Beam’s POV: Day 10

Current Wealth: 4 silver 20 copper

Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver

A full 30 copper pieces for one room over one night felt like a rip-off, to me, but apparently we hadn’t had many options. Had I known the sort of night we were into I might’ve been more insistent on sleeping elsewhere.

The room was better than our little snow mounds and fires, but only just. We emerged from it like butterflies from a cocoon, if the butterflies had mistakenly cocooned themselves inside a C.I.A sensory deprivation tank. Stiff, achy, still cold and fatigued.

We had enough leftover coins for a meal, at least. A dozen copper bought us some bread, soup, etc. The church turned us away though, apparently they’d heard word that we could afford to be sleeping in inns, and didn’t take kindly to freeloaders.

Which was fair enough, honestly. But it still screwed us a bit. Looked like protein wouldn’t be on the menu for a while.

I looked down, feeling my body, frowning at the withering that’d started to take it over. I’d kept up my exercises ever since waking up, or at least as close as I could manage, but there was a lot more to being a modern-day Olympian than just putting in the hours of training. I needed protein, and a dozen other things I couldn’t even remember the names of. We were barely even getting meat, let alone creatine.

My muscles were fading away, fast. I hadn’t lost a point of Strength yet, but I had a feeling that that was still coming. If I’d been conscious and exerting myself for the five days of starvation, maybe I’d already be dropping down the stat scale.

“What’s our next move?” I asked the other two, speaking through a mouthful of stew. It had been expensive to get a bowl with actual meat in it, but I’d insisted. I needed to maintain as much of the head start modernity had given me as was possible.

Solitaire answered with certainty, Xangô with doubt.

“Another troll.” The former declared.

“I don’t know.” Sighed the latter.

They eyed one another, with Solitaire making his case first.

“We’re better equipped to take one on now, stronger, more experienced. Our one disadvantage is we have four arrows instead of five, but that’s easily fixed.”

I saw him wince at the mention of our arrows, he was the one who’d broken one, yanking them out of the creature’s back. Probably saved our lives in the process, mind, but still not great long term.

“We could buy more arrows.” I suggested, and Solitaire chewed on it.

“What do you think, Xangô?” He asked at last.

Xangô hesitated. He’d been doing that a lot today, ever since we’d finally kicked back in our room. I could imagine why. The frantic scramble for food, warmth, and water of the last few days had kept me from really registering anything that’d happened to us, but settling down in our shitty inn had brought a few hours with nothing to do. So I’d finally had the luxury of thought.

My experience in Redacle so far had been fairly limited. I missed home, missed my family and friends, but all of that was somehow dull and distant even with long stretches of downtime. I’d still not asked about any particulars from when Solitaire and Xangô had headed out to save me, but even I’d figured out they’d done something that Xangô at least regretted in the process.

Maybe I’m just a coward, because I was too scared to ask about what it was. All I did was watch and wait for him to swallow it all again before giving his answer.

“We go troll hunting.” He sighed, throat tight with worry. We all shared a solemn nod at that, taking a moment to let the shock of finally deciding on a target wear off. Then we were walking.

Our first destination now was a fletcher, because we needed arrows. Ideally we’d have just stocked up on fifty of the things and pelted all the trolls we encountered from afar until they were pincushions, but there were limits to strategies like that.

The first was that, apparently, medieval longbow arrows are actually really heavy. Each one was close to two ounces- sixty grams in non freedom units- so even just the ten we ended up with weighed over a pound put together.

We also had the issue of actually carrying them. All of us had pockets, but we didn’t have bags, and those cost extra. A decent sack of burlap would’ve set us back the better part of a silver coin, and even that would only let us transport them to the fighting. A quiver, fitted for our freakishly tall frames? Well those were going for more than we had.

The woods greeted us as they usually did: by trying to kill us. We were used to it by now, though, and wrapped up nice and snug. One thing we’d decided had been worth our dwindling coins were some thick furs to cover ourselves with, and they were magic for keeping the heat in. Made me wonder why our modern clothes had been so shit.

As it turned out, troll hunting was actually quite easy. Well, troll finding was at least. Bloody big noses, trolls, capable of finding you first from miles away. But brains smaller than a person’s fist, so they made quite a bit of noise while they charged their way on over.

Just like last time, we had as much time to prepare as we could’ve asked for.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Except this time we’d rearranged our strategy a bit, and gotten a few advantages we hadn’t before.

Xangô went up the tree, now. We’d spent the better part of our journey practicing his marksmanship. Tossing logs into the air for him to shoot, trying to hit particular branches, that sort of thing. It probably tripled, even quadrupled the length of our journey, but we’d set off barely after dawn anyway, which gave us plenty of daylight to burn. And the result was that, after hours of practice, his marksmanship was almost not shit.

Well, okay, that’s unfair. Sure he didn’t have my coordination, but he had a particular way of judging things that I wasn’t sure I’d have ever matched without my exhaustive training. It felt much more like the way Solitaire gauged things, almost mathematical. He wasn’t going to be shooting any apples out of people’s mouths, but he was absolute tits when it came to hitting a moving target. Actually out-performed me when Solitaire was tossing the bigger logs up.

More importantly, his accuracy improved a lot faster than his general combat ability could have. And even though his frame was fairly unimpressive by earth standards, he easily had the strength required to draw this world’s standard longbows on account of not having sixteen ounces of lead dust in his blood where the protein should’ve been. So long as he didn’t have to fire for more than a few minutes straight, he’d do fine.

Solitaire and I had a much less safe and cozy position. I was right where I’d been before, bringing up the front and tasked with not dying for as long as I could manage. Solitaire was helping me, and the hope was that between his bigger frame and natural meanness, he’d do a much better job of leaking the troll’s strength away while I kept it distracted.

In truth there were about a hundred things we’d rather have accounted for that none of us had, but the closest we came to actually doing anything about that was spending an extra few minutes hauling a thirty pound rock up into the tree with Xangô.

According to Solitaire, we were looking at around 5-800 joules of kinetic energy if it was dropped on our enemy from that height. Neither of us knew what that meant, and we didn’t need to to figure out that having a brick the size of a toddler smacking the top of your skull would hurt. We called him a nerd and prepared for the fight.

The roar of a troll, the sound of something heavy smashing through thickets, snow being scraped and barged aside, then a big, grey streak closed in on us from far ahead. I readied myself for it to attack, spear high, feet planted, breathing steadied. It came on just like the last one had, a hairy ball of screaming, vicious asshole zeroing in on me like a meteor.

Much like the last one, it started getting pelted with arrows before it closed in. The first missed, the second caught its chest, the third its shoulder. Then it was within spearing range. Xangô wasn’t the only one who’d gotten tips from Solitaire on our way here, and I put mine to use with earnest. Aiming low now, letting the spearpoint bite deep into the inner-thigh of the troll and lunging to one side, dropping my weapon instantly and rolling to avoid a collision.

It slowed to a stop, rounding on me just in time to leave its back exposed for Solitaire’s own attack. Both knives came down hard into the rear of one knee. Another arrow hit its side near-simultaneously.

With one flexed arm, Solitaire was sent flying away, and it was my turn to engage again. I closed, knife out, teeth gritted and thrusting with a stab that broke the skin, but not much else. It flailed at me, the way I was learning trolls tended to do, and I ducked again. Solitaire was still getting to his feet, absolutely fucked by the impact he’d taken, which meant I was on my own for a few moments. Excellent. No chance of anyone else getting hurt again.

A claw swiped high, and I went low. The troll’s giant body closed in only for me to do likewise, pinning my knife outstretched between us and letting our combined momentum drive six inches of metal deep between a pair of ribs. I was knocked clean off my feet, thrown back to land badly and roll awkwardly. I came up quick enough. The troll was still reeling as I did- the only thing that saved me, I guessed- with the knife stuck clean in its chest. I turned and sprinted in the other direction, opening enough distance for Xangô’s shot to be clean.

It was, another arrow, landed deep into the troll’s calf. It roared in a way that had me cringing, like nails on a chalkboard, and I looked back to assess the damage.

Blood fountained from its thigh, arterial in volume and steaming in the cold air. I’d seen the other troll bleed more before it went down, but not by a lot. We were close to finishing this one. This was no time for a retreat.

I stopped just in time for it to start, squared my feet and waited for its approach. Another arrow caught it in the chest metres from me, and I was jumping an instant before impact.

Drop kicks are never a good idea. There’s precious few exceptions to this general rule, and all are situational.

For one thing you need to be close to olympian in your physique. I was an olympian, normally, and I could only hope that I’d not lost that much through starvation. The second requirement is that you need an enemy you know for a fact is slower, dumber and clumsier than you. One apeman; check. The final requirement is more just the sort of situation where, if the above two conditions are met, it might actually be worth doing. You need an enemy too tough to realistically hurt with any of your much fucking easier and safer kicks. Check.

The troll probably wouldn’t have blinked at a haymaker from Mike Tyson, but my drop-kick was hard enough that it actually springboarded my own body about a yard backwards off the creature’s sternum. Even that monster stumbled, as might a smaller tree, and it was given just enough pause for two things to happen.

Xangô shot it again, and Solitaire knifed it clean in the neck from a dead sprint.

The arrow left a nice big opening, and the blade hit cleanly. Driven through skin and muscle and fat by all the force of a grown man crossing twenty feet every second.

Truth be told, I’d never actually seen an artery get cut open before then. Solitaire had, going by his reaction, or lack thereof. It took about a second for any blood at all to be visible, and less than three for it to be soaking the troll’s entire neck and shoulder. Within another ten the creature seemed half painted, legs weakening beneath it as it dropped down to lie face-down, slackening, weakening.

Maybe the last one had died to a nicked artery, actually. This one looked almost identical in how it moved before passing on. I felt just as queasy at the sight.

Xangô came down from his tree with a lot more grace than Solitaire apparently had last time, climbing slow and steady, not simply jumping and hoping the snow let him live. We all circled the creature’s body, but only after he’d put the rest of his arrows into it.

Dead, alright. Dead as a doornail. According to Solitaire it was small, as had the last one been, but as far as I was concerned the thing couldn’t have been small enough. Better an easier fight than a bigger reward. We’d get plenty of silver either way.

Just moments after we took its arms and started pulling, though, everything went wrong. The sound reached us, snapping undergrowth, pounding feet, and the flit of movement far ahead reached our eyes. But it was faster than before.

Another troll, hurtling towards us far more quickly than the last two. Too quickly for us to take our familiar positions before it burst out through the needly trees, revealing a body three feet higher and one tonne heavier than the one lying dead at our feet.

“Fuck.” Solitaire breathed, just an instant before it charged.