, but they were just out of reach and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn¡¯t jump high enough to reach.

    The man helped me up and I got my first look at him, he looked to be in his late 60s, wrinkled, rugged, he liked to smile, he would have been very handsome in his younger days, he still was. I don¡¯t know why but he reminded me of my mom¡¯s cousin, Vikram, I called him Uncle Vicky, who was a colonel in the Indian army. There was something about this old man¡¯s posture that screamed soldier, and not just a soldier, but an officer. The most striking thing about him however were his eyes, steel blue with silver specks, they were mesmerising. There was an unimaginable feeling of patience, love, kindness but also unimaginable sadness and loneliness. It was as if he had lived a countless lives, loved and felt the loss of everyone he ever knew dying before him. This man in front of me was an immortal.

    I don¡¯t know how I knew. He had spoken exactly three words to me and I had only seen him for the first time a few seconds ago, but I would have bet my life on it, this man was an immortal.

    ¡°Here, drink this.¡± He said giving me a glass of water. It was like a glass shattered in front of me and I realised all those years I walked, I hadn¡¯t eaten or drunken anything. I took a tentative sip of water, then some more and then some more, it was the best tasting water I have ever tasted, so clean, fresh, pure. I kept drinking till I was full and returned that glass back, realising it was still half full.

    ¡°Hhh ... hello¡± I said, suddenly remembering how to speak again, like I had never forgotten

    ¡°Hello.¡± He smiled ¡°I have never seen anyone keep walking till they forgot how to breathe¡±

    ¡°Am I ... dead?¡± I asked, not sure if I actually wanted to know.

    ¡°Good, god no!¡± he laughed

    ¡°Then where am I? How long have I been walking?¡± I asked calmly, weirdly calm. I should have been freaking out but I wasn¡¯t. I was dead calm, walking for so long thinking I was dead.

    ¡°You are inside my legacy. Connected by the strings of time¡± he sighed ¡°and you walked for 1849 years¡±

    I stared back at him blankly, ¡°1849 years¡± I repeated back ... that number was inconceivable, ludicrous, stupid, insane. I already believed I was dead now; I was starting to think I was mad as well.

    ¡°My name is John. I was born before they started counting days, before mankind as a concept even existed, since before human society crawled out of what you now call the Indus valley.¡± ¡°I have lived a thousand lifetimes, loved, married the most beautiful woman to have ever existed. Fathered some of the most brilliant children to have walked this earth. I have been a grandfather, a great grandfather. I have seen humanity rise from the caves, and the plains, to great cities. I have seen humanity writing their stories on cave walls with animal blood and I have seen them grow to build greatest network of libraries, containing the greatest repositories of knowledge that man may ever know.¡± ¡°I have seen war, famine, pestilence ravage humanity. I have seen unimaginable cruelty, committed by men who are revered as saints and I have seen monsters show kindness. I have watched on as everyone I ever knew died, helpless against the unrelenting march of time.¡± ¡°The greatest curse that the gods ever cast ... was the gift of immortality. A joke so cruel, that the gods themselves stopped its practice.¡±

    It was that last sentence shocked me. this strange man I just met was telling me he was older than civilisation and I was willing to believe that, but that last line...If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°Yes, even the gods are no longer immortal¡± he smiled at me ¡°Not that it really matters anyway; they tended to kill each other off every few thousand years anyway.¡±

    I took a few moments to digest that news. The gods were real, and no longer immortal. The other things I already knew, I knew about john¡¯s curse of immortality since I first looked at his eyes. I knew deep in my soul. ¡°You said something about your legacy?¡± I asked

    ¡°After spending thousands of years trying to die, I found a way, I could freeze myself in time and find a successor, I can burn my soul and use the energy from the immolation to shatter my soul and end my suffering. And pass on my curse¡±

    I looked at him frowning ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound like dying.¡±

    ¡°No, shattering the soul won¡¯t just kill me it will erase me. I won¡¯t pass on, I will end. But at least my suffering will end. I can¡¯t remember her face anymore...¡± there were tears in his eyes

    ¡°A successor ... why me?¡± I asked calmly far more accepting of this situation than I had any right to be.

    ¡°Your power, it is called void control, which makes you a void mage. It is far more powerful than you think. In its infancy the power is fairly weak, a useful storage space but not much else. However, as you progress it will grow in power exponentially, even allowing you to have control over the other elements and even capable of influencing the fabric of reality in its final stages.¡±

    ¡°But that¡¯s not the reason you chose me.¡± I stated, not a question. I somehow knew this wasn¡¯t about my cute little ability; I had the feeling that any power taken to the extreme could affect the fabric of reality. Also my ability had a name, void control, and I was a void mage.

    ¡°Correct. The reason I chose you is that you kept walking, for all those years, even after you lost yourself, even after forgot everything to the point you even forgot how to breathe, you kept walking. The walk can be called a test of will power. After all these years you are the only one to have passed¡±

    I was strangely proud of that fact. I didn¡¯t even think I could remember what pride would feel like after all those years. It felt like tasting cake icing for the first time, I didn¡¯t like it, don¡¯t get me wrong I like sweet things, but I have always felt that icing on cakes were too sweet. I didn¡¯t like the feeling of pride ... that walk had fundamentally changed me.

    ¡°So, what happens now?¡± I asked john. ¡°Do you pass on that legacy and I go back to the conference?¡±

    ¡°No. It¡¯s a little more complicated than that, my dear boy. You walked for 1849 years do you really think you haven¡¯t travelled anywhere?¡±

    I stared back at him blankly, what can you even say to that?

    ¡°You didn¡¯t walk across the earth however, you walked across my power.¡±

    John had a power? Was this how he became an immortal? Or did all immortals have powers?

    ¡°Yes. The answer to the questions you are asking is yes.¡± He said with an amused look in his eyes ¡°I am immortal because of my power and all immortals have power. But that¡¯s not really saying much because apart from a few hidden old gods I am the only immortal.¡±

    ¡°Hidden old gods?...¡± I whispered still couldn¡¯t get my mind around gods actually existing.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about them; they are creatures of a bygone age. They are old and tired of fighting, they just roam the earth indulging in their hobbies ... gardening mostly¡± he dismissed the question with a wave of his hand.

    ¡°The reason for my immortality is my power, I have control over time. I can slow it down or speed it up according to my needs. I can even jump in time to wherever I wish: I have seen the dinosaurs roam this earth, the first creature to crawl out of the ocean, I have seen humans leave this earth and explore the universe, I have seen the sun explode and consume the earth, I have seen our star burn itself out, I have seen the last human die.¡±

    ¡°My power may seem unimaginably powerful, but the truth is it is limited. Time is one of the fundamental laws of the universe; I can¡¯t normally stop time or go back in time to a point where I already visited. I can¡¯t go back and see my wife or kids one last time.¡±

    ¡°To shatter my soul and finally end my life I had to do something that goes against the fundamental nature of time, I trapped my soul in that little pebble and stopped the time within until it was found by someone worthy. I made you, Emris, walk backwards through time, burning my soul and using that energy to allow you to march against the flow of time. I intend to pass on my legacy to you and then break the laws of time one last time to see my wife again for one last time¡±

    This was a lot to digest; I had walked back in time for 1849years this would make it around the middle of the 2nd century AD. I was about to gain the legacy of an immortal, was I now an immortal? How would I live, I didn¡¯t speak Latin(I knew that 2nd century Britain was part of the Roman Empire, from a TV show about wine of all places), and my English wouldn¡¯t be the same, how would I blend in?

    ¡°Am I an immortal now? How am I going to live in roman Britain, is part of your legacy teaching me Latin?¡± I asked not quite as calm anymore.

    ¡°You were going against the flow of time; you only walked back to the early 6th century. As to the language barrier, it¡¯s covered in the legacy. Your immortality is ... complicated. You are no longer part of the flow of time, your body won¡¯t age, and your soul won¡¯t die. But you aren¡¯t a true immortal body isn¡¯t as strong, your powers are barely active if you stay as you are now your time in this world you are about to enter won¡¯t be a pleasant experience. The world you are returning to is not the same as the world you left, you will be entering the true world. A world where magic is real, the gods exist and walk among mortals. You will be entering this world as an outsider, your immortality an anathema. They won¡¯t be able to kill you but they will try to harm your body, trap your soul.¡±

    ¡°The main part of my legacy is a way to improve your power, the method is actually derived from the eastern Taoists. Those misguided fools trying to go against the heavens in order to achieve immortality, if only they knew what lays there at the end of their journey. Controlling the essence of your power and guiding it around your meridians, assimilating your core slowly surpassing your human limits to ascend to godhood.¡± John explained slowly and clearly ¡°Normally I would have to start by showing you how to detect the essence of your power in the surrounding world, teach you how to find the best spots where the concentration of essence is strongest, etc. etc. That could have been a problem however, my power is time, it always exists and flows at the same rate everywhere so I never actually had to learn detection, it was just always there. Luckily for us, your power Emris is void control and contains its own essence inside the void. This offers you a huge advantage as you will be able to increase your power without disturbing the essence concentration in the nearby areas allowing you to hide from the other mages, also the stronger you get, the more you can access the void which essentially makes it a positive feedback loop. This should increase your rate of improvement by a lot.¡±

    ¡°I am also going to give you the knowledge you need to survive including my knowledge of weapons, as well as information on a number of individuals I deem interesting. I will also give you all of my worldly possessions; soon, I won¡¯t need them. Store the items in your void space, hopefully they will prove useful¡±

    I had never done anything like this before but I somehow knew it would work; I concentrated on my power and imagined a door opening. A 3ft by 3ft hole (actually a square) opened up. John put his hand into the void and gave me his possessions. I made the gate disappear. John raised his hand reaching out to touch my forehead about to transfer his knowledge to me. I don¡¯t know what made me pause at that moment, but for some reason a question popped into my head that I needed to ask. In the midst of all those revelations my question seemed out of place, but for some reason, at that moment this was the most important question in the world to me.

    ¡°Was it worth it? ... was she worth it? Were the few years with her worth the pain of missing her for thousands of years?¡±

    He looked at me genuinely surprised at my question and simply smiled and said ¡°Yes¡±.

    He raised his hands pressed them around my temples. I looked into those mesmerising steel blue eyes; he had tears of happiness and joy in his eyes. He didn¡¯t say thank you, it wasn¡¯t necessary. He closed his eyes, I felt a pressure on my brain, and my world went blank.

 (edited) Chapter 3

    I woke up face down on the ground. I could smell the damp earth underneath, the wet brown leaves slowly turning to mulch. It was cold, not frozen winter cold; but the early winter cold that happens after the first snow of the winter has melted. I rolled over and stared up at the sky. I was in the middle of a forest. It was either early dawn or dusk; I couldn¡¯t see the sun through the trees. I could see the grey sky tinged with the dark orange of the winter sun. I checked my self over to check if everything worked. I wiggled my toes and rubbed my hands together. I sat up slowly and looked down at myself. I was wearing what could be called period clothes, a rough spun tunic, a pair of worn but tough trousers, tied at the waist with string and an old fur lined cloak. I also had on some worn leather boots. I had with me a leather satchel. I looked inside and found a couple of sets of clothes and a small bag containing a few small silver coins and 2 slightly larger coins. I had discovered that there was a small hidden pocket inside my cloak so I stored most of the coins in my void space and stored the pouch in that pocket.

    While I was storing the coins I looked inside my void space to see what John had left for me inside. And WOW, I guess immortals like to collect: I saw a libraries worth of books, knick-knacks, chests full of coins, jewels, gold and weapons. There were a lot of weapons: swords, sabers, spears of various sizes, halberds, axes, maces, Chinese straight swords, broadswords, Sais, katanas, nodachis, wakasashis, weird pointy bendy African throwing knives and so much else. It was pretty much a large warehouse full of pointy sharp things.

    I grabbed my kukri from my own survival kit and a water skin from some of John¡¯s (I guess now my) stuff. I could hear a stream burbling nearby; I walked down to the stream. I reached my hand down to the water. It was a mistake. It was bone chillingly cold and my hand felt instantly frozen and numb. It took me another 5 minutes to build up my courage and dip the water skin into the stream to fill up the water skin. I put the wooden stopper into the hole and then slowly bent down and took some sips of water.

    There was a small path next to the brook, I followed the stream downstream hoping to find civilisation. while I was walking I started to go through some of the information passed on to me by John, most of the information seemed locked behind a wall and I assumed I wasn¡¯t ready to process the information yet, but I had access to the stuff I needed. I knew languages, all of them. I didn¡¯t actually know them, since there is a difference between learning and acquiring, but I knew I would have no trouble understanding or speaking any language. I also knew how to handle all the weapons, not well, since that requires actual training and building muscle memories until the body learns to bypass the brain and react on an instinctual level. But I knew enough to not slice my own arms of when handling a sword. I also looked at the method of training he left for me, but I couldn¡¯t really meditate and walk at the same time so I left that for later. I also looked at myself checking my reflection in the stream, I noticed I wasn¡¯t as chubby as I had been, I was also slightly taller (I was barely 20 when I entered the walk and hadn¡¯t finished growing yet), I was now about 6¡¯1¡±, I had my thick black hair which was long and messy and a patchy uneven beard which looked terrible.

    I stopped took out some soap and a small mirror from the void space, and using a knife cut off most of that scraggly beard, I then finished shaving using an actual shaving razor. I then combed my hair until it was somewhat presentable. I didn¡¯t do this out of vanity, I had no vanity after the walk, I did that because at some point I was going to meet people and looking like a Wildman wasn¡¯t going to help if I needed... well, help.

    Eventually after about 3hrs of walking I saw some human activity, I saw a small hamlet (there was no church in the village) surrounded by the forest on one side and farmland on the other. I followed the path to the hamlet and was greeted at the gate by a middle aged man carrying a cart full of wooden logs that needed to be chopped. ¡°Hello stranger, what brings ye by this small village?¡± he asked curiously

    ¡°Hello, the name is Emris. I was just looking for a space to stay for the winter. I am young and willing to work to earn my keep¡± I replied. Honestly, I had nothing to do; no grand mission or quest, staying at a farm seemed like a good idea.

    He stopped pushing the cart and stood up straight, he looked me up and down inspecting me. He was a middle aged man in his mid-50s, 5¡¯5 average build, head of what was once brown but now grey hair, ruddy face from working in outdoors, he had a noticeable limp which I thought would mean he could use some help at the farm and be willing to pay in room and board. ¡°You in trouble with the law?¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°A runaway soldier? Or chased by bandit gangs?¡±

    ¡°No¡±

    ¡°Then why aren¡¯t you home?¡±

    ¡°Brother got married, his wife doesn¡¯t like me. Parents are dead. Couldn¡¯t stay there¡± I lied

    ¡°You can stay in my son¡¯s old room. My name is Luke, welcome to border creek¡± he said

    ¡°Where is your son, Luke?¡± I asked, he didn¡¯t seem sad when he offered me his son¡¯s room, so I thought I was safe in assuming he wasn¡¯t dead

    ¡°Mark wanted adventure and excitement, so he went and joined the kings army¡± Luke replied. Luke didn¡¯t seem happy about his son joining the army.

    I took over from Luke pushing the cart along the dirt road to his farm house. I unloaded the cart in one corner of the barn away from the 2 dairy cows that were in the barn tether to a pillar, happily munching on some straw.

    We walked into the house where Luke was greeted by his wife scolding him ¡°Luke, your leg is hurt didn¡¯t I tell you to stay off your feet? You aren¡¯t a young man anymore¡± she seemed genuinely worried and she looked at me and said ¡°who is the young man beside you?¡±

    ¡°The tall fella is called Emris, he needed a place to stay for the winter and we need the help because of my leg¡±

    ¡°Hello mam¡± I said ¡°your leg is hurt? I thought the limp was from a war injury¡± I said to Luke.

    ¡°Yeah, I got kicked in the leg last week by one of the cows, out in the field. The damn thing won¡¯t heal¡±

    ¡°Can I look at it? My mother was the village healer; I might be of some help¡± it couldn¡¯t hurt to get in their good graces; they were offering to take me in for the winter.

    ¡°Well you can have a look but I don¡¯t know how much help you¡¯ll be¡±

    He sat down on a chair next to the kitchen table placed his leg on the adjacent chair and started rolling his trouser leg up. I could tell the wound had been infected before he even pulled his trousers up all the up. The trouser leg had stuck to the wound due to the puss, it was a truly disgusting sight.it was red and angry looking with milky green puss around the edges and it smelled nasty.

    ¡°It¡¯s infected.¡± I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, which to me, it was

    ¡°What son?¡± Luke asked me like I was speaking Chinese

    ¡°It is full of puss, if this continues you would catch the fever and die.¡±

    ¡°DIE!?¡± Mrs. Luke replied hysterically. ¡°Can you heal it?¡±

    ¡°Yes but it is going to hurt, a lot¡±

    ¡°Well lets¡­¡± ¡°DO it, Luke you will not leave me behind¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re going to need water Mrs. Luke. Lots of water¡±

    ¡°Call me Bess, and water? What is water going to do?¡±

    ¡°We will have to clean this wound Bess, scrub the wound clean until there is fresh blood.¡± I sighed; I wasn¡¯t looking forward to this. ¡°Can you please boil a large pot of water over the fire.¡±

    I set about washing the wound with cold water, whilst Bess put some water to boil. ¡°Have you got any clean cloth you wouldn¡¯t mind tearing up? We are going to need to make a poultice and bind the wound.¡± I said as Bess put the pot of boiling water near me. I got a metal cup from the table and filled it up with the boiling water. I borrowed some willow bark, ground it up and added it into the cup to steep. I was making some willow bark tea which was basically herbal aspirin (I picked up a thing or two working in the hospital). I also surreptitiously took out a couple of tablets of penicillin from my void space and added the ground up tablets into the tea.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°Here drink this.¡± I said ¡°all of it, it should help with the pain¡±

    I washed the kitchen scrubber thoroughly and then put it inside the boiling water to sterilise, I also put the clean cloth inside the boiling water. I had Bess hold Luke¡¯s hand and used the scrubber to scrub the wound clean, Luke screamed, I put a stick of willow in his mouth to bite and continued to scrub until there was fresh blood running from the wound, I cleaned up the blood using some of the cloth and let the wound air dry.

    Bess and I got to know each other whilst Luke took a seated nap, it had been truly painful and tiring experience for him. Bess asked me why I left home and I was forced to elaborate more on the ¡°bitch¡± my ¡°brother¡± married and how she had turned him against me, how my ¡°father¡± was killed by the winter fever and my ¡°mother¡± followed shortly after dying of heartache. All this lying about my family did make me think of my actual family, wondering how they were doing, I supposed with my immortality I would eventually make it back to my time and re-take over my life the day after I disappeared, and no one would even notice I had gone missing.

    At least I wouldn¡¯t worry my mother. I was truly grateful for that.

    I learnt about Bess Luke and their family, they had one son Mark who was he same age as me, Mark had been a restless child always getting into mischief, always yearning for adventure, wanting to be more than a farmer. Mark had taken his chance and joined the royal army when he turned 16 and he was doing his 5 year commission. We chatted about Bess¡¯s history, turned out she grew up in the royal capital, as the third daughter of some minor servant for one of the minor dukes who had a residence in the capital. She had family nearby from her mother¡¯s side and had met Luke during one of her visits to her relatives. They had fallen in love instantly and her parents had accepted Luke¡¯s proposal, Luke was the only son of local farmers and she was the 3<sup>rd</sup> daughter, they were well suited and in love. They had married when she turned 16 at a formal church ceremony and been happily in love since. They had been married for 35 years which made her around 51, which actually for the 6<sup>th</sup> century made her pretty old, healthy life expectancy in the 6<sup>th</sup> century was only about 65 (not the average life expectancy, healthy life expectancy disregards things like the horrific infant mortality rate, war, disease which actually brings the average life expectancy into the 40s).

    By this time Luke had woken up, I very gently cleaned up the wound with a freshly sterilised cloth, bandaged up his wounds and cleaned the mess up. I was still, worried about the angry red veins (not actually veins) around the wound, which to made think he might get septic. I made him drink another aspirin tea spiked with penicillin. I was optimistic about the penicillin working as there were no such things as antibiotics for the bacteria to become resistant to.

    I continued to do this every day for the next week and Luke did seem to get better, at least he wasn¡¯t as infected as before and his wound had started to heal. I also helped out doing the various tasks Luke was meant to be doing, milking cows(harder than I thought it would be), chopping wood for the fire place, feeding the cattle, fetching water(water is surprisingly heavy), repairing the fence or anything that broke. It was the winter which meant I had less work than I would have had in the summer or autumn when there were actual things to harvest. This meant I had plenty of time to meditate and help improve my power.

    The first part of John¡¯s technique had a deceptively simple explanation: gather energy, circulate gathered energy around meridians, and strengthen the meridians. In practice it was a LOT harder. The energy was inside my void space so I had to open the connection, which wasn¡¯t hard, but I had to keep the connection open to gather the energy, this proved a challenge. I had never held the gate open for more than a few seconds before, but gathering required me to open a connection for extended periods of time. It took me a month to be able to maintain the connection for more than an hour. Then according to the Taoist method I had to ¡°purify¡± the power. From Johns explanation (directly transplanted in my brain) this is where the quality of the method was important, as under normal circumstances I would have to purify my specific affinity out of the amalgamation of all affinities that existed in the natural world. I could skip this step entirely, my power came directly from the void space, all that existed in the void space was pure void energy. Then came the hardest step. I had to control the void energy I had gathered and circulate the power around my meridians..

    This step was stupidly hard: it was like playing an arcade racer; inside me; on the hardest most insane difficulty; and your car could run out of fuel. Any slight contact with the wall equalled a crash out and I had to re start from the gathering energy stage. Also, the energy had to be of the correct density, and travel fast enough to maintain enough of an energy trail to make a complete loop, also the power could run out mid race. And sometimes, the natural void type energy specks in the atmosphere would act as moving roadblocks (it turns out natural void energy and my extra dimensional void energy were incompatible). And it hurt, every time I crashed out or timed out the energy packet would ¡°explode¡± which felt like being punched in the gut by Mike Tyson, I did throw up more than once. It took me a month to do it right, once. It took me further two months of daily effort to do it with any consistency. But I did notice my power increase. After the first revolution I was able to open the gate to 3x3x3ft (27cubic feet) which I hadn¡¯t been able to do since the white space. And after the further two months of training, I was able to maintain effortless control of the gate and my gate size had increased to about 64 cubic feet.

    It was now getting warmer, Luke had healed up completely by Christmas and it was now well into March. After the whole healing leg incident Luke and Bess had kind of adopted me and I had become family.

    These days I was mostly helping Luke plant new plants for the upcoming summer and tending to the cattle. Today was a Saturday which was market day, Luke had dairy cows, so he naturally sold dairy products, cream, butter, farm house cheese (cottage cheese) and Bess¡¯ famous honey custards (which I had taught her). Luke also had me deliver milk to all the houses every day of the week and Luke got paid for that milk on Saturdays.

    Border Creek hamlet only had about 50 people living in it so everyone knew each other, and there was no such thing as a secret, so I knew that the neighbouring Sheppard Jack¡¯s daughter Daisy was sweet on me. She was 16 and an only child, this meant that under normal circumstance an outsider, farm hand like me wouldn¡¯t even be considered an eligible match, unfortunately for me (she was 16!) the news that I had helped Luke with his leg had spread, and I kind of became the hamlets de facto healer, and with my modern medical knowledge of common maladies, I was much better than the local healers. The local butcher was the surgeon, for fuck sake. So I even had visitors from the neighbouring hamlets. So I was actually considered a respectable and eligible bachelor. Shit.

    I did my best to get along with everyone in the village and for the most part I did. If you are wondering how a half Indian like me didn¡¯t face medieval racism, it was actually simple, I explained I had roman blood in me and they seemed to except that. Britain used to be a part of the Western Roman Empire until the last century and there were a lot of soldiers who remained behind, so Mediterranean features weren¡¯t uncommon.

    I liked people now. My near two thousand year walk alone had taught me the importance of having friends. Also, the walk had effectively removed my ego and my prior judgements on people, so I had a fresh perspective on life. People liked me, I was kind and respectful to my elders and I was affable and self-deprecating amongst people my own age. Even the young kids liked me, I would sing silly, stupid songs in my truly terrible singing voice and they found that (and the funny faces I was making) funny. But I didn¡¯t like Daisy. She was an only child, and she lived up to every one of the bad ¡°only child¡± stereotypes. She was spoilt, rude and generally thought herself to be better than everyone else. She was an only child so she had more things than the other children her age and she liked to show off her wealth. She was a bitch. She also had a voice I could not stand, this bit wasn¡¯t her fault, but her voice had a frequency pitch that gave me headaches, anytime she talked to me I started getting headaches, even before she got sweet on me and started being overtly nice her voice gave me headaches. I did not want to marry her, but she liked me and as the only daughter she ALWAYS got what she wanted. Luke who knew about my headaches thought the whole thing was hilarious, but he also thought that the marriage was a good idea, as it would keep me in the village and I would inherit Jack¡¯s farm in the marriage. Bess thought I should run away in the middle of the night. I knew I liked her more.

    Daisy and her mother Tulip (flower names must have been a family thing) were coming over to the stand to chat with me. I really was hoping someone would set something on fire so I could escape. and the heavens decided that today was a good day to help little ol¡¯ Emris. A young man came thundering through the village entrance on horseback. He was wearing leather armour, so obviously a soldier. There was a dragon crest on his shield, and he had a sword at his hip. I became instantly alert, I had been practicing some of the sword skills that John had imprinted in my head (I had been using a stick, didn¡¯t want to explain where I got a sword), but I relaxed when I heard Luke, who was standing right behind me, happily exclaim ¡°MARK!¡±

    Looking at him closely he did look a bit like Luke, they had the same chin and bushy eyebrows. Mark got off the horse and ran laughingly to his dad and hugged him, hard. They separated, and looked each other over, Luke happily asked ¡°you made it into the king¡¯s cavalry?¡± he was on a horse so it was a fair question, but making it into the cavalry with less than 5 years¡¯ service was unprecedented for a farmer¡¯s son. Cavalry was usually reserved for the nobles or the rich who could afford to buy their own war horse and commission, it took soldiers at a minimum of 10 years of saving to buy a war horse. And, Mark wasn¡¯t riding a warhorse, they were usually stallions and bigger than normal horse.

    ¡°No father, this is a messenger horse. My platoon is stationed in Leicester and we were sent out to the nearby villages to recruit, I asked my lieutenant (pronounced leftenent) if I could come here to recruit.¡± He looked down and said quietly ¡°Actually it isn¡¯t recruitment; it is an King¡¯s order¡±

    Luke looked at him sharply ¡°A King¡¯s order!...¡± he audibly sighed and said ¡°we heard whisperings of an uprising, so there really is going to be war¡±

    Mark turned around to face the crowd of people who had gathered behind the father-son pair. Luke patted him on the shoulder to offer support. Mark straightened his back and in a loud and clear voice proclaimed ¡°By the power vested in me by the gods and my forefathers; I King Uther, first of my name, hereby order all men between the ages of 16 and 30 to join the kings army, for the next 5 years¡±

    Well at least I didn¡¯t have to get married.

 (edited) Chapter 4: Better Training Montage Song? Eye of the Tiger or the Final Countdown

    I guess I was joining the army¡­

    Does conscription count as joining?

    A King¡¯s order. ALL men, including me, between 16 and 30 were to become cannon fodder in some war the king was planning on fighting.

    We were pretty far away from the capital and all its political intrigues. Living in our tiny little hamlet minding our own business so we weren¡¯t the most clued in on any rumours of an upcoming war, certainly not a war large enough to warrant the use of a King¡¯s order. Luke and some of the village elders had heard talk of a small uprising being led by a witch, but I had honestly not been paying attention. It was being led by a witch. John had said I was entering the true world, where magic was real, but I had thought he meant it in a secret underground cabal kind of way. But alas no, this was the ¡°Dark ages¡± a period of time in which there was very little recorded history. It was also called something else in John¡¯s memories.

    It was called, ¡°The age of magic¡±.

    One of the layers of memories unlocked and the information flooded into my mind.

    After the Romans left the hidden world had decided it was their time to rise up and rule the earth, witches, wizards, mages(I guess I actually fell into this group), elementals, alchemists, were-kin all came out of the shadows and vied for the throne. Surprisingly under the heavy assault of all of those powerful supernatural powers, the ones that succeeded in snatching the throne were the Pendragon clan. Humans, albeit, with the aid of dragons. Dragons were the most powerful of all creatures, big fire-breathing, lizards with massive wings. They were creatures that had existed since before the ice age and according to John¡¯s memories were near immortal. A hundred years went by and the Pendragon clan ruled over the land peacefully, and the age of magic was in full swing.

    That was true at least until 21 years ago and the black dragon¡¯s rebellion. One of the Pendragon¡¯s own dragons betrayed its brothers by joining forces with the witches and attempted to take over the throne. After an epic yearlong battle the Pendragons prevailed, but it was a pyrrhic victory, all but one of the dragons were dead, and the capital was burned down to the ground. Most importantly to King Uther, Queen Aetheria was dead. The King in his grief and rage outlawed magic in all its forms, punishable by death. He even executed any children of the known witches and wizards. And in a final move against magic, Uther had his own dragon, the last of his kind, bound in unbreakable chains and buried under the castle.

    ¡°Thanks for telling me so soon John¡± I muttered under my breath, suddenly very sober, all thoughts of a silly marriage discarded.

    The villagers were visibly upset. There were even mutterings of disobedience, which were quickly quashed. Actually the impact on the village would be pretty minimal, there were only 6 men (the village only had 50 people) between the ages of 16 and 30 and 2 of those were former soldiers, so they could not be conscripted. The sense of unhappiness came from the fact that, the villages further away from the (new) capital were always the ones conscripted first.

    Mark spent the day with us. Catching up with Luke and being mothered by Bess. I tried to keep out of the way as much as possible, packing what little things I had managed to accumulate over the winter into my satchel. Talking to the other villagers, saying my goodbyes to the little kids, buying things I might need, like a sewing kit and a good leather belt. So it was lunch time by time I actually spoke with Mark.

    ¡°So you are the one who¡¯s being staying in my room?¡± he asked with a friendly smile on his face. He was going to be one of the soldiers in charge, so effectively he was going to be my boss. I wasn¡¯t nervous (I was never nervous anymore, the walk had made me too apathetic), but I did want to make a good impression.

    ¡°Yes, that¡¯s me I suppose¡± I said laughing, rubbing the back of my head then offering my hand for a hand shake. ¡°I am Emris¡±

    ¡°Mark, although you know that already¡± he said shaking my hand; he had a strong grip from years of sword practice but he didn¡¯t try to crush my hand when he shook it. ¡°Thank you, for saving my father¡¯s life.¡± He had a genuinely grateful look on his face.

    ¡°It was the least I could do, Luke and Bess have been very kind to me, taking me in as they did¡± I said brushing off his thanks.

    Bess came into the room and squeezed my shoulder, she looked at Mark and said ¡°you better look after him, whilst you two are off soldiering!¡± she kissed him on the cheek and bustled off to the kitchen area (actually the kitchen prep area, the actual cooking was done over the fireplace as that was the only place with a chimney).

    I looked at Mark with a serious expression ¡°How bad is the situation? There wouldn¡¯t be a need for an order if it wasn¡¯t serious¡±

    ¡°It is not that bad, at least not in terms of soldiers. Our soldiers will outnumber theirs 20:1. It¡¯s the witch that is the problem, her magicks are strong and she is trying to unite the bandits under her rule. There are rumours she used her powers to enslave an entire battalion of our own soldiers. I even heard wild rumours that she resurrects corpse of those killed by her men to use against us¡± he said shivering slightly at the talk of magic. ¡°But those are just the rumours, the real reason is that the king wants us to make an example of her, and kill her army to the last man as a warning against any others.¡±

    We chatted for about half an hour, after which I let Mark catch up with the family whilst I did all of today¡¯s tasks like feeding the cattle and tending to what little vegetable farming Luke did. I spent the evening at Ian¡¯s; Ian was the local village brewer and brewed some of the WORST beer I have ever tasted. It was bitter and sour and all in all horrible, but his was the only public house in the whole village. Ian liked me; I had helped him improve his beer by convincing him to add dried heather and elderflowers to the wort to steep, acting as a substitute for modern hops. This helped preserve his beer for longer, and it tasted less vile; almost palatable.Ian saw me coming in and beckoned me over; Ian was actually one of the two former soldiers who were exempted from the King¡¯s order, ¡°here drink this¡± he said giving me a tankard of white liquid.

    I looked at him with suspicion, and then down at the murky white liquid again. I took a tentative sniff; it smelt of grapes, but also something else. I looked up ¡°Where did you get wine from?¡± wine actually wasn¡¯t that rare in England at the time, there were vineyards in England and it was actually a bit warmer than in modern times. But there weren¡¯t any vineyards in the neighbouring area, as it was the wrong kind of soil.

    ¡°It is special wine, have a sip¡± he said to me encouragingly. I looked at him suspiciously again and tentatively took a sip. It was sharp, acidic, tart, astringent and much more potent than normal wine of the time. Normal wines, before cork, were very weak, about the same as beer, this was different. This was delicious.

    I looked up at him sharply ¡°This is some exceptional stuff, it must have cost you a lot of coin¡± Ian was notoriously stingy with his coin. Half the reason he liked me was that I had increased his profits, by a lot. His ale was sought after now, some people came from as far as the capital to buy barrels of his new ale. But the stingy bastard still made me pay full price for every tankard of beer I had ever drunk.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    ¡°War is a bad business, friend¡± he said seriously. ¡°You are a healer: healers are valuable on the battlefield. In an honourable battle a healer might be safe being in the back lines helping to save his brothers, but those you fight won¡¯t be honourable. The witch will target the back lines with her magicks and your secrets will be revealed.¡±

    ¡°My secrets?¡± I asked curious to see how much he knew

    ¡°You are an alchemist.¡± He stated back calmly and quietly

    I literally fell out of my chair laughing, ¡°hahahahahahaha, me an alchemist!¡± I gasped laughing using the table to pick myself up from the floor. Everyone was looking at me funny; a few of them were even looking shocked at the revelation that I wasn¡¯t an alchemist. ¡°Seriously, does everyone really think I am an alchemist?¡± I looked at Ian and then around the room, a few of them turned their heads away embarrassed.

    ¡°You are too good at healing. I was a soldier, and not even the venerable doctors of the capitals can do all of the things you do. Also your use of water to heal people is too easy looking. Finally you don¡¯t smell¡± he said to me as if that was conclusive proof that I was an alchemist.

    I looked at Ian and motioned him to come closer ¡°I will tell you a little secret Ian¡± I whispered quietly ¡°I don¡¯t actually heal people¡± he was taken aback. ¡°The body can almost always heals itself from minor wounds. It¡¯s only that there are bad humours in the air that prevent the body from doing so. Boiling water is too hot for those humours to survive within; so using boiling water to clean those wounds and making sure that the wound is shielded from further contamination is what caused my patient''s bodies to heal themselves. I am useless against anything that your body can¡¯t deal with on its own. By the way it is the same humors in the air which causes the malted barley or the pulped grape to turn itself into beer or wine.¡± Ian looked at me as if I had revealed the mysteries of the universe to him.

    ¡°As to why I don¡¯t smell, I bathe. Every single day. Even in the winter, I had Bess boil me water so I that could have warm water to bathe in the winter.¡± I paused and told him ¡°I also know how to make soap by mixing lye water with fats and mixing in dried lavender.¡± Ian looked at me and shook his head in disbelief.

    I looked down at my drink, ¡°what¡¯s in this anyway, it¡¯s not just wine is it?¡± I asked

    He looked at me laughed and said ¡°no, one of Mathew''s contacts makes this with juice from gooseberries, and wine.¡± Mathew was the other former soldier, he and Ian had served together and had retired together, they even partnered up for the brewery and public house, Mathew grew the barley which the beer was made from. The two were inseparable, more often found with each other than their wives. Their wives were identical twins.

    ¡°Where is Matty?¡± I asked looking around

    ¡°Mathew is getting you something.¡±

    ¡°Getting me something? Does he think I am an alchemist too?¡±

    ¡°He is one of the few who doesn¡¯t. He is giving you some of his old things from when he was a soldier. He never liked killing and his old equipment reminds him too much of the bad old days.¡± Ian said, frowning, remembering their army day. I distracted Ian by talking about making soap and we spent the next half hour chatting with each other and the other villagers in the public house. Quite a few of the villagers wouldn¡¯t look me in the eyes embarrassed, but they all had smiles on their faces.

    Matty came in through the back entrance carrying a long thin thing, that was wrapped in cloth. I got up and greeted Matty ¡°can you believe these guys, they thought I was an alchemist?!¡± I complained.

    ¡°You know too much, but you aren¡¯t an alchemist. They smell of the earth and fire¡± he said with complete certainty

    ¡°So you are giving me your old sword. Don¡¯t. You may need it one day if something bad happens to the village¡± I said.

    ¡°I have another, the one I got when I first joined the army. You can have this one, too many bad memories with this one.¡± He said almost pushing the sword off the table.

    I unwrapped the sword. It was different than the standard swords of its day. It was made from pattern welded steel, which was expensive, but the thing that was most different about it was that it was single edged. It was slightly more than 3 fingers wide, there was almost no tapering, the point was curved, and there was a very shallow but wide fuller running down the entire length of the sword. The guard was a simple flat oval, and the pommel was in the shape of a paw. This was a Viking sword.

    I looked at him quizzically ¡°I took this from a Nordic raiding captain after I killed him. they had raided this little village near the border with the Aengles in Meon Wara. Something must have happened to anger the raiders, they killed everyone, even the women and children, I saw their mutilated bodies, and the bastards made them suffer. My squadron hunted the bastards down and killed them to a man.¡± Matt the most cheerful man in the village had a haunted look in his eyes. ¡°I still see the kids in my nightmares. It was something evil that they did to those people. Evil magicks¡± he spat at the floor

    I sheathed the sword back in its scabbard and then wrapped it up in the cloth. ¡°Thank you, hopefully it will serve me well¡±

    We drank and revelled well into the evening, and I left them while they were starting to sing drinking songs. I wasn¡¯t drunk, not because of my powers(although that may have also been a part of it), I didn¡¯t drink much, I liked the wine but I knew it was expensive and didn¡¯t want to take advantage of Ian and I didn¡¯t like the beer, so I wasn¡¯t drinking the beer.

    I got home and found Mark asleep in what I guess was rightfully his own bed, Luke or more likely Bess had set up a small cot for me in the living room by the remnants of the fire. I fell asleep quickly. I was sort of looking forward to this new adventure.

    Farmers get up early, so everyone was up and ready to go by the time dawn was transitioning to morning. There were hugs, tears and promises of returning alive.

    There were four of us about to depart from the village. Two brothers, Isiah and Josiah. Isiah was 24 and an exceptional hunter with his bow, shooting down birds regularly for the Saturday Markets. He was a sharp witted guy who regularly had his friends in stitches, Isiah was maybe 5¡¯6¡± sinewy but quick. I got along well with Isiah, we became friends after he twisted his ankle and I had to splint his leg to treat him. Josiah was the opposite of Isiah; he was 18, 5¡¯4¡± nearly as wide as he was tall, dumb as a box of rocks. Josiah was in love with Daisy, who liked me. You would think the fact that I didn¡¯t like Daisy back would make him at least tolerate me. But for some reason he took that as a mortal sin, he had cornered me behind Ian¡¯s one night, threatening me to be more receptive to Daisy¡¯s advances, or else. Like I said, dumb as a box of rocks. It was also the night I discovered the new me didn¡¯t like being threatened. Jo had grabbed my collar and pinned me to the wall, he had just finished threatening me and to emphasise the point he was about to punch me in the gut. I reacted almost instinctively, curving my hand and jabbing him in the throat, as Jo struggled to breath I had put him in a sleeper hold, 10 seconds of pressure and he was out like a light. Isiah who had quietly observed the whole thing thanked me and literally dragged Josiah back home. Isiah and I had become even better friends after that.

    The fourth member of our little village conscription was Fred, Fred liked to farm and talk about farming, that was it. He was the most boring guy in the village, 28, never married, average looking.

    We started walking behind Mark, towards Leicester, which was in Mercia. It had been a big city when there was a Roman garrison stationed there, but since the Romans left it had lost size to the point where it was considered a town. We were a day and a half¡¯s walk away and we had time to ask Mark about military life, and what was to be expected. The plan was for all of the recruiting soldiers to meet back up with their platoon in Leicester, where we would be trained on how to be soldiers. Then we would get further instructions from one of the generals, who would send a message to the lieutenant in charge of the platoon on what to do next.

    The journey to Leicester was uneventful and we got there by early afternoon the next day. Of course, Leicester was nothing like it would be in the future. For one thing, I didn¡¯t notice a single subway sandwich shop anywhere. It was very pretty with its Roman architectures. There was a public bath house near the centre of the town, the same bath house which became the ruins where I found the stone. It was a surreal experience being in a place that I knew from the future, in its past state.

    The platoon was stationed outside the town. A sea of tents, large and small sprawled out over an area larger than the hamlet we all just came from. Mark went into one of the smaller tents near the edge of the camp. He came out a few minutes later with a blond haired man, about 45 years old. He seemed to be Mark¡¯s superior as Mark was being very serious and respectful towards the man. The man looked like a grizzled old warrior, and a very serious man. He came up to our group and said in a loud instructional voice. ¡°I am staff sergeant Randel, you will address me as such, and it is my responsibility to turn you farmers into warriors so that you may have some chance of surviving the upcoming war¡±

 (edited) Chapter 5

    Mark thanked the staff sergeant, and then took us to one of the larger tents in the camp. There was another old and grizzled veteran inside. He was even older than the staff sergeant, in his mid-50s grey haired. He was hunched over his desk with a quill in his hand. Mark seemed scared of the man. ¡°Sergeant Bernard, Corporal Mark reporting with the recruits from the Border Creek hamlet.¡± Mark said in a loud and clear voice.

    ¡°Stop shouting corporal¡± he said without looking up. ¡°How many, corporal?¡±

    ¡°uh, 6 men between the ages of 16 and 30, but two of them had 10 years of prior service and were exempted, sergeant¡± Mark replied, slightly less loudly

    ¡°So four new soldiers, names of the exempted.¡± Still without looking up

    ¡°Ian and Mathew, from border creek village, sergeant¡±

    The sergeant finally looked up, obviously recognising the names. ¡°Good men, even better soldiers¡± he nodded with approval and then opened up a new bound book. ¡°Names of the new recruits.¡±

    Mark pointed at each of us, and we each said our names to the sergeant

    ¡°Isiah¡±

    ¡°Josiah¡±

    ¡°Emris¡±

    We waited for Fred to say his name, about 5 seconds passed, nothing, by this point everyone including the sergeant was looking at Fred. Nothing, the gormless braindead idiot was looking at the tent wall behind the sergeant, a vacant look in his eyes

    Mark finally got fed up and walked behind Fred. He smacked him on the back of the head (careful there is already not much there) then said directly into Fred¡¯s ear ¡°say your name to the sergeant¡±

    It still took him another 3 seconds to process that ¡°huh, umm, Fred¡±

    The sergeant sighed, shook his head and made a note. He then looked up at us and said ¡°My name is Sergeant Bernard, I am the quartermaster at this camp, I will be letting you BORROW MY equipment, if you return my equipment and I find that it has been damaged in any way, you will answer to me. Is that clear?¡±

    Isiah and Josiah gulped. I didn¡¯t care. Fred, Fred was back to looking at the tent walls. Fred, wasn¡¯t stupid or mentally challenged, he just didn¡¯t pay any attention to anything not farming related. Talk to him about something like weather affecting crop yield and Fred could wax lyrical about the effect that year¡¯s rainfall had had on the wheat farming for hours. But talk to him about anything else, he was vacant to the point of driving anyone around him crazy.

    The sergeant gave each of us two sets of uniforms, a tent and pack to carry our equipment. He looked at us and said ¡°you will be given your practice weapons tomorrow; you will not get your real weapons until I know that you will be able to look after my weapons¡±

    Mark took us to one of the clear areas around the edge of the camp and told us to put up our tents and settle in. ¡°Be sure to get your rest, tomorrow is going to be the longest day of your lives.¡±

    Isiah and I decided to check out the town after putting up our tents and stowing our stuff. Jo followed behind; the town was full of the old Roman buildings. Isiah and I ended up at a pub enjoying drinks with people who were also joining up tomorrow, border creek being one of the villages on the outskirts of Mercia we were one of the last batches of recruits to arrive. Josiah had disappeared into the local whorehouse. Isiah and I got to know some of the new recruits and even some of the veteran soldiers here to instruct us. We spent the evening drinking honey mead, and funnily Ian¡¯s beer which I had helped to create. We called it a night pretty early heeding Mark¡¯s warning about tomorrow being a very long day.

    After the Romans left and the Pendragons conquered the throne, England had been split into many grand duchies by the Pendragons. These duchies were regarded as their own kingdoms within their territories, but the ducal kings all bent their knees to Uther. Mercia was one of these ¡°kingdoms¡± ruled over by its own ducal king, but this war against the Witch¡¯s uprising was being led directly by king Uther. So we were conscripted by the king¡¯s army and not the ducal militia.

    Our platoon was recruiting in eastern Mercia; the platoon was made up of 40 soldiers led by a lieutenant. They were to conscript able bodied men from the nearby villages, train us and then lead the resulting company to join up with the division command at the capital. Where we would be given our orders for the upcoming war.

    I woke up well before dawn, and got dressed. I also meditated for an hour. I wasn¡¯t worried about today, 1850 years of walking builds stamina. The meditation also helped with my body, as my meridians strengthened and the energy started to form a small gaseous cloud in my core, the nourishment it gave to my body also improved my body. It wasn¡¯t noticeable from the outside but after I was able to rotate the energy inside my body 10 times my physical strength had increased dramatically. I was now able to easily lift about 100kilos over my head, whereas before I would be struggling with about 50. Subsequent increases hadn¡¯t been as dramatic but after reaching about 50 rotations I was able to easily lift about 200kilos. I completed my rotations for the day managing 58 rotations before not being able to continue. I was left mentally exhausted but my body felt as if it was filled to the brim with energy. I closed my eyes again and took 10 deep breaths and then opened my eyes. I remembered reading somewhere that at the core of all training was breathing, and I couldn¡¯t help but wonder on its profoundness.

    I was broken out of my reverie by a loud clanging noise outside. The clangs rang 10 times, and then someone said in a loud deep bass filled voice. ¡°You have one quarter hour to get dressed and present yourself at the camp entrance. You are to arrange yourselves according to village; if one person is late the entire village will be punished.¡±

    Telling time in 6<sup>th</sup> century was an imprecise thing but it was possible using various methods such as sundials in the day time and using the rate of a candle burning during the night. Of course candles were expensive so not really used in the little farming villages. Candles were used mainly by the priest and monks in churches and monasteries who had to adhere to strict times for their vigils. There was bell at the church in Leicester, and that¡¯s what the clanging was.

    I was already dressed, so I got out of my tent and ambled over to camp entrance. I saw Mark standing there waiting, his demeanour completely different than before. He was much more buttoned up, serious looking, standing straighter, more like a soldier. His body language told me he was no longer Mark, Luke and Bess¡¯ son from border creek, now he was Corporal Mark, soldier in the king¡¯s army and our instructor.

    He looked me over. ¡°Good to see you so squared away, I hope you got a good night¡¯s sleep you will need the energy¡±

    I was there early so I helped the veteran soldiers setting up tables, moving racks of shields, moving barrels of water. Not drinking mead, water quality in the middle ages inside or near cities was fatally bad, cholera and other faecal waterborne diseases, but not in wells. The ground rock acts as a filter naturally filtering out the pollutants in water. So water from deep drinking wells was perfectly safe to drink, but not water from the rivers near or downstream from the towns.

    By the time we finished setting up most of the people were lined up and nearly 15 minutes had passed. I lined up behind Isiah and Josiah and I asked if they had seen Fred. They both shook their heads. Sergeant Randel came to the front of the line-up and started doing a rollcall. The platoon of forty soldiers had managed to gather around 180 conscripts from the nearby area. 3 of the soldiers in the platoon were the staff sergeant who was in charge of training ALL of the groups, the quartermaster and the lieutenant (whom we hadn¡¯t met yet), so that meant the 180 new soldiers were going to be trained by the 37 remaining veterans, that meant there were going to be 32 groups of 5 and 5 groups of 4 new soldiers. We were from a village group of 4 and one of the last arrivals so we were assigned to be a group of four.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    By the time the rollcall got to our group Fred was still missing, Mark looked at us and said ¡°where is Fred?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know¡± Isiah replied back

    ¡°Did you not hear that if one of you is late you ALL get punished?!¡± he glared at all of us ¡°you are to be a team. You were supposed to wake him up and drag him here. Naked if necessary¡±

    That¡¯s exactly what happened, Mark asked one of the corporals to check inside Fred¡¯s tent and drag the fool out. Fred was dragged out of his tent, naked as the day he was born, bleary eyed with drool hanging from his lips.

    Mark looked at us angrily and said ¡°you are going to pick up your practice equipment from the quarter master, and the run around the camp 20 times carrying your equipment, and since you all are to be punished equally, you will be dressed the same as Fred¡±

    We were lined up single file and marched down to the quartermaster and given our equipment, a wooden shield, a dowel rod about two meters long and a wooden short sword. We were marched outside, made to strip down to our skin, and run around the camp 20 times. We ran around the camp, naked as the day we were born. Josiah tried to use the shield to cover up, but that made running impossible as his knees kept hitting the shield. This meant he wasn¡¯t paying attention to his ¡°spear¡±, which angled forward, got stuck in the ground, and made him topple over almost like a badly performed pole-vault.

    Running around naked didn¡¯t bother me that much. The walk had worn away some of my modesty, and we weren¡¯t exactly being ogled by women. It did make me realise that running naked wasn¡¯t the best idea though and made me appreciate the ingenuity and purpose of under wear.

    We finished our run in about an hour wisely having paced ourselves to the slowest person in the group, Josiah, who wasn¡¯t unfit, so much as built for impact. Jo had his hands on his knees not caring that he was mooning the entire platoon, huffing and puffing, exhausted, occasionally spitting out huge thick wads of mucus, staring murder at Fred. Isiah being a woodsman wasn¡¯t as tired. He calmly went and got a cup of water from the tables and handed it to his brother. He calmly walked over to Fred and whispered ¡°If you are ever late again, I will gut you.¡± Fred¡¯s eyes flew open and he was about to say something

    ¡°Hhh how¡­¡±

    ¡°He won¡¯t be late. One of us will kick him awake every morning until he learns to wake up¡± I said trying to diffuse the situation

    By the time we got done with our run the rest of the new soldiers had gotten their new equipment, Mark let us get dressed and then we had to run around the camp again this time only ten times and with all of the new soldiers. Our group, which was already tired from the first run, were among the last to finish. Josiah was on his knees dry heaving.

    We were the last to finish our run so we were the last to enter the mess tent. We also were the last to get served, and since they were running out of food, consequently we got the smallest portions. Josiah kept looking at Fred with increasing hatred.

    After our breakfast we were all taken over to a large clearing on the east side of the camp grounds. We were lined up, spaced apart about 3 meters from each other and were taught how to hold our shields properly. Our instructors went round correcting our mistakes, and making sure we were holding the shields correctly. It was tiring work and inevitably our shields dipped down too low, due to the weight and the effort required to maintain the same stance. When they did drop too low, the instructors started swinging their blunted metal swords at us, we had to hurry up and raise our shields to parry or get brained in the head. This went on for a couple of hours, and then we were made to switch hands.

    We were served lunch of a savoury gruel with bits of dried beef and watered down ale, everyone seemed exhausted and a few of the new recruits even had bruises and welts from the mornings¡¯ training. After lunch we were given 30 minutes of rest time before the afternoon session began.

    In the afternoon we were taught how to use our swords, swinging our wooden swords on wooden dummies, which were little more than a tall wooden logs. That first day we were shown two basic swings and then we were told to swing at the logs. It was tough work. The jarring impact of the swords on the dummies made the hands itch, and the impacts would hurt all the way up your arms to your shoulders. I had previous training, from John¡¯s memories, and the practice had done in the woods, so I quickly figured out that the easiest way to avoid the jarring impacts was to angle the sword and glance off the post. The sound of the impact changed and Mark immediately took notice. He observed me for about 5 minutes and then called over another of the instructors.

    Mark stopped me and called me over ¡°Emris come over here!¡± Mark barked

    I quickly stopped what I was doing and jogged over ¡°yes, corporal?¡± I asked

    ¡°This is Private David¡±

    ¡°You have had previous training.¡± Said David. It was a statement not a question

    ¡°My dad taught me some forms, and I had an older brother¡± I quickly lied ¡°I also had some instruction from Mathew¡± I said, this was true. Mathew had once caught me practicing with my stick out in the woods; he was coming back from hunting and had observed me practising some of the forms. After that Matty had suggested that I needed a sparring partner and we had sparred with each other a couple of times a week. In the two months since, I had improved tremendously, almost beating him more than once.

    David looked at me with a raised eyebrow ¡°show me.¡± He said whilst unsheathing his sword

    I backed away unsheathing my own sword. David had a distinct advantage, his was sword was made of blunted steel and he had years of training, my sword was made of wood and I had 3 months of training and some memories.

    David swung at me full force before my sword was half way out of my belt loop (no scabbard for a wooden sword); I abandoned the draw and rolled left, avoiding the sideways swipe. I was about to get up but I felt the sword strike coming at me from above, I had managed to get my sword out of my belt loop whilst rolling. I used both hands to block the heavy overhand blow. I could hear the wood creaking in protest as the internal structure snapped from the pressure. I had managed to angle the block so that the sword slid past me. David had over extended on the strike and that gave me enough time to try and get up. Because I was caught unprepared and had to roll away at an angle, when I was getting up my back was turned to David, David noticed and sent a backhand strike towards my back. Out of some kind of primal instinct and my faster than normal reaction speed I managed to swing my sword backwards over my head and block the strike. That strike had force. If it had landed it may have broken some vertebrae, and even the block wouldn¡¯t have worked if not for my extra strength. I utilised that strength and spun to my right, flicking away David¡¯s strike. I was finally face to face with him. He had a surprised look in his eyes.

    By this time everyone had noticed that something was going on and had paused on their training. Even the staff sergeant had started looking over. Normally I wouldn¡¯t like to stand out like this, but some kind of primal survival instinct in me had been triggered, that strike at my exposed back could have been fatal. I was angry and at a disadvantage but I wanted to fight. And now I was face to face with my opponent, finally ready to attack and not just defend.

    I swung overhead going right to left, David blocked the strike and moved back quickly and came right back at me with a piercing thrust, which would have been fatal if it struck. I step into the thrust parrying his steel blade with my wooden sword and spun away; as I was spinning past I used the momentum from my spin and punch him with a spinning back fist to the back of his head. David staggered forward, I waited for him to turn around, David had a wild angry look on his face, and he wasn¡¯t expecting a new recruit to even touch him. He snarled and came at me again with a wild overhand swing, looking to overwhelm me by force, I tried to block the strike but my wooden sword couldn¡¯t take the abuse anymore and snapped under the pressure. I rolled away barely avoiding the strike, but I was now furious. I turned around to see David smirking. He casually started to swing his sword, looking to punish me for humiliating him. I used my left hand and threw the broken sword towards him like a Frisbee; the sword was aimed at his face. David flinched and moved to avoid the sword and in that split second I grabbed him by the wrist squeezing with enough force that he let go of the sword due to the pain and with my free right hand I jabbed him lightly in his throat. He slumped to the ground holding his throat. I lightly bent down and picked up his sword which was on the ground and held it against the back of his neck in a declaration of my victory.

    Mark looked at me suitably impressed, and I heard a voice behind me. ¡°Not bad, recruit¡±

    I turned around to see staff sergeant Randel looking at me. ¡°You have been trained well in the sword¡± he turned and looked at Private David and frowned. ¡°You attacked an unprepared recruit with a real sword and lost. You will see me in my tent at the end of the day¡±

    The rest of the day went pretty well, I was made to spar with the veterans whilst the rest of the recruits went back to their training; I did pretty well managing to scrape out victories in most of my sparring matches.

    When the days training finished we were dismissed. We all went to the baths in an almost organised fashion, and then in an zombie like trance returned; went to the mess hall, ate the brown sludge on our plates, and went to bed whilst there was still daylight.

 Chapter 6- You try writing about spear practice without phallic double entendres

    It had been a long day and all of the new recruits had turned in early after a gruelling 12 hours of training. I had gone inside my tent too, but I had gone inside to hide how not tired I was. I didn¡¯t get tired, I don¡¯t get tired. 1849 years of walking had eliminated the concept of fatigue. Also the void energy mist inside me also improved my physical constitution so that I didn¡¯t get tired easily.

    I settled down inside my tent and then started meditating, I opened up a connection to the void realm and started gathering the void energy, after three months of meditation this had become second nature to me. Once I felt that I had gathered enough energy I started rotating the energy using that rotational force to mould the energy into a vague funnel shape. I took a deep breath and started controlling the energy swiftly guiding the energy around my meridians. I managed to guide the energy around my meridians 60 times before the energy dissipated from my meridians.

    Then something strange happened, normally the energy would have dissipated across my meridians slowly bleeding into my body and then back into the void. This time however the energy didn¡¯t disappear, instead the energy condensed in my core, and started extracting the void energy that had previously dispersed into my muscles and bones, this suction force felt uncomfortable, I felt myself get physically weaker as the energy was extracted away from my muscles. It started to hurt, a deep bone crushing pain as the energy was extracted away from my bones. I was getting worried, this wasn¡¯t written anywhere in John¡¯s meditation method, and I didn¡¯t have anyone I could ask to help.

    The energy started getting sucked out of my meridians, by this point I was PANICKING, the whole point of the meditation exercise was to improve my meridians and now this suction was causing my meridians to wither. I tried opening a connection to the void space, but the pain, which by this point felt like my body being torn apart into tiny little pieces from the inside, meant I couldn¡¯t concentrate enough to gather the void energy. I could taste the iron in my blood; it tasted like licking a battery, and salt. I a moment of madness and desperation I opened a connection inside my own body, directly in my core, the hole opened up expanding from the size of a pinprick to about 10cm(4inches) in diameter. Energy rushed in, normally the energy that came in was like opening a tap about half way, easily controllable, but this time it was like a fire hose being opened, an immense amount of energy flooded in, my withered meridians rehydrated, the energy entered my bones and muscles. The void energy saturated my bones and muscles. And then it exceeded my body¡¯s boundaries. A bubble of void energy formed around my tent, separating me from the earthly dimension. Isolating me inside a void bubble

    I had had some relief from the pain when the energy had started flooding back, but when the void energy exceeded my limits I felt pain. I felt pain on a level I had never experienced. I don¡¯t even think there is a way to quantify that level of pain. Back in my early teens I once fell off my bike in the middle of the street and broken my radius bone in my arm and cracked my knee cap in half. This pain made that look like a small scratch. I felt all of my bones being crushed to dust by the void energy. I felt my muscles being shredded. I felt my meridians literally exploding. The pain was unimaginable. I screamed, except there was no noise as the energy had already shredded my vocal chords and my body wasn¡¯t even capable of making noise anymore. I hoped I would pass out from the pain. I prayed I would die. Except I knew I couldn¡¯t; fucking John and his fucking immortality.

    I cursed John, I called him every name under the sun and more, I even invented a whole new category of swears. I promised to myself that if I ever met John again I would kill him in the most excruciating way possible. I settled on grinding him to paste using a slow turning belt sander and a slow acid drip.

    Finally there was nothing left except my amorphous consciousness and the void at the core of what was once my being. My body started to remake itself, the void energy permeating throughout every single cell in my body. I felt my bones being remade from the femur right down to the two stapes in my inner ears. I felt my organs being remade, new blood vessels being formed, new stronger muscles being formed, more resilient tendons and ligaments, a layer of cells started to form around the outside, these cells were laden with saturated void energy, and formed a neigh impregnable skin around my body. Even my hair grew back with void energy infused inside.

    The void bubble surrounding me started to shrink slowly going back into the void. I opened my eyes and looked at myself. I was filthy. I was covered in the remnants of me. My old body was torn apart and rebuilt according to the void and these were the bits rejected by the void. Without even thinking I took out a clean towel and wiped myself clean, I took out some clothes and put them on and got out of the tent. It was still dark outside. I looked up and saw that the moon was high in the night sky, it was still the middle of the night. I walked out of the camp, I didn¡¯t sneak as being caught sneaking is generally harder to explain, and into the public baths and bathed again. Using modern soaps and shampoos and not the survivalist lye fat soaps, to thoroughly clean myself. I took out a mirror and looked at myself. I was worried about how to explain the changes in my body that happened overnight. Thankfully there were no visible changes from the outside. I looked just the same as before. I looked internally and that¡¯s where I found the changes, I was no longer within the human boundaries of strength and agility, I could now easily lift 500 kilos over my head (although why I would ever want to?) and I could now move with inhuman speed and agility. The biggest change however was in my core, the wisps of void energy were gone, in its place was a void energy whirlpool containing a whirling mass of densely packed void energy clouds. I also noticed that my shredded withered meridians had been repaired. But they were very different than before, they were a lot wider and smoother, which I expected. However, I didn¡¯t expect them to be out of phase with my body, they were in a perpetual void phase, half in my body and half inside the void dimension. I didn¡¯t know what to make of that.

    I dressed myself and went back to the tent. I felt tired, I had thought that the walk had made me immune to fatigue, but I was feeling tired. I lay down on my mat and closed my eyes and felt asleep.

    I slept a dreamless sleep, it was restful. I woke to the clanging from the church indicating the start of another day. I got ready and was out of the tent within 10 minutes of waking up, I checked into Fred¡¯s tent to see if he was up, he was not. I got a mug of water and poured it over his head, he woke up startled. ¡°You have 5 minutes, and then I am dragging you out. And don¡¯t forget your equipment¡±

    He was out, still mostly undressed using his shield like a platter to carry his equipment we were lined up in the same spot as yesterday. Mark looked at Fred and sighed, he shook his head.

    All of the recruits were made to run around the camp 15 times. We finished the run and got breakfast. After breakfast it was shield training again. Learning how to block against enemy strikes. Unlike yesterday we were taught how to move our shields around, moving the shield forwards to meet the oncoming strikes before they reached their apex. But it was still 5 hours of shield practice

    The change in the day came after lunch. After lunch we were shown how to use our ¡°spears¡±, which was pretty simple work. We were being trained for formation battles using spears and not individual spear combat, so it basically just involved holding the spear and thrusting and thrusting and thrusting. It was repetitive and boring. I was glad about this since I was still recovering from last night¡¯s incident. This complacency almost got me ¡°revealed¡± as a being more than just human. I had tuned myself out and was just mindlessly practising the spear thrusts when I noticed a strange whip cracking noise coming from right in front of me. I thrust my spear forwards and it happened again, and that¡¯s when I noticed it, I was creating a sonic boom on the tip of my spear as I was thrusting it. Normally a really fast thrust of a spear can cause the wood to vibrate slightly. Unfortunately for me, my relaxed unconscious thrusts were violent enough that the shaft was bending and snapping back fast enough to generate a sonic boom. I quickly paid more attention to my actions and slowed down; luckily for me I was unconsciously matching the timing of those around me so no one really noticed too much.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    I was much stronger and faster than normal humans. I paid more attention to what I was doing, but the repetitive nature of the task made my head wander, and for some reason (I suppose it really had to do with my new found super-ness) I started thinking about how the superman had sex. And if he had to spend so much of his time and effort on consciously slowing and gentling himself down, that was the sex even fun anymore?

    Spear practice is boring work.

    After about 4 hrs, though it felt much longer, spear practice was declared over for the day, and we were shown a real demonstration of spear fighting. A Corporal Robert was facing up against my good friend, Private David. Corporal Robert was an affable fellow, I had sparred with him yesterday and I was left with a good impression. He was the type of guy you couldn¡¯t really hate. An easy going fellow, with a lazy ever present smile. He was gracious in defeat and even joked around with the other soldiers after the spar.

    David kept looking at me with venomous hatred. I turned to Mark and asked ¡°That loss against me couldn¡¯t have been that humiliating, could it?¡± I had also sparred against Mark and won, he didn¡¯t seem to be angry at me.

    Mark gave me a pointed look and said ¡°The Staff Sergeant punished him for attacking you before you were ready. He got five lashes from Bernard¡¯s whip. Barnard gave him five more for breaking your wooden sword.¡± He said looking down at my belt loop which now had David¡¯s old sword.

    David noticed Mark¡¯s look at my sword and snarled. David and Corporal Robert squared off and started the demonstration they were using real spears, unlike us, we were literally using sharpened sticks. They circled each other jabbing at each other with their spears, feeling each other out, finding the opponents range. They started moving the tips of their spears in a horizontal figure eight pattern, trying to tangle against each other hoping to create an opening to attack. David was the first to attack, lunging forward thrusting his spear at the Corporal¡¯s abdomen, the used the shaft of his spear to deflect the spear away by rotating the spear in his hands by 90 degrees , whilst also side stepping slightly to avoid the blow. The Corporal made efficient use of the opening completing the full half rotation and jabbing at David¡¯s chest with the back of his spear, pushing David away. This was meant to be a demonstration so the Corporal didn¡¯t use the opening he created to end the bout. He took a step back and reset the fight. David didn¡¯t seem to like this; he looked like he thought the Corporal was mocking him. He charged forward and used an over hand sweep, using his spear to slash at the Corporal¡¯s head. Corporal Robert matched him with the same slash. this was meant to be a training demonstration, so at you were only supposed to be using 80% of your strength and speed, so that you could maintain control and not injure your partner, but David in his rage had forgotten that and had swung full force. Corporal Robert was surprised when the spears collided he barely dodged out of the way. Ducking down and to his left, the Corporal showed his experience and superior skill by using the recoil from the overpowering to deliver a low sweep with the rear of the shaft. The sweep struck David on his calves upending him on to the dirt. The Corporal realizing that David was out of control pointed his spear at David in an obvious declaration of victory which should have ended the bout. I say should have because David swung his hand up as the Corporal was approached, throwing a handful of dirt at the Corporal¡¯s eyes blinding him. The Corporal flinched away blinking temporarily blinded by the dirt. David got up and swung his spear at the Corporal¡¯s back, there was a sickening crack as the wood splintered and broke over the helpless Corporal¡¯s back and David stood up arms raised in celebration as the rest of us looked at him in contempt.

    He turned around faced me with a smug look on his face and loudly proclaimed ¡°I claim challenger¡¯s rights!¡±

    I turned to Mark and asked confused ¡°what are challenger¡¯s rights?¡±

    ¡°It is a way for us commoner soldiers to challenge someone within the platoon to unarmed combat without reprisals, it was designed to minimise infighting and improve overall discipline¡± Mark replied looking grim

    ¡°Can he actually challenge me? I haven¡¯t been fully enlisted yet. I am still a recruit¡± I asked, annoyed more than anything else.

    ¡°I think so.¡± he replied sighing heavily

    ¡°Seriously, he attacked me. And now he has the audacity to come at me with a challenge?¡± I asked indignantly ¡°How badly can this end up?¡±

    ¡°Depends on the winner, but it is unarmed combat for a reason. You shouldn¡¯t be hurt too badly¡± he said consolingly

    ¡°I meant what are the rules and how badly can we get hurt?¡± I asked ignoring that jab.

    ¡°It¡¯s combat so injuries aren¡¯t uncommon. No one has been killed or anything but broken bones aren¡¯t uncommon¡±

    The Staff Sergeant walked up to the demonstration area. ¡°Who is the challenge directed at and what is the grievance?¡±

    By this time some of Corporal Robert friends had rushed in and carried him to the infirmary tent, whilst giving David all sorts of angry looks.

    ¡°I challenge Recruit Emris, the reason for the challenge is that he stole my instructor¡¯s sword¡± he claimed.

    The Staff Sergeant looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

    ¡°Um, sergeant is this even allowed?¡± asked one of Corporal Robert¡¯s friends.

    ¡°It is something of a loop hole.¡± The Staff Sergeant answered with an almost apologetic shrug. ¡°And why do you have Private David¡¯s sword?¡± The sergeant asked looking over at me.

    ¡°It was given to him so that Emris could continue to practice his swordsmanship, to replace the one broken by Private David. I deemed him ready to handle a real sword sergeant¡± Mark answered quickly, bailing me out.

    ¡°The matter of the sword will be resolved by the quartermaster¡±

    ¡°Does that mean that I don¡¯t have to fight?¡± I asked. ¡°I was about to head to the medical tent to check on Corporal Robert, I am a pretty good healer¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately no. although you got approval to use the sword, it was Private David¡¯s so his grievance also has some merit.¡±

    I made my way to the demonstration area; I wasn¡¯t worried about the fight. Even before my body was improved I would be confident. I was surprisingly good at fighting. I had a green belt in karate, which doesn¡¯t actually mean much in a fight, but it did mean I knew how to block a punch and how to throw a punch. I also had a lot of cousins my age and we were into rough housing¡­ and it turned out I was pretty good at joint locks and choke holds that I had seen used in MMA and subsequently used in our rough housing bouts. Plus now I had superhuman strength and speed¡­ that kind of helped.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to kill you!¡± David said with an insufferable grin on his face. He looked mad, not angry mad, raving-lunatic-in-a-straightjacket-threatening-a-superhero mad.

    ¡°Um, can he do that? What exactly are the rules?¡± I asked the Staff Sergeant

    ¡°No weapons, no groin shots, no eye gouging. You fight to the first blood or till one of you is judged not to be able to continue.¡±

    Ok, finally some rules. I didn¡¯t want to fight, so the simplest thing would be to end this quickly. The thought of losing never even occurred to me.

    I nodded my head in acknowledgement. ¡°I will be the judge.¡± The Staff Sergeant proclaimed.

    He raised his left arm up. David squared up to me ready to fight; I turned 45 degrees away from him my left side slightly closer to him than my right. The sergeant dropped his hand to start the fight and¡­ it was over. I started walking away whilst David crumpled to the ground holding his nose. I had quickly jabbed him in the nose. Drawing first-blood. And winning the fight quickly.

    The sergeant looked at David crumpled on the floor holding his bleeding nose and said ¡°Emris is the winner. All matters between Private David and recruit Emris are now considered settled¡±

 Chapter 7: Overachieving Swordsman Recruit #2

    I walked over to the medical tent, looking for Corporal Robert. He was on the bed laying prone, shirtless, revealing a massive ugly looking bruise that was starting to form. A medic hovering over him, tutting.

    ¡°Ouch that looks like it hurts¡± I said to no one in particular. ¡°How are you doing Corporal?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Hurts like hell, I am going to kill that little bastard the next time I see him.¡± he said grimacing in pain

    ¡°Well you won¡¯t have to wait long; he should be coming to the tent any time now. The bastard challenged me to a duel, so I broke his nose. And you aren¡¯t going to be hurting anybody for the next 5 weeks at least, if I miss my guess¡± I said

    ¡°Good eye¡± the medic stated. ¡°I was going to reduce the swelling and let out some of the blood maybe even perform a venesection to accelerate his wellness¡±

    ¡°Why? All he has is a couple of bruised or cracked ribs. It will heal faster if we don¡¯t do anything. All bloodletting is going to do is make you wrap the letting site which may cause pneumonia¡±

    ¡°I follow the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen, I will not be talked down to by a recruit with folksy wisdom¡± he said snootily.

    ¡°I also know of the teaching of Hippocrates of Kos and Galen of Pergamon, but bloodletting would require taping his ribs. This would mean he wouldn¡¯t be able to breathe as deeply, thus unable to expel the stale air. So the foul air may settle at the bottom of his lungs and that foul air could cause pneumonia¡± I explained calmly ¡°and as to why I interfere in your course of treatment: In quascunque autem aedes introiero, eas adaegrotantium opem ingrediar. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick.¡± I replied reciting a passage from the Hippocratic Oath, I had done a paper on the history of modern medicine for my pharmacology class.

    He looked at me, sighed ¡°I apologise, I didn¡¯t expect to find someone as educated as you in the countryside, especially amongst the recruits. But I still recommend a full course of weekly venesections to accelerate his healing.¡±

    ¡°Go ahead, but I really don¡¯t see how reducing the amount of blood he has will help heal his bones any faster.¡±

    I turned to Corporal Robert. ¡°This is what you need to do for the next 4-5 weeks:

    First and foremost rest and take time off work if you need to

    Breathe normally and cough when you need to ¨C this helps clear mucus from your lungs to prevent chest infections

    If you need to cough, hold a pillow against your chest provides support and allows you to clear your lungs more.

    After a couple of days start walking around and sometimes move your shoulders to help you breathe and clear mucus from your lungs

    Take 10 slow, deep breaths every hour to help clear your lungs

    Try to sleep more upright for the first few nights¡± I said, reciting the NHS¡¯s recommendations on the treatment of bruised or broken ribs, it was on a poster in one of the corridors I passed multiple times daily for 3 years.

    I also ground up some willow bark and snuck in some of my stolen paracetamol to make pain relieving tea to help with the pain.

    ¡°Get some rest, it will help you get better faster¡± I said gently patting him on the shoulder.

    About this time two of the instructors came in dragging a beaten pulp behind them. They were literally dragging him by the ankles, so they obviously didn¡¯t like the guy. The guy they were dragging looked out of it: He had a broken nose. His eyes were bruised black. He had odd lumps in his jaws, which looked to me like he had recently lost a few teeth. His jaw looked dislocated. And he had 3 lumps forming on his forehead. He looked familiar, but in that state I doubted if even his mother could recognise the poor bastard.

    ¡°WHAT happened here!? WHO did that to him!!!¡± the medic shouted out loud.

    ¡°The fool here accused Boss Randel of not refereeing properly, and challenged him¡± the one on the right spat

    ¡°He is to be treated whilst being tied to the bed and when he¡¯s fixed he is going to the brig!¡± the soldier on the left said.

    ¡°Wait, is that...¡± I said trailing off in disbelief

    ¡°Yeah it¡¯s Private David¡± the one on the left said

    ¡°I can¡¯t believe he is that stupid, who would be stupid enough to challenge the beast of Bothra?¡± the medic exclaimed

    I later found out that the beast of Bothra incident involved the staff sergeant singlehandedly destroying a 20 man bandit crew, whilst they tried to rob the village of Bothra. It cost me 20 laps around the camp, worth it.

    ¡°Him apparently.¡± I said pointing my thumb in David¡¯s direction. ¡°I would be careful I was you, he seemed to be going feral out there¡± feral was an accurate term of describing David.

    I went back to the camp grounds, and we were doing spear practice again, so of we went to thrust town again, but now we were doing some straight vertical slashes as well. We continued on till about 6 in the evening and then we were told to clean up and dismissed for the day.

    Most of us were exhausted and for once this included me as well (from last night¡¯s activities), so we quickly washed up, ate our supper and went to sleep.

    The next two weeks basically repeated the last two days, we did running in the morning followed by breakfast, followed by shield practice, followed by lunch, followed by either sword practice or spear practice. The training seemed more focused on building our stamina than actual combat prowess. We would run further, hold our shields up for longer, slash for longer and of course thrust for longer. We were taught in group battles that individual skill counted for much less than the guy next to or in front of you holding up his shield properly during the battle.

    This isn¡¯t to say that we weren¡¯t taught how to fight properly, we were. We learnt about using the shields to trap, how to use the shield as a weapon to bash. We learnt how to hook using the spears, how to sweep at the ankles and how to properly slash with the spear. We were taught how to ¡°fight for the centre¡±, which was basically an imaginary point in the middle of the slash where the two opposing slashes would collide.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    But mainly it was running around building stamina.

    I learnt I was not as good at the spear as I was at the sword (I was still better than any normal human). I suppose that may have something to do with the fact that I had three more months of training with the sword than with the spear. Mentally, I actually preferred the spear to the sword. I firmly believed that the spear was the king of all bladed weapons and really nothing could compensate for the reach advantage. But for some reason I was so much more comfortable with the sword than the spear. Especially the single edged Viking sword, somehow that sword came naturally to me. Ever since the first use. It was almost as if it was made for me. I suppose that had to do with my height, I was 6¡¯1¡± which for those times made me Shaq (ok not Shaq, maybe Dwight Howard); the average height was only around 5¡¯5¡±. Matt¡¯s sword was taken from a raiding Viking captain and they tended to be a bit taller, so the sword being an appropriate length for me made sense.

    Even so, since I started using that sword, I was simply unbeatable in the platoon. I had instinctually started combining some of Chinese broadsword techniques into my fighting style and that combined with my strange comfort with the sword meant I was unbeatable. I even bested the Staff Sergeant, which I was told had never happened. I even gained the approval of Sergeant Bernard the quartermaster to swap ¡°David¡¯s¡± instructors sword to my Viking sabre.

    So that is how it came to be that I was in the demonstration area, facing off against 3 people: my own instructor Mark, a Private Thomas and another overachieving recruit (I would tell you his name but recruits weren¡¯t given the privilege of being acknowledged). I was in the centre surrounded on three sides by my opponents. I was standing straight up in a non-defensive posture, with my sabre in my right hand and my shield in my left, waiting, about 5 breaths went by, no one made a move. Then. With an unspoken command all three made their move, Mark and Thomas came at me at the same time, both with right handed overhand swings aimed at my torso. The overachiever was a bit more clever, he did a stutter step to the left cheating over more towards Thomas¡¯s side, offsetting his timing by half a step from Mark and Thomas. I stepped forward and lightly deflected Mark¡¯s strike, moving it just enough that it actually struck Thomas¡¯s strike, overachiever¡¯s stutter step meant he avoided my entanglement and came at me directly from behind instead of my left with a thrust aimed at my spine. I was moving forward in order to deflect Mark and used that same momentum, to take another step forward, literally hopping forward, moving me out of the overachiever¡¯s range. I used a reverse sweeping strike to try and hit Mark with the back of my sabre, but it was blocked at the last second by the overachiever changing his thrust into a parry.

    This first exchange had seemed like a draw, but in actuality I came out the victor. I had neutralized their biggest advantage. Ok their second biggest advantage; it was still three on one. They were no longer behind me, I could now see all their moves and they couldn¡¯t come at me from my blindside.

    Mark and Thomas charged forward again swinging laterally, the overachiever once again lagging behind them, trying to throw off my timing. Mark swung at me from the left Thomas from the right. I used the shield in my left hand to deflect Mark and swing backhand at Thomas¡¯s strike. The shield did its job and shielded me from Mark¡¯s attack. I then used the shield as a weapon punching with the edge at Mark¡¯s shoulder. I hit him fairly solidly, I felt decent contact, I wasn¡¯t using my super strength or speed, so although the shield would hurt, Mark was still in the fight. The shield strike had a dual purpose as that strike also put me in position to block overachiever¡¯s overhand strike. Thomas seemed surprised and hesitated for a microsecond, but it was enough, I won the centre in our clash and changed my parrying slash into a thrust, stopping just as the blade made contact with his shoulder. Thomas was out. But Mark had been clever, using the momentum from the shield strike to spin away behind me.

    So the second clash which seemed like a clear victory on my side became a draw.

    Actually it was almost my loss, I was still facing forward with both my sword and shield pointed in that direction. My shield was still engaged with the overachiever who had used my shield trap to trap me instead. Mark thrusted his sword at my back, any other strike and he would have won, but the thrust left me an option at victory. A crazy, insane option but an option none the less. I took a half step forward with my left foot, pushing the scrawny overachiever away, bending my torso forward to give me maximum distance away from Mark, also using the overachiever¡¯s resistance to counterbalance myself. Then came the crazy part, I swung my right leg in a upward arcing sweep, twisting my body, torqueing my waist to give myself the maximum possible leverage. I kicked. I kicked right at Mark¡¯s hands. I got lucky as Mark was caught off guard and I managed to kick his thrust left. I let go of my shield using the momentum from the kick to flip my body 180 degrees, to fall on my back. Mark had slightly overcommitted on the thrust and my kick had also unbalanced him so he stumbled forwards. I used my sabre to hook his leg and trip him down on to the ground, hitting him on the thigh with the flat of my blade. Mark was out. All three of us were also on the ground, me from my crazy twisty kicky thing, Mark from the hook trip and slash. And the overachiever had also fallen down from my shove earlier. The only one not on the ground was Private Thomas who was already ¡°dead¡±.

    The only ones still ¡°alive¡± in the battle were the two recruits. Some smart Alek in the crowd also noticed and commented loudly ¡°these new punks are really showing us veterans up, no respect for their elders!¡± and right in the middle of battle, laying there on the ground looking up at the sky, I burst out laughing. The joke wasn¡¯t even funny, but at that moment in that intensity, I burst out laughing. I wasn¡¯t the only one, Mark and the overachiever also started laughing, coughing as they were both struggling to breathe.

    No one really teaches you this, but combat is largely anaerobic. I know that every martial art teaches you to breathe whilst fighting, but during those instances of extreme high intensity, the oxygen demand by both your muscles doing the fighting and your brain working overtime to let you survive are simply too much. So the fact that after only 40 seconds we were all completely out of breath was not surprising. This had been a particularly frantic bout both sides trying to end the fight as quickly as possible. Me because I was fighting against 3 people, them because I was obviously more skilled and numbers advantage worked best when they were the freshest. Plus, this battle was happening at the end of a hard day¡¯s grind and they didn¡¯t have much stamina left anyway.

    So there we were, on the ground, exhausted, breathing in deep lungfuls of air laughing at a terrible joke, which just happened to cut the tension at the right time.

    We all got up at the same time; Mark slowly walked to the edge of the demonstration area and joined Thomas. The overachiever pried his sword out of the shield, and then grabbed the shield in his left hand. I stood up and adjusted my grip on the sword twirling my fingers on the sword as if playing a piano, waiting for the overachiever to get ready. This was now a duel of the rookies, I was obviously more skilled (and faster and stronger). But he had a shield and I didn¡¯t.

    He took a defensive stance; knees bent left leg forward, body sideways at a 45degree angle behind the shield. I was standing straight, no posture, feet shoulder width apart, sword in my right hand at the ready. He raised his sword to his waist level, the sword parallel to the ground. And I moved, attacking first. I swung overhand from my right hand side. He brought up his shield to block, correctly using the edge to block the blow, aiming to thrust right when my sword got stuck in the shield. As he brought up his shield he was blinded to my actions, at the last second I twisted my arm striking with the flat back edge of the sabre whilst also jumping to the right avoiding his counter thrust. The back edge of my sabre was flat, and bounced of the shield the natural momentum from my swing combined with the bounce brought my swing to behind his legs, which had been my target all along. I swept his legs upending him. I stomped on the shield pinning it to the ground, and pointed my sword at his neck. He accepted his defeat immediately. Letting go of his sword, and tapping on the ground twice, conceding.

    ¡°You are good!¡± I said, holding out my arm to pull him up.

    ¡°Wow, no one¡¯s ever beat me that fast before¡± he said grabbing my fore arm.

    I pulled him up to standing. ¡°My name is Emris¡± I said introducing my self

    ¡°I¡¯m Merlin.¡± He said.

    Yup, that¡¯s how I met Merlin, overachieving swordsman recruit number 2 at the conscript training camp outside Leicester

 Chapter 8: PSA - Dont Try To Break Up Fights

    So that¡¯s how we met, me being an idiot, standing out and showing off, him being the overachieving swordsman recruit number 2.

    We didn¡¯t immediately become best friends and go roaming off as an adventuring duo. Nor did we hate each other but become friends due to our mutual respect for each other¡¯s skills. This was not a buddy cop movie.

    As to me showing off ¡­ I was good at swordsmanship, instinctually good, a natural. I don¡¯t think that it was built up resentment from always staying below the radar, never standing out, always achieving 78% when 80% got you an A, had anything to do with it. The Walk had largely made me forget my ego. The 1800+ years of walking had given me a much longer perspective and those sorts of thing seemed, (I don¡¯t know how to say this without sounding like I am showing off) unworthy.

    I don¡¯t think it was the appreciation or the adulation either, I actually found that distasteful. Like with pride, it seemed too much to me, too sweet, cloying. I think the closest term I could think of to describe why I was ¡°showing off¡± was that I thought it was necessary. John, a time traveller, had left me with a trove of weapons and an imprint of how to use them. On some primal lizard brain level this must have registered as must learn fighting for safety reasons. Hence, I thought it was necessary.

    So anyway, back to the actual story.

    We didn¡¯t become best friends immediately, actually immediately afterwards I was promoted to sword instructor for Private David¡¯s team. David was healed and locked inside an old crumbling leftover roman building from when Leicester used to be used as a garrison station by the romans. It must have been the roman brig as well, the windows had iron bars and the door only had locks on the outside.

    I finished the sword practice for the day, by this point everyone was familiar with the basics of sword play and could probably be trusted to not stab themselves with the sword, and we had started to incorporate shield work with the sword practice.

    After we were dismissed from sword practice, I re-joined Mark¡¯s team as a recruit. We were led through a 10 lap run around the camp ground, to help improve our endurance. This as I said before, was thought to be the most important thing.

    The endurance training had obviously started to work; the others weren¡¯t as utterly exhausted after a day as they used to be. We washed up after our run and had our supper. Isiah and I decided to head out to the local tavern. Some, like Josiah went whoring. Even Fred had found things to do, talking to the farmers at the evening Markets.

    We were through our third pint of mead (for me) and ale (for Isiah) when we were joined by Corporal Mark and the injured Corporal Robert. Rob was recovering well, having followed my advice and we were starting to become friends. ¡°I heard you bested three today¡± Rob said with his ever present smile.

    I coughed and looked down. Isiah looked to the left and away from Mark. It was embarrassing for a recruit to beat his own instructor, let alone in a 1 vs 3 fight.

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t even the final man alive¡± Mark said with fake anger.

    ¡°Was the other newbie really that good?¡± Robert asked surprised, he had heard of the victory but not the play by play.

    ¡°He wasn¡¯t as skilled as the Corporal, maybe as good as Private Thomas, but he had real battle experience as fighting as a part of a team. He knew how to throw off my timing. And that first parry which saved the Corporal¡­ it wasn¡¯t something you could do without having some experience in group battles.¡± I said analysing the fight

    ¡°The Corporal, here, almost won, he should have won. Any other strike and it was an assured victory. It took an incredibly lucky kick for me to win.¡± I said humbling myself.

    ¡°You won 1vs3, of course you got lucky¡± Isiah said. ¡°With those odds the only way to win, is to win lucky¡± he said to me in a condescending manner. ¡°I hate the sword, give me my bow back and I could just kill you from a hundred yards away.¡± He complained.

    Isiah didn¡¯t actually struggle with the sword. In actual fact he was probably in the top 5 of all recruits in fighting with the sword. He hated the shield, he was wiry and agile. He used his speed and wits to win. The big heavy shield slowed him down and took away his biggest advantage. Also his wiry build meant he couldn¡¯t hold up the shield for as long, which meant he got hit a lot by the instructors, this added to his hatred of the shield and by extension any weapons used with the shield, like the sword.

    ¡°Funny you should mention that, the Staff Sergeant has decided that we can stop practicing the shield in the morni-¡±

    ¡°Thank fuck for that!¡± Isiah interrupted Mark in the middle of his sentence

    Mark cuffed him lightly on the back of his head and continued ¡°in the mornings in favour of archery. Wipe that grin off your face Isiah. Shields are now to be practiced with both the sword and spear. And you¡¯ll all be getting your mail armour tomorrow, that¡¯s another 20 pounds to carry with you all day.¡±

    We retired to our tents pretty soon after that. it was going to be a tiring day.

    The day went pretty much as Mark said it would. We got our short sleeved chain mail armour in the morning: it was heavy, rusty and surprisingly restrictive. I mean compared to all other types of metal armour this was probably a million times better at not being restrictive. But it was still pretty restrictive. It was the difference in dexterity between barehanded and thin woollen gloves; it¡¯s minor, but definitely noticeable.

    We ran around the camp 15 times instead of our now normal 20 laps. By the end of which, everyone was completely and utterly exhausted. Apparently, those 20lbs really added an extra challenge to the morning run.

    After breakfast, we were given our bows. Isiah was very excited. He needn¡¯t have been. We spent that morning learning how to maintain our bow, how to make string from gut and how to string our bow. That as it turned out was unbelievably hard the first time, the bow kept slipping out underneath my foot as I tried to string it. Eventually I got the hang of it after about an hour of struggling. We were meant to be able to string our bows in a battle situation in under 30 seconds, consistently. At the moment sometimes I could do it in 30 seconds if I got lucky but most of the time it took me around 5 minutes. This was going to be a work in progress.

    Then we spent the rest of the morning learning how to draw the bow, the proper technique of holding the bow when releasing. This turned out to be important because if you didn¡¯t hold the bow properly, when you released the string it clanged you right on the forearm holding the bow. Most of us found that out the hard way. It left us with deep, ugly red pulsating welts. After about 2 hrs of practice, we were judged to have been able to fire our ¡°arrows¡± without hurting our forearmsThe narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    We hadn¡¯t actually been given any actual arrows, these were rudimentary sticks made from split lumber, roughly turned into a cylinder. These sticks weren¡¯t sharpened or fletched, they weren¡¯t wasting glue on practice arrows. they didn¡¯t even have a notch for the string. We had to carve those nocks into the sticks ourselves. We figured that out by watching the more experienced archers, who had previous experience of using bows to hunt.

    After most of the recruits had at least one welt, we were given our forearm bracers. And a leather glove, this glove was basically a cylinder with a hole for the thumb. Cheap and nasty, but effective. At least according to Isiah.

    The instructors were sadists. most of the recruits couldn¡¯t even put on the bracers for the next week. The welts on their arms made it too painful to put on that coarse leather bracer. The bracers also wouldn¡¯t have been necessary if we were given full sleeved chain mail instead of short sleeved chain mail, but conscripts don¡¯t rate good armour.

    For me, the crack stung my forearm but it barely even caused my new and improved skin to redden. So to all the others it just looked like I was following the proper technique like the more experienced archers. More experienced archers like Isiah, who had been demonstrating his perfected technique with over exaggerated movements: flexing his back, pretending to adjust his aim, generally showing off.

    Isiah was looking mighty pleased with himself, rubbing the bow with hands, petting it like it was a cat. Josiah was looking furiously at both mine and Isiah¡¯s unblemished forearms. His were covered in several deep welts some of which had even opened up and he was bleeding.

    I looked at him whilst unstringing my bow and told him ¡°Josiah go to the medic, those wounds need treatment.¡±

    ¡°Who put you in charge?¡± he snarled at me.

    ¡°Just go to the medic, joey. Unless of course you want to lose that arm to sepsis.¡± I replied back not even looking at him. I was more interested in my new skin¡¯s resiliency than Josiah¡¯s latest dick measuring contest. I was noticing that the redness was fading already, and my skin was returning back to its natural dusky olive shade.

    Josiah must have been more hurt than I realised (or he was a wuss), he came at me like a mad, hurt bear, charging at me with a loud roar. I turned around and whacked him on his injure left arm with the stave. I was about to snap the stave back and whack him on the head. But, he disappeared. Like one second he was there snarling then *poof* gone. It was magic. My carefully aimed strike missed.

    I became instantly alert, looking out for his attack, when I heard ¡°Enough little brother, do as he says and go see the medic. He is never wrong about medical things. And you are bleeding a lot¡± Isiah said rather imperiously whilst looking down. I followed his gaze and saw an upended Josiah. Isiah had used his bow to snag one of Josiah¡¯s feet and yanked him off his feet.

    ¡°Impressive¡± I said looking at his bow. ¡°You¡¯ll have to show me how you did that¡± I said curious

    ¡°Only when you teach me that weird fancy sword fighting technique you used to practice in secret. The stabby one¡± he replied back. Isiah had seen me practice? How? I had been very careful. Fucking wood ninja.

    ¡°Wish I could, but that technique is still beyond me.¡± I said with my arms out in an I-am-hiding-nothing gesture. ¡°I was taken to the city of Winchester by my father, I saw some travellers from the Far East. They said they came on something called the Silk Road. They had performers, one of them, a swordsman, had an open challenge. I saw him win 20 consecutive fights with that swordsmanship. I have been trying to recreate it for 10 years.

    Growing up I would fight against my brother trying to imitate that style. I got beat up a lot, but I also got pretty good with the sword.¡± I said spinning a yarn which both explained my weird style and why I was so good with the sword. ¡°I also got hurt a lot, so I spent a lot of time being healed by my mother; I learnt the healing arts from her while she mended me¡± further expanding on my mysterious background.

    ¡°Well that does help explain somethings¡± Corporal Mark said from behind me, apparently he had been eavesdropping. I needed to start paying more attention to my surroundings.

    We went to get cleaned up and then had our lunch, halfway through lunch we were joined back up by a heavily bandaged Josiah.

    ¡°That looks like a lot bandages¡± Isiah said to his little brother (only in age, by weight there would need to be at least two Isiahs to match up to that barrel chested fucker)

    ¡°I won¡¯t be able to do any bow work for the next two weeks. I was never any good with ¡®em anyhow¡± he said sulkily. ¡°I can concentrate on the shield and spear. A proper man¡¯s weapons, no sneaky attack from a hundred yards away or flashy twirly sword shit¡± he said putting both me and Isiah down.

    We ignored the comment

    Fred, bless the daft fool, popped into the conversation with ¡°didn¡¯t Emris beat you with the spear as well?¡±

    Josiah snarled and back handed Fred in the face. Fred fell backwards, whilst falling Fred grabbed the back of Josiah¡¯s tunic dragging him to the floor as well. Josiah lost it; he started trying to wail on Fred with wild clubbing blows. Fred was hit a couple of times, then something strange happened, Fred dodged the injured left and sharply punched at the wrapped arm with his own left. Josiah howled in pain, Fred bucked underneath him and shove-punched Josiah off him. He rolled over and perfectly UFC mounted him

    Both I and Isiah were struck dumb by this, but we still reacted, jumping over the dining table trying to separate them. I was bigger than Isiah so I took Josiah, while he took the new and improved Fred.

    Never try to separate fights; it is a good way to get hit. Seriously, this is an actual piece of advice. Don¡¯t try to break up fights.

    I caught a two piece wing on the back of my head from Fred and a wild swing from Josiah which I managed to block. With my face.

    Don¡¯t try to break up fights.

    I was pissed. I first turned around and open claw jabbed Fred in the throat and then back kicked Josiah in the chest. I slowly turned around towards the fallen Josiah, walked over to him, grabbed him by the neck and pulled him up. I calmly waked out of the tent whilst dragging an utterly stupefied Josiah by the neck. I threw him back, he took a moment to calm down then charged, using a wild right hook, I bent my knees ducked underneath the punch and then punched him in the gut. He bent over puking his gut out on the floor.

    I bent down and said in to his ears ¡°You are big bastard, who believes that his superior strength makes him better than the rest. You believe that might makes right. It does.¡± I kicked out his legs; he fell in his own sick. I kneeled down carefully avoiding the sick and grabbed him by the hair. ¡°I am going to teach you today that you are a frog in a well, looking up at his tiny view of the sky and believing that he is the strongest under the heavens. I am going to teach you that there is always someone, bigger, stronger, and faster than you. In this case, it¡¯s me. Every time you think that your strength means you can bully others remember this, I will do to you double what you do to others.¡± I said rubbing his head in his own sick. He kept trying to stand up but I used my supernatural strength to hold him down. ¡°Do. You. Understand?¡± I asked slowly

    He struggled harder trying to swing his arms at me, I grabbed his flailing right arm in mine and twisted it applying a very painful thumb lock ¡°Do. You. Understand? I am not going to ask a third time without breaking something¡± I said

    ¡°YES!¡± he screamed ¡°yes, I understand.¡± He sobbed out

    ¡°Good, get up. I think the Corporal wants a word.¡± I said letting go of him

    Mark looked at me and nodded ¡°20 laps¡± he said simply. So we ran, Isiah and Fred were also running, Isiah looked at Josiah and sighed.

    ¡°That throat punch really hurt, I wasn¡¯t trying to punch you, that was an accident.¡± Fred complained.

    ¡°Since when can you fight?¡± I asked not apologizing

    ¡°Handling the animals. The sheep don¡¯t like being shorn and no animal likes the abattoir so they struggle, sometimes you have to punch ¡®em to keep ¡®em in control¡± he said shrugging.

    Who knew handling farm animals could teach you hand to hand? Certainly not me

    By the end of the 20 laps the others were exhausted, but before we could even recover we were called into formations. We rushed over, not wanting to have to run laps again. Today was spear practice, so we did that. Shield in our left hand, spear in our right. Marching and thrusting in a line, advancing a step, raising our shield to block, squaring our body, moving the shield and thrusting with our spear. Repeat for 10 paces. Then take a step back block, stab and repeat.

    We repeated this sequence for hours, until it was around 5 o¡¯clock. We were then made to run around the camp for 15 laps. The others were exhausted; I hadn¡¯t seen them this exhausted since the first day of training.

    We washed up, ate and turned in for the night.

 Chapter 9: My best friend is a cat

    I started meditating; I was rotating the energy around my meridians. I had noticed that my new meridians were a lot easier to flow the energy around in and with the better flow I was able to circulate the energy around myself a lot more times. I had cracked into the nineties the day after I got my new meridians and my rate of improvement was increasing, just as John had predicted.

    I had noticed that every 30 rotations my abilities would spike: after the first 30, I had reached the peak of the human physique. After 60 rotations my body had been broken down and born anew, I was now beyond the human limits of physical attributes, supernaturally strong, supernaturally fast. 90 quite honestly was a disappointment, sure my physical attributes increased, but not by much the main thing that happened was I was able to form a thin projection of void particles outside my body temporarily sealing of myself from the outside world.

    After 90 I could hold the void sphere for around 10 seconds. In these last 2 weeks I had reached to 99 rotations this allowed me to hold the invisible barrier up for about 90 seconds. I was about to break into the 100s and become a true mage. There was a bottleneck between 99 and 100. At the moment I was a mage disciple but after breaking through into the 100s I would become a true mage. Finally taking a step into what John called the true world.

    It was after midnight that I woke up from my meditation, not having made any progress beyond 99 rotations. I was woken up by a loud ripping noise. I opened my eyes to see a sword blade ripping my tent apart, slashing towards me. I hurriedly dodged out of the way. I rolled out of the tent from the front, without grabbing my sword or any weapon. I ducked and rolled to the left out of some kind of instinct. I felt something cold whiz past me as I rolled away, I turned around and looked up to see my assailant¡¯s face, but it was too dark. There was enough moonlight to see the shiny sword but not enough for me to clearly make out the attackers face.

    I scrambled to my feet and moved left avoiding a thrust, I tilted my body avoiding an upward slash, and I ducked underneath a decapitating strike. I kept dodging and retreating moving away from the tents moving myself to a more open ground.

    Then I heard his cackling laughter, I instantly knew who he was. ¡°I heard you¡¯ve been actin¡¯ like some kind of genius swordsman, fighting multiple opponents on your own, showin¡¯ off your fancy sabre techniques. Teaching MY RECRUITS! You lowly, filthy pleb, reaching above your station¡± he raved ¡°you beat me by cheating and then used MY reputation to cheat your way into becoming the best swordsman here. I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BEST! YOU RUINED MY PLANS!!!¡±

    I avoid a thrust at my shoulder, he was ranting and raving, but he was also swinging the sword. He didn¡¯t do the villain thing and stop to monologue. The raving lunatic was multi-tasking. ¡°Hello David¡± I said back, narrowly avoiding another slash. ¡°nice to see you out and about, haven¡¯t seen you for this past fortnight, where have you been pal?¡± a thought went through my head of {why am I antagonising the crazy man with the sword?} But that thought was interrupted by a vertical slash, which I avoided by side stepping to the right. He swung backhand with a horizontal slash, I had predicted this move and already moved out of his range.

    ¡°You dirty rat! Stop dodging and fight me!¡± he shouted, people were waking up and starting to get out of their tents by this point. Hopefully someone would come and subdue him.

    ¡°No thanks¡± I said ducking underneath another wild swing, I wanted no parts of him. I was hoping that he would make enough noise that some of the other soldiers would notice and come deal with it.

    He swung back, I dodged backwards. I fell into his trap. The backswing was a feint and he changed his swing midway and turned it into a thrust. The sword should have pierced me through, but I was saved by my new void infused skin. The sword barely left a scratch as it slid past my waist ripping my tunic. A light gleamed in David¡¯s eye; he now knew that I was more than human. He had felt the contact with my skin and instead of gutting me all he had managed to do was ruin my night shirt.

    David was opening his mouth to reveal my secret. I hurriedly summoned my kukri behind my back. I intended to use my supernatural speed to silence him. ¡°I KNEW YOU WER--¡± an arrow pierced him through the neck. At the same time I had moved stabbing him through the chest.

    It¡¯s hard to stab someone in the chest. The chest offers natural protections other parts of the body don¡¯t. The ribcage is a lot harder to penetrate than you would think from Hollywood movies. There are the hard bones and two layers of strong intercostal muscle, the lungs which is soft and kind of like a sponge and the heart, which is surprisingly thick and hard to pierce as it is surrounded by the double walled fibrous pericardial sac. But I managed it. I saw David¡¯s eyes go wide as he realise what had happened, then I had to close my eyes as some blood sprayed onto my face from the neck wound. I pulled my knife out, and blood gushed out. His mouth was filled with blood as the blood rushed out of his heart and filled his lungs. He died pretty quickly as the blood was no longer being pumped into his brain and the brain cells died of oxygen deprivation.

    Various thoughts went through my head:

    #1: who shot that arrow?

    #2: Is it still Deus ex-Machina if you were about to kill him anyway?

    #3: I just murdered someone, it was an active choice, he had found out about my secret and I had actively decided he could not be allowed to live.

    #4: It is a lot harder to stab someone than I realised. It was. People don¡¯t realise it but they naturally hold back some of their strength in a fight. It takes years of training or some psychopathy to fully consciously hit someone full force. It¡¯s like those brick breaking karate videos, the key is to aim through the brick and follow through. Normal people instinctually aim at the top of the brick and don¡¯t follow through.

    I collapsed on the grass, sitting down opposite the body. I took a couple of deep ragged breaths, turned over on all fours and started to heave. I wasn¡¯t feeling sick to my stomach. That would come later. This was the excess adrenaline. I saw Isiah come walking up, he had his own hunting bow in his hand, a quiver slung on his back. I guess I knew who shot David. He offered me his hand to pull me up, I gladly accepted. I grabbed his hand with my hands (which still trembling from the excess adrenaline still coursing through my body) and he pulled me up.

    ¡°Thanks¡± I said, he knew I meant for shooting David and not for picking me up

    ¡°You¡¯re heavier than you look¡± he said acknowledging my thanks, not mentioning anything about my bloodied hands.

    ¡°What happened here!?¡± Staff Sergeant Randel said coming through the crowd that was forming. He was followed by Corporal Mark.

    He had a lit torch with him, he pointed it down to look at the body, when he saw that it was David¡¯s he furrowed his brows and then sent Mark to check on the brig and see what had happened to the person who was supposed to be guarding David.

    The Staff Sergeant noticed the arrow sticking out of David¡¯s neck and Isiah¡¯s bow and said ¡°you two follow me¡±

    We followed behind quietly; he took us into the medical tent. Not where I was expecting, I was expecting the command tent or straight to the brig, not the medical tent.

    He looked at my upper body and commanded ¡°strip¡± I immediately took my ruined shirt off. The medic came bustling in, yawning.

    ¡°Check him out¡± he said to the medic pointing at me.

    ¡°It¡¯s just a scratch¡± I said. It was just a scratch I could feel how deep the thrust went and I knew that it hadn¡¯t penetrated deeply at all. But it was bleeding profusely so the jack the medic checked me out. He cleaned up the wound and wrapped it and pronounced that it was indeed just a scratch.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    ¡°So, what happened?¡± the Sergeant asked brusquely.

    I explained to him about sleeping in my tent when I heard it being ripped. I told him about me avoiding the wild slashes from an unknown assailant, about recognizing it was David because of his mad rantings, about him wanting to kill me because ¡°I took his rightful place as the best swordsman¡±. I then told him about him nearly stabbing me through, about the arrow piercing his throat and then me stabbing him through the chest.

    He seemed to have figured most of it out already and was nodding along to my story. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you use your knife from the beginning?¡± he asked

    ¡°He was stark raving mad, I thought me being unarmed might calm him down. I was really just hopping to distract him long enough for someone to sneak in from the back and tackle him to the ground. I didn¡¯t want to kill¡± I said being completely honest about the situation.

    He turned to Isiah. ¡°Why did you shoot him? Why not wait for someone more experienced?¡±

    ¡°I saw Emris lead him away towards the opening, the fight woke me up. I saw that Emris was unarmed so I took my hunting bow when I went outside. When I saw him almost stab Emris I thought I should end this, so I loosed my arrow.¡±

    ¡°Why did you aim at his throat not his back? It was a dark night¡± the Sergeant asked. I sat upright at that question I hadn¡¯t actually thought about it until that point, but that shot was incredibly accurate and well timed. It was not a fluke.

    ¡°My aim was off, I was training with the practice bows and my own hunting bow is weighted different. I was aiming for his heart.¡± He said. I saw that the Sergeant had bought it, but after 4 months of being friends, I could tell that he was lying. An arrow shot through the neck from 50 yards on a dark night, it shouldn¡¯t have been possible, but my instincts told me that Isiah had done just that.

    ¡°That¡¯s a strange knife, where did you get it?¡± the Sergeant asked looking at my knife

    ¡°My dad got it for me. he said it was modelled after the old Greek swords called kopis.¡± I lied. I don¡¯t think the kukri and the kopis were related by history, but the shapes were remarkably similar so I knew that lie would work.

    The Sergeant asked to see the kukri; he weighed the thing in his hands and gave it a couple of swings. ¡°It¡¯s heavy and unbalanced¡± he said ¡°It swings like an axe¡± which is true, the forward curvature of the kukri made it front heavy by design. This gave it tremendous chopping power, and the thick spine and large size did make the kukri a pretty hefty weapon.

    ¡°It¡¯s a memento from my father¡± I said, taking the knife back.

    ¡°Sarge, you should come have a look at this¡± we heard from the other side of the tent, someone had brought David¡¯s corpse in through the other side, and the medic was examining the body

    Autopsy were a taboo in the 6<sup>th</sup> century so there wasn¡¯t going to be a medieval version of CSI, the cause of death was obvious anyway, exsanguination due to a stab to the heart and I was the culprit, case closed.

    The medic had taken David¡¯s tunic off, and had him prone on the bench, his back facing the ceiling. There was a weird shaped tattoo on his back underneath his left shoulder; it was very small about the size of a pea. I don¡¯t even think anyone would notice it unless one was looking for it.

    It looked like ¦·, the Greek letter psi. I didn¡¯t know what that meant so I looked at the Sergeant.

    ¡°The witches Mark¡± he said grimly. ¡°None of what we say gets out of this tent, do I make myself clear?¡± he said looking at both me and Isiah.

    We nodded

    ¡°That is the witches Mark, which means he was a traitor, working for the witch. She must have been trying to influence his mind and something went wrong which is probably why he was acting so strange.¡± He said. He turned to us and said ¡°If anyone asks, tell them he went insane, due to petty jealousy.¡±

    Mark came rushing in through the front flaps of the tent, behind him were two of the more burly soldiers in the platoon, they were carrying a body through the tent. ¡°How did he die?¡± I asked.

    ¡°He¡¯s not dead, just unconscious.¡± Mark laughed. ¡°It¡¯s just a bump on the head.¡±

    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t have moved him; he is going to wake up with the world¡¯s worst headache.¡± I said relieved.

    The medic mixed something noxious smelling in a bowl and the room started smelling strongly of ammonia, he brought the bowl to the unconscious soldier¡¯s nose. The soldier woke up with a start, he was disorientated and holding his head. I walked over, while the medic threw out the noxious liquid. I took a candle from the table; I lit the candle using the caged torch that was being used to light the tent.

    I snapped my fingers to get the man¡¯s attention. ¡°Look at the candle in my hand. Follow the flame.¡± I moved the candle to the left and then to the right, he had trouble following the light. He was obviously concussed. ¡°Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is?¡± I asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s Tuesday and I am at the training camp.¡± He said annoyed and confused.

    ¡°It¡¯s Friday, you got hit in the head, you are going to be confused and disorientated for a while. You may also feel a little sick.¡± I said handing him a bowl. ¡°You could be bleeding inside your skull, I am sorry but I am going to keep you awake for the night, to make sure you are fine.¡± I had him chew on some willow bark to help with the pain. Probably not the best idea since aspirin (which is what willow bark is) also has an antiplatelet effect so if he really was bleeding inside this would make it worse.

    I asked the medic to have someone stay with the soldier to keep the waking the soldier up once every hour. In the two weeks since I had met him the medic refused to tell me his name. But we had become familiar, he had seen me work and had realised I was a fairly good medic and he had come to trust my medical advice. We could almost be considered friends; but the bastard still wouldn¡¯t tell me his name though.

    I walked outside the tent only to be greeted by Mark. ¡°What happened?¡±

    I explained the whole thing again, from the beginning. He frowned when I told him about the arrow to the neck and how Isiah had misaimed, but otherwise said nothing. I left out the part about the witch¡¯s symbol tattooed on David; I also left out the part about my skin and actively deciding to murder David to protect my secret, obviously.

    Mark looked at me sighed, and said ¡°David was always a hot head, but he had been acting stranger since last year.¡± He looked into the stars, so I did the same. They were different than the ones I remembered from modern times, the sky was different. There were more stars visible, the light pollution from modern times obscured so much of the night sky, the milky way was visible where as it was impossible to see during normal times from the cities or the suburbs.

    ¡°You killed your first man, you will kill again. It¡¯s the soldier¡¯s life. It is going to change you. You lose a part of yourself every time you take a life, not a big part, just the part that matters the most. It can chip away you, sometimes it breaks you and you run away from it all to become a barley farmer, like Mathew. Sometimes it just scars you until all you are left with his a gruff calloused old man who lives for battle.¡± He sighed and looked back down; I continued staring at the sky contemplating his words

    ¡°My advice; find a woman who loves you, marry her, have a bunch of kids. The killing can¡¯t take away what you have already given away¡±

    I turned to face him ¡°do your parent¡¯s know of this family?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Not yet, I am scared that mother wouldn¡¯t approve.¡± He said

    I scoffed ¡°Bess is the kindest most generous soul I have ever met. All she wants is your happiness¡±

    ¡°It is more complicated than that. Liz is the widow of my former squad mate and she has a one year old boy. I love him like my own, but I am afraid my mother wouldn¡¯t understand¡± he said.

    ¡°Is that the reason you won¡¯t go back?¡± I asked

    ¡°Yeah¡±

    ¡°Do you love her? If you love her then Bess will love her. Your mom worries about you¡± I sighed ¡°I feel tired, how am I going to sleep? my tent is all ruined.¡±

    ¡°Probably best if you don¡¯t wake up the quartermaster, wait till tomorrow morning.¡± He patted me on the shoulder and went on his way.

    I walked back to my ruined tent and started picking through the wreckage. It wasn¡¯t that bad, the only thing that was damaged was my tent, my pack with all of my clothes and equipment were all okay. I was in the middle of repacking when I heard a polite cough behind me, I turned around.

    ¡°We should talk¡± Isiah said to me.

    ¡°Yes, we should.¡± I said back.

    We walked away from the camp. Walking in the opposite direction to the town, we had walked for about 10 minutes and we were now in the middle of a field, cattle grazing probably. There was nothing but grassland around us and we would be able to see anyone before they came into earshot.

    There was awkward silence around us for a moment before Isiah broke the silence. ¡°You aren¡¯t a normal human.¡± Not a question, a statement. ¡°I saw David make contact, he should have run you through. You aren¡¯t working for the witch or David wouldn¡¯t have hated you. Who are you?¡±

    ¡°No, I am not a normal human. And no I don¡¯t work for the witch, I hadn¡¯t even heard of her till Mark came riding into the village.¡± I said ¡°as to whom I am, my name really is Emris, I was born a mage. Both my parents were normal humans and everything I have said about them is the truth¡± I said lying, even when revealing my secrets I couldn¡¯t reveal that I was from the future.

    ¡°I am not like those normal mages. I can¡¯t control fire or the wind or water or lightning. All I can do is store stuff.¡± I explained what my power was and how I had come to find out about them, minus all modern things.

    ¡°You aren¡¯t just a simple human either; no ordinary human would have been able to see me being stabbed from 50 yards away, on a dark night. And no ordinary human would be able to shoot someone through the neck at 50 yards on a dark night. What are you?¡±

    ¡°No, I am not an ordinary human. I am a were, a turned were. Specifically I am a were-cat¡± he said whilst changing his hand into a paw, his eyes became vertical slits.

    My best friend is a were-cat

 chapter 10: I Need A Fucking Drink

    My best friend was a were-cat

    I stood there a while digesting the news ¡°Who else knows?¡± I finally asked.

    ¡°About me? No one. My parent, the one who turned me, died.¡± Isiah looked down, took a deep breath and exhaled. ¡°I was out in the woods hunting, when I found this woman. She was bleeding from these horrific wounds on her chest, so I quickly went to help her. She thought she was under attack so she slashed me, nearly killing me. The next thing I know I am waking up in her arms with a metal taste in my mouth. She explained that she had been attacked by a pack of were-wolves, and she almost killed me by accident. She explained that she had turned me to save my life. Weres are really hard to kill, so she lived for 10 days before succumbing to her injuries, she taught me all she could during those 10 days. It has been 5 years since, I figured out most of the rest on my own.¡±

    ¡°Thank you for telling me.¡± I said.

    ¡°Now we know each other¡¯s secrets.¡± He said. ¡°Although I know you aren¡¯t telling me everything, like how you really learnt to fight.¡±

    ¡°Mages and weres both live for an extremely long time, I am sure that in time we will know everything about each other.¡± This was true, truly powerful mages could live up to 5000yrs old (not to mention I was an immortal) and weres could live for almost 2000yrs, but they rarely did, due to the constant interspecies wars. Fighting like cats and dogs had a completely different meaning in the true world.

    ¡°So what do we do now?¡± Isiah asked.

    ¡°We hide amongst the humans and carry on. I suppose, technically we should be on the side of the witch, but my parents were humans, all of the people I know are humans¡­ I just can¡¯t side with the witch¡± I said.

    ¡°No, you idiot. I meant what do we do now?¡± he said bursting out into laughter

    ¡°Well, I feel like I am about to make a breakthrough in power and I have no tent. Would you mind being my lookout as I meditate?¡±

    I sat down to meditate, folding my legs underneath me. I opened up my connection to the void. Two tiny holes opened up on the palms of my hand, I started gathering the energy into my meridians, the gaseous vortex of void energy in my core started to rotate. My meridians started to vibrate, phasing in and out of reality until they achieved a quantum state of duality, being both here and in the void at the same time. I clapped my hands together, completing the circuit. The energy started to rotate through my body. Each rotation seemed to speed up the vortex, increasing its centripetal force, causing the gaseous vortex to compress into itself. The speed of the vortex rotation kept increasing, until I reached 99 rotations; normally at this point the vortex would have reached its apex of speed and collapsed back out, like a hurricane losing energy and turning back into a tropical storm. But this time it didn¡¯t, I managed to break past the 99 rotation barrier reaching a 100 rotations and the vortex imploded inwards. The vortex turned inwards forming a ball which kept condensing in on itself. After what felt like hours the ball condensed into a singularity and then exploded. The void energy washed through my body. I braced myself for pain expecting the void energy to rip my organs apart to reforge them, again. The pain I was expecting never came; instead all I got was a cool refreshing sensation as if jumping into a refreshing pool on a hot summer¡¯s day. The void energy that rushed in was different from before. It was denser, almost a liquid, it was much more compressed and more potent. It went into all the cells and caused a qualitative change to the void energy inside those cells. I felt refreshed, like I had boundless energy and I couldn¡¯t get tired, no matter how much I worked. Previously I had a near infinite stamina, but that was mainly an inexhaustible mental stamina, my body still got tired, but my mind would push past those limits. Now it felt those physical limits simply no longer existed.

    I breathed in deeply and exhaled. I was finally a true mage, with the ability to enter the true world, whatever that actually meant. I looked inside myself to see what changes had occurred to my core. Gone was the simple gaseous vortex, now there was a circular liquid ball of void energy surrounded by a spiralling disk of gaseous void energy clouds: Like a newly formed protostar surrounded by its circumstellar disk. These gas clouds were constantly being condensed into a liquid and accreted into the core. My meridians were now in a constant quantum dual phase, pulling in just enough energy from the void to sustain the slow expansion of the liquid protostar that was now at my core.

    I opened my eyes, they adjusted to the dark instantly, I was able to see much more clearly in the dark, it wasn¡¯t like I expected it to be, everything was in different shades of blue, purple or black, you could guess at the actual colour of things but it was all just a blue-purple. Even the grass was more purple than green.

    ¡°Before you even say anything, go to the stream and clean up. Jeez you stink¡± Isiah said, he was standing about 10 yards away from me holding his nose.

    I sniffed the air, BIG MISTAKE, holly hell I stunk. There was an oily film of impurities stuck on my skin slowly drying into a smelly crusty mess. This was all the stuff ejected from my cells when they were ¡°washed¡±. I quickly ran to the stream which was nothing more than an artificial water channel that was diverted from the River Soar to bring water to the farms.

    After a thorough cleaning, I sniffed myself again. Satisfied that I was clean, I dried myself and changed into new clothing. Those old clothes needed to be burnt, they were covered in David¡¯s blood from last night and now the filth from whatever came out of my every pore. Without even thinking I manipulated the void to be in anti-phase with the world, I used this discordant edge to vaporise those old clothes. This power could be useful, but I wasn¡¯t strong enough to sustain this power for long.

    I walked up to Isiah. ¡°Thanks for looking out for me, I felt like the breakthrough was imminent and I couldn¡¯t waste the opportunity.¡± I said gratefully

    ¡°That power of yours is really useful¡± He ignored my thanks and said, looking at my clothes. ¡°What else have you got stored in there?¡±

    ¡°Anything and everything, I have my whole life¡¯s possessions stored inside. It is very useful in that way. ¡± I said looking up at the sky; it was still at least a couple of hours until dawn.

    Suddenly I felt all of the night¡¯s events crash down on me. I had killed someone. I had taken a life. At that moment my new reality finally sank in. Even after almost 4 months of living here in the 6<sup>th</sup> century I still thought of myself as a 21 year old from modern England, temporarily stuck back in time. I had half expected John to Deus ex Machina his way into my life at the first sign of trouble and whisk me back to my present time and into my safe life. I was finally accepting my new reality, I was stuck here, out of my depth, in a time not my own and a reality that I barely recognised anymore. My best friend was a were-cat.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    Thinking of Isiah also reminded me of the fact that Isiah had also shot David. I sat down opposite Isiah and said ¡°That was the first person I have ever killed. I should be freaking out, but I am not. That is what is freaking me out.¡±

    ¡°Maybe it¡¯s because I am no longer a human, maybe it is because I grew up a huntsman. I didn¡¯t really feel anything when I took aim and loosed that arrow. He was just another deer for me to kill. Perhaps that makes me a monster, but that¡¯s what I am now¡± he said transforming his hands into claws, his eyes going yellow with an eerie glow, his slit like cats eyes dilating into vertical eye shapes in the night

    ¡°A monster wouldn¡¯t have risked being exposed to help a friend in need.¡± I said thanking him. ¡°I need a drink, can we even get drunk anymore?¡± I hadn¡¯t even managed to get a buzz even after spending many of my evenings at Ian¡¯s public house. My new improved metabolism seemed to be able to process the alcohol faster than it could affect me.

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t know, wasn¡¯t a fan of Ian¡¯s beer when I was young. And your improved beer came along after I was turned, so I have never been drunk.¡± Isiah said.

    I opened up a connection to the void and looked through John¡¯s greatest gift to me, his collection of alcoholic beverages. It had every imaginable vintage of wine from some of the best wine makers to have ever lived. I saw an entire case, A CASE, of Henri Jayer¡¯s Vosne-Roman¨¦e Premier Cru- Cros Parantoux among the thousands of bottles. But these weren¡¯t what I loved. I could appreciate wine, its history and artistry, but I wasn¡¯t able to fully appreciate the subtle nuances of wine. What I loved was hidden away right at the heart of the all of the drinks stored inside my void space. Stored inside its own special vault

    Whisky. There were thousands of bottles of whisky, from hundreds of distilleries; there were some truly ridiculous whiskies there: Shackleton, Macallan Ms, 1966 Springbank, Dalmore constellation 1964, Black Bowmore, 1974 Ardbeg. It was a truly ridiculous collection of whisky, worth billions in modern money.

    I pulled out one of my favourite bottles of whisky for beginners, Bulleit bourbon, from the vault and poured it into a clean water pouch. I took out the water skin from the void, careful to make sure Isiah didn¡¯t see the modern bottles inside the void.

    ¡°I want you to try something¡± I said offering him the water skin. ¡°I used a process called distillation to distil beer. It was a method used by Alexander of Aphrodisias to distil water in order to purify it; I thought doing the same to beer might improve the taste. Didn¡¯t work, but I left the result in a barrel for about six months, and when I came back it tasted like this.¡± He looked at me suspiciously and took a tentative sip, and immediately spat it out, coughing and spluttering. He was looking at me angrily, but then he tasted whatever was still left in his mouth. He sniffed the water skin again, and then took an even more tentative sip. This time he didn¡¯t spit it out, but he did grimace when swallowing. By the time he had his fifth sip he was clearly enjoying it. We sat up all night drinking and talking. We both couldn¡¯t get drunk; our metabolisms were too strong for something like alcohol to affect us.

    We made our way back to the campsite when the first rays of the morning came. we made it just in time to hear the morning clangs, Isiah went into his tent to clean up and get ready for the new day. I did the same, except out in the open, because my tent was ruined to bits. I was done in 5 minutes, and then I used the remaining time to salvage anything useful from the ruined tent and make my way down to the assembly point. I informed Mark that I was going to see the quartermaster about my tent and made my way to see the quarter master.

    The quarter master yelled at me for what seemed like days, he seemed to imply I had done this on purpose, destroying his property on purpose to undermine his authority. He told me that I had personally disrespected him by letting his tent get destroyed. At no point during his near hour long rant did he mention, David or the fact that I had killed a human being, but he made sure to point out that I had scratched his leather pack that he had let me borrow.

    By the time the quartermaster had finished with me: all of the recruits had assembled. The Staff Sergeant had addressed all of last night¡¯s excitement and everyone had run their laps. We were told to pretend that everything was normal and that we were to carry on as if nothing had happened.

    Incredibly that is precisely what happened, no one asked any questions as I joined the others for breakfast. The day carried on as usual, we carried on practicing with the bow in the morning, trying to improve the speed at which we did everything. Improving the speed at which we strung our bow. Improving the speed at which we drew our bow. Improving the rate at which we reloaded. Improving the rate of our releases. Improving our technique of loosing the arrow. It seemed to me that they were more interested in the rate of fire than individual accuracy, hoping to turn the enemy into pin cushions with sheer rate of fire rather than accurate archery. We hadn¡¯t yet been given any fletched arrows to fire at any targets.

    Things continued on as normal for the next week, we were trained with the bow in the mornings learning how to shoot the bow. By the end of the week we were even given fletched arrows and targets to shoot. Isiah proved to be the best shot, firing into the centre ring with unerring accuracy. The afternoons were spent practising with the either spear or the sword. The only change came in the form of the more domestic training sessions that had started happening on Sunday mornings.

    Sundays were supposed to be a day of rest, this was a Christian nation and Sundays were meant for rest and for going to church. But we were preparing for war, so a day of relaxation was too much time wasted. In order to do something useful with that time we were given lessons, these lessons were important and necessary, but no one thought of them as part of a soldier¡¯s life. We were taught how to sew our clothes in order to maintain them. We learnt to cook, so that we had variety on our long marches and didn¡¯t survive solely on hard bread and dried meats. Some of the more dextrous were taught fletching arrows, whilst the rest of us were taught how to maintain weapons and armour.

    The issue of David¡¯s attack and his subsequent death had been ignored for the most part, but it had caused some logistical problems. Mainly it meant that there were 5 recruits without an instructor. This issue was not as big as it could have been because David had been in the brig, so the other instructors had already been covering up the gap left by David. the issue arose with the sword training instructor. Me. Since I was the one who killed David and these were David¡¯s recruits, it was deemed that I was not allowed to teach them. For reasons. Eventually the hassle of the instructor shuffle went too far and it was decided that they would be split up amongst the squads that had 4 recruits. That plan also fell apart as I was in one of the 4 man squads.

    In the end after almost a month of total training it was decided that the entire platoon would get shuffled around. And in that shuffle they decided to form an elite squad of recruits to act as an example to the rest of the recruits. The new squad was given to Mark to control, Mark had been in the military for 5 years and was one of the senior instructors. Also it helped that 3 of the 5 were his recruits. The squad consisted of:

    Me. I was chosen for my sword skills.

    Isiah was chosen for his archery skills.

    Josiah, who had become my obedient lackey since his beating, was the best shield bearer. He had been under close scrutiny since the fight and his change in attitude had corresponded with his improvement in skill, so they stuck him with me because I was a good influence.

    Frank from Leicester, who was supposed to be the spear specialist, but I thought I was better (I still hadn¡¯t given up on making the spear my primary weapon).

    And Merlin. He was the second best with the sword and sneaky good with knives. It was as part of this legendary squad that I got to know Merlin.

 chapter 11: Seriously, a foot race?

    Squad nine, that¡¯s what our squad was named. Nine.

    We were supposed to be an example to the other recruits, the best recruits at each position combining to form an all-star squad. We should have a had more impressive name like the alpha squad, or elite squad, but no. we were called squad nine, because we came 9<sup>th</sup> in the foot race as a combined squad.

    We could have come first, both Isiah and I were faster than everyone else. We could have literally carried the rest of the squad on our backs and come first, but that would have meant exposing our supernatural abilities; probably not the best idea. So Isiah and I ambled our way to 3<sup>rd</sup> and 4<sup>th</sup> talking about the new squads and about David¡¯s former recruits, who had sort of been the unintentional trigger of these changes.

    Isiah brought up the point that David had been a traitor and these were his recruits, there was a possibility that they too were traitors. ¡°It¡¯s probably the reason they shuffled the squads, they separated them so that they could observe them individually and see if any of them are working together. That kind of collusion would have been impossible to notice if they were on the same team¡± I said to Isiah.

    We were talking out in the open, but we were being careful. We both had supernatural hearing so we could talk quietly and still be able to hear each other.

    ¡°They probably already know who it is.¡± He said back

    ¡°Um, should we be helping your brother finish the race?¡± I asked changing the conversation. Joey was probably one of the slowest runners in the entire platoon. He was also one of the largest, being almost twice as wide as the average recruit (and twice as strong, the idiot was a muscle head).

    ¡°No, let him finish on his own.¡± Isiah said with very little feeling

    ¡°Your brother seems to only understand brute force and you are much stronger than him, why didn¡¯t you bring him to heel?¡± I asked with genuine curiosity.

    ¡°I am 5 years older than him by 5 years, but he was stronger than me by the time he was 8, he was a bully back then too¡­ I became his favourite target; so I started spending more and more time in the woods just to avoid him. I guess it worked out, I became a good woodsman. By the time I was turned into a were the dynamic had already been well established. Plus those first few years I thought I was a monster, that I would turn feral and kill everyone I knew. It made me very cautious around people. There were times I nearly killed him¡­¡±

    We finished the race in silence. Merlin won the race, exhausted and red faced having sprinted for the last half mile. Isiah finished 3<sup>rd</sup>, I came in 4<sup>th</sup>, walking across the line not even the least bit tired. Frank finished a respectable 8<sup>th</sup>. Josiah finished 40<sup>th</sup> and collapsed on the ground huffing and puffing like a great beast of burden. Our points were tallied, and we had come in 9<sup>th</sup> place in total points so we were squad 9.

    A fucking foot race, we were going to go face an army led by a magical witch with possible undead soldiers, and things were being decided by a foot race.

    We carried out training in Leicester for another 3 months, till the start of July, the days got longer and so did the training. We ran for longer, practiced for longer; we even started sparring with each other using blunted weapons.

    I was the best in the squad with the sword, followed by Merlin, then Isiah who was almost as good as Merlin, then Frank and Josiah.

    Isiah was the best in the squad with the bow. He was a dead shot from a hundred and fifty yards, which was beyond impressive considering the quality of bows at the time. I was the second best, improving at a rapid rate due to my supernatural eyesight and John¡¯s imprinted memories. I was followed by Frank; he was surprisingly accurate up to about 80 yards but had trouble at greater distances. Josiah was terrible at archery, even after almost 5 months of training he could only manage to hit the outer rings of the target at anything further than 70 yards. Surprisingly Merlin was the worst of the group, only hitting the outer edges at anything further than 50 yards and not even managing to hit the target at anything further than 75 yards. Well except for that one time he managed to hit the centre from 150.

    Frank proved he was indeed better than me with the spear, if only narrowly. He could beat me 3 out of 5 times, of course I was deliberately restricting myself to about the strength and speed I had before I started practising the Idiotic Taoist Immortal Cultivation Manual (John¡¯s name not mine, it was his technique). Merlin, Isiah and Josiah were close to equals. Josiah favoured power, trying to overwhelm his opponent with every strike. Merlin and Isiah favoured the speed approach.

    Josiah was the best with the shield. He was given a big rectangular shield, compared to our smaller round shields. He used his massive power to shield rush people, using his body like a battering ram. Demanding attention as someone behind him used the distraction to sneak in and attack.

    In any other squad Merlin would have been the unquestioned best swordsman. He was better than most of the much more experienced Privates and almost as good as the average Corporal. Unfortunately for him I was untouchable; my progress with the sword even with me restricting my strength and speed was unbelievable. I was now able to consistently eek out victories against the whole squad, even in mixed combat. Actually that¡¯s not true. In 4 vs 1 mixed combat I would win against the rest if, and only if, Isiah was not using his bow. His range advantage was too big.

    Over the four months we got to know each other, we would become a squad so we had to be able to work as a team and function together for our own survival. We learnt about each other, for instance we learnt that Frank could sing and play the lute. He was pretty good, better than most of the travelling minstrels that played in the local taverns.

    Frank was a good guy, tall, standing at 5¡¯8¡±, powerfully built. He was loyal to a fault. He was a man who believed in honour above all else. He took to military life like a fish to water. Loyalty and honour are good traits in a military man. Frank was older than us at 28, he already had a family. He had a wife, two 8 year old kids (twin daughters) and a little sister-in-law who lived with them. Frank was a local man, so he was able to visit the family a lot. This was a good thing for the rest of us as his wife was an excellent cook. She made sure to pack some things for us, every time Frank visited.

    Actually on the point of food, 6<sup>th</sup> century food sucked. There were so many things modern me took for granted that simply weren¡¯t available. Like pepper, seriously they didn¡¯t have simple seasoning. There were no tomatoes, no chillies, no citrus fruits, they didn¡¯t even have potatoes. Meat was rare, and usually pork. The bread was made of barley and rye, it was dense and bitter, I am sure hipsters would love it. The only fruits available weren¡¯t really eaten. The people had an unreasonable distrust in uncooked fruits. Even when they had the ingredients available like ginger and coriander, they were outrageously expensive and used almost exclusively in medicines. The most expensive of these spices was cinnamon; the medieval people were swindled into believing it was harvested by stealing from a giant eagles nest. These nests were located on cliff faces found in a remote part of Arabia. I am not joking. Cinnamon by weight was over 20 times more expensive than silver.

    Frank¡¯s wife was an excellent cook, sending along bowls of hearty pottage, fruit pies, cheeses, cooked black pudding along for us to eat. All this food wasn¡¯t completely free. We were roped into helping out with the household, repairing the roof, re-tiling the kitchen with slate and various other little jobs. There was also a tacit agreement that we were to keep her husband safe during the war.

    It was because one of these odd repair jobs that Isiah and I had our first fight which resulted in us destroying a sizeable portion of the nearby woods. Frank had a younger sister-in-law living with his family, she was 22 and beautiful. She was widowed, her husband was a trader and he had been killed by bandits on his way back from trading goods in the neighbouring countryside. She had moved in with her sister and Frank after the death of her husband.

    We met her during one Sunday when we were repairing their roof, which had been damaged by a recent thunderstorm. She was beautiful, intelligent and funny. Isiah fell for her, HARD. He started to visit her multiple times a week, first as friends and then more. It was obvious he had fallen in love, equally obvious so had she. He knew he couldn¡¯t fall in love with a human, I reminded him as much several times but since when does a cat listen to anything it¡¯s told? A cat follows its instincts above all and this cat was in love.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    I heard Isiah psyching himself up, he was about to go ask Frank, for permission to marry his sister-in-law. I had to put a stop to it, for his sake. I grabbed him by the back of then neck, using my supernatural strength to pinch down on a nerve cluster. This was a weak point of were-cats; he went limp unable to control his limbs. I drag/carried him for 30 minutes until we were well into the forest, far away from any humans who could hear us.

    ¡°What are you doing?!¡± he asked me furiously when I let go of him

    ¡°I should be asking you the same question. You were about to ask Frank for permission to marry Amelia.¡± I said back just as furiously.

    ¡°I love her!¡± he snapped back

    ¡°You are a were-kin, you can¡¯t marry her! She would find out your secret and that would put us both in danger.¡± I said.

    ¡°She loves me, she would never tell anyone¡± he said but he didn¡¯t sound certain.

    ¡°Even if that were true, and she didn¡¯t run away the first time you transform into an 8foot tall Man-cat with huge claws. You could never be with her. Your curse is passed through bodily fluids, you could never even kiss her.¡± I said ¡°Even if she agreed to that, you will outlive her. You will live for another 2000 years, could you bear to watch her grow old and die?¡± I said pleadingly. He looked away guiltily. Guiltily. Not in pain, but in guilt.

    ¡°You idiot! You were going to try and turn her! You selfish cunt! How could you even think to attempt that? You say you love her! How could you even think about turning her?! Her chances of survival would only be 10%. You would rather risk a NINETY PERCENT chance of KILLING her, than giving up the chance to be with her.¡± I was FURIOUS; I could feel my rage building.

    Isiah looked down at the ground sad and ashamed. ¡°You think I don¡¯t know that? I love her and I want to be with her, I can¡¯t bear the thought of her dying. I was going to wait till she was at least 50 before I turned her.¡±

    ¡°She has a 90% chance of dying when she is healthy and young, how would she survive the curse when she is older and frail? Even if she agreed to all of that how would she explain her husband never aging? How would you live together?¡± I asked, I paused took a deep breath and said ¡°It can never happen.¡± I patted him on the shoulder consolingly.

    He broke down crying; heartbroken, knowing that I was right. Knowing he would have to also break Amelia¡¯s heart, despite loving her deeply. He despaired, and then he got angry. His anger turned toward me, blaming me for waking him from his dreams of marital bliss. He needed to vent, his inner cat needed to vent.

    His pupil turned into vertical slits, glowing with an unnatural yellow colour.  He slowly took off his tunic, and his trousers not wanting to destroy them during the change. He started changing, it was disgusting. I heard his bones break and reform into stronger much more dense and bigger bones, his pelvis broke as the spine grew longer, the annealed bones in his coccyx separated out and formed into his tail. His face grew wider the nose shrinking into his face as it became rounder, his skull distorted as the ears relocated to the top of the head. His human ears, not his cat ears. He was bleeding from all the places where the skin was stretched too far and tore. His feet grew into paws, with three inch long claws protruding out of them. His hands grew longer; his nails fell out, as the bones literally tore through the skin. I could see that the finger tips were hollow.

    His bones were broken, his skin was shredded, and his muscles were torn. Then they started to heal as quickly as they were torn. His skin grew back pale and baggy, for an instant he looked like one of those hairless Egyptian cats. The next instant, all of his hair sprouted. Blacker than the darkest of nights, except for a V-neck like ring of blonde hair. His hollow bones hissed as sharp karambit like claws shot out of his hollow fingers.

    He roared into the night sky sounding like a tiger¡¯s roar. It was deep raspy, full of a heart shaking bass and remarkably similar to race car exhausts. I don¡¯t know why that thought popped into my head at that time, with a terrifying 8ft tall monster roaring out its challenge to me, but there I was, thinking of whether it was monster truck or crazy a Wankel engine.

    I was remarkably calm as I reached into the void to take out a sword; in the end I decided one sword just wasn¡¯t enough sword. I took out a Chinese broadsword, and Chinese war sword. The war sword, was a heavy impractical piece of shit, the single edged blade was 4 inches wide and barely two feet long, the handle was impractical and ridiculously long at nearly the same length as the blade, with a large ring on the end. It was designed as a chopping weapon to be used two handed. I was using it one handed, compensating for the lack of two hands with my supernatural strength. The blade was designed for power, and that was exactly what I needed.

    I had the war sword in a reverse grip, with the blade edge facing up. I gripped the handle at the base, close as I could to the blade itself. I gripped the broadsword in a regular grip in my right hand. I turned 45 degrees away from Isiah, my left side facing forward elbow tucked in an almost boxing stance, using the war sword as a blocking weapon rather than a chopping weapon.

    Isiah roared. I twirled the broadsword in my right hand. He charged at me supernaturally quick, slashing horizontally with his claws trying to decapitate me, I dodged out of the way by bending my body down and to the right. Then I got my first lesson in supernatural combat: Don¡¯t forget to account for the sonic boom. His arms were moving fast enough to generate a sonic boom. The shockwave hit me, throwing off my counter attack. Then I felt a blunt pain in my abdomen, as I saw the ground shift underneath me. Then I felt a larger blunt pain in my back as I hit a tree, then another similar but lighter thump on my back. I looked up and saw that I hadn¡¯t just hit the tree, I had gone through the tree, and hit another tree behind the first.

    Isiah had kneed me through a tree.

    I got up, as the tree my body had gone through toppled over. ¡°You get three.¡± I said to Isiah ¡°Then I start fighting back.¡±

    He roared back defiantly, and charged at me. He used the same swing again, this time I let the swing go past me and before the shockwave hit, I punched his elbow with my left hand. I was trying to dance away when I learnt my second lesson of supernatural combat: Don¡¯t forget to account for the tail. I felt something wrap around my leg tripping me, then I felt another blunt impact, this time on my thorax. I felt 3 of my ribs break from the impact and I went through another tree.

    I coughed out a mouthful of blood. Some of the blood vessels in my lungs had ruptured, resulting in a little blood filling my lungs. ¡°That¡¯s two, only one left¡± I said, getting up, I revolved my core  faster, using the void energy to heal my ribs.

    I don¡¯t know why I was being so confident. I was losing.

    His third attack was different, he hunched down on all fours. His tail was raised up in the air. He jumped. Using those powerful back legs to propel himself forwards. The ground underneath him exploded and there was a sonic boom which caused the trees nearby to fall. He jumped high above me into the trees, using his claws to climb up even further. He cut a fairly straight branch into a 5 foot long javelin. He reared his right arm back and threw the spear. It was like a rocket, easily reaching past the sound barrier many times over. I swung my broadsword at it, just like he expected.

    The spear throw was a distraction; the spear couldn¡¯t take the stresses involved and burst apart into a million splinters. Isiah was right behind the spear, having launched himself forward in the microsecond after throwing the spear. He fell for my trap.

    I turned my slashing swing into a thrust, spearing him through the right shoulder.  He roared and slashed at the broadsword, his claws slicing through steel. I swung the war sword at his knees, using the blunt back edge to break his knee. Truth be told the front edge was also blunt, a war sword cleaves it doesn¡¯t slice.

    He screamed in pain as he collapsed forward. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, causing him to go limp below the neck. Kittens have that nerve point so the mother can carry them without hurting them. In terms of were-cat age Isiah was only five years old and could live up to 2000, he was barely more than a new-born. So he still had that flexor reflex.

    ¡°Do you yield?¡± I said looking him in the eyes.

    He looked at me angrily for a few moments then nodded.

    I let go of him and he started to transform back into a human, this process was much less disgusting. Well he was naked. So I will revise that to, slightly less disgusting. He went over to where he had stowed away his clothes and started putting them on, while I surveyed the damage we had caused. There were fallen trees everywhere.   Two from me crashing through,  the trees felled due to the sonic boom caused by Isiah jumping, there was even one that had a perfect diagonal cut through it. This one was caused by the wind pressure from my fake slash.

    Isiah came back fully dressed. ¡°you said I had three chances¡± he said

    ¡°I lied¡± I said shrugging

    ¡°I need a drink.¡± he said sitting down on a recently felled tree.

    I reached into the void and filled up the water skin with an entire bottle of Talisker 10, I felt the salty smokiness was the appropriate flavour for what had happened. I also put the war sword back.

    ¡°Where did you get those swords?¡± He asked

    ¡°You aren¡¯t the only one with a master who has passed on and left you their inheritance.¡± I said referring to John. Ailsa his were-cat mother (not his actual mother, obviously), had left him a mysterious key, that he wore on his neck at all times. She¡¯d told him it unlocked the greatest treasure in all of were-kin existence. She¡¯d said he would find it when he was strong enough and that the key would guide him. John actually left me with stuff, so John won the ¡°who is the better dead master competition¡±.

    We sat there all evening drinking in silence. By the time the water skin was empty we were friends again. Well at least until Isiah punched me in the face. ¡°That¡¯s three.¡± he said

 chapter 12: Im sorry, what did you say about my arse?

    Isiah punched me in the face. It was a normal human level punch, I could have easily avoided it if I wanted to but I didn¡¯t. He could have also punched with superhuman strength but he didn¡¯t, so I took the punch on the chin, actually it was my left cheek.

    ¡°Ow, that really hurt!¡± I whined. It didn¡¯t. He clapped me on the back, HARD, as if to console me. That did hurt and he knew it, my ribs were still sore from where he had broken them a few minutes earlier.

    ¡°You deserve it.¡± He said, his anger was fading but obviously hadn¡¯t completely faded yet.

    I looked around the clearing yet again. It was a mess. Several trees were uprooted, a giant crater in the ground, even a tree that was cut perfectly diagonally. ¡°We need to fix this up, or someone¡¯s going to realise there was a magic battle here.¡± I said to Isiah

    ¡°Yeah.¡± He sighed, putting his hands on his hips. ¡°Wow we made a mess¡± he said looking around.

    ¡°What do you mean we, I only destroyed 1 tree. You destroyed half the forest.¡± I said exaggerating massively.

    ¡°And those two¡± he said pointing to the two I had been smashed through. He was making jokes, he would pull through.

    ¡°Humph¡± I sighed angrily, conceding defeat.

    ¡°Replant the uprooted ones as best as you can, we can store the rest in my storage space.¡± After breaking through to the true mage realm I was able to visualise the void space in my head and it was unfathomable, the area I could see was at least the size of a city, and I knew there was more. It was like looking out at the ocean from the beach, you can only see as far as the horizon, but you know there is more.

    I used my war sword as an axe to deliberately hack up the remaining stumps so as to make it look like the trees had been felled by axes and not smashed apart by my poor lower back. It really hurt, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the pain was coming back. Although I had won the actual fight, I had come out of it as the clear loser. I had broken Isiah¡¯s were-cat kneecap, but that was instantly healed. As soon as he transformed back, he was as good as new. I on the other hand had tender ribs, burst blood vessels in my lungs, a badly contused back and god only knows what injuries in my abdomen from being kneed by an 8ft tall monster.

    I had a distinct disadvantage in that fight, although I was superhumanly fast, even when compared to other mages, I was always going to be slower than a were-cat. They were built for close combat, mages weren¡¯t. We were meant to fight from a distance. I was trying to compensate for that using Eastern Taoist cultivation, which also strengthened my body. I had only won using the flexor reflex. Isiah was still in his growth phase, the first 10 years of a were¡¯s life is the growth phase, after which their physical growth stops and he would lose the flexor reflex.

    I sat down on the now flat stump and started meditating. I opened up a connection to the void rotating my energy core faster and faster. During normal condensing of my power, the void energy could be absorbed into my core by my quantum phased meridians, but when I wanted to accelerate the rate of absorption I still found it necessary to open an actual connection to the void. I started circulating the energy around my meridians faster and faster until I reached 298 rotations, which had been my previous limit. I was able to push past this limit and reach 299; I knew I was close to breaking through the 300 rotation barrier. This was the barrier to a middle phased true mage. This was a significant step as a beginner void mages power was limited, I had a void shield which was only useful for hiding at night as it prevented any light or sound escaping or entering depending on its polarity, but was useless at stopping physical damage. I could also maintain the destructive discordant edge around my hands for 10 seconds. I had a feeling that breaking into the middle phase would improve my combat ability tremendously.

    The protostar in my core was rapidly siphoning off material from its accretion disk, turning gaseous energy into a liquid energy. Over the last four months the protostar core in my centre had grown from the size of a pea to a small walnut size, it was getting increasingly stable and more and more dense.

    I was expecting to stop at 298 rotations, I was pleasantly surprised when I broke past 298 rotations to 299 rotations, but the energy kept going. I completed 300 rotations. I was expecting something to change, a minor subtle change that would increase my strength somewhat. What I didn¡¯t expect was the whole process being changed. Up until that point I had been gathering energy from the outside and bringing it into my core but what happened when I reached 300 rotations completely surprised me.

    A connection to the void opened up in my core, engulfing the entire region. Void energy flooded in and the core seemed to expand to the size of a watermelon. A thought went through my head {if these were actual objects inside me, instead of energy projections, I would have literally burst apart}. The void energy particles in the centre, which were solid due to the incredibly high density, seemed to compress in on itself due to the high density and started to fuse, this fusion created energy which was used by the surrounding particles to also fuse together, this created a chain reaction. This fusion caused the watermelon sized energy ball to shrink, condensing back down into the size of a walnut with a surrounding accretion disk the size of a grapefruit. The core fusion reaction continued to shrink until the true fusion core was the size of an olive surrounded by a plasma ball the size of a lemon, which was surrounded by a grapefruit sized accretion disk. An energy force seemed to radiate out of the core, this caused the accretion disk to disperse and form a nebulous cloud around the core but it was not connected to the core.

    There was a fundamental difference in the energy flow from before. Up until this point the energy flow direction was going inwards towards the core, at first to form the core and then to stabilize and ignite the core. However, now the core was using collected material to fuse void particles creating void energy photons. These void energy photons could be used to actually do things, and affect the real world. This had been my biggest problem; my power so far had been useful for storing things but not much else. It could not be used to defend or attack. Now it could.

    I opened my eyes and was greeted by the sight of a dead deer¡¯s face right in front of my nose staring at me. ¡°WAAH!¡± I exclaimed toppling over backwards, my arms windmilling backwards.

    ¡°Hahahahaha¡± I heard Isiah laughing. I got up off of the ground brushing off the dirt from my shirt. ¡°Funny, weren¡¯t you supposed to replant the trees?¡± I snapped back.

    ¡°That was an hour ago, you seemed busy so I thought I would go out and hunt our supper, changing always makes me really hungry.¡± He said.

    ¡°An hour?¡± I had lost all concept of time while meditating; I thought at most 15 minutes had passed since I started.

    He started to skin the deer carcass, making quick work. His years of experience hunting showed in the way the blade moved. Nothing was wasted, the skin could be used to make clothes or bags, the internal organs would be used in stews or sausages, even the blood could be used to make black pudding by mixing with oats, onions and spices. Of course hunting game was illegal and considered poaching, but we had been here long enough to establish some illicit connections.

    The black Market was a necessary evil in the 6<sup>th</sup> century as things like meat and fish were regulated by the local lords. Even the grain production was regulated, 90% of the production of wheat was for the lords and the rest was taken up by the rich. The rest of us had to make do with barley and rye. The lords and nobles were known to show off their wealth by having elaborate feasts made and only eating tiny bites whilst throwing the rest away. A common way to judge the character of the particular noble you worked for was, whether he let the servants take the leftover food downstairs into the kitchen or whether it was deliberately thrown out.

    The 6<sup>th</sup> century was different from modern times, 95% of the wealth was owned by 5% of the population¡­ oh wait, Nevermind. It did feel different than modern times though, the quality of life for the average citizen when compared to the ultra-rich was better. 21<sup>st</sup> century laws may be lenient towards the rich, but at least it existed. You couldn¡¯t openly get away with murder (OJ doesn¡¯t count, that was prosecutorial incompetence), unlike the 6<sup>th</sup> century. That actually happened, the third son of the duke of Glouvia, modern day Gloucestershire-ish, was known to have sodomised and killed over twenty teen boys, he was never even questioned. The woman who poisoned him, a mother of one of his victims was whipped to death in the middle of the town square.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    I shuddered and then shook my head, trying to clear my head of the disturbing thoughts. As an experiment I formed an imaginary edge on the fairly blunt war sword, using the new void energy photons. I touched one of the felled logs with the edge. The log fell apart into two clean slices, upon closer inspection these slices were the cleanest slices ever, they looked like they had been polished. They were shining. A spatial edge, my first attack skill was a spatial edge¡­

    I swiftly cut up the log into small pieces suitable for a fire, I arranged the cut up logs into a conical structure with twigs and small wood chips in the middle. I used a fire striker to ignite some saw dust and used that to make the fire. I had to make the saw dust, normally cutting a tree into logs would generate bags of sawdust, but the spatial edge didn¡¯t even leave a spec behind, so I had to use a saw to create some sawdust.

    I used a fan to blow wind on the embers until the fire took hold. By the time I was done with the fire Isiah was done butchering the deer, he used the skin as a bag to carry the meat over to the fire, I brought out some metal skewers, I cut up the two hind legs into chunks, seasoned them using my own stash of spices from the future and started cooking them. We spent the next hour, grilling and eating the dear. I ate about 4 normal portions worth. Isiah ate half a deer.

    We packed up the rest into the deer skin and made our way back to the camp. We gave the rest of the meat to the private who was in charge of the cooking, he didn¡¯t care about poaching. We were imperial and poaching fell into local lord¡¯s jurisdiction. We waited until night to take the deer skin to the local tanner, who bought the thing without saying a word.

    We split the money evenly and went to bed.

    The next day we went back to normal, except that Isiah avoiding Frank. By mid-day Frank was getting annoyed, this would need to be dealt with. I was thinking I would have to talk to Isiah to calm him down at lunch. But before I got the chance, we heard the sound of horses. We turned around to see a group of 5 armoured men on horseback coming into camp. The man in the middle seemed to be important. He was riding a beautiful black warhorse, a stallion, whereas the others were riding the same types of horse used by Mark when he came to ¡°recruit¡± us.

    So this was our commanding officer, Sir Henry Warren, second son of an Earl from the Kingdom of Atrebatia, a small ¡°Kingdom¡± in the south of England, the northern half of modern day Winchester County. He was what you would call dashing; 5¡¯9¡± chisel jawed, fit. He had an air of richness around him, although that may have been because he was wearing the most expensive clothes and had a sword with a jewel encrusted hilt.

    He got off his horse, handed it to one of his subordinates and made his way towards the waiting Staff Sergeant, who was standing to attention.

    They went in and had a debriefing session. The other corporals who had arrived went off to see the quartermaster, to return any borrowed equipment. The only topic of conversation at lunch time was about the Lieutenant¡¯s arrival and what that meant for the battalion. People were excited at the thought of going to the capital; many of us had never been to the capital and were rightfully excited.

    ¡°I heard that the capital is the most modern city yet. I heard they have adopted some of the newest technologies and have something called plumbing.¡± Frank said excitedly

    ¡°I heard the city doesn¡¯t smell¡± Josiah said just as excitedly. This fact had me excited as well, medieval times weren¡¯t the most hygienic, especially the cities. The was filth everywhere, chamber pots were emptied out of the houses and dumped out into the street, it was like walking past an open sewer pipe.

    ¡°It is the newest capital in history, it was purpose built by the mages of old to be their capital if they won the great war.¡± Merlin said as if that explained everything. ¡°It has a magical network of pipes for water and something called a sewer system to remove waste.¡±

    ¡°I thought that magic was illegal¡± I said curiously, the whole point of this war was to fight a witch, to stop the spread of magic.

    ¡°Magic creatures are abominations that need to be killed on sight, but magic artefacts are used by the crown, for the betterment of his subject¡¯s lives.¡± Merlin said, a hint of fanaticism creeping into his voice. The King¡¯s hypocrisy was lost on him.

    ¡°How do you know so much?¡± I asked Merlin curiously.

    ¡°My father is a respected physician in the capital. I haven¡¯t seen him since I was a child, he moved there when the drought destroyed mother¡¯s farm. He moved to the capital to provide for us.¡± He said proudly. ¡°He even treats the King on occasion; he is the 4<sup>th</sup> alternate physician to the King.¡± He said boasting, but there was something else there; resentment. Resentment towards his father was understandable if the two hadn¡¯t seen each other in years.

    We were interrupted out of our conversation by loud clanging noises. We all had intimate knowledge of these clangs. We all went to sleep dreaming of destroying that infernal instrument. These were the morning clangs. We all rushed out of the tent and assembled at the assembly point. And then we waited for half an hour. This was England in the summer so of course it was raining. So there we were, outside standing to attention in the rain for half an hour. Eventually the Lieutenant arrived with his entourage of 4 corporals and accompanied by the Staff Sergeant. He walked from the left edge of our grid formation to the right, barely looking at us.

    ¡°So these are my new recruits¡­ they will have to do I suppose.¡± He said, apparently not impressed.

    ¡°So where is this squad of elites you spoke of?¡± he asked the Staff Sergeant

    ¡°Squad nine to the front¡± the Staff Sergeant commanded.

    We hurriedly rushed forward, whilst still maintaining formation. The Staff Sergeant ordered us to form a line ready to be inspected.

    He inspected each of us closely, he dismissed Isiah and Merlin as not powerful enough, and he seemed to like Josiah and Frank as strong powerful fighters. Finally he got to me; he spent a few seconds walking around me, mumbling to himself. normal people couldn¡¯t hear him but Isiah and I had supernatural hearing. ¡°He is a tall freak, looks sturdily built. Nice-bottom, I wonder if the front is just as pleasing. Pity, pity, pity, he is going to die soon, too inexperienced. His death will bring me glory¡­ glory to house Warren.¡± He kept mumbling but I was stuck on the die soon part, I shot an alarmed look at Isiah who seemed just as concerned. ¡°Well if they pass this test they might have a chance at survival¡­ but alas, there is no chance of them passing. Pity, pity, pity.¡± I heard him mumble to himself as he did a final pass around all of us.

    ¡°Well they certainly look the part¡± his eyes darted over to me, ¡°but let¡¯s see how they handle a battle.¡± The Lieutenant said to the Staff Sergeant. He signalled at the corporals lined up behind his back who then lined up in front of us. ¡°You five will have a fight against these four corporals, so that I can assess your battle prowess.¡±

    The nine of us made our way to the battle area, it was wet and muddy, the slippery ground would favour the more experienced team, it would also neuter Frank and Josiah as they both relied of solid footholds to generate their power. The Sergeant came to the middle acting as the referee. ¡°Choose, your weapons, you may only choose one weapon, a shield and a knife.¡±

    Frank and Josiah chose the spear and shields, Merlin and I chose the sword and shield, Isiah raised some people¡¯s eyebrows by choosing his bow and arrows. The battle area was pretty small, only about 30yards across and 25yards wide, not enough space for a bow to come into its own.

    ¡°Let¡¯s be careful¡± I said, looking at Isiah.

    We lined up opposite the corporals, they were all using spears. The Sergeant raised his hand; we all tensed up, all of ready to explode as soon as the hand moved. The elbow twitched downwards and all 9 of us moved.

    Isiah retreated back, putting some distance away from the melee.

    I used the edge of my shield to block a thrust of the spear, moving forwards past the spear¡¯s point. I slashed at the corporal, I was 5 inches taller than him and I had long arms, I was using that to compensate for the spear¡¯s extra range. My strike was blocked by my opponent¡¯s shield; I swung my own shield at his shield, binding the shields. I was close, too close. At this range the spear was useless. He tried to let go of his spear and tried to grab the knife on his belt, but it was too late. I had leveraged myself to his left, past his shield, which I had skilfully moved towards his right. I used a horizontal swing to ¡°cut¡± him down. It wasn¡¯t the best of swings, the extreme close proximity had nerfed some of the swords power, I hit him with the heel of my blade, which had less power. In a real battle this may not have penetrated his mail, but in this mock battle this counted as my win.

    I looked around at the other battles, both Josiah and Merlin were out, Merlin had at least managed to create an opening and his opponent had been ¡°shot¡± by Isiah. It was now two on three, but Frank was losing. I saw Josiah¡¯s opponent charging at me whilst using his shield to block a couple of Isiah¡¯s arrows. I turned to face him, but then I got lucky. The wet mud caused him to slip a little, and he thrusted his spear too early, I swung my shield to block, using its inside edge. I used my own swing¡¯s momentum to twirl behind his thrust and then used a reverse swing at his torso to end it. This time the contact was much better, it probably would have broken some ribs if I hadn¡¯t pulled back at the last moment.

    I turned my attention to Frank¡¯s battle. Frank was losing; his battle had gone on for about 30 seconds now. This was a fast frantic battle, it was anaerobic, and Frank was getting tired. Frank tried a low thrust trying to trip his opponent, or cause him to drop his shield to block, giving Isiah a chance to shoot Frank¡¯s opponent. His opponent was good, he dropped to one knee blocking the strike trapping Frank¡¯s spear. An arrow sailed over where his chest would have been. Frank had had to overextend slightly to go for the knees; his opponent used that slight gap to strike. ¡°Spearing¡± Frank in the gut.

    Before Frank¡¯s opponent could even stand up I placed the edge of my sword on his neck. He looked up surprised to see me looking back at him. He nodded his head conceding defeat. I retracted my sword. I offered my hand to pull him up off of the ground.

    ¡°Good, your squad may just be able to survive the next few months.¡± He said looking me in the eyes.

 chapter 13: Speech Writers and Bandit Crusniks

    ¡°Good, your squad may just be able to survive the next few months.¡± He said looking me in the eyes.

    I raised one eyebrow up in a questioning manner. I had spent countless hours as a kid trying to do the Rock¡¯s eyebrows but only managed to perfect the questioning dad eyebrows (it was the slight lean down¡­ and that charisma). It was weird, I had thought the raised eyebrow was a modern thing but somehow body language transcended time. And my current body language was saying {the hell you talkin¡¯ bout?}.

    ¡°You have said enough Corporal alexander¡± came the voice of the lieutenant.

    The Corporal realised he had said too much and came to attention, as did the rest of us.

    ¡°Line up¡± boomed the commanding voice of the staff sergeant from my right.

    We quickly formed into two lines separated into our squads. ¡°That was a most impressive performance.¡± The lieutenant said as he looked at us, his eyes trailing on me just a hair longer than everyone else. ¡°You all worked well as a team and showed an impressive amount of coordination against a much more experienced group of fighters. Most impressive¡± he said.

    ¡°Line back up with the rest of the platoon, so that you all may receive your orders.¡± The sergeant commanded.

    We lined up as before. Waiting for the lieutenant to speak, on our way back we were quietly congratulated by the other recruits as our victory raised the stock of the entire recruit class and not just squad nine.

    The lieutenant took a step forward and the battalion quieted down. You could have heard our nails grow, that¡¯s how silent we were; barely daring to take quiet shallow breaths. What came next would be the most important commands we had heard so far and would determine our lives for the next few months and for the unlucky maybe forever.

    ¡°This is one of the finest recruitment classes I have ever seen, and I am especially proud of the job done by my platoon in training you. Most of you will be following the sergeant and I back to the capital for further training and your reassignments.¡± The sergeant didn¡¯t seem happy when the lieutenant mentioned that he would be going back with the rest of the recruit battalion, he wanted to stay behind and fight. ¡°Unfortunately we are at the precipice of war. This war is against the foul magical abominations and those who seek to gain power from the unholy curse of magic. War is brutal, and it is cruel. You will lose people; some of them will be your friends, your brothers in arms. But know this; this is a just war. This is a war to protect; not conquer. To protect those you left at home: your families; your wives; your sisters; your parents and for some even your children. We must stop the scourge of magic or humanity may be reduced to slaves or even livestock for the monsters.

    The witch¡¯s powers grow stronger every day, the tales you have heard of the undying are true. They are abominations that keep fighting, well past their deaths. The Duke of Galwydel has turned traitor, after King Uther so generously allowed him to establish himself there after he fled Ynys Manau (isle of Mann). The traitor Tutgwal Theodovellaunus has turned his back on the king and is now assisting the witch. He has sent a portion of his forces into the woods to act as bandits, raiding villages and disrupting supply lines. They have taken control of all of the bandit forces from kingdoms of Rheged down to the Fens.

    We will win this fight, because we have to win this fight. We fight on the side of good, protecting the innocent against the cruelties of magic. They may have magic but our armies outnumber theirs by 50 to 1, which is why they have resorted to raiding and banditry like the common criminal thugs they are. We fight a just war and the gods will ensure our victory.¡± The lieutenant raised up his fist and the rest of us followed.

    Over the next few weeks the training became even more intense, the words of the lieutenant had raised the tension levels in the camp, and everyone seemed to be on a razor¡¯s edge. There were more fights and scrapes in one week than there had been in the past 2 months. Everyone was anxious about the war. One morning squad nine was taken aside along with 25 of the Corporals and Privates.

    ¡°You have been assembled here as you are the best fighters we have at the camp, your missions for the next year is to hunt bandits. You will go out into the woods and ambush and kill as many bandits as possible in the next year. You will finance yourselves by reclaiming what the bandits robbed, of course that money will have to be returned to the crown.¡± That last line was a lie. He knew it, we knew it, but we were trying to maintain the fa?ade that we were the good guys.

    So we had our orders, we went from cannon fodder to bandit killers. We were small teams of people who go around the countryside hunting and robbing bandits. We were bandits who banditted bandits, we were bandit squared. I didn¡¯t know how to feel about that¡­ it was one thing to kill people as part of an army in battle; but this was murder. The people we were going to kill were also murderers, but I was still made uncomfortable by the orders.

    I asked Mark about my inner conflictions, we talked for what seemed like hours; Mark was stoic about what had to happen. He boiled it down to the fact that these were bad men; these people were tasked with hunting the innocent traders, and disrupting the trade of goods. They raided local villages and burned down farms. They needed to be stopped.

    So it began.

    We departed the camp the next day. Squad nine was a group of 6, led by Mark. We were the biggest squad of bandit hunters, most of the other squads were only 5 people. We headed into the countryside, living off the land, scrounging what we could, buying what we couldn¡¯t scrounge. We were given a pittance, our money source was hunting the bandits and the lack of money was supposed to ¡°motivate¡± us, the truth of it was that the quarter master was a cheapskate.

    We looked like a bunch of poor travellers, not soldiers. This was by design, as we didn¡¯t want anyone to know what we were doing. We were wearing hardy but cheap travelling clothes, we didn¡¯t have shields as travellers didn¡¯t carry shields, and our swords were wrapped in our bed rolls with just the tip of the hilt sticking out. We had spears, but they were disguised. We had a long ¡°walking stick¡± and a knife which just so happened to slot into the stick and was held in place by a peg. Also the bottom of our walking sticks had a thick metal cap, to make it more durable; also it made it a more effective weapon. Isiah still carried his bow, but it was a hunting bow rather than a war bow.

    Actually it wasn¡¯t even a hunting bow anymore. I had a new bow made for him using laminated tempered steel, basically like an old leaf spring suspension, to make a bow. I had added an outer layer of flexible wood to make it look like a hunting bow. The thing was a beast, it had a draw weight of around 150 pounds which was monstrous, but it also caused the arrows to shatter after launch, so I had to reduce the draw weight down to 120 pounds and some more expensive thicker tapered arrows had to be commissioned from the town fletcher, not the battalion fletcher.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    The bow was completed at the perfect time. Isiah had the conversation with Amelia. He had explained that he was going on this mission with the squad, and then if he survived he would have to go to the capital. That there was a war on the horizon, and there were going to be lot of casualties. He also explained that war changes people, especially the type of wars we were going to be waging and he didn¡¯t want to burden her. It had been an exhausting conversation, she had cried, gotten angry, turned violent, cried again, then kissed him. Isiah was also upset, he had accepted that this was the right thing but, he was still hurt.

    He spent that night in the woods as a cat, hunting. There were screams, mournful howls, and savage shouts only audible to me due to my enhanced hearing. I made my way into the woods about half an hour before dawn and found him curled into a ball on the ground transformed into a house cat. There were tear streaks on his little cat face.

    I gently awakened him and waited patiently as he transformed back and changed into a human. After he had cleaned up he looked at me and nodded, he had worked the stuff out within himself and he was going to be alright. I reached into the void space and brought out his new bow. I handed the bow to him. He took a moment to inspect the bow, going so far as to sniff the whole thing several times. He strung the bow, and immediately noticed the difference in stiffness, he tested the bow by drawing the bow a couple of times then he looked at me impatiently, I handed him a quiver full of two dozen arrows. He spent the next hour shooting the arrows, the first few shots missed his target, high, the trajectories were different than he expected. He corrected his aim and continued, by the end of the hour he was able to hit consecutive arrows within one inch of each other at a range of 350 yards, considering the maximum range of the current war bows were only in the 150-200 yard range, this was a huge improvement, and would prove pivotal in our bandit hunting mission.

    We were pretty unsuccessful in our hunt for bandits for the first few weeks, we had been in the Mercian forest looking for bandit hide outs to no avail, we were running low on food and money, well only money; we could always hunt the food. But we were tired of grouse, and actually wanted some fresh bread instead of the dried hard bread we had been eating.

    We ambled into a town at around midday, looking haggard and worn out after two weeks of unsuccessful hunting. We spent the day cleaning up at the bath house, and selling things like rabbit skins and some of the bird feathers to the tanner and the fletcher, we used that money to buy our supplies and restock. We were sitting in a tavern, eking out the last of our coin and trying to find out the local rumours hoping to get lucky on news of bandits. We were sitting there slowly sipping on some foul tasting ale, whilst Josiah tried desperately to seduce the serving girl. She took one look at the state of our clothes and pegged us for broke and wanted no parts of Josiah.

    Jo made a foul comment which earned us all a dirty look from the server. Both I and Isiah slapped him on the back of the head. ¡°I am sorry miss, my brother is an idiot and I will try to keep him in control¡± Isiah said to the young girl. She nodded her head and went on her way. She returned 15 minutes later with two jugs of ale.

    ¡°You all look like you could use a job¡± she said

    We really were in need of money so Mark nodded and Isiah said yes.

    ¡°There is a wagon train transporting goods to Leicester, they could probably use some extra hands. It is dangerous work, they already lost a couple of men to bandits.¡± she said

    Mark¡¯s antennae went up at the word bandit, Frank lost the sleepy look in his eyes, Josiah went to open his mouth but I grabbed his elbow, my thumb pressing on the ulnar nerve. He had improved from before, but he was still a dumb muscle head and there was no telling what he might say.

    ¡°Where can we find this wagon train, we didn¡¯t see it when we came through the village this morning.¡± Isiah said.

    ¡°They were stationed outside the south gate, the man leading the wagon train is sitting over there with that burly man¡± she said pointing over to the other side of the tavern. We thanked her and she went away after winking at Isiah, her hips swaying from side to side, not at all gently.

    Isiah looked away embarrassed. Both Jo and Frank looked at him in anger, for very different reasons. Mark looked at Isiah and chuckled ruefully. I was looking at those hips. They really were some top notch hips, connected to some top notch¡­ never you mind.

    Mark was the leader of the squad but Frank was the eldest and looked more tough than Mark. Frank went up to the leader of the wagon train and talked to them about needing men. They talked for about five minutes before Frank signalled for us to walk over. The burly man sitting next to the wagon driver introduced himself as Redmond; he was a mercenary troop leader for the Red Tailed Mercenary Company. Redmond looked like a bear of a man, huge chested, massive bushy brown beard, but he had very sharp calculative eyes. He looked us all over and he asked Frank ¡°Why aren¡¯t you all in the king¡¯s army?¡±

    ¡°We were in the army, we all did our five years and got out. We heard rumours of war on the horizon and wanted no parts of it. So we were moving north, into the Maetae lands (kinda Scotland-ish). I have an aunt up there, I thought she could help us start anew.¡± Frank replied back, this was a well-rehearsed lie that we had all memorised in case we were ever questioned about our backgrounds.

    He looked at all of us, and thought over the story; eventually he accepted the story as plausible. He and Frank continued negotiating our fee. Frank proved himself to be a very good negotiator as he managed to get us a salary of 50 silver, each, for 2 weeks work. Taking the stuff to Leicester and making our way back towards the port of Londinium with whatever they bought in Leicester.

    I haven¡¯t yet explained how money worked in the 6<sup>th</sup> century. Largely it was the same as when the romans left, the main currency was still a silver coin, except it wasn¡¯t called denarii anymore. The coins used were: iron, copper, large copper, silver, small gold and gold. There were 4 iron bits to a copper, 4 coppers to a large copper, 2 large coppers to a silver, 25 silver to a small gold and 2 small gold to a gold. The most basic coins were the silvers coppers and iron, a villager would be lucky to ever see a gold coin. Even though the currency value of gold was 25 and 50 silver, the nobles rarely let any gold out of their greedy little hands. This actually made the street price of gold to be double its currency value.

    The average annual salary for a Corporal in the army was 750 silvers¡­+ loot. Privates like us (oh yeah in all the excitement I forgot, we were Privates now) made about 550 a year + less loot than Corporals; so 50 silver for 2 weeks was almost double our salary. Also we were desperate for money. So we temporarily became part of the Red Tailed Mercenary Company. Bonus, we were more likely to face bandits, I mean the red tails had already been attacked before, so the chances were good that they might be attacked again.

    We became part of the Red Tailed Mercenary Company. No we didn¡¯t have to wear a red sash on our belt to identify us; we had shields and helmets (which I didn¡¯t wear). We were pretty easy to spot; also we were wearing chainmail over our clothes now. We had previously been wearing them underneath our clothes, which was warm and uncomfortable. Chainmail and helmet wearing guys carrying swords and shields; we were pretty easy to identify. Our shield did have a red bird on it though.

    The wagon train left the town the next day. We were the new guys so we got the worst jobs, night duty and rear guard. It took us 2 days to get back to Leicester, but we stayed out of the city, hidden away as our backstory wouldn¡¯t hold up if we were recognised. The caravan was in Leicester for 5 days trading away salt, spices and luxury goods, and loading up new cargo.

    The new cargo was barrels of beer. My beer. The beer I had taught Ian how to make. There were other stuff too but, it was my beer. That Ian made me pay full price for.

    We travelled back down towards the south towards post roman London. It was going to take us 7 days to get there and so far the trip had been uneventful. We had made discreet contact with our Leicester command post to find out how the others were doing and we found out that only one squad had managed to find bandits, but the ambush had failed there had been a battle and in the ensuing battle 2 were mortally wounded. It was as if the bandits knew we were coming.

    It was on the 11<sup>th</sup> day of travel, only 3 days from reaching London that we finally met our bandits. And just like that, all my previous thoughts of bandit hunting being akin to murder was gone. We weren¡¯t facing jimmy two shoes and 5 of his friends on horseback. This was an entire platoon of 40 well trained soldiers.

    I heard someone beside me in the most calm voice exclaim ¡°Fuuuuccck¡±

 chapter 14: Seriously, why do movie bad guys always eat an apple?

    ¡°Fuuuuccck¡± I heard someone exclaim on my left. A small part of my brain registered that it was Frank¡¯s voice.

    We spotted the bandits cresting over a small hillock, they were in formation calmly marching towards us, and they didn¡¯t seem excited or surprised to see such a large wagon train coming. They were expecting it.

    We identified them as bandits by the shields they were carrying. They had the crest of the witch painted in a reddish brown colour on their shields. I could see the ¦· much more clearly than the others (except Isiah) using my enhanced eyes. That reddish brown wasn¡¯t paint, it was dried blood.

    Isiah could see the blood just as clearly as me; he sniffed the air, there was a gentle wind blowing towards us so he was able to use his supernatural nose. ¡°It is human blood¡± he whispered gently under his breath so only I could hear. He sniffed again. ¡°Corporal Alwin¡¯s squad, the blood is from Corporal Alwin¡¯s squad!¡± he whispered shocked.

    Corporal Alwin had been in charge of one the bandit hunting squads. His squad had gone north into the Sherwood Forest, where as ours had gone east towards what would later become Rutland. They must have encountered the bandits and been killed. It spoke to the bandit¡¯s barbarism that they painted their shields in human blood.

    The bandit, can we still call them bandits? The bandit platoon was still a mile away in hurry to come charge at us, they had the superior numbers and they were more mobile than us. The mercenary leader Red looked nervous. He asked us all to form a tight phalanx at the front of the wagon train. There were only 16 of us, facing 40; no formation was going to help us. If we were going to survive this we would need to reveal some of our secrets. I looked at Isiah he nodded at me, he had been thinking along the same lines.

    We formed up into 3 lines of five, the captain was hoping that the phalanx would help even out the clear advantage, it wouldn¡¯t. The phalanx was a historically great formation, perhaps even the greatest formation. It had been invented by the Sumerian¡¯s some 3000 years earlier (2500 BC approx.) and been in use in some form or other ever since. Most famously under the Spartans in their Hoplite phalanx and under Alexander the great in the Macedonian phalanx that conquered half the known world.

    Most famous of all the effective uses of the phalanx was probably the battle of Thermopylae where Leonidas and his 300 Spartans had held off 10000-150000 Persians, or so the historical propaganda spread. There were also 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans present, but were conveniently overlooked by the legends. And you know¡­ they lost, murdered to the last man.

    And they had advantages we didn¡¯t, they were battling in a valley which narrowed the approach, and they couldn¡¯t get outflanked. Outflanking was a major issue, the Macedonians had huge cavalries protecting the flanks, and we didn¡¯t. The phalanx was supposed to be invincible from the front, but was very weak from the sides and back. We weren¡¯t even strong from the front. Also the phalanx was a heavy infantry formation, forget heavy infantry, we weren¡¯t even light infantry. We had wooden shields and chainmail. We had spears but they weren¡¯t as long as pikes and they didn¡¯t have secondary sauroters; sharp pointy things attached to the bottom of the spear to spike it into the ground for more leverage, also they acted as a backup point when the spear broke. Oh yeah no one tells you this in modern times, but spears break. Really fucking easily. Especially in a charge situation, like the one we were going to be facing. We didn¡¯t have plated armour, or durable bronzed shields.

    Frank was right, we were fucked.

    I lined up next to Isiah and quietly spoke. ¡°This will never work. We don¡¯t stand a chance in close combat.¡±

    He nodded solemnly ¡°we don¡¯t have enough archers, there are only 3 bows available and only you and I can hit targets consistently beyond 100 yards.¡±

    I sighed, we both could easily survive this incident, but not without revealing our secrets. Revealing our secrets was not an option, magic was outlawed and we would become hunted men. I would have considered revealing my secret if it was to save just our squad but there were others, the other mercenaries and the traders in the wagon train. There was no telling if they would keep the secret, especially since there were hefty rewards attached with identifying ¡°magical abominations¡±.

    ¡°You will have to save us.¡± I said looking at Isiah. He turned his head and looked at me surprised. ¡°We will have to reveal the range of the new bow, you can shoot them down at 400 yards, if we can reduce their numbers by 10 or 15, and I can go crazy with the swords, maybe even cheat a little. We can maybe survive this, but there will be casualties.¡± I sighed.

    Isiah thought about it for a moment and nodded his head. ¡°That¡¯s probably the only plan that can work¡± he said grimly. He realised that this wasn¡¯t the best of plans, realistically this only gave us a 30% chance of survival, but that was better than 0.

    The captain at the front raised a black flag and waived it. This was the flag of a temporary truce, a parley. The bandit platoon stopped about 500 yards in front of us. They all had spears, swords and shields. There were even people with javelins. Their shields were bossed and covered in painted leather. They were prepared for war. We had spears, a lucky few had their own swords, our mail was markedly cheaper and worse than theirs and we weren¡¯t wearing thick leather armour underneath.

    The bandit leader walked out, he was a tall gangly looking man in his 40s, ugly looking, he had a scarred face and a mangled ear. He was dressed in full mail with leather a padded leather coat underneath. He was wearing a bloodied wolf skin over his helmet, in the fashion of a roman standard bearer. Because, you know, being in charge of a platoon of bandits with human blood covered shields is not enough.

    Something strange happened beside me. Isiah went still. Like frozen into stone, still. He stopped breathing, his teeth were bared and his eyes were turning yellow, he was on the verge of transforming. Then I heard a low growl starting to build in his throat. I quickly grabbed his arm, squeezing hard. It took him a moment to snap out of it, ¡°What is it?¡± I asked worried, something had triggered the were-cat in him, which was bad. And it wasn¡¯t like we weren¡¯t already busy.

    ¡°WOLF!¡± he growled under his breath.

    ¡°Oh shit!¡± oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. The bandit leader was a were-wolf; and a powerful one at that. The wolf skin on his head was another were-wolf he had fought with and won. Seriously, just what we needed. Because fighting outnumbered 3 to 1 whilst trying to hide our abilities wasn¡¯t hard enough.

    ¡°Give me your sword and move back to the wagons, use these arrows. If you need a sword take one from the enemy¡± I said handing him 20 bodkin tipped arrows. ¡°Don¡¯t aim for the leader, leave him to me.¡±

    He nodded and quietly moved back towards the wagons. The others looked at us suspiciously, especially the mercenaries. ¡°He will be more helpful with a bow¡± I said. I will cover for him, the rest of squad nine agreed. The other mercenaries were still suspicious but they didn¡¯t have time to worry as the parley was about to begin. I turned my attention to the meeting using my super hearing to hear what they were trying to say.

    Redmond went up to the bandit leader completely unaware that the bandit leader was a werewolf. ¡°I am Redmond and I lead the Red Tailed Mercenary Company¡± he introduced himself

    ¡°What a coincidence, we also love red!¡± the wolf said in a mocking overly pleasant voice. ¡°I am called Graith, and I lead the BLOOD WOLVES.¡± He shouted those last words and the soldiers behind him stomped their right feet in unison and howled ¡°AWOOOO¡±

    ¡°Is there a way we can avoid bloodshed, we can offer you 50 gold coins and some truly remarkable barrels of ale. As a¡­ tax, just so that we can be on our way. You can make a hefty profit and no one on either side gets hurt.¡± Redmond tried to negotiateThis text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    ¡°But I like bloodshed. The more the better¡± Graith said in that mocking positive sing song voice, his every word carrying a sense of malice. This man was a predator, a sociopath. He exuded a feeling of feral violence; like he was more animal than human. He was circling around Redmond; a hunting pattern. ¡°I like the colour of blood, I like the smell of blood, I like the warm feeling of fresh blood spraying on my skin and I even like the taste of blood. In fact I would go so far as to say that I LOVE blood¡±

    ¡°I am offering you 50 gold coins just to stand aside and do nothing. None of your men will have to get hurt. If you attack we will have to fight, we will become desperate, and desperate men can be dangerous. Think about it I am offering you 50 gold coins, that¡¯s 2500 silver coins, just to stand aside and let us pass. That is good coin, surely lord Theodovellaunus would be pleased with your efficiency.¡± Redmond tried again.

    ¡°You made three mistakes in that appeal. Well really two, I do care about the money a little bit. Your first mistake was that you think I care about what happens to my men. I really don¡¯t. In fact I hope they die. I am thinking about having the widows of those who die sold off as slaves and the children; well you don¡¯t want to know about what will happen to the children.¡± He said licking his lips. ¡°And second: you think we work for the lord of Galloway?¡± he suddenly moved faster than humanly possible and grabbed Redmond by the neck and stabbed Redmond in the chest. ¡°I killed the lord of Galloway, with this very knife. I work for the Witch!¡± I pulled out the knife, bathing himself in Redmond¡¯s heart blood. He literally licked the knife. Tasting the blood, my inner monologue was thinking {he couldn¡¯t act more like an evil bad guy unless he was eating an apple. Seriously, why do movie bad guys always eat an apple?}

    Graith proved himself to be much smarter than he looked (which was feral). The murder shocked the mercenaries. They were angered, and scared. They abandoned the formation and charged towards Graith in a suicidal move. I know I said earlier that the formation was basically almost useless, but there is a difference between almost useless and charging headlong into an enemy force that outnumbers you 3 to one, actually 4 to one as the rest of us belonging squad nine hadn¡¯t charged. The Blood Wolves howled and charged forward with practised coordination.

    I looked at Mark and said ¡°Three man shield charge.¡± This was a formation used by squad in the 4 on 1 mock battles we had, against me. Josiah would use his massive frame to do a shield charge, Frank and Isiah would hide behind and use the spears to attack. Merlin, stayed one second behind the attack to take advantage of any unguarded escape attempts. He nodded his head; Mark would take Isiah¡¯s place and attack from behind Josiah.

    I looked at Isiah and nodded my head. He raised his bow and shot thrice in rapid succession and then reloaded and loosed three more arrows, 6 shots in as many seconds. He fired three more arrows before anyone realised what had happened. 9 shots, 9 kills. All of the arrows were deadly accurate. In the throat, from 300+ yards.

    The Blood Wolves realised the problem, and raised their shields as they charged, and 3 more fell down. Isiah had predicted the raising of the shields and aimed at the thigh, either piercing the femoral artery and killing them or smashing the femur disabling them completely. The arrows kept the wolves distracted enough that their numbers advantage wasn¡¯t as over whelming. The charging Red Tails managed to do some damage. They all died, but they did manage to kill 9 people.

    We had killed 21 people, and we went from being out numbered 2.5 to 1 at the beginning to now being out numbered 3.2 to 1. Sometimes I hate maths.

    Isiah killed 3 more, making the ratio 2.7 to 1. The wolf, Graith, noticed, and he sniffed the air, identifying the scent on the arrows as were-cat. ¡°CAT!¡± he exclaimed with pure hatred. He looked towards Isiah, his eyes glowing red with genetically ingrained hatred.

    ¡°You back up the others, I will take the wolf¡± I said quietly, Isiah could hear that due to his super hearing. So apparently could Graith, even over 300 ish yards. He turned towards me. I turned to Mark and said. ¡°NOW¡±

    We charged into the battle field, Josiah at the front with that massive shield he had managed to get back when we stopped in Leicester. Frank and Mark were right behind him, with Merlin trailing two steps behind.

    I was running alongside them, about 5 paces to the left. Mid stride I switched my spear grip from an underhand to overhand carry. I was building up momentum, when we got to within 30 yards of the enemy. I took two larger steps, loaded back and launched my spear forward. I had put just slightly more force than possible for a human. The spear flew straight, spinning slowly in a clock wise direction. The spear hit one of the Blood Wolves in the rear, straight in the face. The spear burst through his skull like a watermelon on one of those silly YouTube fruit shooting demonstrations (nothing against guns, I just think fruit is for eating). It was spectacular; it sent blood and brain spraying everywhere.

    By the time my spear landed on the field 6 yards behind the bandit, I was at the frontlines. I dodged sideways through a spear thrust, using my shield as a battering ram to barrel over the man who was thrusting. I landed on top of him. I took out a knife from my void place. It was not my kukri, but a seax left to me by John. I had three reasons for selecting the seax. It was period correct. It was better at piercing than a kukri; which I demonstrated by stabbing the guy I landed on, through his liver, severing the aorta. And thirdly and perhaps most relevantly, the knife had been silver plated. Also, I like saying the word seax.

    I got up and dodged out of the way of an incoming slash. I kicked the slasher in the leg, breaking the leg. People don¡¯t think about kicking when they have weapons. I used the seax to stab him through his unprotected neck as he fell.

    I tucked the knife away and drew my sword. I saw the wolf charging at me, the shield was going to be as useful as used tissue paper against a were; so I threw the shield, captain America style, at a random Blood Wolf¡¯s head. I got lucky and managed to hit the dude in the head. I heard the sickening thwack as the shield hit the head. That guy wasn¡¯t getting up, ever.

    I heard a furious roar coming towards me from front. I had sort of turned 45 degrees to my right to throw, so I swivelled back to face this inhumanly fast wolf man approaching me. I ducked under the slash, trailing my sword in front of me. Graith¡¯s natural momentum made him slide past my sword. I had coated the edge of the sword in void energy so there was a spatial edge on the edge of my sword. The sword cut through the chainmail and the padded leather armour like they weren¡¯t even there and left a deep cut on his ribs. It was hard to tell how deep the cut was, with a spatial edge cutting through rock felt the same as cutting through air. I had no idea whether I cut through bone or just scratched the skin.

    ¡°Sorce...¡± he started to hiss in anger, but I slashed at his face, I had to slow myself down, to hide from the other humans who may have been watching the fight. I was faster than an untransformed were-wolf. Actually I was probably faster than a transformed were-wolf. My body was much faster and tougher than weres, thanks to my eastern taoist cultivation techniques. He moved his face away as fast as he could but I managed to cut his tongue out, and cut through part of his lower left jaw. I think.

    He howled in anger and slashed at me, his hand changing into a claw mid swing. A thought went through my head as I dived backwards away from the swing {third lesson of supernatural combat: older weres can transform faster.}

    I hurriedly got back up trying to stab him before he could finish his transformation. I was too late, he had finished transforming. He was hideous. Isiah was an 8ft tall monster, but there was a certain type of elegance about him. Not Graith: He was almost hairless, as if he was diseased. His back was hunched over way too much, like the hunchback of Notre-dame. He had a full on snout, were-kin usually retained human jaws to be able to communicate in the human tongue. His arms were too long, and his fingers were almost as long as human forearms.

    I realised something. He wasn¡¯t a true were-wolf, he wasn¡¯t an old well experienced were. He was an experiment. The witch had evidently been experimenting with were-wolf physiology and Graith was the result. He was a true monster.

    Graith slashed at me with those humongous arms. He was fast, almost as fast as Isiah. That is surprising because were-wolves somewhere along the way in their evolutionary chain had forsaken speed in favour of power and durability. And a prolific breeding ability, that had allowed them to outnumber other weres by a ratio of at least 3 to 1.

    Whatever had been done to Graith had made him faster than normal were-wolves. He was dangerous. I drew the second sword, which I had borrowed from Isiah. I had to end this quickly. I started to revolve the particles in my void star core faster, fusing more void particles and releasing more void photons for me to use in the fight.

    Graith slashed at me again this time with his left hand. It was a horizontal slash, aimed at taking my head off. I abandoned caution for a moment and moved forwards at supernatural speed, ducking underneath the slash, I twisted my body underneath the slash in a clockwise motion. The Viking sabre in my right hand swung through Graith¡¯s left leg whilst I used the double edged sword to cut through Graith¡¯s slashing arm in a backhand swing.

    Graith fell to the ground, confused as to what just happened. He looked up at me with a confused expression on his face, the madness fading. He whined at me in a manner very similar to cute pet dogs when they get confused. ¡°Hummmpwwphh¡± there was none of the malice or menace present. The witch¡¯s experiments must have altered his personality somehow. I felt sorry for him. But he was now a monster; a true abomination.

    I cut his throat with Isiah¡¯s sword. I dropped the Viking sabre in my right hand, drew out the seax in my belt and quickly stabbed him through the brainstem with the silvered seax.

    I felt sick.

 chapter 15: Superglue is miraculous

    I stabbed the creature known as Graith through the back of the head, killing him. I had used a silvered seax knife to pierce his brainstem. I don¡¯t know why silver works against weres but it does. According to legend it may have something to do with Judas and his 30 pieces of silver, although John¡¯s memories debunked that theory by predating the use of silver in killing weres to well before the birth and/or the death of Christ. Silver is antimicrobial and were-ism is communicated through bodily fluids like a disease¡­ maybe it has something to do with that, maybe. I didn¡¯t know how it worked and at that moment I didn¡¯t care as long as it did work.

    My use of a silvered knife was going to be a problem that I couldn¡¯t explain (nor could the problem of me being able to chop off werewolf arms and legs, but I was hoping that would be covered under the general, heat of the moment-adrenaline clause). So I hid my knife back in my void space and used the sword in my left hand to hack his head off. Hack was the appropriate term; I deliberately made a mess of it to cover up my stab.

    I felt sick.

    I dropped the sword. And put my hands on my knees. I panted, breathing in deep lungfuls of air. The battle haze, that had come over me started to pull back. I had been single minded in my focus when battling Graith, nothing else had mattered. All of the sounds of the surrounding battle had faded away and only the battle against the monster that was in front of me had remained.

    The sounds of battle had stopped. So I felt confident in letting my guard down.

    Then I heard a loud panicked shout. ¡°EMRIS!¡± I turned around to look at where the shout had come from, it was Mark. He was holding on to a fallen Josiah and was yelling towards me.

    I hurriedly rushed over to see what had happened. Mark had a deep laceration on his arm that was bleeding profusely, but he didn¡¯t seem to care. He was holding on to Josiah. Josiah had broken his arm. Badly. It was a compound fracture which meant he had broken both the radius and ulna; one of his bones was sticking out of his skin. He also had a big cut on his thigh and a huge knot forming on his head. Merlin was on his knees trying to put pressure on the leg wound to stop it from bleeding.

    Frank was sitting on the ground holding his right arm up to his chest and was having trouble breathing, he probably had broken ribs.

    I quickly ripped apart Josiah¡¯s shirt and bound it around his thigh, well above the wound and used a broken spear shaft to twist the cloth in order to tighten it and form a tourniquet. ¡°Hold this, firmly¡± I said to Mark, giving him the spear shaft. I then moved over to where Merlin was and asked him to remove his hand to see the wound clearly. It was a deep cut and it had cut open a big vein. He had lost a lot of blood. I cheated and used void particles to form an invisible tube which held the vein together temporarily buying me some time and asked merlin too keep putting pressure.

    Isiah came running in; to look at what had happened. The situation was bad, Josiah was deep trouble. I took Isiah by the shoulder and walked 10 yards away. He looked at me. ¡°Can you save him?¡± he asked, his face was a mask.

    ¡°Maybe, but not without revealing our secrets.¡± I said. ¡°He has lost too much blood. More than likely, the only way to save him will be to give him some of your blood.¡± the implications of my words were clear. There was only a 5 percent chance he could survive without Isiah¡¯s were blood, but there was only a 10 percent chance of Josiah surviving Isiahs were blood. If he did nothing his brother would have a 5% chance of survival. But if he did give him some of his blood, there was a 90% chance that he was murdering his own brother. There was also the matter of whether his brother could keep this a secret and if turning him into a were-cat would put all of us in danger. Plus there was their past relationship and Isiah¡¯s child hood bullying at Josiah¡¯s hands to consider.

    Isiah simply nodded his head in acknowledgement. I rushed back to Josiah.

    I asked Merlin to go grab a couple of people from the caravan to help us carry Josiah back. Then I checked Josiah¡¯s pulse below the arm break as I noticed his fingers were turning purple. I couldn¡¯t really feel anything, and I had supernaturally acute senses. The blood flow was being obstructed by the break. I grabbed a nearby spear shaft and broke it in half, and then I pretended to baton each half. I used a void edge to cut the stick lengthwise to form two long sticks. I then tore the remaining bits of Josiah¡¯s shirt into long strips.

    I asked Isiah to help. ¡°Hold him down, firmly. This is going to hurt.¡±

    Isiah held him down by the shoulders. I pulled hard on the broken arm straightening it out as much as I dared. Josiah twitched, his body responding to the excruciating pain despite being unconscious. I temporarily splinted up his arm as best as I could, the bone was still sticking out, but I could now feel the pulse at his wrist.

    Merlin came running back with two of the more burly merchants. The five of us picked Josiah up and carried him to the wagons, I made sure to task someone with the Job of securely and stably holding Josiah¡¯s head in place. When we reached the wagon train, we gently lowered him to the ground.

    I had one of the wagons emptied, the same wagon we the mercenary troops used to stow our stuff whilst travelling, so that we needn¡¯t carry heavy packs all day. After emptying the wagon and ripping out the covers to let the light in. We gently put him in the back of the wagon

    I had the wagon moved to the edge of the stream and had any and all men go out to gather as much fire wood as possible.

    Whilst they were doing that, I grabbed Mark and made him sit down. ¡°You are injured and losing a lot of blood, if this goes on much longer Josiah is not the only one who might die.¡± I grabbed the only pack left in the wagon and took out a rolled up leather bundle. I had this bundle specially made for me by a craftsman in Leicester to store some of my emergency medical kit. I grabbed a curved needle out of the pack as well as some silk string and a candle and some scissors. I lit the candle with a fire striker and some char-cloth. I surreptitiously swapped out my waterskin with a waterskin filled with vodka that I had in my void space. I threaded the needle with the silk string and tied a knot around the needle. I heated up the needle in the candle flame to sterilise the needle and I placed it in a bowl filled with vodka. I used a clean rag to clean the wound with vodka. Mark flinched in pain. ¡°Ow that burns! What is that?¡± He exclaimed in pain. I ignored him and quickly stitched him up. The wound was 3 inches long and an inch deep but luckily it hadn¡¯t cut any major blood vessels, but it required over 20 stitches and would leave a very nasty scar.

    The people sent out to bring firewood started to arrive as I was wrapping up Mark¡¯s wound. It had been 15 minutes since the fight had finished and despite the tourniquet and my creative void tube Josiah had lost a lot of blood.

    I asked someone to fill up a pot with water and start to boil it.

    Isiah returned back with firewood and looked at me ¡°no matter what he has done, he is my little brother¡±

    I looked him in the eyes. He had considered everything and came to this conclusion. I nodded my head. ¡°You will never question me about what happens this day, and you will do what I ask.¡±

    He looked back at me and nodded.

    ¡°Good, now go grab a fresh corpse and cut out their kidneys and bladder, and make absolutely sure not to damage the tube connecting the bladder and the kidney.¡± Isiah looked at me wide-eyed like I was crazy, but he nodded his head and took off running. The desecration of a corpse was a huge taboo. Even medical autopsies were banned by the church.

    I needed a strong flexible rubber or plastic tube, I didn¡¯t have any. so I was making do by using a human ureter (the tube connecting the kidney to the bladder). It wasn¡¯t perfect, but it was the best I could do without modern plastic tubing. It may have seemed macabre to use a human ureter, but considering where we were the only other choice was to go hunt a deer or boar for its ureter and we simply didn¡¯t have the time.

    I may have seemed calm and bossy on the outside, but I was panicking on the inside. I had no practical medical experience, except for my eight months here in the 6<sup>th</sup> century. I was making all of this up as I went along combining bits of knowledge gleamed together from TV shows like House M.D. and scrubs. Combining that, with my basic knowledge from one semester of anatomy and whatever I could remember from A-level biology. That inadequate amount of knowledge somehow made me the best doctor/surgeon in the world. The normal surgeons of the time were the local barbers and butchers, and the medical knowledge was woefully inaccurate, stunted.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    I remembered a tale that I had read for my research paper on the history of medicine, it had stuck with me because it seemed funny at the time:

    ¡°They brought to me a knight with a sore on his leg; and a woman who was feeble-minded. To the knight I applied a small poultice; and the woman I put on diet to turn her humour wet.

    Then a French doctor came and said, "This man knows nothing about treating them." He then said, "Bring me a sharp axe." Then the doctor laid the leg of the knight on a block of wood and told a man to cut off the leg with the axe, upon which the marrow flowed out and the patient died on the spot.

    He then examined the woman and said, "There is a devil in her head." He therefore took a razor, made a deep cross-shaped cut on her head, peeled away the skin until the bone of the skull was exposed, and rubbed it with salt. The woman also died instantly.

    I asked them if I was needed any more, and when they said not I came home, having learned of their medicine what I knew not before.¡±

    And that was from the 12<sup>th</sup> century, a full 6 centuries of ¡°modernisation¡± later.

    I was about to perform surgery, actually two surgeries, on a man in the middle of a field, because I could maybe save him. I was scared.

    I called the rest of squad nine over. ¡°What I am about to do is going to be extremely difficult, I am going to need my absolute concentration and I cannot be disturbed. I am going to need you, Merlin, and you, Frank; to make sure no one comes and disturbs me.¡± I turned to Mark and said. ¡°We should retrieve whatever we can from the bandits, but make sure not to go near the leader¡¯s corpse you have an open cut, his curse is passed on through blood.¡±

    I had the water boiling by the time Isiah came back, I carefully measured out a litre of boiling water, using an empty vodka bottle and filled up a sterilized waterskin. I then added about 9g of salt (a bit less than 2 teaspoons) to the water skin making an improvised isotonic normal saline solution. I carefully took the human innards from Isiah and placed them on a clean sterilised cloth; I carefully found the ureter connecting the kidney to the bladder and managed to cut about a foot long section. I took that section and thoroughly cleaned it in water, then vodka, then sterilized water. I made sure to properly flush the insides of the ureter.

    I attached the flared kidney end of the tube to the waterskin spout, binding it with string. I then tied the other end to a large diameter hypodermic needle (I also used some super glue to make sure there were no leaks). I found a vein in his non broken arm. I let the liquid flow through the needle making sure there were no large air bubbles in the tube, and then inserted the needle into the cephalic vein. I asked Isiah to find a spear and then stab the spear into the ground. I then carefully measured a height that allowed me to tie the water skin up above Josiah. I asked Isiah to carve a notch into the spear at the correct height, which he did using his claws. I tied the waterskin to the spear and let it hang, completing the improvised gravity powered intravenous saline drip.

    I took a deep breath and blew it out. Now came the hard part. I cut open the wrap around the splint and carefully cut away all of the wrapping. I removed the halved dowels from the splint. I took out a Japanese kiridashi from my void space and dipped the edge into the boiling water, I didn¡¯t have scalpels in my medical kit and this was the only knife that worked in a pen grip, I may have had some in the void but I forgot to look for them in my panic.

    I was about to perform surgery on a man who wasn¡¯t even anesthetised, he was simply knocked out, with a severe concussion, and quite probably suffering from a brain bleed. I carefully cut open the fore arm at the break site being very careful to avoid any big blood vessels. I slowly flayed open the entire break site and inspected the breaks, they were clean breaks and luckily there were no bone fragments in the surrounding tissue. I carefully inspected the breaks. they weren¡¯t flat and clean, but they weren¡¯t jagged or crumbly. I reattached the bones together using super glue. Yup, super glue, I knew super glue had been used to repair bones in animals and also to reduce bleeding in wounded soldiers during the Vietnam War, so I was using it to temporarily attach the bones together. In modern times an actual trained surgeon would use titanium pins and plates to hold the bones together, but I wasn¡¯t in modern times. And it was abundantly clear I wasn¡¯t an actual surgeon, I could tell that from my hands, which were shaking more than Gene Wilder¡¯s in that famous scene from the movie blazing saddles. I used the super glue to lightly suture together the flayed open wound site. I then re-sterilised the stitching needle and stitched the wound shut.

    I inspected the leg wound, it was deep and a vein had been cut, but there wasn¡¯t anything else wrong. I cleaned the wound with the sterilised water and a diluted vodka solution, and then used the super glue to join the cut vein together. I let the superglue dry and then dissolved my void tube, which was holding the vein together. The vein remained sealed and there were no leaks. I waited another 10 seconds checking to see if the seal would hold and then I sealed the wound and stitched it closed.

    Once I got Josiah stabilised I heaved a sigh of relief, and cleaned up. Whilst I was cleaning up in the stream Isiah came up to me. ¡°How is he?¡± he asked sombrely

    ¡°I have done everything I can, his body should heal given enough time but the bump on the head¡­ he is probably bleeding on the inside of his skull, it is unlikely he can survive the night.¡± I replied soberly. ¡°When I previously straightened out his arm, he felt the pain and moved. I just flayed open his arm and caused ten times the amount of pain, he didn¡¯t even twitch. He is deteriorating fast¡±.

    I paused, took a moment to consider my next question and asked. ¡°What will happen if we give him some of your blood?¡± I asked Isiah, were-cat things were his domain, not mine.

    ¡°His body is in the correct shape, so he will heal correctly now, if we had done it earlier, his arm would have never recovered.¡± He said. ¡°It should stop the bleeding in his head and heal him up. If he survives¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think he can survive the night. So we might as well try, at least this way he will have a chance.¡± I said whilst drying myself.

    We walked up to the cart where Josiah lay recovering.

    Mark and Merlin came up to us, they had been guarding the perimeter making sure I wasn¡¯t disturbed during the surgery. Mark had taken over from Frank as Frank had broken ribs and needed to rest.

    ¡°How is he?¡± they asked.

    ¡°I have done everything I can, but he has lost a lot of blood and that wound on his head concerns me. He never woke up, even once, during all of my mending that is not a good sign.¡± I was preparing them and (if I am honest) me for the likely possibility of his death. Even with the were-cat blood there was a 9 in 10 chance he was going to die.

    Mark nodded his head. ¡°We will need to talk after you have finished.¡± He said looking at me.

    I nodded my head in acknowledgement.

    ¡°We were lucky you are with us, I don¡¯t think we would have survived against that monster.¡± Merlin said his body shivering at the thought of Graith.

    They both started to make their way back to the camp. Isiah and I made our way to Josiah, preparing to turn Josiah into a were-cat.

    I looked him in the eye. ¡°Whatever happens, it isn¡¯t your fault. Remember that. Without this he will be dead by tomorrow. If he dies you cannot blame it on yourself.¡±

    Isiah nodded his head readying himself.

    Isiah transformed his right hand into claws, and drew out his retractable claws. ¡°Do it.¡± He said to me. I stabbed Josiah in the chest with the kiridashi, opening a cut all the way into his chest, Isiah quickly slashed his left wrist with the claws and let the blood drip into the wound and directly into the heart; Isiah¡¯s dark ruby blood mixing directly with the scarlet heart blood.

    The wound started to heal and close up almost instantaneously, leaving no Marks behind. Josiah started to wriggle around, his body clearly in discomfort. Isiah looked at me and said that he could look after him now. I nodded at him and started making my way to Mark.

    I found Mark and Merlin by a pile of bodies. They had stripped the Blood Wolves down and retrieved anything of value. Things like good chainmail and swords cost money and frankly, the dead weren¡¯t using them anymore.

    Mark ushered me over to a secluded area and spoke to me. ¡°I have no idea how you killed that monster and I don¡¯t want to know. My mother told me you were special, she grew up in the capital before the Great War and she taught me not to be afraid of magic. But I am a soldier, and if you revealed your magical nature to me, I would be duty bound to report it. Your actions today saved our lives and your knowledge of medicine may save Josiah. So as long as you don¡¯t tell me what you are I won¡¯t mention anything to anyone.¡± I nodded my head in understanding. I didn¡¯t try and lie to him, I didn¡¯t want to insult the trust he had placed in me. He knew telling me that he knew I was extra-normal was a risk, but he placed his trust in me and I didn¡¯t want to return faith with a lie.

    We spent the next few hours cleaning up and stacking our loot into a spare cart. We had managed to create the spare cart by shuffling a few things around and packing things more efficiently. By the time we were finished it was night time, Isiah was staying at Josiah¡¯s side monitoring him in case he woke up during the night.

    It had been a taxing day and I decided to turn in early, I would wake up tomorrow morning to see if Josiah had survived the night.

    I woke up before dawn to a commotion outside, someone was dead. I assumed Josiah, l felt sorry for Isiah. First the break up with Amelia, now this¡­ he was my friend and this was unfair. I got up, put on my trousers and walked outside. I was expecting the commotion to be outside near the stream where Josiah¡¯s body would be, but the commotion was nearby, only 10 yards away. I rushed over to see what had happened and I was shocked, I felt a sense of helplessness and guilt.

    There was someone in the squad who was dead, but it wasn¡¯t Josiah.

    It was Frank.

 Chapter 16: Three Funerals, No Weddings

    Frank was dead.

    It was my fault. I had been so busy with Josiah, that I had completely ignored Frank. I hadn¡¯t even examined his wounds. I had assumed bruised or cracked ribs and ignored it. What if it had been more? What if one of the broken ribs had punctured a lung? I should have paid more attention.

    I bent down to look at the body. He felt cold to the touch. That felt so wrong. By this point I had seen a lot of dead bodies; I was responsible for at least 5 of them. But I had never seen one cold. He looked pale, and the underside of the body looked like a giant purple bruise. The blood had stopped pumping and settled to the bottom due to gravity. His body was in full rigor, so he had been dead at least 6 hours (thank you CSI). He had petechial haemorrhaging in the eyes. He had died of asphyxiation.

    He hadn¡¯t made a noise in his sleep which meant it wasn¡¯t a sharp sudden thing like pneumothorax or hemothorax. The only thing I could think of was that he had died of a pulmonary contusion. The trauma to his chest must have bruised his lungs. Some of his blood vessels were damaged, so the oxygen exchange wasn¡¯t as efficient. This must have led to hypoxia and his death. I felt a sick sense of comfort in knowing I couldn¡¯t have done anything to save his life.

    Someone put a hand on my shoulder; I didn¡¯t have to look to know it was Mark. I slowly got up and turned around. ¡°It happens. I have seen the strongest of men survive battle only to suddenly die the next day.¡± Mark said to me. It wasn¡¯t surprising, injuries could cause clots which could travel to the lungs and cause a pulmonary embolism, plus things like concussions and internal bleedings could cause deaths, which in the 6<sup>th</sup> century would be inexplicable. ¡°We managed to face 25 soldiers led by a werewolf and come out with only one casualty. We were lucky. You saved Josiah; it is a miracle that he is alive. You saved one life only to lose another; there is a balance to that.¡±

    I stood up and punched him lightly in the gut. ¡°You get too¡­ sage-y sometimes.¡± I wanted to say Zen, but Zen Buddhism wasn¡¯t a thing anyone in 6<sup>th</sup> century England would know about.

    ¡°What are we going to do now?¡± I asked. ¡°There are only 4 of us, and Josiah won¡¯t be able to fight for at least a month. We can¡¯t protect the wagon train.¡±

    ¡°We should be able to reach the town of Grantebrycge (Cambridge) before midday. Then we can split the team so a few of us will stay with the wagon, whilst we find another mercenary company to take over the mission.¡±

    ¡°And what are we going to do with the Blood Wolves?¡±  I had no idea what we were going to do with the bodies.

    ¡°We will have to dig a hole and bury them. We will cremate our comrades from the Red Tailed Mercenary Company and send the ashes with the wagon train, so that they may reach their families. We will take the money and then bring Frank¡¯s body back to his family.¡±

    I nodded. I supposed these were the realities of war. The losers were buried in mass graves hastily dug up, only to avoid the scavengers that the smell would bring. The corpses of the winners at least got a cremation and the ashes were transported back to the families. So that their loved ones had something to bury. Only the very lucky few or the very important got their loved one¡¯s body back for burial.

    We spent the morning digging up a mass grave, never thought I would say that. It was a roundish hole 10ft in diameter and about 4 foot deep. It had taken 10 of us close to 3 hours to dig a hole that deep (Mark had bullied the people on the wagon train in to helping). We filled up the hole with the corpses of our enemies. Again, never thought I would ever say that.

    I made sure to be very careful whilst moving the corpse of the werewolf. Mark insisted on keeping the head of the wolf as evidence/war trophy. If as I suspected a viral mutagen was the cause for the transmission on were-ism then the head was probably safe to touch carefully, as viruses can¡¯t survive outside of a live host for more than a few minutes. I washed the head down with a bucket of bleach water and vodka, and then washed the head in some sterilised water to remove the smell. I wrapped up the head in a buck skin.

    I went over to where Isiah and Josiah were sitting. They were still by the stream. I had instructed the others that no one could move Josiah yet. Isiah had spent the morning quietly sitting with Josiah explaining his new reality to him. I hadn¡¯t seen him yet, but my super hearing had picked up some heated conversations.

    ¡°How is he?¡± I asked Isiah

    ¡°Stubborn. Weak, but he is alive. He survived so he is a were-cat now. It will take him a few days to get used to the changes. He is getting restless.¡± Isiah said. His face had a look of gratefulness.

    ¡°Isiah spent the morning explaining that I ain¡¯t human anymore¡­ he explained how I¡¯m gunna be stronger and faster than normal folk. How I am going to be able to change into a cat. Or like that monster from yesterday.¡± Josiah said to me. Isiah slapped Josiah on the back of the head. Josiah looked at him angrily, non-verbally asking why he got hit. Isiah pointed at me using his eyes, Josiah remembered and sheepishly turned his head to me. ¡°Uh¡­ yeah. Thank you for saving my life.¡± He tried to raise his splinted arm to rub his head and then looked at his arm.

    ¡°This thing itches, can I take it off? I am really hungry; can I get something to eat?¡± He said.

    ¡°No, that splint is staying on for a month. I am going to give you a sling to carry your arm around in. you can never reveal that you are anything more than human. That means you can¡¯t seem to recover from wounds faster than humans. If anyone ever finds out that you are a were-cat you will be a hunted man, then they will discover your brother. And eventually even me. And if they find out about me, I will have to kill you.¡± I said with a smile. ¡°You aren¡¯t a human anymore, you can¡¯t behave like you used to. You can¡¯t go around picking fights. You can¡¯t control your strength, if you fight a normal human you would kill him and then I would have to kill you to avoid the enquiry. And no more whoring, your curse is passed on through fluids. If I find out that you have passed on your curse to anyone; I will kill you and any one that you have infected.¡± As I said this I formed a void edge on my finger and cut the spear that Isiah had planted yesterday in half. Josiah¡¯s eyes went wide at the sight of me cutting through metal with my finger. He gulped and nodded.

    I reached into my void space and brought out a package of improvised pemmican bars that I had made and kept in the void space. This was an idea that Isiah and I had come up with after noticing Isiah¡¯s increased hunger after changing. I had come up with the recipe by combining dried venison with the rendered tallow with some honey, oats and some nuts. It was calorically dense and Isiah claimed it tasted very nice. I refused to taste the thing as the idea of eating tallow repulsed me. Josiah needed the energy as his body had used up a lot of energy to heal itself. Whilst he and Isiah ate the bars, I cut the spear shaft to get a foot long dowel, and then split the dowel length ways to form two flat sided sticks. I took some cloth and carefully ripped it into bandages.

    Josiah seemed to calm down a bit after eating; he had been fidgeting restlessly before. I re-bandaged up his arm and then his leg. I made him a sling for his arm, and ordered him under the threat of death to keep pretending that he had badly broken his arm.

    Isiah and I rolled the cart back to the camp site. Josiah came walking behind pretending to use the rest of the spear as a walking stick. Isiah and I ¡°helped¡± Josiah into the wagon cart containing our loot. We then piled up the bodies of the Red Tailed Mercenaries into the now empty cart. We also carefully placed Frank¡¯s body in that cart wrapped up in his tent.

    We broke down our camp ground and packed our packs. We would have to carry our packs as we had run out of space in the carts. We reached the city of Grantebrycge just after midday. Grantebrycge was a fairly new city established at the same site as the roman fort of Duroliponte. Like Leicester it had lost a lot of people after the romans left, but unlike Leicester, Grantebrycge was resettled by Saxons. Unlike what the stories told us, the Pendragons did not war with the Saxons. The Saxons were part of the lesser Ducal Kingdoms and whilst they didn¡¯t support King Uther, they stayed neutral. King Uther didn¡¯t care about the fights between these Ducal Kingdoms; his sole focus was on what was called the scourge of magic.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    Mark went off with Balthazar the head merchant in the wagon train to find a new mercenary group. Balthazar had agreed to pay us the 50 gold that was offered to the Blood Wolves, he had also agreed to help us sell the loot we had collected from the Blood Wolves. We were now rich.

    The four of stayed with the wagon train, protecting the train, I passed the time by making a hard cast to encase Josiah¡¯s arm. In modern times it would be made of plaster of Paris, but we didn¡¯t have plaster of Paris. I thought about making it from clay, but Isiah pointed out that he would need to train Josiah, which would mean that the cast would have to come off. So I ended up having, what was basically a cheap giant manacle type thing, commissioned.  It was a hinged cylinder that would encase his arm and act as a splint. Also as a bonus it would act like a bracer.

    Mark and Balthazar came back in the early evening along with 20 other burly men, these were the people who would take over from us in guarding the wagon train on their journey to the port of Londinium. Balthazar had also arranged for the cremation of the Red Tailed Mercenaries.

    There was a sombre mood in the camp that evening as we stood looking at the burning pyre of what were our comrades, albeit temporary ones. We stood there reflecting on how close to death we came, even me. It had been my first life or death battle against a supernatural being. And although I had won easily; I knew that in the true world, werewolves were nothing more than cannon fodder. There were many stronger beings such as other sorcerers (mages were also called sorcerers) and elementals, not to mention the gods that walked the earth and the hidden immortals.

    We didn¡¯t speak after the funeral pyre, nor did we eat supper. We all had our own thoughts to keep us company as we turned in for the night.

    The next morning, the mood at the camp was noticeably lighter. The funeral pyre had been cathartic, and had drained out some of the negative emotions in the camp. We spent the morning untangling our things from the rest of the wagon train and bidding our farewells. We ended up spending 10 gold coins on buying a couple of horses and a wagon of our own, to carry Frank¡¯s body back with us.

    We made our way to an inn, to have a sit down breakfast and discuss our plans before we headed back to Leicester.

    Isiah opened up the conversation, cutting off Mark who was about to start speaking. ¡°There is something wrong here, we were supposed to be ambushing the bandits, but we were the ones who got ambushed. They were in a platoon, and they seemed to know we were coming.¡±

    Isiah looked at me to continue. ¡°We weren¡¯t the first to get ambushed.¡± I said. Mark snapped his head around to look at me. He already knew me to be supernatural so he gave what I said more credibility. ¡°We knew about Corporal Kenway¡¯s squad, from when we visited Leicester.¡± I paused and took a deep breath. ¡°And I think Corporal Alwin¡¯s squad was also ambushed. That red on their shield was human blood. The wolf bragged about killing an imperial named Alwin when he attacked me.¡± That last bit was a lie, but I couldn¡¯t exactly tell them about Isiah¡¯s nose.

    ¡°Corporal Alwin and his squad were in the forests of Sherwood, north of Leicester. If this squad really killed them in Sherwood and then made their way south towards us, then they would have had have been hunting us. They couldn¡¯t have known about us beforehand, as this mission wasn¡¯t planned. That means there is a spy. Someone at the training camp has been working for the witch.¡± Mark was easy to convince of this as he was aware of David¡¯s tattoo.

    ¡°We will have to be very careful from now on. No one at the camp can know where we are going, or how we plan to ambush bandits.¡± Isiah said

    ¡°Can we even continue to hunt bandits? They were working in platoons not squads, and they were led by a monster¡± I said.

    ¡°That is our sole mission¡­ but you are right, we can¡¯t operate in these small teams and hope to win against larger squadrons in an head on battle.¡± Mark sighed

    ¡°We will have to get creative. Attack at night or from large distances and then run away. We will have to separate individuals from the group and quietly kill them. This will be a true hunt in the forest and not a fight¡± Isiah said.

    Mark¡¯s eyes seem to light up at that idea, it was risky but it was the only real option we had.

    ¡°We should get better equipment.¡± I said. ¡°We will be fighting against superior numbers; we will need every advantage we can get.¡±

    Mark finally cracked a smile. ¡°We can actually afford real equipment now, we finally have some money. We managed to sell all of the Blood Wolves¡¯ equipment for another 50 gold. And I kept the monster¡¯s sword, which by rights should belong to Emris for killing that monster.¡± He said giving me a wrapped package.

    I attempted to give the sword to Isiah. ¡°We couldn¡¯t have survived the battle without Isiah¡¯s archery; he single handedly took out half the Blood Wolves, the sword should belong to him.¡± I said, trying to lessen the attention on me.

    ¡°NO!¡± Isiah said. His eyes briefly glowing yellow as his nostrils flared, too fast for normal humans to notice. ¡°I fought using my bow, not a sword. Emris was the one fighting with two swords.¡±

    Oops, I forgot that the smell of the sword would trigger Isiah¡¯s were-cat side.

    ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll take this one. But we should get everyone some real swords and some chain-mail armour that fits.¡± The army issued swords and mail were iron, not steel. And the mail wasn¡¯t custom, so it was ill fitting and uncomfortable.

    Mark nodded his head and agreed. The swords and mail were expensive, but because Grantebrycge was a city, there were blacksmiths who already had swords made for sale. The mail was even easier; as although the armour was custom fitted, the mail was made into rolls like fabric sheets and the material was cut out of that.

    We stayed in Grantebrycge for 2 days waiting for our armours to be made and our swords to be adjusted to our liking (I even had Graith¡¯s sword re-profiled to have more distal taper and made it thinner and lighter). Then we made our back to Leicester. Our return journey was a lot faster. We were on a cart and not walking. We made the 4 day journey in a day and a half.

    On the return journey, I managed to convince Mark to give the credit of killing Graith to Frank. Mark had been adamantly against the idea at first. but he agreed it was for the greater good after I pointed out that there was a reward for killing creatures of magic, and that Frank¡¯s widow would need the money with Frank no longer there to look after her.

    When we reached Leicester, the first thing we did was to report to the camp. We reported our battle to the quarter master, who had stayed behind and was the person in charge of the whole bandit hunting operation. He listened to our story, his eyes turning large when he heard about the werewolf. He listened and agreed with our assessment that there was a spy and he also confirmed that he had not heard from Corporal Alwin¡¯s team in over a month. He wrote down what had happened and he promised to write a letter to the military HQ about Frank¡¯s bravery, he promised he would make sure Frank¡¯s family got the proper rewards for his bravery.  The quartermaster surprised us when we tried to turn over some of the profits of the mission, instead of writing down 20 gold, he wrote 2 gold and then told us to give the rest of the gold to Frank¡¯s family.

    All of squad nine made our way towards, Frank¡¯s house with his body. Annis took one look at us; she knew. She collapsed on the ground and broke down crying. We all quickly bent down to pick her up. I was the first to reach her and I tried to hug her. She kept punching me in the chest and crying until she got tired, Amelia had come out at some point and also broken down crying. Isiah was comforting her.

    We moved inside and told her what had happened, we didn¡¯t tell her the complete truth as we were ordered by the quartermaster to not tell anyone about the werewolf. But we told her that her husband had fought valiantly against vastly superior numbers, and come out of the battle only to die in his sleep from unseen injuries sustained in battle.

    We spent the afternoon with her. Talking, and learning more about Frank; about his life before his conscription. We learnt that we knew very little of Frank and that he would never be forgotten. We made our way back to the quartermaster after saying our good byes. Josiah needed to heal and we were mentally exhausted, so the Sergeant gave us the next week off to recover. We decided to go to Border Creek so that Mark, Isiah and Josiah could see their families. I decided to tag along to speak to all of the people I had made friends with. Merlin didn¡¯t want to intrude and decided to stay at the camp to practice his sword forms.

    We decided to leave after Frank¡¯s funeral, which was in the morning of the next day. We were joined by the quartermaster and the many people that knew Frank. Frank was well loved in the community and it showed in the sheer number of people that came to the funeral.

    After the funeral we all hugged Annis and Amelia and we promised to help any time they ever needed us. Amelia kissed Isiah on the cheek, it was clear that they both still liked each other but Frank¡¯s death had made Amelia realise about the dangers in marrying a soldier.

    We bid our farewells made our way to border creek on our cart.

 sorry for the delay. i have exams this week

    hoping to have the chapter done by thursday. really appologize for this, i was hoping to have a chapter pre written but the chapter was attrocious. and the exam stress made me really kill happy, i mean it made the red wedding look like a picnic. also at one point, in a tangential rant i made a trully terrible bursting out of it coccoon and transforming into a mothra joke... the chapter is being burnt with fire and restarted. will be done by thursday.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    the exams are on ecology. also i have been watching a show called surgeons at the edge. which is based on surgeries happening at the QE hospital. it is interesting but each episode is long and i have to write a paper on every episode.

    chapter will be up on thursday

 Chapter 17: A touch of cream and a sprinkle of parsley. That would have been perfect

    We were on our way to border creek on our cart. It had taken us a day and a half to walk from the little hamlet to Leicester, but it would only take us around 8 hours by cart, to return. Going back to border creek made me think about all that had happened in the past year. It was almost November; I had been in the 6<sup>th</sup> century for almost 11 months. I could still vividly remember the smell of the earth and the ground of the forest when I finally awakened from my long walk.

    I remembered looking into the cold stream and barely recognising my face. I doubted that version of me could recognise me now. I had lost a lot of weight during the walk, I was thin and malnourished looking. I had long wild hair and a splotchy beard. Oh, how much difference a year makes. I was no longer malnourished or skinny, I was long and lean. My hair was no longer messy or crazy, it was short and neat.

    Actually my hair wasn¡¯t really hair any more. Ever since that first transformation my hair was more resilient and slightly out of phase with the world. It couldn¡¯t be cut or combed anymore; it grew back into a neat short haircut and then stopped growing. At least I wouldn¡¯t have to worry about going bald like my father.

    I could grow a beard and it was no longer splotchy, it was thick, black and bushy. Don¡¯t ask me why I could grow a normal beard when my hair was no longer real hair, I don¡¯t know, my power is weird and I still don¡¯t fully understand it. My power is weird.

    The biggest change however was in my eyes. When I first awoke from the walk my eyes were blank. I was an outsider to the world, nothing on this earth held any interest to me. I found the concept of interacting with other people alien to my instincts. I thought the little hamlet of 50 people to be too populous.

    I still hadn¡¯t recovered all of my humanity that I had lost in the walk, but I had regained the parts that I wanted. I had friends now; I had people I had formed bonds with. that would have felt impossible to the shell that woke up in that forest.

    That wasn¡¯t to say that everything was perfect, I had killed people and done things I never would have thought that I would have to do¡­ I was woken up from my reverie by a massive Jolt that nearly threw me out of our cart.

    I picked myself off the cart floor and jumped out. The cart wasn¡¯t moving very fast, barely faster than walking pace, so it was safe for me to jump out. The path was downhill so it took a while for the cart to slow to a stop, there were no brakes on the cart. I walk down the hill to the cart and inspected around the cart, nothing had broken but one of the spokes on the rear left wheel was cracked. Everyone got out of the cart and inspected the damage; they had much more experience with medieval wheels than me. I preferred fifteen52 forged alloy wheels, personally.

    Mark untethered the two horses and led them over to the stream to water them; he staked a peg into the bank and let them graze on the grass whilst we assessed the damage. The damage was assessed and we had to take the wheel off. This proved to be much easier than modern times as there were no complicated 5 bolt patterns or tyre wrenching required. The wheel was held together by an axle and wooden peg that went through the axle rod, holding the wheel in.

    Mark got back and helped me lift the back of the cart off of the ground. Isiah hammered the peg holding that wheel, out of its socket. And then Isiah and a one armed Josiah gently removed the wheel from the axle. The cart balanced itself on three wheels. It was fairly empty and we had moved our packs to the opposite corner to make it easier to lift the back.

    The break was long and diagonal. I went to the front of the cart and rummaged around my pack, whilst bringing out a few 3 inch long nails from my void space. These were not like the round shiny silver nails from modern times, these were square and covered in forge scale. I also got some thick tanned leather strips from my back pack. I had bought these specifically in case of this happening. The 6th century wasn¡¯t known for its glass smooth roads, and as far as I knew suspension hadn¡¯t been invented yet.

    I bound the leather around the cracked spoke and then hammered a nail through the middle of the break, at the thickest point for both sides. I then made sure that the leather was stretched and bound as tightly as possible before nailing the two ends of the crack. I continued to wrap the leather strip and nailed them to the unbroken ends of the wheel. I bent the nails on the other side so that they stayed firm for the Journey. Whilst I did that, Isiah had gone into the woods and hunted us a couple of rabbits, Mark had been fishing and fished us a ¡­ trout, I think. Josiah had foraged in the woods and gathered firewood for a fire.

    It was around midday and our breakfast had been light (no one had felt like eating before the funeral). Isiah lit the fire whilst I brought out the cooking pot. He had also gathered a bunch of mushrooms, mostly penny buns (porcini) and oyster mushrooms. I brought out some onions and garlic, as well as some root vegetables, which we had bought at the Market in preparation of our trip. I brought out a piece of pork Jowl preserved in salt, I chopped up the Jowl and put it into the cooking pot, I then added the onions and root veg, finally added the washed and chopped up mushrooms and the smashed garlic into the pot to cook. Whilst I did that, Isiah dressed the rabbits and cut the rabbit into small pieces. I put the rabbit into the pot along with a few dried thyme leaves and a secret pinch of chilli powder. After a few minutes I added some water and put the lid on the pot to let it stew.

    Whilst I was doing that, Mark had whittled some tree branches and skewered the fish after removing its guts. He planted the skewers near the fire. We chatted for about 10 minutes waiting for the fish to cook, it smelled divine, you could see the juices inside were bubbling. We divided the fish up and ate it after seasoning with salt. Isiah and Josiah managed to snag most of the fish, whilst Mark and I got about a third to share between us.

    The stew needed more time and we were temporarily satiated, so we decided to put the wheel back on the cart again. We finished doing that in about 10 minutes. We sat down around the fire and ladled ourselves some of the stew. It was good, I mean really good. It was light and earthy, and it was particularly good at softening up the hard bread we travelled with. The pork Jowl added a baconiness, which went well with the mushrooms and the gameyness of the wild mushrooms. The others also seemed pleased with the meal as they finished of multiple bowls of the stew in a reverent silence.

    We finished our lunch and continued on our way, the Journey was uneventful and we spent most of the time chatting and having fun. But there was an air of death that hung around us; the battle was still fresh in our minds, especially as Frank¡¯s funeral had reopened the wound. We were all pretty worried about the war and the battles to come, especially after the battle with the blood wolves. We all had heard the rumours about the monsters that worked for the Witch (I know this is a clich¨¦) but hearing about something and actually seeing it are completely different.

    ¡°How do we kill those monsters?¡± Mark asked me. He meant as normal human beings. Not realising, at that time, he was surrounded 3 to 1 by supernaturals.

    ¡°I only know of three ways to kill a were-wolf, and these are largely based on rumours¡± I said. Mark leaned forward, as did Josiah who was in the cart. Isiah was driving (is that still applicable?) the cart, but even he was interested, I could tell because he tense up. ¡°Fire. Burning them to death works on most things. I guess that is why the King likes his burnings. Chopping their heads off also works, I know this one because that¡¯s what I did to the blood wolf (I couldn¡¯t call him Graith in front of Mark). And this last one is a rumour and I am not absolutely sure I believe this one fully, but cutting them with silver stops them from healing as quickly, silver weapons are rumoured to hurt them like normal weapons hurt humans.¡± (No, silver doesn¡¯t visibly burn like in the TV shows. But it does inhibit the supernatural healing abilities of weres and vampires.)

    ¡°Smithing swords and knives out of silver is not really practical. The metal is too expensive, and too difficult to forge¡± Mark replied. ¡°And the sword wouldn¡¯t be practical. I saw one of those rich merchant¡¯s sons in the capital that had one commissioned, to show off his father¡¯s immense wealth. He challenged one of his other rich friends to a match. The poor sod could barely lift the sword, and the thing broke in three pieces before there was a blow made in real anger.¡±The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°You could melt a little silver and paint your blade with it, I suppose¡± Josiah said

    Mark turned around in surprise, he had not expected that answer to come from Josiah.

    Here is a thing that no one tells you about being super human, your brain becomes much more efficient. You are able to move at supernatural speeds and to keep in control of that your brain improves along with your body. This doesn¡¯t make you fundamentally smarter or wiser, it just makes you quicker. That makes you seem smarter, but in reality you¡¯ve just had a longer time to think.

    Isiah and I were also surprised by Josiah¡¯s answer. The blow to the head had done some permanent damage to Josiah. Becoming a were, amplifies your personality and merges it with the natural instincts of your were-animal. Josiah had been brash, loud and aggressive before becoming a were-cat. His transformation should have made him more aggressive. More fighty. More brash. More loud. But he wasn¡¯t. He was calmer, more¡­ docile, he was quieter and gentler.

    Also he was more mentally¡­challenged; it wasn¡¯t noticeable to the others because his supernatural speed was compensating for its slowness to normal people. But to me or Isiah, it was clear that the bump on his head had affected him dramatically. So, Josiah coming up with a smart idea like that was surprising.

    ¡°That might just work.¡± I said to Mark. ¡°But we can¡¯t do it to our new steel swords, they have been tempered, and dipping them in molten silver would ruin the temper.¡± I said

    ¡°We could just paint one side of the blade.¡± Said Isiah, from the front of the cart.

    ¡°Bloody hell! How did you even hear us?¡± Mark exclaimed in surprise.

    ¡°Need good ears for hunting.¡± shrugged off Isiah.

    ¡°We should do that when we get back to Leicester¡± said Mark

    We reached the little hamlet of border creek just as the sun was setting. We had made a slightly slower time after lunch as we were all a bit full and needed a nap.

    We were met at the village entrance by Mathew and Ian who had spotted the cart in the distance. They were visibly tense as they came to greet the cart. They wore swords on their hips, which was not normal, especially for Mathew. He hated swords despite his supreme skill at using them.

    They came up to the cart to look at who was driving the cart. At first they didn¡¯t recognise Isiah, who was driving (You will notice I never drove the cart, I was terrible and banned from driving the cart after my first attempt). It took them a moment to recognise Isiah: He was no longer thin and wiry. He was now athletic looking; also he had a beard which he never had in the village. Actually we all had beards, it was Frank¡¯s idea for all of us to grow beards and longer hair when we first got the mission, so that we didn¡¯t look like soldiers. I kept my short not-hair, but all of us grew beards.

    ¡°Ho! Ian, it¡¯s me Isiah¡± said Isiah as he saw Ian¡¯s hand unconsciously lowering towards his sword.

    ¡°Isiah¡­ wow you look different. Why are you back? Shouldn¡¯t you be heading towards the capital?¡± he looked at the rest of us sitting at the back of the cart and noticed Josiah¡¯s arm in a sling. ¡°Looks like a lot has happened, I will let you get to your families. But we should talk tomorrow.¡±

    Mark noticed the swords and agreed.

    We went into the hamlet, it was decided that the cart would be parked near Mark¡¯s house as Luke had the dairy barn and there would be space for the horses to rest as well as hay and feed for the horses.

    We were greeted at Luke and Bess¡¯s place with big hugs from Bess. ¡°Oh my god! You are back! You both look like ruffians.¡± She said kissing us both in the cheek. What is it about mothers? They greet you by picking on any changes you make that they don¡¯t approve of.

    Mark ruffled away embarrassed, whilst I looked on bemusedly. We went inside the house and settled in. Mark told them about the training camp and about his superior training skills resulting in him being put in charge of the elite training squad. We lied about our current mission saying that it was patrolling the local towns and villages to deter bandit activity.

    Luke and Bess nodded at that. ¡°There have been some stories of villages nearby being raided.¡± Luke said. ¡°One of Ian¡¯s barley suppliers told us that bandits razed an entire village to the ground. There have been awful tales of night raids.¡± Luke said

    ¡°They are probably just rumours and exaggerations, but the bandit activity is true. It has mostly been wagon trains like-, that has been attacked.¡± I looked at Mark sharply when he said that. Why do grown men turn into boys in front of their parents? The normally cool and calm professional soldier, Corporal Mark, would never have mentioned wagon trains.

    ¡°Have there been any incidents here?¡± I asked quickly to distract from Mark¡¯s slip of the tongue.

    ¡°Nothing bandit related¡­ but there seems to be a wolf that has moved into the woods. Jack (Daisy¡¯s father) lost a couple of his flock to the wolf a few days ago. No-one is hunting the beast right now, but I suppose now that Isiah is back we will have to organise a wolf hunt.¡± Normally the local lord would have to be involved in something like a wolf hunt, as he would be the only one with the sufficient number of armed men for something like a hunt. But border creek was under no lord¡¯s territory. It fell through the cracks. After the romans left, and Britain splintered. It was chaos. There were successions of lords who owned the territory and then lost a war or ran out of money. A small town on the edge of a forest was easy to miss.

    I was on alert as soon as Luke said wolf. Mark looked at me with a serious expression. He was thinking the same thing as me. Werewolf.

    We spent the rest of the evening chatting and then we went to sleep. Here is a truth about the 6<sup>th</sup> century that you don¡¯t really think about, almost everything revolves around the fireplace. It is the kitchen stove, the oven, the main source of light at night, and the only warm room in the winter. So we were all sleeping in the living room as it was the only warm room.

    We woke up the next day, at dawn. Mark and I fell into the rhythm of helping around the farm. Mark grew up on the farm so it was second nature. I was only here for 3 months but I still somehow fell into the routine. Mark mucked out the barn (also temporary stables) whilst I milked all the cows and then released them out into the pasture. I also brought out the horses into the fields but I staked them down, albeit with about 20 yards of rope.

    We finished up and had our breakfast. And then went into the village to meet up with Ian and Mathew at Ian¡¯s public house. We were met inside by both Isiah and Josiah who were already there. Josiah was sipping on a beer with a happy smile on his face. He was completely different than before; there was an innocence in his smile that was impossible to fake. That head wound had turned him into a simpleton, but the super speed meant that he could keep up with normal humans. In some respects it was a blessing.

    We all sat down at the table, everyone else was drinking Ian¡¯s beer. I was drinking heather tea, with honey.

    Mathew started off the conversation. ¡°So you are all bandit hunting. And it hasn¡¯t gone well, 2 squads are gone and you have lost your best spearman.¡± It was a statement, not a question.

    <how the fuck does he know that?!> I thought

    ¡°How do you know all of that? And what was that about two squads? I thought it was only Corporal Alwin¡¯s squad.¡± Mark asked sharply.

    ¡°I always know.¡± He replied back, that wasn¡¯t an answer but he refused to say anymore.

    ¡°Why were you wearing a sword last evening?¡± I asked.

    ¡°You know the answer to that. The wolf¡± he said confirming all our suspicions.

    Ian interrupted the tense mood around the table. ¡°Mark, help me move these barrels around. I need more space in the back room.¡±

    ¡°We will need to talk about all this money you are making, Ian¡± I said to him across the room. Mark looked at me funny. ¡°What? The bastard made me pay for my own recipe!¡± I said indignantly.

    Mark made his way to the back, whilst giving us a suspicious look. His suspicions were probably reduced at that moment as Josiah belched a long burp. ¡°This new beer is a lot better than the old stuff, slightly bitter though.¡± He said merrily. ¡°Can I get another one?¡±

    Mark shook his head and went to the back to help Ian.

    Mathew turned to all three of us. ¡°It isn¡¯t just one wolf. There will be an entire pack of werewolves, they have been very careful so as to not cause too much suspicion, but the lone wolf that is observing us will be Joined by an entire pack soon. There will be 14 wolves out there by tonight, including an alpha.¡± He said to us.

    ¡°Shit!¡± Isiah exclaimed under his breath.

    ¡°How do you know all of this? And so help me god, if you say because you always know. I am going to punch you?¡± I said to Mathew leaning forwards.

    ¡°I am a seer.¡± He said. According to John¡¯s memories; seers were psychics with the ability to see into the future. But unlike what I imagined, seers were not ¡®gypsy¡¯ ladies with crystal balls. Most often they were elite warriors who used their powers to see their opponent¡¯s moves and react before the move was even made.

    ¡°So, you know what we are?¡± Isiah asked warily.

    ¡°You two are were-cats. You have been one for the last 5 years. Josiah is new, looking at his arm; I would say less than a month.¡± Isiah looked shocked; he had thought no-one in the village knew.

    ¡°Him¡­¡± Mathew said pointing at me ¡°I don¡¯t know what he is. Something ancient. Something new... Something powerful.¡±

    ¡°I am a mage. A sorcerer. I am different in that I don¡¯t control any of the primary elements; I have power over the void, which is a variant branch of the shadow element. Up until recently, it was pretty useless in combat, as it could only be used to store things. It has¡­ improved (I wanted to say evolved but Darwin was -1200 years old), to something more useful in battle.¡± I said to Mathew, although I suppose it was also for Isiah and Joey¡¯s benefit. That was the first time I had properly described my powers to anyone.

    ¡°When are we fighting?¡± Jo asked. There was an efficient practicality to his simple-ness. We were beginning to waffle and his question brought us back to the heart of the matter.

    ¡°They will arrive by tonight, they plan to launch a night raid and raze the village to the ground.¡± Mathew said.

    ¡°We should start preparing then.¡± I said, actually rolling up my sleeves.

 Chapter 18: The Black Panda-faced Yetay

    We were about to be attacked by a pack of fifteen werewolves, including an Alpha. My first instinct was to run away. Grab everything we could pack and get as far away from the village. Not an option, there wasn¡¯t enough time. And even if we did manage to get everything packed and organised, they would be much faster than us. The only thing running would mean was that when they caught up to us and killed us, we would be tired.

    We needed a plan.

    ¡°Our biggest advantage right now is that they don¡¯t know that we know about the attack. We are also more familiar with the terrain. And we know when they will attack. ¡± Mathew said, listing out our advantages.

    There weren¡¯t many.

    ¡°How accurate is your future sight, how far can you see and how much detail¡± I asked. We needed any and all details we could, if we were going to formulate any kind of plan which could surmount these odds.

    ¡°In battle? About half a breath. This makes me a very good person to have, in a battle. My distant sight is localised to anyplace I call home. In this case I saw what was coming 3 nights ago. As for the details; they aren¡¯t that clear, but I saw werewolves.¡± He said.

    ¡°Actual werewolves? In fur?¡± Isiah asked, he had guessed where I was going. Were we dealing with actual werewolves or the monsters The Witch had created?

    ¡°It was hazy and it was at night. Why does it matter? I heard them howling in my vision¡± Mathew said, wondering what was going on.

    ¡°They probably know that a Werecat used to live in the village, your scent must be all over the forest.¡± I said to Isiah

    ¡°Yes. And the scout probably smelt me coming back into the village yesterday.¡± Isiah said.

    ¡°No, he wasn¡¯t observing last evening. Ian and I patrolled the village to scare him off.¡± Mathew said.

    ¡°Then they don¡¯t know that we have 3 maybe four people capable of fighting against them.¡± I said.

    ¡°They know about your squad, being here. One of their main reasons for attacking is to kill you all.¡± Mathew said deflatingly.

    We were the targets.

    Again.

    First, it was the wagon train; where the Blood Wolves had travelled south from the forests of Sherwood to hunt us.

    Now this.

    There was definitely a spy. And the spy was someone we knew. Very few people knew about our squad joining the wagon train; fewer still, the people who knew about our trip to border creek.

    We would have to deal with the spy soon.

    ¡°The best way to attack them is probably to attack them from a distance. Ambush them in the forest with bows. Isiah and I could probably shoot down five or six of them from the trees before they are even aware of us. Which will help a lot, and then it comes down to close combat.¡± I said.

    ¡°They would still out number us 10 to 4.¡± Mathew said

    ¡°Werecats are inherently much better at fighting than werewolves. So Isiah and Josiah working together will probably be able to hold their own against the wolves. Despite being a mage, I am much more suited to close combat than anything else. My sword work has improved a lot since our last meeting, Mathew.¡± I said. There was a slight challenge to my voice. Despite the wholly inappropriate time, I wanted to test my skills against him. He had been my first teacher of the sword, but he had also been my first opponent (not counting stick fighting as a three year old). He was also the only one I had ever lost to in a sword fight. I wanted to test my skills and see how much my skills had improved.

    ¡°I can hold my own in a fight. Even against werewolves¡± Mathew said calmly, not rising to my bait.

    ¡°Um, I am not sure I can fight a werewolf. I don¡¯t even know how to transform yet.¡± Josiah said.

    ¡°We will work on that today.¡± Isiah said to Josiah. ¡°I agree that ambushing them with archery is the best option, but won¡¯t they just heal? We will need to make silver tipped arrows. And they will have to be bodkins if we want them to penetrate. Even with my bow, we need more power.¡±

    ¡°I can make adjustments to your bow to increase the draw weight and make the bow more powerful, but then there is a risk of shattering the arrows as they are loosed.¡± I said to Isiah. I turned to Mathew and said ¡°we need a smithy, do you think we can convince Tom to let us use his forge for a few hours?¡±

    Almost every village needed a blacksmith; iron was the backbone on which the farming economy was built. There was no mass production, everything was handmade. Even the littlest of things like nails needed a blacksmith to make it. Tools for farming, tools for cooking, anything made out of metal needed a smith to make it. In actual fact most of the larger smithies used multiple smiths to make things. There were no power hammers or hydraulic presses, forging things required massive amounts of manpower.

    ¡°Ian can, he and tom are close. But why do we need a forge, we don¡¯t have time to make anything?¡± he asked

    ¡°Silvered swords. Silver can stop weres from healing, making them easier to kill¡± Josiah replied on my behalf.

    ¡°Hmmm, an interesting idea. I¡¯ll talk to Ian in a minute.¡±

    ¡°We also need a place for me to teach Josiah. I would normally have taken him into the woods, but we can¡¯t do that without tipping off the werewolf scout¡± said Isiah. Every time he used the word werewolf, it came out as a spit; like he was cursing every time he said the word.

    ¡°The forge is probably the only place you could get away with making that much noise, it will be cramped but you will have to manage.¡± Mathew said. The smithy was a large open building, but the forge room was indoors and could be closed off.

    Isiah didn¡¯t look happy but he nodded.

    We made our way to the back, where Mark and Ian were struggling with moving heavy barrels around. Each barrel contained a third of a culeus (175litres-ish). They had to be careful as each barrel weighed as much as 2 Josiahs and contained what had to be some of the most expensive beer in the land.

    Isiah and I quickly took over helping from Ian, so that Ian could go convince Tom.

    ¡°We came up with a plan to deal with the wolf¡± I said, careful to avoid saying wolves. ¡°There is only one, so it should be fairly easy.¡± Yeah right. ¡°Mathew knows the hiding place so he is going to take us there. We are going to go upwind from the wolf and then Isiah is going to shoot it with silvered arrows. I am then going to go make sure it is dead.¡±

    Mark nodded, agreeing with the plan. It would be a great plan if we were actually fighting only one wolf.

    ¡°You and Ian are going to remain here in the village, to make sure that village is protected. In case the wolf escapes and tries to attack the village.¡± I said. He didn¡¯t seem thrilled with the idea, but it was probably the best plan. Mark would be useless in fighting against a whole pack of werewolves and it would mean revealing Isiah and Josiah¡¯s secrets to him, so the best thing in this case was to leave him on the side lines.

    ¡°What about Josiah?¡± Mark asked curiously

    ¡°He will be home recovering, he is still hurt.¡± Isiah lied. Josiah made the appropriately disgruntled face; although it was impossible to tell whether it was because of the insinuation that he couldn¡¯t help, or because it was a lie involving him. Since the head injury, he had been uncharacteristically honest.

    We carried on moving the barrels around for another half an hour, before Ian and Mathew came back.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°You can use the forge for today, but if anything is destroyed Tom will kill us all.¡± He said to us. ¡°Mark stay, we need you to help train us back into fighting shape. I haven¡¯t swung a sword in anger in two years.¡± Ian said to mark.

    ¡°You will have to use the spare swords, I am going to try and silver the swords as well¡± I said to them.

    The brothers and I made our way to the forge after collecting all the steel swords, the brothers came along in the guise of helping me carry all of the swords to the forge. The forge was nothing like the modern forges I had used previously. The forges I had learnt on were propane forges which didn¡¯t need manual fuelling or air to be pumped. This was different; this was a charcoal forge, with huge bellows used to pump air into the forge. Then I noticed that the bellows were being powered by the small waterwheel outside. The forge was already lit slightly, but the valve connecting the bellows to the forge was closed. I opened the valve slightly to let some of the air blow through. The flowing air re-energised the smouldering embers; I shovelled more charcoal into the fire and waited for the coals to light.

    Whilst I did that Isiah was teaching Josiah about how to transform into a werecat. They were sitting on one side of the room quietly talking.

    I got myself organised, I found a crucible and a pair of crucible tongs. I wrapped my palms and forearms in a thick cloth to protect them from the heat, and got a bucket of water.

    Once the fire got going consistently I placed the crucible into the fire, and piled up the coals on the side, I also added a long iron rod into the forge. I opened up the valve completely so that the airflow was no longer restricted. The red coals started turning orange and yellow as the fire increased in temperature. I constantly monitored the fire, adding charcoal as needed and moving any ash away. I added a bag of about 30 silver coins into the crucible. I knew that the forge would be able to melt the silver as I knew silver¡¯s melting point was in the 900-1000 degrees Celsius range.

    It would take a few minutes for the crucible to come up to the correct temperature to melt the silver. So in the mean time, I turned my attention to the iron rod I had put into the fire. I had only put about 2 inches of the rod into the fire whilst the rest was on the outside. I felt the opposite side of the rod to see if it was safe to touch, and then picked up the rod. It was fairly thin maybe only a third of an inch in diameter, it was probably what Tom used to make nails. I placed the red glowing steel on the anvil and hit it with the hammer. The material was turned into paste and went flying, and there was a slight dent in the anvil. Oops I forgot my own strength; I was now a walking power hammer, I would have to be careful with my swings.

    I modulated my strength on the subsequent blows and forged out a flat long palate knife looking thing, the type of long thin knifes used to even out cake icing. I put the knife back into the fire but in a slightly cooler area of the fire.

    I checked on the silver in the crucible and it had melted. So I moved that into a slightly cooler section of the coal forge. I brought out 20 bodkin arrows from my void space and removed the arrowhead from the arrows. I found the thinnest pair of tongs I could and placed one of the arrowhead in the fire, I heated it till it barely started glowing at all, and then dipped it into the crucible. I brought out the dipped arrowhead. I made sure to remove the excess silver by scraping the arrowhead around the inside edge of the crucible. I waved the arrowhead around in the air for a second and then dropped them into the water to cool. I wasn¡¯t worried about cracking as this was mild steel at best and silver is not water hardening.

    I repeated the process for each arrow. Each arrowhead had to be done individually as they were too small for me to just place them in the fire without losing them in the charcoal. Once I was done with the arrow heads I turned my attention to the swords. I placed the crucible back into the hottest part of the forge and heated it as hard as I could. I placed one of the swords on the anvil, and then carried the incandescent white hot crucible to the anvil. I then dipped my cloth covered hand into the water and grabbed the palate knife that was in the fire. The rod was long enough that the other end was only very warm when touched with the wet cloth, and not burning hot. I dipped the hot palate knife into the molten silver and painted the silver on to the sword on one edge leaving the other side untouched. The steel near the painted section started to change colour turning a deep purple which radiated into a golden hay/straw colour as it creeped towards the unpainted edge. I quickly splashed some water onto the sword to stop it heating further and repeated the process until all 6 of the swords were silvered on one side (my single edged Viking sabre remained unsilvered).

    I was in full concentration mode. Fully distracted by what was once my favourite hobby. I was enjoying the work very much and had tuned out the rest of the world. So I was surprised when I turned around to find what I can only describe as the black yeti, standing in the corner with a pathetic whiny sad expression on his face. Holy shit Josiah was huge. He looked to be almost 12ft long, with the same panther like colouring as Isiah, but his face was like the opposite of a panda, with white splotches for his eyes and nose. <He would look so cute from a distance> I thought. He reminded me of Sully from the Monsters Inc. movies.

    He currently had a pathetic expression on his face and was being fiercely scolded by Isiah. ¡°You need to learn to have more control! Your arms are much longer and faster than before, be mindful of how you swing them about.¡± I heard Isiah scold.

    ¡°Holy shit he¡¯s big.¡± I said. They both turned to look at me. ¡°Arrowheads¡± I said pointing at the bucket. ¡°And swords¡± I said pointing to the floor besides the anvil.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think we can change the bow in time, so I am just going to change the string to something better and lighter which should help with the speed of the arrows.¡± I said to Isiah as I measured and strung Isiah¡¯s bow with some modern ultra-high molecular weight polymer string that I found in the weapons vault, in my void space. Along with various bows including some really modern compound bows. I looked for guns but, it seemed John wasn¡¯t a fan of guns.

    Actually that¡¯s not true. I did find guns, but they were locked inside of a vault that I didn¡¯t have the codes to, I found a note on the vault saying that the code was trapped in a memory fragment that would be revealed later. Thanks John.

    Whilst I measured out the appropriate length of string and restrung Isiah¡¯s longbow, Isiah was in the bucket looking at the arrowheads. He transformed his hand into a claw and scraped the insides of the arrowheads (the collar) clean and reattached the arrowheads to the shafts. Josiah meanwhile was trying to juggle; to increase his dexterity. Under normal circumstances it would have been the cutest thing to see a cat with a panda face juggle. Especially since, this cat had his tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. But this man-cat was 12 ft. tall.

    Once Isiah was finished he told Josiah to change back. Josiah changed back into his human form; got dressed and put on his metal arm-cast/bracer. Whilst he got dressed, Isiah and I cleaned up the smithy.

    We made our way to Ian¡¯s and dropped off the three silvered swords belonging to Mathew, Mark and Ian. Isiah and I made our way out of the village and into the open fields to test our bows. I ended up not choosing a compound bow, and went with a modern recurve bow made out of carbon fibre. It had been painted jungle camo and felt very lightweight. We made sure we stayed down wind of the wolf and Isiah made sure that we weren¡¯t being observed. We shot a few arrows at the trees, adjusting to our new bows, we added cotton balls and wool strips to various bits of the bows to make them as quiet as possible without losing too much speed. Isiah seemed very happy with the new string.

    We went back into the village and met up with the others. We had a light supper.

    Mathew, Isiah and I then made our way out of the village, whilst Josiah ¡°went back home to rest¡±.

    We made our way out of the village and entered the forest. Josiah managed to catch up to us about half an hour later; he had followed us using our scents. Mathew guided us to where the wolves were going to meet up, when we got there the scout werewolf was already there waiting. We made sure to stay down wind and hidden away from the wolf and waited for their arrival.

    We were about a hundred and fifty yards away from the clearing, Isiah and I quietly climbed up a tree and waited; any noises we made whilst climbing, were covered up by the winds blowing and the general sounds of the forest. We both made sure we had a clear line of sight to the clearing.

    Mathew and Josiah stayed on the ground hiding behind a fallen tree.

    We were up in the trees waiting for a long time. It was tense and it was boring. We daren¡¯t make a sound. Josiah napped. I wasn¡¯t even mad; he was a quiet sleeper and kept very still.

    It was around midnight when we heard movement.

    The wolf pack had arrived.

    They didn¡¯t even try to be quiet. They were the most dangerous things in the forest, and they knew it. They were utterly confident in their security and in the knowledge that no one could harm them.

    The man at the centre of the pack was the Alpha. He was at the front of the pack; all the other wolves were at least one step behind. He was also the most richly dressed, his cloak was more luxurious looking, and his hands were covered in ornate gold rings, with various gemstones inset. The biggest giveaway however was that he was wearing an ornate steel sword; none of the other wolves had a sword that was as expensive. They weren¡¯t drawn so I couldn¡¯t be sure, but I would have bet the rest mostly had cheaper iron swords.

    A man stepped up from behind the Alpha. He was big, dumb and muscular; the Beta. He was the enforcer of the group. ¡°Report! What is the news?¡± he asked the scout.

    The scout addressed his answer to the Alpha and not the Beta, the Beta was the Alpha¡¯s mouthpiece, it was the Alpha who was asking. ¡°Those soldiers, they have arrived just like he said they would. They got here late last night and they were doing chores and catching up with friends this morning.¡±

    ¡°Good, we will change and then attack the village. We will raze the village to the ground, just as the witch commanded it.¡± The Beta said.

    ¡°Don¡¯t get too cocky, that squad survived against the blood wolves when outnumbered 3 to 1¡± the Alpha warned calmly. ¡°Don¡¯t be overconfident, their archer is capable of killing from 300 yards and one of their swordsmen can best four people in battle at once. They may not be able to kill you, but they will provide a fight¡±

    <How did he know all of this> I thought. <We have to kill that spy.>

    All of the werewolves began to take their clothes off in preparation for the change. They were at their weakest. They had taken off their chain mail and they weren¡¯t aware that Isiah and I were in the trees ready to shoot our bows. Isiah and I looked at each other and nodded.

    We took aim and fired, with our superhuman speed we both managed to shoot 3 arrows in less than 2 seconds.

    And then all hell broke loose.

 Chapter 19: I used to be an adventurer like you...

    We loosed 6 arrows in less than 2 seconds; arrows are a lot slower than bullets, so it took the arrows about one and a half seconds to actually reach their targets. The arrows were deadly accurate, 2 hit in the throat (Isiah) 2 in the heart (Me). The two arrows that didn¡¯t kill were both aimed at the Alpha, he twitched at the last second, my arrow¡¯s speed was faster than Isiah¡¯s by a hair and it hit him in the shoulder. It made him twitch and Isiah¡¯s arrow that should have hit him in the face, missed. It didn¡¯t fully miss as it carved out one side of the face, leaving a gaping hole where the left side of his jaw used to be.

    By the time they realised they were being shot at we had already released our second and third salvos. These weren¡¯t as effective as the first as the combined twelve shots managed to only kill 1 more werewolf. But it did injure 2 others badly. The Beta had jumped in front of the Alpha to protect him from the next volley and 3 arrows struck him, destroying his shoulder. And the other was shot through the knee, there went his adventuring days.

    ¡°Silver arrows!¡± the Alpha said. Actually he said ¡°sphilba avvos!¡± But half his jaw was missing, so he couldn¡¯t be blamed for his mispronunciation.

    The wolves began scattering, moving faster than it would be possible for humans. They were moving for cover behind trees. They had noticed that the arrows were lethal. That meant that not only did we know about their planned attack; but we also knew that they were werewolves.

    We had only coated 20 arrows in silver. They had been divided unequally between us. I had 9, just enough for 3 salvos. Isiah was the better shot, so he got the two spare ones. He proved he was the better shot by managing to catch a fleeing superfast werewolf in the ankle.

    Out of the 15 werewolves we had managed to kill 5. We had injured 4 others, but it was still the equivalent of 8 or 9 on 4. And now we were out of arrows. We were out in the middle of the woods, outnumbered 2 to 1 facing off against werewolves. We all had superpowers as well but one of us had been a werecat for less than a week. And no matter how far into the future Mathew could see; he was still a human, with human reflexes and human strength.

    The werewolves waited behind the trees and started transforming. The clearing was filled with the noises of breaking bones and howling, as the wolves transformed. Isiah also took the opportunity to transform. I stowed away the bow in my void space and brought out my swords: The unsilvered Viking sabre and the half silvered ring sword which used to belong to Graith. The ring sword differed from the later more classic swords because of its hilt. It didn¡¯t contain the later Christian cruciform guards but was a bronze small oval, which had an iron ring embedded around it (hence the name). The pommel was the same as on a roman spatha.

    Then I had an embarrassing moment. I was up on the tree branch and I had to get down to the ground; so that I could fight and kill the werewolves, to do that I needed my arms. so much for looking heroic¡­I had to put the swords back and then jump down, I landed awkwardly and was windmilling my arms around trying to balance myself. I then redrew my swords. Isiah meanwhile, had changed into his werecat form and jumped down gracefully. Fucking cats, and their natural sense of balance.

    That¡¯s when things started going wrong. We went forwards towards the opening and were met by Mathew, who like me was holding two swords, his and Isiah¡¯s, as Isiah wasn¡¯t using it. And Josiah, except Josiah wasn¡¯t in his were cat form, he was still human.

    ¡°Why are you still human?¡± I turned to Mathew, my voice going up an octave ¡°Why is he still human?!¡±

    ¡°Couldn¡¯t transform¡±

    ¡°He couldn¡¯t transform¡±

    They both said simultaneously.

    Now it was 10 on effectively 2. Shit.

    ¡°Pick an injured one, and be careful!¡± I said to Mathew. I turned to Josiah and said ¡°hide!¡± a human Josiah was useless in this battle. He may have been stronger compared to normal humans but against transformed werewolves, he was going to be a lamb to slaughter.

    The werewolves had realised no one was shooting arrows at them anymore. I realised my mistake <shit! It would have been useful to have someone shoot arrows at them from the trees, even if they were only steel arrows!>

    The wolves came out of the trees; they were in their hybrid forms. They were 7-8 feet tall, furry, with pointy triangular canine ears. Their noses and upper jaws were elongated slightly, to accommodate their longer canine teeth. Their hands and feet had grown bigger, and had small triangular claws. Their bodies were also much wider, almost reaching 5 feet in width. And they were more muscular, built like giant inverted triangles with a head and two arms.

    They came out into the clearing as a pack, the Alpha leading at the front. You could tell he was the Alpha as he was still missing half his lower jaw. He was slimmer than the rest at less than 4 feet wide. His body was lithe and agile looking, his muscles rippled under the fur pulsating with a hidden danger. A weird thought went through my head, maybe because of the pulsating muscles. But at that moment I was glad that weres adapted to the animal sheathed genitalia system. I don¡¯t think I could have faced 8 foot tall monsters with their cock and balls swinging around.

    That thought brought me to an abrupt stop and I started laughing.

    I was about to be facing off against a pack of werewolves. We were outnumbered at least three to one, I was about to lose my best friend and most of the people I had grown to care about. My body would probably be ripped apart, but since I couldn¡¯t die; I would have to spend the next few months regrowing my body, in excruciating agony.

    But at that moment, the thought of werewolves with human genitalia¡­ it made me laugh.

    Mathew and Isiah looked at me like I was an idiot. ¡°Sorry¡­ he he¡­ I¡¯m really sorry, I just imagined werewolves with human genitalia¡­he he he, it makes me laugh¡±

    Isiah turned to face me and roared in my face. ¡°GRRRROOOOAAAARRR!!!¡± which is werecat for ¡°shut the fuck up¡±, I think.

    ¡°Okay, time to be serious¡± I said, straightening up. I switched the sword in my left hand to an ice pick grip and adjusted the sword in my right.

    Isiah turned to the Alpha and roared ¡°GRROOAAR!¡±

    ¡°aaeewwoooo!¡± the Alpha tried to roar, it came out a little strangled, due to the missing half of his jaw. I would have laughed, but the rest of the wolves also roared ¡°AAAAAWWWOOOOOO!!!¡± Which was a lot more impressive.

    Isiah charged in, crashed into the Alpha. The Beta also charged into the mix, but he was missing one of his arms and bleeding profusely from the wound. Mathew charged in and engaged into the battle and started battling against the werewolf with the broken ankle. That broken ankle had slowed that wolf down a lot so the fight would be even.

    But that still left 7 wolves that were fine. They identified Isiah as the biggest threat and rushed towards him, trying to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. Only the other injured wolf came at me, dismissing me as an extra. Actually both Mathew and I got underestimated, or to be more specific; they underestimated our swords, which were silvered. Mathew¡¯s ability allowed him to side step that first lazy step and used the werewolf¡¯s own momentum to skewer him with the silvered sword. He used the other sword in his hand to stab through the werewolf¡¯s neck. Blood came spurting out as the injured werewolf was killed. The werewolf made a strange strangled noise as if he couldn¡¯t believe he was dying. This grabbed the attention of the pack.

    My werewolf died an even more spectacular death. He came slashing at me with a huge loping horizontal slash. Instead of moving to avoid that strike, I flicked the sword in my right hand towards the strike. I had coated the edge in void photons to create the spatial edge on the blade¡¯s edge. The entire arm was bisected in two lengthways. I moved, supernaturally fast, spinning behind the flailing remains of that arm, and slashed upwards with the Viking sabre in my right hand. The sword split him literally in half, splitting him from his arsehole to his head, cutting the spinal cord in half. He was dead, but I casually swiped right with my silvered sword cutting the top off of both heads (his previous head was now in two) just for that added flair. It was spectacular, his body didn¡¯t realise what had happened and continued moving forwards, and then exploded. The body broke into four pieces and the blood went everywhere.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    The five werewolves were terrified. They had paused when they noticed the death of their injured pack member at the hands of Mathew; they were assessing how much of a threat Mathew was. But when they saw what happened to the other one, at my hands. I immediately became the primary threat; even bigger that the werecat, Isiah. One of them, the most cautious of them all, separated from the group and made eye contact with Mathew.

    He attacked Mathew, but not with any killing intent. His objective was to separate him from near me. Mathew allowed this to happen, backing off to the left and into the forest. I kept an eye on him as I observed what the other four werewolves did. They separated and tried to surround me. They were being extra cautious and slow. Mathew and his wolf had disappeared into the woods. I could hear the sounds of angry claws hitting against trees. Mathew was dodging using his future sight and the increased obstacles in the woods were working to his advantage.

    The wolves trying to encircle me we being overly cautious; the way I had killed the other wolf must have really scared them. I looked at the battle going on with Isiah against the Alpha and Beta. The Beta was having a terrible time of it. Isiah was holding his own against the Alpha, the Alpha was quick and compact for a werewolf, and he was extremely powerful even when compared to the naturally powerfully built werewolves. But Isiah held the advantage in speed and agility, Isiah¡¯s biggest advantage however lay in his tail. His tail acted as an extra limb, but it was infinitely more flexible and acted almost independently of its owner. It seemed to have a mind of its own and blocking attacks that Isiah couldn¡¯t possibly have seen coming.

    Isiah was using his speed and agility to avoid the Alpha and the Beta and he was doing it in such a way that they ended up hampering each other. The Beta was the biggest werewolf here at over 8 feet tall and would have been well over five feet wide, if he had both shoulders. But one of his shoulder was ripped apart by three arrows, whilst he was still in human form and the injury had affected him significantly. He was losing blood from the wound and it was obviously slowing him down.

    I got a little too distracted watching that fight and I almost paid for it. The four werewolves had surrounded me and the one to the right of me notice me looking towards the fight which was at my 10/11 o¡¯clock ish. He launched an attack, which was followed by the other three also attacking. He was the first to launch the attack. He was moving at inhuman speeds, I was caught flat footed and unprepared. I moved my sword in my right hand up to block and dodged towards my 2 o¡¯clock, moving underneath the swipe. The attack surprised me so much that I didn¡¯t even form a spatial edge on my sword. The claw hit the sword with an insane amount of force, it caused the sword to flex; someone must have done an incredible job with the tempering of the Viking sabre as it flexed to almost a 90¡ã angle and then sprung back without warping. There were two deep scratch marks on the blade from his claw marks. The right one¡¯s forward momentum carried him past me and he ended up directly blocking the attack from my left as well as slowing down the attack from my back.

    The wolf attacking directly from the front side was the first to reach me. I still hadn¡¯t fully recovered from that surprise attack (it was a surprise to me). But I had managed to form he void edges on my swords. The werewolf attack-(ok this is getting confusing I can¡¯t keep calling all of them werewolf; lets number them! the one in front is no.1, the one from my right is number 2, the one from my back is number 3 and the left one is 4). Werewolf 1 attacked me from the front, he slashed his right hand towards me at a slightly downwards angle. I raised my left hand to block the attack, but the attack passed right through, I didn¡¯t feel the block resist the attack at all. I was hit in the ribs by what felt like a baseball bat and I went tumbling to the side.

    Actually the attack didn¡¯t hurt as much as I was expecting it to, and my tumble moved me out of werewolf 3¡¯s attack vector. I quickly got up to face them. I discovered another advantage to my tumble. They were all now in front of me. All that faffing around cautiously surrounding me all wasted in the first attack.

    I quickly checked myself out. I had been hit hard in my ribs, but I didn¡¯t feel any of the claws ripping through my skin, and I didn¡¯t feel like I was bleeding. Maybe the new chainmail had stopped the claws. But then I remembered; I wasn¡¯t wearing any chainmail. I had taken it off, as it made too much noise; and it would have been impossible to climb the trees undetected. Then why didn¡¯t I hurt? Was it like those stories of people being shot and not even realising it? I looked down and saw that there was blood, but my shirt wasn¡¯t even ripped.

    I looked forwards again; I was expecting werewolf 3 and 4¡¯s attack to be coming at me. I had even gotten into the defensive posture. But the attack never came. They were all there looking at number 1¡¯s hand. I finally discovered why I hadn¡¯t felt any claws. He didn¡¯t have any. The void edge had sliced through his palm chopping off his claws. But it had done it so easily and smoothly that it hadn¡¯t even slowed the attack. I had been smacked away by the stump. The blood on my shirt was his.

    They all turned towards me and with a bestial growl they attacked as a pack. They knew that some of them would die in the attack, but they were trying to overwhelm me with the numbers. They started changing even more during the attack, devolving further into the wolf.

    Werewolves could transform more towards the wolf. But they chose not to; preferring their hybrid forms. They found the form too bestial and uncivilised. Werewolves did transform fully into their wolf form every full moon, but this was done as an offering to the old ancestors. Werewolves were the only were-species that always transformed into animal form during a full moon. That was something that came from the wolf part of the werewolf.

    The four charging weres started growing out their snouts and their already large teeth started changing further. Their eye lenses started growing larger taking up almost the entire eye, the whites almost disappearing; and they changed to a striking yellow bronze colour. They bared their mouths in a snarl as they lunged at me all of them swiping at me with all 7 of their paws.

    I moved at the last moment, I was faster than them and I used that superior speed to the left and slash my Viking sabre at the werewolf furthest to my left. I took great pleasure in knowing it was werewolf number 2 that I had just beheaded. He had damaged and almost broken my favourite sword and I had used that very sword to decapitate him. Blood sprayed everywhere as his heart continued to beat for a few seconds after his death, pumping blood through the carotid arteries and into the air.

    Before they could even fully turn around and find me I attacked them. I was no longer the one defending, I attacked. I will be honest I am not the best with 2 swords, I find them awkward to use when attacking, which is why I always keep my non dominant left hand¡¯s sword in a defensive ice pick grip. But this time I flipped the sword into the natural sword grip and attacked. I swung the Viking sabre in my right hand in a down ward slash cutting diagonally through werewolf 3¡¯s left shoulder, heart, lung, liver¡­ everything. Then I used the momentum from my recovery to slash upwards diagonally with my left hand cutting through the one armed werewolf number 1 in a reverse strike to my right hand.

    I had turned my Viking swords recovery into a reverse side slash, aiming to cut werewolf number four in half or at least gut him. I managed neither, werewolf four proved cleverer than the other 2 as he didn¡¯t turn around after that first failed attack, but instead kept moving forward.

    Now it was one on one, and he was terrified. It had gone from the 5 of them watching from the side lines, expecting a hobbled werewolf to easily win against a puny human to now him being the only one who was still alive; surrounded by the shredded pieces of his fallen pack.

    Then I noticed something that made my blood run cold. He didn¡¯t stop; instead he was running towards Isiah¡¯s fight. Isiah was still holding on against the Alpha and the increasingly weakening Beta. The Beta saw number 4 running towards them covered in his own pack¡¯s blood and decided to do something insane.

    The Beta abandoned all defence and attacked Isiah head on. Isiah took advantage and struck at him using his sharp and deadly claws to rip through the Betas rib cage and rip out his heart. But instead of the Beta being surprised, he grabbed Isiah¡¯s arm and bit down. I desperately threw my sword at number 4 impaling him through his chest with the silvered sword, he fell down¡­ but as he did so he managed to grab a hold of Isiah¡¯s left leg.

    I saw the Alpha streaking towards Isiah. I tried to reach him desperately, but I was too far away. The Alpha was about to reach Isiah. He was about to kill my best friend. I was filled with despair. I rotated my core to its maximum, trying desperately to increase my speed, so that I could reach him. I directed all of the void photons into my legs in hopes that it would increase my speed; the muscles in my legs began to strain and tear apart. I wasn¡¯t going to make it.

    I wasn¡¯t going to be able to reach him.

    I wasn¡¯t going to be able to save my friend.

    He was about to die.

    BOOOOMMM!!!!!

    I heard what sounded like an explosion in front of me.

    I saw a giant black mountain go past me.

    Holy hell! Josiah!

    He came out of nowhere and just smashed into the Alpha.

    ¡°GRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!!¡± Josiah roared

    He picked up the Alpha by one of its legs and smashed him into the ground repeatedly. Like in that famous Hulk vs. Loki scene. Except this was reality, the wolf¡¯s brains were smashed into pulp on the first swing. On the second the head came off; flying off into the forest. and on the third swing the leg tore away from the body as the body crashed behind him on his back swing.

    The Alpha was well and truly dead. Josiah threw away the mangled leg, turned around and looked at the broken carcass of what was once an Alpha werewolf and roared ¡°GRROOAAAR!¡±

    By this point Isiah had extricated himself from his bind.

    I hobbled over to Isiah; the muscles in my legs were destroyed and would take some time to recover. Josiah turned towards us, gone was that furious rage from his face. He looked like a happy, if slightly dopy kitten; his eyes were closed and his face was tilted to one side, with an innocent pure smile on his face.

    ¡°Sorry I couldn¡¯t transform before¡­¡± he said rubbing his head with a giant hand. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or the fact that Josiah had just saved the day and was the one apologising.

    But both Isiah and I looked at each other and started laughing.

    ¡°Why are you always laughing?¡± we heard behind us as Mathew walked out of the forest carrying a werewolf head.

 Chapter 20: YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH

    ¡°Why are you always laughing?¡± Mathew asked walking out of the forest. He was carrying a werewolf head on his hand.

    He was bleeding. He was covered in blood. He looked to be staggering around, weak on his feet. He was kind of sideways to us so we couldn¡¯t really see his left side. He stumbled forwards a little bit, his body turning towards us.

    We stopped laughing.

    Immediately.

    Whatever funny thoughts that were going through our heads stopped.

    He had no left arm.

    He had no let arm and he was bleeding profusely from the stump. And there was nothing below the elbow. The wound was clean. It was as if the wound hadn¡¯t been caused by a werewolf; but by a sword. He had tied his arm in a tourniquet using a belt and it had slowed the bleeding, but it hadn¡¯t stopped. He was still bleeding.

    We all acted immediately. Josiah rushed forwards and picked him up. He brought him over to me quickly.  I looked at the wound closely and it was horrific, his arm had been severed right below the elbow. It was a clean cut. It looked to be self-inflicted, I found a silver flake imbedded into the wound.

    I untied the belt; the blood started spurting out of the wound in a jet. I quickly re-tied the belt, but more tightly this time; so the blood would stop spilling out so fast. He grimaced at the tightness, but I was trying to literally stop all blood flow. I had him elevate the arm, so that gravity could help him not lose as much blood.

    ¡°What happened?¡± I said. I wanted him to keep talking to stop him from going into hypovolemic shock.  Going into shock would reduce his heart rate and respiration, which in this case would be very bad. He had lost a lot of blood and that meant there was less oxygen in his system; the high heart rate and respiration was compensating for that, but if he went into shock his heart rate and blood pressure would drop, which could mean that his blood couldn¡¯t get enough oxygen to his vital organs; resulting in death.

    ¡°I was fighting that werewolf, and he trapped me. I managed to stab him in the leg, so he wasn¡¯t as fast anymore. I managed to run away from him, but I fell and trapped my arm in between a rock and a fallen tree. It was stuck and badly broken. I could hear the wolf approaching. I tried, but failed to free myself. I had to cut it off to escape.¡± He was panting, in pain and from the increased demand of oxygen on the reduced blood volume.

    ¡°The wolf was hunting for me, but then we heard a massive roar coming from here and the Alpha¡¯s head came flying towards us. The werewolf took one look at the head and took off running.¡±

    ¡°That was a hell of a coincidence, the Alpha¡¯s head falling exactly where you two were fighting.¡± I said. I was being a bit paranoid, but we did have a spy problem and the odds of the head landing where they were fighting were improbably small.

    ¡°Wasn¡¯t a coincidence, my powers can help me be very lucky sometimes. I saw what was about to happen and moved the fight to where the head was going to land.¡± He said.

    I brought out the IV kit I had used on Josiah. I had stored it in my void space for future usage; I had also stored the excess normal saline in there. I wasn¡¯t worried about things spoiling inside as the concept of time didn¡¯t seem to exist in the void. The extra saline solution I had stored inside was still warm from the time I had made it. Even still I washed the water skin and the ¡®tubes¡¯ out with half a bottle of vodka. I tied a brand new needle with the tube using thread and then inserted the needle into his brachial vein on his right arm.

    This proved to be much harder than expected for two reasons: it was dark. And the loss of blood had made his veins flat.

    Whilst I tended to him, Isiah and Josiah had transformed back after retrieving Isiah¡¯s clothes and bow. Josiah was naked, he had burst through his clothes when he¡¯d transformed. I passed him an old cloak so he could cover himself up and a pair of loose fitting trousers, which barely fit around his wide frame.

    We heard noises and rustling coming from the forest. Isiah drew his bow. Josiah and I drew our swords. Mathew tried to stand up, but I pushed him back into a seating position.

    ¡°I thought there was only supposed to be one measly werewolf out here tonight!¡± came the angry sarcastic voice of Mark as he came through the trees.

    ¡°Oh, and you said Josiah was still injured and resting at home tonight!¡± he was angry; really angry.

    Ian was walking up behind him. Ian knew about what was happening tonight; he and Mathew were closer than brothers, and Mathew had told him what was about to happen tonight.

    ¡°You were supposed to keep him in the village tonight. You two were supposed to be the last line of defense; in case we failed¡± Mathew told Ian rather weakly.

    Mark turned around to accuse Ian, and then back to Mathew. They were carrying torches but were the light wasn¡¯t strong enough to illuminate Mathew¡¯s missing arm. They did however notice him sitting down and sounding weak.

    Ian rushed forward, knowing something was wrong. He came to a dead stop when he saw what had happened. ¡°We need to get him back to the village immediately!¡± he said forcefully. I only nodded in response.

    Mathew was still able to walk, but he was weak and unsteady on his feet. Ian arranged for Josiah to walk beside him carrying the waterskin of saline, like a waking IV stand.

    I walked by Isiah and quietly whispered for him to burn the corpse of the werewolves in the clearing. He nodded and walked back towards the clearing. Mark looked at Isiah walking back and gave me a dirty look. He felt betrayed; like we had all conspired together to keep a secret from him. He was 100% correct.

    ¡°We need to burn the corpses of the werewolves. It is dangerous to leave them lying around.¡± I said to him as he looked at me suspiciously. Was it necessary though? I had no idea what would happen if an animal ate werewolf flesh. I didn¡¯t particularly want to find out; just in case it was a rabies type thing. Also, we had made a lot of noise and other people were bound to want to investigate and they could get infected with the werewolf virus.

    I treated it like a virus, because that is how the infection seemed to behave. To me were-ism behaved like a sexually transmitted disease, like HIV or herpes. It was passed on through bodily fluids and it didn¡¯t seem to survive for long outside the host. It had to be spread by direct contact and couldn¡¯t be passed on very easily. Of course it was also much more difficult to spread as 90% of those infected died within minutes of being infected... so they wouldn¡¯t have time to spread the infection. Although with werewolves the death rate was only about 80%.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    I was thinking on these tangents to avoid thinking about my main problem. Mathew had his arm chopped off. How was I going to help heal that? I knew nothing about amputations, when I had repaired Josiah¡¯s arm I was putting things back in their places and literally supergluing it back. This time I had no idea where to even begin.

    The only thing I remembered about amputations was reading a thriller novel in which an African warlord chopped people¡¯s arms off and dipped them in molten tar. The hot molten tar would cauterise the wounds closed, and he would do this to his prisoners every Christmas. I remembered the option he gave the prisoners, short sleeved or long sleeved; by which he meant above the elbow or the wrist. That part really stuck with me for some reason.

    I broke out of that terrible thought with a shiver. It seemed ridiculous, but I didn¡¯t know what else to do. I then started to dissect (poor word choice) the methodology of what they were doing with the tar dip. They were cauterising the wound and sealing it; which stopped the blood flow and reduced the chance of infection.  That I thought I could accomplish, probably. Maybe.

    We reached the village, and it was active with people. They had obviously been disturbed by the howls and roars in the forest. We were half a mile inside the forest but the noise had obviously carried. I had hoped that the trees would provide some natural sound dampening, but apparently it hadn¡¯t.

    ¡°Tell them that everything is okay now and the wolf pack is gone. They won¡¯t return.¡± Which was true, dead people rarely return.

    Ian went off to explain/lie to the villagers. Mark, Josiah and I took Mathew to the pub. It had the largest fireplace and the biggest tables. The large fireplace would mean more light and that I could boil water faster.

    We got inside the pub, the fire was already lit. Both Ian and Mathew¡¯s wives were inside waiting, along with Bess. When they saw us come in the all got up. They saw Mathew¡¯s stump and one of the women almost fainted. That one was Mathew¡¯s wife; they were identical twins and liked to dress the same. <Why do twins do that?>. It was impossible to tell them apart. The other twin grabbed her and stopped her from falling.

    ¡°I knew something more was going on lad, I already have the water boiling.¡± Bess said, pointing at the fireplace. I nodded in acknowledgement. Mathew had stopped bleeding and the saline solution had seemed to have helped. So I had a little time. Although Mathew had lost a lot of blood, it could have been much worse. He had tied a tourniquet on the wound immediately, so he hadn¡¯t lost as much blood. He had lost a lot of blood, but not nearly as much as he could have.

    I had Josiah sit Mathew down onto a chair and I went to the back room. I saw one of the tables had been cleaned and there was a clean linen sheet on top along with my medical equipment bag. I looked at Bess. ¡°I wasn¡¯t born yesterday. I remember the Great War, I still remember those howls.¡± She said to me. Damn, that was one impressive woman.

    I went around the back of the bar and got a pestle. I ground up some willow bark from my pack and two secret pills of Vicodin. I mixed that with some water, and made him drink. I had no anaesthetics in my void space, Vicodin was the best I could do. I made him drink the whole thing down. And then I asked him to lie down on the table. ¡°This is going to hurt.¡± I said to him. No shit. ¡°When you cut off that arm you were in a battle haze, so you probably didn¡¯t realise how much it hurt. This will hurt worse.¡±

    I then prepared my equipment by filling up a tankard with boiling water and then sterilising my knives and needles. After the incident with Josiah I had improved my medical pack.

    He nodded his head. I had him bite down on a leather strap. ¡°Jo, grab his shoulders and other arm and hold him down. Mark I need you to hold his legs down.¡± I said to them. They both nodded, although Mark was still scowling.

    I took a deep breath and blew it out. I started the operation. I cut apart the skin until I went past the elbow. Mathew bit down on the strap as he tried to thrash around. ¡°Hold him down tighter!¡± I commanded. Both Mark and Josiah complied. I doused the site in vodka, to sterilise the site as much as I could. Ideally I would have used betadine, but there was none available. Actually, ideally I would have called 999 and waited for an ambulance; and let professional surgeons do this kind of shit.

    I cut away the flesh from below the elbow leaving only the skin and bone attached, I knew enough to know that the best place for the amputation was at the joint itself and that exposed broken bones were bad. I cut away all of the muscle and tendons that were below the elbow severing the ulnar nerve at the elbow at the junction where it started to split. I cut away all of the ligaments connecting the humorous to the radius and the ulna bones, and then dislocated and pulled the bones away from the elbow. By this time the Vicodin had kicked in and the pain must have been reduced by a lot. But Mathew still screamed into the leather strap.

    I tied off all of the blood vessels going down the arm using a heated knife to cauterise the ends of the blood vessels. I had no idea whether I was doing everything in the correct order or not, I was hopelessly unqualified. I checked to see if we had missed any blood vessels and loosened up the tourniquet slightly; to literally check for leaks. Luckily there weren¡¯t any. I cleaned up and went behind the bar to prepare a salve, which was actually just a strong antibiotic cream and disinfectant mixed together. I applied the salve to the wound and then stitched the wound closed, using the skin flaps from below the elbow; liberally applying the salve to the outside of the wound as well. I then carefully wrapped the site in bandages.

    I then collapsed on the floor. My legs were no longer able to bear my weight. In all of the excitement after the battle I had completely forgotten that my own legs were torn apart on the inside. By this time Ian had long finished talking to the villagers and had come back. Even Isiah had returned after disposing of the corpses.

    Isiah and Josiah rushed forwards and to help me off the floor. They sat me up on a chair, using another chair a footstool to raise my legs up. ¡°Let me have a look.¡± came Bess¡¯ voice from behind me. She¡¯d been sitting with the twins. She had been trying to calm mark¡¯s wife down and praying with them for some comfort.

    She raised my trouser legs up to look at my leg. ¡°Oh my god! How did this happen? Why were you standing there like nothing was wrong?¡± she scolded me. My legs were a mass of ugly purple and angry red. They were swollen and looked bruised to hell. I had caused a lot of internal damage when I tried to push myself way beyond my limits, to try and rescue Isiah.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be fine, just a couple of days off my feet and I will be fighting fit again.¡± I said. Poor choice of words, that. The room seemed to get tenser, as soon as the word fight was used.

    ¡°Speaking of fighting, what happened out there? You told us there was only one werewolf. We saw more than a dozen bodies lying there. And I want the truth.¡± Mark said. There was something in his voice that told me; if I didn¡¯t tell him the truth, we were done being friends.

    ¡°Are you sure you want to know?¡± I asked softly.

    ¡°Yes!¡± he snapped back

    ¡°You once told me that you couldn¡¯t know, so that you didn¡¯t have to inform our superiors.¡± I said reminding him.

    ¡°I have the right to know what kind of monsters I have at my side, pretending to be my brothers!¡± he said. I was genuinely offended. We were friends. He was the one who talked to me the first time I took a life. I was the only one in the village who knew about his wife and adopted son.

    I was hurt.

    I heard quick small footsteps coming from behind me. Bess walked forwards, she stood in front of mark, raised her right hand back and slapped him in the face. It was like thunder. Everything went quiet; it was as if even the insects were afraid of making a noise.

    ¡°HOW DARE YOU! THIS CHILD WENT OUT THERE INTO THE NIGHT TO FIGHT MONSTERS! He fought to protect our village. He fought to the point that he could barely stand and the first thing he did after that was to help heal his brother; ignoring his own pain. LOOK AT HIS LEGS! He did that to himself for our sake. Pushing himself beyond his limits to protect people he has no blood relations to.¡± She was crying. ¡°Oh, I have failed you as a mother. You will apologise and you will mean it!¡±

    Mark looked at his mother, the tears in her eyes and then he looked at my legs. ¡°I am sorry.¡± He said, bowing his head. He seemed to genuinely mean it. ¡°But why didn¡¯t you take me with you, I could have fought alongside you.¡± This really seemed to be the crux of the matter.

    ¡°For the same reason, we didn¡¯t take Ian, or Tom or any of the other able bodied men.¡± Isiah said from the side.

    Josiah looked at him. ¡°Do you really want to know the answer?¡± Isiah asked him.

    Mark took a moment to consider his options; he took a deep breath and then exhales slowly. He turned and looked Isiah in the eye; and then nodded his head, slowly.

    ¡°Because you are human; and we are not.¡±

 Chapter 21: A long night

    ¡°Because you are human; and we are not.¡± Isiah said with a calm determination.

    The phrase hung in the air for a while. It brought the entire conversation to a stop.

    The silence was palpable; thick, like a heavy soup.

    Mark stood there with his jaw agape, unable to say anything. He closed his mouth, opened it and closed it again. He was like a fish. He swallowed a couple of times. Then he exploded.

    ¡°What do you mean you aren¡¯t human!? We grew up together. I have known you since birth. We used to play soldiers together!¡± he turned and pointed at Josiah. ¡°I was there when he was born! I saw him grow up! We were all there when that vicious little bastard started picking on you. We were all here when we saw you cower and retreat from your own brother; choosing to hide in the woods rather than stand up to him¡±

    ¡°¡­I¡¯m sorry¡­¡± Josiah said from the side

    ¡°What does me being human have to do with defending MY village? Why does my being human make me inferior to you?! How dare you prevent me from defending my own village!!¡± Mark was panting by the end of his speech.

    ¡°It isn¡¯t about you being inferior to us¡­¡± I said trying to calm him down.

    ¡°Then why didn¡¯t you take me with you?! Why did you leave me behind? I am supposed to be the leader of this squad, yet I was kept in the dark and lied to. This was insubordination! It was tantamount to mutiny!¡± he was getting hysterical. This conversation wasn¡¯t going anywhere. Mark wasn¡¯t listening. He was spiralling within his own neurosis; we needed to snap him out of it.

    ¡°Because you would have died¡­ and worse than that you would have gotten in the way¡± Isiah must have been thinking along the same lines as me.

    Mark was taken aback.

    ¡°What do you mean gotten in the way? I could have helped. Maybe, if I was there Mathew wouldn¡¯t have lost his arm!¡± Mark exclaimed. Mark was about to say more but-

    ¡°You would have been a distraction and gotten us all killed!¡± Isiah shouted over mark

    ¡°You seem to think we are disparaging your bravery or calling you weak. We aren¡¯t. This isn¡¯t about whether you are brave enough to fight; or whether you have the right to fight for your own home. This is about capability. This is about ability.

    Earlier you called us monsters¡­ that¡¯s precisely what we were fighting out there tonight; Monsters. Monsters out to kill us all and all the people we care about. Terrifying monsters that were targeting us.¡± Isiah waived his hand around pointing at all of us in squad nine.

    ¡°This wasn¡¯t about some misguided glory seeking. Or a way to undermine your authority; this was about survival. They were hunting us; we decided to hunt them back. We decided to ambush them at night before they could attack us. We didn¡¯t tell you because you are a human. You aren¡¯t capable of fighting against the monsters. This was a night raid, you can¡¯t see in the dark. You needed a torch to move around in the forest, where as we can see in the dark. You move slower than them, you are weaker than them in every single physical aspect. And a silvered sword as only as useful as where you can stick them.¡±

    ¡°We didn¡¯t know whether we would win¡­ quite honestly we didn¡¯t expect to come out of this so unscathed.¡± I said quietly. Mathew¡¯s wife started to say something, but I cut her off. ¡°Mathew shouldn¡¯t have been out there with us either. He is a human. His future sight might make him a better fighter when compared to other humans; but he was out matched against even the weakest of werewolves. It was the 4 of us against 15 werewolves. We had no right to survive. It is a miracle that we survived. We had no right to survive.¡±  I repeated

    ¡°We didn¡¯t expect to survive¡­¡± Isiah said.

    ¡°We left you back here so that you would be able to protect the village against any werewolves that got past us.¡± I said, again, for what must have been the 20<sup>th</sup> time. But this time the message seemed to get through.

    Mark looked at us; then turned his head to the floor, ashamed. ¡°Sorry¡­

    But I still don¡¯t understand the not human part. Emris, yes, he I know is something different; but you two? I grew up with you two. I trained you two, I saw Josiah almost die a week ago from a shield strike to the head. How are you more equipped to deal with a pack of werewolves than me?¡±

    Isiah extended his arm outwards and then selectively transformed each of his fingers and then slowly transformed the rest of his arm. It was actually a bit weird to see him transform each of his fingers individually as the finger expanded outwards; he looked like he had one really fat big furry finger, whilst the rest remained normal. I had seen his transformed arm before, but the out of scale-ness of one finger was weird.

    Mark jumped back, scared, his arm reaching towards his belt for his sword; which wasn¡¯t there. Everyone had taken their swords off and placed them behind the bar at Bess¡¯ insistence.

    ¡°You¡¯re one of them?!¡± he accused back, his anger flaring back again. Only to be smacked on the back of the head by Bess.

    ¡°Stupid child. If he was one of them why would he help you fight them.¡± she said calmly

    ¡°Look at his arm! He is one of them. He is a werewolf!¡± Mark exclaimed again.

    Isiah bared his teeth and hissed, at being called a werewolf

    ¡°No he is not a wolf¡­ he is a cat.¡± I said ¡°A werecat.¡±

    ¡°How¡­ what¡­?¡± Mark said flummoxed.

    ¡°Werewolves aren¡¯t the only were creatures in existence, just the most populous. There are weres of most higher-order predatory mammals.¡± I explained

    Everyone looked at me funny

    ¡°Higher-order, predatory mammals?¡± Mark asked confusedly.  Oh-shit, those words meant nothing. And they wouldn¡¯t for another 1200 years.

    ¡°Large predators with Fur: Like lions, wolves, bears, etc.¡± I explained hastily

    ¡°How did you turn into a werecat?¡± Bess asked Isiah calmly, everyone was still giving me the side eye, but thankfully this question took the attention away from me.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    Isiah looked around the room everyone was looking at him, curiosity in their eyes¡­ and fear. Everyone wanted to know the story, even me. I knew the short version, but was curious about the full story.  He took a deep, lung clearing breath; breathing out explosively. He slumped in resignation.

    He pulled a chair and sat down, his left side leaning against the side of the table.

    ¡°It was the fall of the year I turned 19, the Sunday after the harvest festival. I was wearing the new clothes I had bought at the harvest feast. Josiah was 13; he was drunk on stolen harvest mead. He had confessed his love to daisy again. She refused him, again. He was in a foul state of mind and drunk. He was already larger than me and in need for an outlet for his frustrations.

    He found me.¡± Isiah took another deep breath and shook his head.

    Josiah had his head down in the corner; trying to make himself as small as possible. I saw a teardrop fall from his eyes.

    ¡°I¡¯d like to say that I gave as good as I got, but that would be a lie. Josiah went too far, in his drunken rage he managed to break my arm and I was bleeding from a cut to my head. I couldn¡¯t tell anyone, I was embarrassed; I had been beaten up by my own kid brother¡­ and despite everything he was my brother. and I had promised mother that I would always look after him.¡± Isiah looked down hiding the tears that threatened his eyes at the mention of his mother.

    Isiah¡¯s mother had died shortly after giving birth to Josiah. She had succumbed to what was called childbirth fever, known as puerperal fever in modern times; a bacterial infection of the reproductive tract, contracted after the birth. Maternal mortality rate in the sixth century was close to almost 5%; mainly due to the poor sanitation (also the solution to a haemorrhage was not a venesection, why did they love venesection so much?). So that meant that if a woman had 4 pregnancies (which, considering the lack of contraception wouldn¡¯t be uncommon) she would have a 20% chance of death.

    ¡°I remember that! You told your drunken father that you were going away hunting, and the fool told us that you had run away.¡± Bess said exasperatedly

    Isiah shook his head and continued: ¡°I ran away into the woods hoping to explain away my injuries as a fall. I collected up some rabbits that I had snared as proof of my activities. I was in the woods and thirsty, so I made my way over to the stream for some water. That¡¯s when I found her; the werecat who turned me.

    She was hurt and bleeding, covered in so much blood that I didn¡¯t even notice her nakedness. She had been attacked. At the time I thought it was bandits, but I later found out it was an ambush by a pack of werewolves with silvered weapons.¡± I raised my eyebrow at this. A pack of wolves ambushing a lone cat with silvered weapons¡­ seemed like overkill. And they failed to kill her outright.

    ¡°I made my way over to help her. She had been hurt badly and with silvered weapons, so the wounds weren¡¯t healing, she was hurt, hungry and more than a little paranoid. She was feral. She reacted on instinct, mistaking me for a threat. She attacked me, slashing me across the chest at a speed not possible by humans¡­ and then I died.

    Well that¡¯s what it felt like, I felt more pain than I ever felt and then the world went dark. I felt like I was in hell; for what felt like years. It was dark and cold, it felt like every bone in my body was breaking and reforming and then I felt nothing.

    Next thing I remember it a sharp pain on the back of my neck and a feeling of comfort I hadn¡¯t felt since when mother was alive. I woke up a few hours later naked as the day I was born and hungrier than I had ever felt. The woman was still there, looking much calmer, well at least less bloody. She still looked a little feral. She was sitting there, leaning against an oak tree, observing me. I noticed she was wearing my clothes and eating the last remaining rabbit I had snared. I hadn¡¯t noticed earlier in her more red state, but she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was tall, taller than me, lithe and with a gorgeous bosom. She was a perfect goddess, even in her shabby less than perfect state. Her skin was dusky and she had flowing long black hair.

    I tried speaking to her, but my throat felt like it had been ripped to shreds. After I woke up my mind was still fuzzy and I didn¡¯t seem to be in full control of my body, there seemed to be something else in my mind, something more primitive. I seemed to be in a heightened state of awareness, I could hear every bird call and leaf rustle in the forest, the stream seemed louder than thunder, my own heartbeat seemed like standing next to war drums. I tried again to speak but all I could muster was (what seem to me) a deafening croak.

    She interrupted my failed efforts. ¡°Easy cub, it will take time for you to re-learn how to speak.¡± Her voice was raspy and taut, like she was in pain. ¡°You must be feeling hungrier than you have ever felt; try to control that hunger. Don¡¯t let the hunger consume you. Carefully, try to get up on two feet, your instinct will be to be on all fours, don¡¯t give into that. Control your hunger.¡± She gave me a small hunting knife, my own small hunting knife, which she seemed to pluck out of nowhere and told me to go hunt something but only using the knife.

    It took me a long time to go hunt a straggling old doe. When I brought it back to the camp, she ordered me to start a fire and roast the deer. The hunger inside me wanted to eat the dear raw, and it wanted to start from the liver. After roasting and eating most of the dear, my hunger somewhat subsided and my mind started to return to me.

    That night she explained what had happened to me. What she had done to me. She told me her name was Kora and that she was a werecat; specifically an aberrant form of a were-tiger, called the night tiger.

    She told me how she had been ambushed by the wolves and that she had barely escaped from them. She lifted up the shirt to reveal a deep throbbing scar running across her abdomen. The wound had an unnatural purple hue to it; she explained that it was caused by a cursed blade. She told me that in her injured state her inner cat had taken control. She was hungry and in desperate need of nourishment to heal her wounds (the ones which weren¡¯t caused by the cursed blade) and that the inner cat smelt the rabbits; she reacted on instinct and attacked me to take the rabbits. She regained enough control to give me some of her blood which kept me alive and transformed me into a werecat.

    We spent the next two weeks together as she taught me how to adapt to my new circumstances and how to control my hunger and how to control the inner cat. She taught me how to adjust to my new senses, as they threatened to overwhelm me and how to control my new strength; so that I could safely live in human society.

    She taught me how to transform into my various forms including my war form. She taught me how to hunt in my transformed state without giving in to my inner cat. She also taught me how and when to give control to my inner cat. The cat demands freedom and the occasional releases help maintain an inner balance.

    She taught me about our history and how most werecats were originally from Egypt and the Africas and had been brought over to Europe by the Macedonians during Alexander¡¯s triumphant conquest. How we, the night tigers, were from the Indian subcontinent and how we were said to be descended from the mount of the goddess of motherhood, Ma Shashti.

    She taught me about the laws of the weres, about the relationships and customs between the various were-tribes. About how to identify different weres, and even how to guesstimate the approximate age of weres. She taught me about how weres are turned and about how 9 out of 10 sires can¡¯t handle the gift and die. She taught me how the gift was passed on through the bodies vital fluids and how the curse only lasted a very short time outside the body. She taught me how to control sires by forming a sire link by biting the sire in the back of the neck and how the sire link allows you to feel how the sire is feeling and to help the sire.

    She taught me all she could, but the curse was killing her. Each day she would manage to stay awake for shorter amounts of time, until the tenth day when she didn¡¯t wake up at all. It took another 3 days for her to die. I buried her corpse underneath her favourite tree, the tree where she used to sit and tell me tales of our tribe¡¯s history and legends.¡± Isiah finished his tale.

    He had tears in his eyes as recalled Kora. I looked around the room to see tears in the eyes of the women and Josiah, who was openly crying in the corner. Mark was looking down at the floor ashamed at his previous conduct. Bess got up from the chair and grabbed Isiah in her warm and loving embrace.

    We spent the night at Ian¡¯s monitoring Mathew¡¯s condition, at one point in the night Josiah and Isiah went outside to talk, and even without my super hearing I could tell that Josiah was apologising to his brother for his previous behaviour. When they came back they both had puffy red eyes.

    We spent the rest of the night in contemplative silence. Mathew broke the silence in the morning waking up in considerable pain. I inspected his wounds and gave him some more painkilling tea.

    It had been a long night.

 chapter 22: What do we actually know

    It had been a long night.

    We were tired, physically fatigued from the battles we fought last night and mentally fatigued from last night¡¯s revelations. We had come back to border creek in order to recuperate after the loss of Frank, but we had been forced to defend the town against a pack of werewolves instead. We were tired.

    The tiredness and mental fatigue bled into our moods for the rest of our down time, and it seemed to bleed into the mood of the village too. From my brief three month stay in the village, I remembered it being a lot noisier and more active. But the fatigue seemed to have dampened the village¡¯s vibrancy. We spent the time quietly going about our various tasks, each of us preferring to spend times inside our own heads. I spent my time helping Bess with the cooking, which she reluctantly allowed me to do, the kitchen was her domain and no men were allowed, but I managed to convince her to let me cut the vegetables and stir the potage. I also helped Mark and Luke around the farm doing the various repairs and maintenance that needed doing, like repairing the broken wheel spoke from our carriage. I debated whether I should add suspension to the carriage, adding a rudimentary leaf spring suspension would be possible. Ultimately I decided against the idea as the steel required to make the suspension would be too wasteful (it required more than 4 swords worth of steel. and it had to be steel as iron didn¡¯t spring back, which is kind of important in a spring).

    I also spent a lot of time monitoring Mathew¡¯s condition, he seemed to be healing up ok and there didn¡¯t seem to be any signs of an infection. I had also started to wean Mathew off the modern painkillers I had been giving him. Mathew was awake by this point and he was not happy when the pain started to increase. I explained this away by suggesting that his body was building up a tolerance to the willow bark. By this point most of the village knew about Mathew¡¯s injury and one of them spoke up about the normal drug given to sedate someone when willow bark brought no relief. It was a concoction of hemlock and henbane.

    ¡°I was told that ¡®it will cause a dreamless sleep for 3 nights¡¯ by one of my relatives.¡± Mathew¡¯s wife said to me

    ¡°After which he will never wake up!¡± I snapped back, I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. I reminded myself that Harriet was simply trying to help. ¡°Look Harriet, I know you and Henrietta (Ian¡¯s wife, and Harriet¡¯s identical twin) are just trying to help but trust me on this, just keep giving the him willow bark to chew and make sure that he wound is kept clean, he will be fine. He is over the worst of it. As for hemlock and henbane; they are both lethal poisons that are more likely to kill him than relieve the pain.¡±

    Hemlock and henbane were incredibly dangerous poisons and people knew this. Despite knowing this they still used it as a sedative. I don¡¯t even know why. Probably for the same reason trepanning (drilling holes in the head) was used to relieve headaches in various different cultures to treat headaches. In some extremely rare cases a headache could be caused by an increased intracranial pressure, basically too much fluid in the brain, and the too much fluid starts to crush the brain. In those rare cases trepanning allows the excess fluids to drain out and this stops the brain from being crushed. Some old shaman/shyster probably tried it as a desperate measure and it worked, so they started using it to treat all headaches. And it probably worked, in that ¡®I wouldn¡¯t notice my original headache if someone was DRILLING into my skull¡¯ way.

    It was the fifth night of our ¡°leave¡± when we finally recovered from our collective malaise and decided to sit down and have a squad meeting.

    We met at the only real meeting place where this sort of discussion could take place; the pub. It was late and Ian had graciously closed the doors a little early to let us have our meeting. In exchange we would have to clean up the pub before leaving. Smelling the room, he got the better deal. We may have cost the notorious miser a couple of coppers but we saved him from having to wipe down the tables and chairs, which at this point in the night were covered in a foul mix of dried ale, mead and sweat. The tables and floor were tacky and the whole room smelt like 30 rowdy farmers had been dancing inside; because they had.

    ¡°We should clean up first.¡± Isiah said. His tone made it clear this was not a suggestion.

    ¡°Fine¡± replied mark, Josiah and I just nodded and got on with the job.

    We spent the next 30 minutes cleaning the pub in silence. I fetched some water and began wiping down the tables, Mark and Isiah began sweeping the floor, and Josiah followed behind them and was mopping the floor. By the time we were done the pub was relatively clean and tidy, well at least it wasn¡¯t sticky. I had added a little soap and lavender to the water so the smell was also mostly gone.

    When we were done we sat down around a table to have our talk. Isiah pulled down some flagons and got us each some ale, except for me he just gave me an empty small cup, I noticed he got one for himself as well. I took out my waterskin full of whisky and poured some into our cups. It was the Compass Box blend¡¯s Phenomenology, a crazy blend of dissonance that somehow managed to work together to produce something exceptional.

    Mark looked at the two of us accusatorily; Isiah hastily got up and got two more cups. I poured a couple of fingers worth in the cups and handed them to Mark and Josiah. Mark looked at the small amount (relative to the flagons of ale) and decided to sniff the cup; Josiah on the other hand took a look at the cup and decided to swallow the whole thing in one gulp. He then proceeded to cough and splutter it all out again. Then he spent the next minute gasping. Finally he recovered, grabbed the cup and with a massive grin on his face he said ¡°more please!¡±

    ¡°Pffft¡± we all burst out laughing. The silent and sombre mood that had hung around the room seemed to disappear.

    ¡°What is this?¡± Mark asked suspiciously.

    ¡°It tastes like fire!¡± Josiah replied cheerfully his hand still outstretched demanding more.

    I deftly switched the waterskin full of the really nice Phenomenology of which I only had one case, with a waterskin full of Tennessee Jack and poured another double into Josiah¡¯s cup. ¡°Sip it slowly¡± I said to him as he brought the cup to his face.

    ¡°This is what happens when you try to turn ale into a tincture. Alexander of Aphrodisias came up with the process of purifying water by distilling it. I applied the same process to ale and it resulted in an undrinkable horrifying thing. It looked clearer than the cleanest spring water but it burned in the throat, so I called the thing firewater. I stored it in a barrel and forgot about it for years. Then one day I returned back to the thing hoping to mix it with herbs to make something to treat a cough. It had turned back into the colour of ale. Out of curiosity I tasted some and I liked the taste. It didn¡¯t help with the cough though.¡± I invented this story taking credit for inventing whisky a thousand years before its invention; although this is probably close to how it was discovered¡­ or the perfume industry.

    Mark took a tentative sip at the same time as Josiah took his second sip. They went through the time honoured face making that happens when everyone sips their first hard alcohol: oh-that¡¯s-a-new-flavour; oh-that¡¯s-bitter; oh-that-burns; oh-that-was-horrible-and-I-am-never-doing-that-again; oh-it-feels-warm-in-my-stomach; oh-that-feels-nice. Let¡¯s do it again!If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Isiah got us back on track by clearing his throat ¡°we need to clear the air between us¡±

    ¡°You all have been hiding things from me and planning things behind my back¡± Mark said

    I tried to look a little bit apologetic; Josiah just rubbed his head innocently, this was all still too new for him. Isiah took a different approach.

    ¡°Yes.¡± He said with more than a hint of defiance in his voice. ¡°We had to hide our secrets. Our mere existence is a crime; by law you should be trying to kill us. By the letter of the law we are unnatural monsters that should be hunted down and killed. The king has outlawed the existence of magic and all magical beings. So we hid the part of ourselves that would get us killed.¡±

    Mark looked a little mollified at that. ¡°I understand that part, but planning things behind my back is not ok. We are part of a military squad and the squad can only function if we are all working together as a whole.¡± He explained

    Both Isiah and I nodded at this statement.

    ¡°We will endeavour to do better moving forwards.¡± Isiah said in a very formal manner, implicitly acknowledging Mark¡¯s last statement as a military order.

    I released a huge sigh of relief and said ¡°Moving on, we need to discuss what happened the night of the ambush and how these wolves knew where we were.¡±

    ¡°They have a spy.¡± Isiah spat out in disgust. No-one likes a spy, especially if he is working against you.

    ¡°But the question is who?¡± I asked.

    ¡°It has to be someone with intimate knowledge of our mission.¡±

    ¡°It must be someone who was in at the base camp when we were there, how else would they have known that we were coming back to border creek.¡± Isiah said

    ¡°They also knew about us defeating the blood wolves¡­¡± the list of who it could possibly be seemed to be getting very small.

    ¡°It has to be either Merlin or the Quartermaster. They are the only ones who knew we were coming back to border creek¡± Isiah said cracking his knuckles, plotting his revenge; his eyes were glowing an unnatural yellow, so the cat wasn¡¯t happy either.

    ¡°It can¡¯t be Merlin. He has been with us most of the time; he didn¡¯t have time to send messages. And he was with us when we were attacked by the blood wolves.¡± Josiah said defending our squad mate

    ¡°It can¡¯t be the quartermaster. He has been a soldier all his life, he is a survivor of the Great War. He has seen first-hand the devastation caused by the real forces of magic; he wouldn¡¯t betray the King for a measly witch.¡± Mark said, Mark had been with the army for five years and naturally knew the quartermaster better than us.

    Something in Mark¡¯s words set off some alarm bells in my head. It was like we had all been ignoring something right in front of us and suddenly I could see the moon-walking bear.

    ¡°I¡¯ve been wondering about this since the David incident¡± I said, referring back to my killing of David and then finding out that he was a spy. ¡°She is a witch. By and large witches are harmless. And the ones that aren¡¯t, don¡¯t live very long.¡±

    Mark and Josiah both looked at me confused; Isiah was frowning as if he had also just figured out that something wasn¡¯t right.

    ¡°Witch craft isn¡¯t natural¡­¡± I started, trying to explain something whilst also trying to figure out the problem out loud.

    ¡°Magic isn¡¯t natural¡± Mark said back, interrupting my train of thought

    ¡°No, magic is a natural part of this world.¡± I said to him patiently trying not to take offence. ¡°It is just a part of the world that can¡¯t be seen by most humans. It is a part of a greater world, we just call it supernatural. Weres have existed since antiquity, so have mages, elementals and various other creatures of magic.

    Witches are different. Witches are humans¡­ I mean normal humans like you.¡± I said when I saw Mark about to interrupt again

    ¡°They are humans who are somehow trying to manipulate the nature of this world. They are trying to imitate mages; they try to channel energy through them to affect nature. Magic or spirit energy exists all around us in the natural world. Mages are born with the natural ability to channel this spirit energy inside them, refine the energy and use the magic energy to for their own purposes. A mage is naturally limited by how much energy they can channel and their own elemental affinity; that is the type of energy they can channel. Humans shouldn¡¯t be able to channel these energies. Witches are humans who forcibly channel these energies which are unnatural to them. This how ever comes at a grave cost¡­ life force. They use their own life force as a source of energy to power their spells. They sacrifice their looks, which is why they all look like hags, and their lives to power their magicks.

    It does however have its own advantages, life force has no elemental affinity so they are able to manipulate all of the elements, and they are able to do things like minor alchemy, the ability to brew potions, minor physical enhancements, they are slightly stronger and faster than normal¡­ minor everything basically.

    They use life force in exchange for the powers they get but it is not an equivalent exchange. Life force is an extremely powerful source of energy; only ever to be used as a last resort. When a magical being burns their life force it allows them to temporarily access powers far beyond their limits: a water mage capable of only freezing a barrel¡¯s worth of water may be able to freeze an entire lake, which could be useful if they were being attacked from something in the lake.

    The results aren¡¯t the same for witch craft. Witchcraft goes against nature, like trying to swim up a waterfall, so the amount of power required is greatly amplified. It is the equivalent of having to burning a forest to boil a pot of water. The stronger the spell the more life force is required, which is why they used to work together in circles; distributing the life force required over multiple people. Instead of one witch sacrificing a year¡¯s worth of time, twelve witches could sacrifice a month¡¯s worth of time¡­ of course there aren¡¯t many witches left and no witches circles anymore, which is why I said they are supposed to be harmless. A witch causing this much mayhem should have run out of life force a long time ago.¡±

    ¡°So you think the witch is somehow using magic to spy on us from a distance?¡± Isiah asked me, ending my monologue (which was actually quite helpful, I was starting to confuse myself).

    ¡°It¡¯s possible, I guess to use something like numeromancy or oculomancy or some other divinatory magicks to scry our futures.¡± I said shrugging. ¡°But again this requires a lot of power, how is she fuelling this much power without killing herself.¡±

    ¡°Human sacrifice¡­ Killing living beings to fuel spells. Kora told me about them; it is part of the night tiger tribe¡¯s history. There are beings called the Rakshasa, who consumed the blood and flesh of humans to temporarily gain abilities to power their magicks. It can also be done by consuming the life forces of animals but it is said to be less effective.¡±

    I was distracted for a second, suddenly remembering my Great-uncle Vik. He used to sit me at his side and tell me stories about the Rakshasas eating naughty children to scare me. So apparently my childhood nightmares could have really happened¡­

    ¡°We have to stop her!¡± Mark exclaimed, smashing his hand down on to the table.

    ¡°We can¡¯t even tell what we know to the army; even knowing about this stuff could get us summarily executed.¡± I said to Mark ¡°Your King¡¯s ban on all magical knowledge... it¡¯s not really helpful when fighting against people who already have magical knowledge.¡±

    ¡°In any case, we should go back to base as soon as we can. The longer we stay here the more danger we bring to our families.¡± Isiah said bring an end to our conversation.

    We went back to our houses in silence, we had more questions now than when we started and things didn¡¯t seem to be going in our favour. We still didn¡¯t know if we had a spy in our midst or if the witch was divining things with magic. We didn¡¯t know if the latter was better or worse, because it almost certainly involved human sacrifice. We didn¡¯t know how to pass on our conjecture to the army without getting killed. And we didn¡¯t know what we were going to do next.