Gontran crept along the outer walls of the huts in silence. He kept an eye on the narrow, shadowy gaps between the buildings, thinking he’d hide there if anyone spotted him. Wooden carts were also parked in front of some homes, and he was soon planning his movements around these carts—lunging from cart to cart with the intention of ducking down behind one if a dog barked, or if someone suddenly asked: “Who’s there?” But his high stealth skill kept him concealed.

At one point he found a well, and guzzled cool fresh water from the bucket he hauled out of the depths. He felt so gross—his skin was caked in dirt and salt from a day of running for his life—that he wanted to take off his clothes and bathe right there. He would have done so, had circumstances been less hostile. All he could do was quietly rinse his face.

Gontran moved toward the town center. He meant to steal some food from the church. As he drew closer, he looked back to the gnarled oak where he had left István, but only saw darkness.

His heart plunged. Had István left?

He’ll betray me, Gontran thought. Turn me in for the reward. That’s the real reason he came with me. Machiavelli. Just building me up so he can let me down. The Venetians will pay him and even free him in exchange for torturing me like this. Nothing hurts a man more than hope. That’s what Annibale wants. Make me think I’ve made it. Then, the moment I’m celebrating—catch me again.

You’ve become a little more paranoid since your imprisonment, the game voice said.

Shut up.

Gontran arrived at the piazza that was in front of the church. For a moment he checked to see if anyone was around, but no one seemed to be. Here were richer homes of wood and stone, two or even three stories high with windows of thick smudged glass which—who knew?—István or Béla may have even made back in Murano. These were open to the cool humid spring night. The snoring of smug, self-satisfied burghers rattled their windowpanes. Like Annibale, none of them had ever missed a meal. None of them needed to worry about running for their lives or getting chained up or whipped. Regardless of what happened, tomorrow was going to be another wonderful day for all of them. Gontran could tell from their snoring alone that their sleep was deep and dreamless, since they had no need to dream. For them, reality was the dream. It was a living dream. And they didn’t want to wake up.

Taking a deep breath, Gontran snuck along the buildings facing the square until he was as close to the church as he could get without exposing himself in the open. Looking back and forth one last time, he darted across the piazza to the church entrance, his feet squishing in the wet muck—churned into buttery softness for who knew how long by rain, sweat, and innumerable wheels, shoes, paws, and hooves. Once he arrived, he tried the door, but it was locked.

Fuck! House of God my ass!

Before he knew what he was doing, he was checking his pockets for anything he could use to pick the lock—he was a rogue, after all, and a Master Thief (8/10) with a corresponding Master Lockpicking Skill (8/10)—but all he was carrying was a sword. Then he peered into the darkness. He needed two metal pins. Where the hell was he going to find two metal pins in the middle of the night in Monselice? Nowhere!

What about sticks or twigs? No! They'll snap!

He tiptoed around the church, found a rear entrance, tried it. Locked. The priest, the father, the abbé, the padre, whatever you wanted to call him—it seemed he had some experience with thieves, and perhaps even his own fair share of escaped slaves. They must have been coming through here all the time. Venice was the slave capital of the world. Some slaves inevitably got loose.

Now Gontran was really starving. The game voice said his hunger had gotten bad enough to affect his health. There was a vegetable garden in the rear, and he fell upon it, but it was spring, and the seeds had yet to sprout from the earth. They were still germinating. Gontran swore silently.

Yet aside from the tower—probably guarded by at least a few burly knights, bristling with razor-sharp swords and armor—the church must have contained the most food in the village, especially if there was a monastery attached, even a small one with only a few fat monks tucked inside, safe and snug in their warm beds, snoring through dreams of Jesus on the Cross, God the Father in the clouds, and the heartwarmingly amusing antics of Brother Francesco and Brother Leonardo.

Wait. They didn't dream about those things. They dreamed stress dreams about messing up monastic duties, chanting the wrong words during mass, ripping an uncontrollably deafening (plate-rattling) fart during an otherwise quiet dinner, arriving for confession naked, or failing to love god hard enough. Those were monk stress dreams. But the larder must have been stuffed with sacks of communion wafers and barrels of communion wine at the very least.

Mmm, the body and blood of Christ.

Gontran tried the doors of the other houses of the rich, but all were locked. No wonder even the dogs were asleep. There was nothing to worry about. The doors and locks were strong. It would take a band of at least five, ten, maybe even twenty guys to break into one of these places.

Gontran heaved his shoulders. He was out of ideas. As he thought about what to do, he realized that the peasants’ houses were probably unlocked. Peasants lacked even the money to brace their doors with anything but big stones on the ground, if that. They also lacked anything that was worth stealing. But although Gontran was ravenous, he had yet to reach the point where he would take bread from the mouths of destitute people—whom the lords and ladies and priests had already bled to dry husks.

Out of options, he crept back to the oak in defeat. What the hell was he going to do now? Gontran was starving! He’d been running, hiking, and fighting since early in the morning without even a breadcrumb! Yet along the way back to the oak, he spotted a blacksmith’s shop he'd somehow missed. Listening and looking around, he snuck closer. It was so dark he could barely see, but he felt around for anything he could use to pick a lock, careful at the same time to avoid cutting himself on sharp objects. The blacksmith and his assistants had locked away anything of value, but a couple of nails might be all Gontran needed. These would be thick and heavy—like the nails driven into the flesh of Our Lord on the cross—but medieval locks were also correspondingly large. Two relatively thin nails might do the trick.

Slowly reaching into a bucket, Gontran found that it was full of nails. Jackpot! He stuffed two of the thinnest he could find into his pocket, then returned to the church. Within moments, the door lock was open, and his lockpicking XP had increased.

Piece of cake.

It creaked as he opened it, snuck in, then closed it. Once inside, he shoved the nails back into his pocket, as cold darkness enveloped him. The building was no Renaissance masterpiece—the Renaissance lay two centuries in the future. Instead, the church was a plain brick structure with a bell tower, and no windows. Its architecture was probably Byzantine-esque, but Gontran couldn’t tell. Forced to feel about in the dark, he worked his way toward the altar, stepping carefully, pausing constantly to listen. Nothing. Even his own dirty footsteps were silent to him.

Once he reached the altar, he got confused. Never much of a churchgoer, he lacked knowledge of basic church design. He knew that there were things around the altar—structures which were used in various ceremonies, for the choir to sing, and the priest to swing the smoking censer about, chanting quietly about nostrae pater quid est in caelio, amen. Doorways opened to other rooms here and there, but as to their name or purpose, he was clueless.

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Where do these assholes store their food? They have to eat sometimes, don't they?

It was in the ciborium, wasn't it? The tabernacle? Didn’t ciborium mean dinner or something in Latin? It was at the back of the altar, in the center, a big metal container where they stored the consecrated wafers and wine. Maybe. Gontran did his best to find his way there, but he also needed to keep his bearings and avoid getting lost. Presumably he could find a wall and then use that to guide him back to the entrance, but who knew?

When he arrived at the back of the altar, he found it: a sort of ornate metal barrel, its insides sloshing with wine, with a drawer for the communion wafers on the bottom. He was ready to stuff himself to bursting with holy bread and drink himself halfway to death with holy wine. It was a sacrilege, and God would never forgive him, but fuck that guy.

There was just one problem. The container, also, was locked.

Fuck! Everything is locked in this fucking place! Monselice! More like Mon-se-locked-e!

Clutching his head, he was ready to smash the metal container onto the floor. Then the whole village would hear, and they’d all come and attack him like sprites in a video game. His lockpicking skills were also useless, here: the local father had splurged on a nice new lock that was too small for the big nails Gontran had plucked from the blacksmith’s.

He stumbled into a room adjoining the altar. Here with his hands he found plain wooden tables and chairs, some parchments, a thick book which was probably a bible; he also felt robes hanging along the walls. But no bread. No wine.

Cursing the church, God, Christianity, Jesus, and everything within and without the universe, Gontran left the dark building in defeat.

Monselice, the world’s shittiest little town. Monselice: a slice of the Hell of the Damned. Of leeches. A food desert.

Once he was outside, he noticed that the clouds had cleared a little in the night, and that the promontory and the tower appeared as dark shapes obscuring the stars.

That was his last choice. There must have been food in the tower. It was locked, to be sure, but that was no problem for him. The only issue was climbing up and down the mountain at night without falling, tearing up his feet, breaking his ankle, or getting stabbed through the chest by Signore Roderigo Dickfacio de Monselice.

Suppressing a groan from the hunger that was threatening to turn his stomach inside-out, Gontran found the path that led up the mountain. The starlight made the climb easier then he’d expected—until he realized that the stars were actually getting a little too bright. It wasn’t the stars that were lighting his way—it was the star—the sun—the dawn. The sky itself was brightening. He needed to hurry; he’d been messing around in this godforsaken hellhole all night. Soon the cows would be mooing to be milked, the cocks would be crowing, the swifts chirping, the cicadas rattling, the frogs croaking, and choral ensembles of dogs would be barking at nothing at all—complete with distinct alto, tenor, and basso profundo sections, each putting all their energy into the performance, while their owners screamed at them to shut up. Finally, when the sky turned orange, and the sun dripped upward from the horizon like a blob of molten lava, the farmers would trudge off to work, dragging their carts behind them, the vast majority too poor to own even a single spavined Rocinante. They’d spot Gontran and shout at each other in whatever impossible dialect they spoke. Then the knights would ride him down, net him like a fish, and drag him back to Venice in exchange for a sack of ringing golden solidi.

No thanks.

At the promontory’s top was a splendid countryside view, one worthy of a panorama shot, a five-star rating on the internet that did not exist. In the faraway blue-gray mist Gontran even spotted the Venetian lagoon, and the towers and domes rising like a plague of mushrooms from the Venetian isles, and even little sailboats flitting back and forth along the channels between the shoals. At this distance the ships looked like white-winged butterflies perched on the waves. Some were headed into the Adriatic, which was where the Paralos was, if it hadn’t been sunk—if its crew still lived. Gontran sighed.

In other directions lay other cities whose names were beyond him. Vicenza, Padua, Ferrara, Mantua—who knew which was what? Yet each had Romantic connotations. In the old world, rich Americans would have spent a thousand dollars a day lounging around these places, sipping coffee in the morning and wine in the evening, bumbling around historic town centers and taking selfies in front of curving church facades weighed down by hot sleepy afternoons, heading to the Lido to sunbathe (scandalized by the topless sunburnt crones who had the same idea), stuffing their faces three times a day with food that was nothing like the Italian food back home.

Can’t say I blame them. Man, that would be nice. A nice little Italian vacation.

The Roman road led westward across a great deal of cleared farmland to a decent-sized urban agglomeration of some kind. That must have been Verona—fair Verona, where Gontran hoped to lay his scene. He could even make out what looked like a miniature coliseum there, one covered with trees and vines, a living Piranesi sketch, Mother Nature collecting on the debt she was owed. There were other cities, too, in other directions, but he only looked around for a moment. His principle concern was the gate and the wall in the path ahead.

Monselice, come for the walls, stay for the locks.

Quickly opening the locked gate as though he was using a key rather than two nails, he entered the fortress. Inside was a small courtyard with shovels, wheelbarrows, and ladders. There was also a stable with a horse which nickered when it saw him; Gontran put his index finger to his mouth. Then he crept inside the quiet tower, its door being the only one in Monselice he had encountered which was unlocked. Past a small stone lobby for scraping your shoes—Gontran didn’t have any—was the usual enormous dining hall with a vast wooden table surrounded by chairs as well as a fireplace with embers glowing inside. Yet another monstrous hound was sleeping on a carpet on the floor, but the beast remained asleep.

You have one job, Gontran thought, shaking his head—though his right hand gripped the hilt of Boscolo’s sheathed sword. Gontran considered slaying the dog outright, and although he hated dogs, he didn’t hate them that much. He couldn’t kill a poor cute little poochie in cold blood, even if this ‘poor cute little poochie’ was the size of a couch. Besides, the noise would wake whoever was sleeping in the tower.

Larder, larder, where’s the larder? Where’s the pantry?

The kitchen adjoined the hall. Keeping an eye on the dog, Gontran crept inside. There he finally found what he needed: sacks of bread, salt pork, cheese, meat pies, plus barrels of wine, oceans of wine, rivers of wine to float upon.

Piles of apples from last season were even stored in the pantry. These medieval people used some trick to keep them from rotting in the absence of modern refrigeration techniques. The pantry itself was cool, dark, windowless.

Gontran took all he could carry, stuffing an old rancid rasher of bacon into his pocket in case he needed to distract the dog by the front door. But would that even work? This was a game, yes, but was it that kind of game?

On Gontran’s way out through the doorway to the hall, he ran into a small child—boy or girl, impossible to tell—wearing only a heavy woolen night shirt. As with every child Gontran encountered, this one looked like Joseph. Gontran froze. The child did the same. They stared at each other for a moment that lasted forever. As with the horse in the courtyard, Gontran held his index finger to his lips. This gesture was apparently understood in the medieval world, because the child nodded quietly in response. Gontran mouthed the word “grazie,” then walked out through the front door, saddled the horse in the stable, piled it with everything he had stolen, and rode out quietly through the front gate and down the path to the town. Everyone was still asleep—including István, who was snoring against the gnarled oak’s far side. Gontran shook him awake, and together they mounted the horse, which was a good strong charger, and perfect for a knight. Just as they were riding out of town, shouts came from the tower. A muscular young man was sprinting down the path in his night shirt, clutching a sword that was as long as he was tall, screaming for all he was worth. Groans came from the village as people woke up. Then the church bells rang.

Gontran urged the horse to a canter. The man—presumably the tower knight—chased them as far as he could, though even at a canter an Olympic runner would have had a hard time keeping up with a horse. Eventually the man gave up. He was so out of breath he lacked the strength to keep shouting.

Gontran looked at István. “Might be the only horse in Monselice.”

István bit into a loaf of bread, then offered the loaf to Gontran. “Perhaps true.”

Once they had put some distance between themselves and Monselice, they rode off into a secluded wood, threw themselves onto the ground, and devoured their food and guzzled their wine, too tired and content to speak. Monselice’s frantic bells were still ringing, and even the bells of other cities and towns across the march were answering. Neither Gontran nor István cared. The instant they had packed their bellies with food and drink, they passed out, exhausted beyond what they had believed possible, not even caring if the stolen horse rode off, or if anyone found them.