George crossed the bridge, metaphorically and physically, into the expansive new world. He went from stone to dirt again somewhat quickly and wound up on a beaten down, packed in road with distinct grooves for carriage carts. It was just wide enough for a horse drawn wagon to pass through, perhaps.

On one side of the road was the slow river that passed under the bridge. On the other was a deep but narrow ditch where grass refused to grow that separated the road from the yard next to it.

The yard was bigger than one George ever lived on. It was maybe half an acre, with half of that land taken up by a long, simple looking house. The walls were logs patched with dark clay mortar. The back end was unexposed, no doors or windows. The area was fenced, effectively, by its ditch. Like the land was literally cut through with a serving knife to create the lot.

Up the road that continued from the bridge was another bridge over another stream that served as the front yard of the nearby cabin. He saw more of the house as he walked up the dirt road. The front of the house was more traditionally composed, wood slats layered over one another. Still no windows. The era of the land seemed to be before the common placement of such things in far off, little houses.

Then his eyes looked up. He only got a basic view of the countryside from where he fell into the new world. Up close, it had more impact. Just like the house beside him, every one had its own allotment that was divided up in an uneven gridwork of roads and rivers.

The lowest houses, around the area where he entered, looked poorer than the ones uphill. The higher the village went the more important the homes became. Some had second stories or silos and mill wheels. He started to get mystified as he counted the number of such homes with their private, riverside yards. He got to 45 when he was stopped.

“Oy!” he heard from behind. It was a brash, manly voice, roughed up from a lifetime of shouting and the onset of elder years. It was the first human voice he heard since he was shot to death. His gunman gave him about the same amount of warning.

George turned and saw the owner of the lot he was next to. He was a stocky man with a slight gut. He had a thick beard and wore a floppy hat that was more of just a fabric tied up in a knot at one end; a leather bonnet. His clothing was somewhat matching to the castletown aesthetics of the rest of the world, simple and dark brown tanned hide that was stripped thin into a dark fur tunic and pair of pants that were tied up by the straps of his boots.

“Uh, hi,” George greeted.

The man looked up and had to turn his whole body from the waist up to do it. “High? What is? Who are you? What’r you wandering near here, bug-eyed and gobbing for?”

George tried to contain his stammers. He thought if he let out a string of unbroken Uhs and Ums he would be mistaken for a witch. “My name is George,” he began. “I’m….a stranger here, trying to get his bearings.”

“That y’are,” the man nodded. “Yon’t find them here, then. That’s the main carriageway to the land off south, Murton. You know it?”

“I….don’t,” George confessed.

The man swiped his thumb across his nose, like a boxer might, and crossed his arms. “How strange are ye? How far’ve you come to be placed here in sight of Dossul?”

George looked up to the castle. “That’s Dossul?”

The man nodded. “It tis. Dossulacrum, the castle, and Dossul, the city, and we fair folks out in these paddies here are vassals of said city, minding the roads and ways the carriages must go. Tis all Dossul in different words. And Dossul minds itself to not let foes past the riverlands.”

“I see,” George said. “Well…” He looked to his side and thought of a fast excuse. “I’m not an enemy of anyone. I’m….an exile. From elsewhere. My hand is - was - is gone. It’s off, and they replaced it with a chain to my - it’s locked down. I’m cuffed under here, you see. I can’t even raise it to change my pants - or, my trousers. And -.”

“Exile-ed?” the man said curiously. “For what?”

George gulped. “The crime of….being born. My family, and our enemies - a grudge. My family’s enemies took power over the land and forced me off of it.”

The man nodded in understanding. “That’s a shame, then. What good labor can a man do with one arm?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Barely enough to get by,” George admitted, “but….I’m not looking for charity or anything like that. I mostly just want to know where, if not here, I can go.”

“Not here,” the man said stubbornly. “Or up there,” he said, pointing to the various river houses. “But perhaps there,” as he pointed to the grand castle and the walled city around it, “I’ve seen some vagrants live long in the streets. But if that doesn’t satisfy you, the carriages are always running to bring supplies out to the further reaches of the kingdom. If you work for one of them you may travel, too, and eat what they let you. It’ll be better than walking.”

“Yes,” George said with relief. “Well, thank you.”

“Hmm,” the man grunted. “I need no thanks of yours, exile. I only wanted to know that my home was not approached by a cad of ill intent. You see this stream there?” He pointed to the bridge George crossed to arrive, the one that opened out into countryside with a single road that stretched off into the unseeable distance of forests. “And that land out there? Where bandits roam? And my home here?”

“I do see that,” George said. The man gave him a wide-eyed, aggressive look. Like he was used to doing so. George felt the gun in his hand suddenly. Like he just remembered it was there, as a rough looking, tough sounding man tried to intimidate him. He smiled and gave the man a parting nod. “I’ll be safe knowing you’re here.”

“Feh,” the man scoffed. He threw his hands, dismissing George off of his property. George decided to stay away from the fronts of the homes, if he could help it, on his way up the winding criss-crossed grid to the city gates.

The long walk made the reality of his situation finally really hit him. It was the pain he felt that reminded him that he was alive. The ground was hard and sometimes uneven off the carriage tracks. It was all uphill, over bridges that were split-level and went up the terrace steps. No flat asphalt or tarmac to walk on. And he had his regular running shoes to do it all.

He tried to avoid eye contact with the other folks in the terrace village but occasionally got caught looking. When he did he desperately turned away to the opposite side of the world and peered out at the horizon. The higher he went the more of the land he could see beyond the trees. After the forest there seemed to be a lowland that meshed together with a mountain range which blocked the rest of his view. It was wild, untamed country.

After a hike, he made it to the outer walls of the grand city of Dossul. The widest river yet circled the walls as a natural moat. The embankments looked slightly shifted, as if they redirected parts of the river to make it overall rounder. He finally saw the source of the gridwork terraces. The river was deep and dark blue.

He arrived at the main river on an uneven path that didn’t line up with the main gate. He was effectively on the fringe, the side-yard, looking on to the front door. From that angle he saw how the river split itself apart in many places. He also saw that the gatehouse was built over it. A third waterway poured into the major moat from inside the city and the whole thing flowed down from that three-pronged tributary to trickle and pour out in the streams below.

The gatehouse was his obvious destination. There were already people in a queue waiting to get in. As he approached he saw there were two queues, one for horse-drawn carriages and one for people. No one looked as foreign as he did. He tried to hunch himself over to better hide his hidden arm and keep attention from sticking.

He got in line and quietly waited as it processed. People were interviewed by armed guards up ahead. George got a good look at them while they were talking so they didn’t catch him gawking. They were real, medieval looking guards. He saw chain mail under their tunics, which had a four-square pattern of bright green and blue which crossed under their chests.

The same pattern was above them on banners which hung over the gates. There were two emblems, one top-left and bottom-right. The top left was a simple blue flower against the green backdrop with a sword going through the middle. The bottom-right crest was a shield which repelled fire on one side and snapped a blade against the other. All very rustic and simplistic but easy to understand.

Aside from all of that, they looked like over-dressed bouncers. He scanned their personage from side to side and didn’t see a weapon. Some had small knives attached to their belts but he couldn’t imagine them solving a dangerous situation with just that. That made George the most well armed person present. It was a dread-inducing thought. He grew nervous as he approached the head of the line at last.

“State your name and business,” the guard demanded.

“George,” he answered. “Uh, shelter. W-work and shelter. And, perhaps, also, transport.”

“You want to work,” the guard asked, “and find shelter, and find transport? Which is it?”

“I’m a wanderer,” George said. “So I’ve got no -.”

“From where have you come?” the guard asked.

“It’s hard to explain,” George sighed. The guard didn’t take kindly to his evasiveness. The talk of Dossul’s enemies from before was all George could think of, namely how to avoid seeming like one. He wasn’t sure if they were on good terms with Murton, but that was the only other name of a country he knew in the new world.

The guard looked him over and focused on his covered hand. “What’s wrong with your arm?” he asked. “Your hand is hidden. Show it.”

“I - I can’t,” George said. The guard groaned impatiently. “It - it’s not that I can’t but it’s more that - it’s about - It’s gone. My hand. I suffered an attack and am keeping it in my pocket so the wound doesn’t get infected.”

“What?” the guard said. He looked harder at the square bulge. “Then what is that there? And how is it in your trousers so?”

“Uh, it’s tribal fashion,” George explained. “My people - who I’ve been separated from, yes, this is the way we’ve come to make our clothing for convenience sake. And I lost my hand, and had to bind it tight with a clamp made of wood - so it’s a block of wood in there, sterile wood, burned up on the edge a little to close the wound - and so if I take it out now it might separate. I can’t dress it in the wild, but I’m not looking for a hand-out - which, that wasn’t a joke but -.”

“Stop speaking,” the guard insisted. He sighed and leaned to the side. George looked back. A few more people were waiting, some in fair or fine dressing that walked alongside stacked merchant carts. Some were soldiers, too, who guided their horses by the reins with similar regalia to the gate guards.

“Right,” the guard said. “You’ll find passing quarters in the south block of the city. Inside and head right to the vassal hall. They will hand you exactly what is needed to employ yourself in Dossul. And give you a space to address your….wound.”

“Thank you,” George said. The guard pointed him toward the massive gate across the drawbridge. George got by with yet another lie that brought him into civilization. He realized how fortunate he was that his strange but effective lies were panning out when he saw the sheer number of guards waiting inside the thick walls.

Even with a gun, he might not be able to fend them all off. One shot each and he’d run out of bullets, most likely. That reminded him that he had to check just how much ammo the gun actually had in it.

Which struck a dreadful nerve, because until that point, he never even considered whether the gun was loaded or not. If it was or if it wasn’t, either possibility felt terrifying. To have all of that power so close, or to have none at all in an uncaring world. There was no lesser fate to him. Just two kinds of bad.