Sam

Once Will told the others about the plan to visit Sheerhome, it was soon agreed that they would all go together, chimps included. Mongrel explained that he was due a run to the city, meaning it was just as well that he came along. He said it was safer to travel in a group anyway, which Sam could well believe after her encounter with the troll.

No one knew why Nyx decided to come along, but she was actually dressed decently for once and wasn’t making a fuss of herself as she rode in the back of Mongrel’s wagon while they traveled the sinuous path leading to the city, so Sam was content to simply ignore her.

Only Number One had stayed behind to care for the animals and make sure that no bandits tried making off with any valuables. He was too old and tired to travel much anymore, he explained through Mongrel, and he had experienced more of Sheerhome than he would like anyway. Sam had been surprised to find him reading a book in the living room before they left, wearing a pair of adorable reading glasses on the bridge of his flat nose, and had to wonder just how smart those chimps were, exactly.

She kept her head on a swivel while wandering alongside the wagon, eyeing the trees for signs of trolls. Will insisted that she was unlikely to see any more, since, as he explained: “They’re actually quite rare, you know. You were lucky to run into one in the first place.”

“Lucky?” Sam asked with an incredulous laugh. “I thought I was going to shit myself at the time.”

“If we’re going to see anything, it’d probably be grinners,” Will continued in a light tone, his hand on the hilt of the sheathed saber on his hip. “They’ve been all over the place lately.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid!” Mongrel shouted from up ahead. “Diregulls are the most common, obviously.”

“Along the coast, maybe. How many diregulls have you seen in the woods?”

“Oh, plenty. Since Brimstone started fishing more slaves off the Shore, the damn things don’t get as many easy cadavers, so they’ve had to move further inland to find food.”

Will didn’t offer any resistance to that, settling into thoughtful silence, which Mongrel took as him winning the argument.

Sam, for one, did not have any desire to learn about either ‘diregulls’ or ‘grinners’, whatever they were. She was worried that Will would begin a lecture on the topic, considering how he liked to explain things at length, but luckily he let the matter drop. To bookend the subject, Mongrel said: “Either way, you don’t need to worry about anything sneaking up on us while little Willie’s around. He’s got ways of making sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen.”

At a questioning look from Sam, Will shrugged. “I’ve got a skill called Detect that lets me spot things from a distance. With my range doubled by divine vow, and another passive called Extension of Self that doubles it again, I can see pretty far out. I’ve been pulsing it periodically, so you can be sure that we’re safe for now.” He held up his arm, showing that several of his AP crystals were dark from being used up.

Before they made it out of the woods, Will had Sam roll up the left sleeve of her tunic. Apparently, it was considered suspicious to go about a public space with your left sleeve down, since it implied that you wanted to hide either your Profession or your AP crystals. Seeing someone roll down their sleeve usually meant that they were about to engage in some form of illicit activity, so he warned her to look out for it.

They left the woods without incident a little before noon, with the chimps jumping down from the trees they had been swinging among to join the others on the path.

A wide stretch of cultivated land extended out to both north and south, a patchwork of yellow fields criss-crossed with paths and irrigation ditches and low walls of stacked-up stones that served as boundary lines between properties. The occasional farmhouse dotted the land, as did the occasional moving herd of sheep.

Wooden watchtowers stood evenly spaced just beyond the edges of the cultivated land, manned by men in chain armor and bright-red livery. The structures looked a little too much like the ones the slavers used for Sam to feel comfortable around them, but Will assured her that they were garrisoned by the lord’s militia, who were only concerned with keeping the farmlands safe from monsters and bandits.

They were never stopped by any of the militiamen, who recognized Mongrel as a frequent visitor, and a few of them even joked with him from their posts on the tower walkways as they passed. No one seemed to pick up on Will’s presence, however, since he was wearing his ingenious disguise. It consisted of a large bandage worn over the left side of his face to cover the tell-tale stitched-up eye that people knew him by, along with wearing slightly grubbier clothes than usual. If anyone noticed the number of crystals adorning his arm, they made no mention of it.

Once beyond the watchtowers, they did not encounter many more people as they journeyed through the farmland. The few they did see out in their fields usually straightened from their labor to stare suspiciously after the travelers until they were completely gone from sight, not a word in greeting. Friendly bunch.

It was not long before a high stone wall came into view in the distance over the rolling landscape, with toothy crenellations and edged towers that jutted out at even intervals. The path they followed began to widen as they neared the wall and eventually fell in alongside it, traveling perpendicular.

“The Sheerhome wall is probably the only major building project completed in the city after the Deicide,” Will explained, walking over to the monolithic stone structure and allowing his hand to trail along it. “Brimstone spent a lot of money and even brought in Builders from other cities to have it completed. Keeps out the monsters that get past the watchtowers, for the most part.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

They walked for what seemed like forever before they finally reached the wall’s northern edge, and swung back around west to get onto an actual paved road that would take them to Sheerhome’s main gates.

Sam’s first impression of the city was not good. A huge, sprawling slum of huts and shanties grew out of the shadow of the walls like black mold, and they were forced to travel through it to reach the main gates. It was apparently known as the Outside. It was filled with undesirables of all sorts, from beggars to invalids to those afflicted with infectious diseases, the latter of whom were crammed into overfull sick homes. Small packs of emaciated dogs roved the labyrinthine streets, and there were even mean-looking wild pigs covered in coarse bristles that mucked about in the dirt and charged at anyone who got too close.

Will saw Sam eyeing a poor fellow who had no arms and only one leg, and seemed to have lost his lower jaw as well, tongue hanging limply onto his neck as he slumped against a building that didn’t look so solid itself. “Stump shaker, they call those,” Will said, nodding toward the man. “A few of the city’s brothels have demons working in them. Some get hopelessly addicted to their… services. Most of the demons take cash payment, but when you have no money left, they will happily accept your flesh as a substitute. And they’ll keep on taking it until all that’s left is a wretch like that.” There was no pity in his voice at all; only disgust. Apparently he did not see the demonic contracts he had made as being in the same realm.

“That’s awful,” Sam gasped.

“A fair trade, dear,“ Nyx said from the back of the wagon with a lazy yawn. “They know the price of what they're buying, and they pay it smiling.”

“Quiet, demon,“ Will admonished, “before you start giving Mongrel ideas.”

The man in question muttered an insincere prayer to the dead goddess and kept his gaze fixed firmly ahead.

“See that?” Will continued, motioning to his own neck, then back to the unfortunate man. Sam saw what he was trying to point out; a line of AP crystals running at an awkward diagonal down the man’s neck, with his Profession symbol taking up one exposed shoulder. “If you lose your left arm for any reason, the Concord will replace your sheet on your right arm. If you lose your right arm, too, it will show up on a random part of your body.”

Sam could not muster any enthusiasm over Will’s random factoid while looking at the poor man. Looking around, she saw many more like him, and swallowed as she passed by.

“There’s no point in giving them money,” Will said with a warning look. “They’ll only crawl back to the brothels with it. And if they’re not let in there because of their appearance, they’ll spend it on drugs instead.”

Sam nodded somberly, and averted her eyes as they passed on.

The Outside was also the place where the city dumped most of its garbage, and she watched wheelbarrows full of stinking refuse be unloaded straight into streams and ditches, where giant midden piles had formed. More than once did she see people actually digging into those piles for anything edible or useful, covered to their knees and elbows in human excrement and worse.

Will had been right. The smell of rot and sour piss was so strong that Sam could almost taste it. She gagged more than once, and Will eyed her sympathetically as they hurried along.

Jesus, I didn’t think it would be this bad! There’s got to be something that can be done for these people, somehow.

The city’s main gate was a large portal with a raised portcullis that made a row of badly rusted iron teeth along the rounded top. People streamed in and out alongside wagons and beasts, and three liveried militiamen made no attempt to halt the flow, leaning heavily on their halberds as folk passed around them.

The crowding was even worse once they actually got inside the city. The street narrowed in, with tall buildings shouldering each other for space, built so close that she was not sure a person could squeeze through some of the alleys even if they went sidelong. Sam instinctively reached for Will to avoid losing him in the crush, and he took her hand, holding it firmly. It made her feel a little better.

The area immediately inside the walls was crowded with inns. Signboards swung in the stale breeze, often adorned with crude names and even cruder drawings that most commonly referred to genitalia in one way or another. Based on this, it seemed to her that the people in this place shared their senses of humor with ornery sailors and ten-year-old boys.

This part of the city was known as Topside. While extremely crowded, at least it was not nearly as squalid as the Outside had been. Once they got past the double rows of inns, they reached a large market square lined with shops and stalls, then residential streets with fine, glass-windowed townhouses for the well-to-do and shabbier tenements for the slightly less fortunate.

At an intersection, Mongrel bid them farewell, explaining that he was going to sell off the goods he had brought, and went off down another path taking his mule and his chimps and his demon with him, looking a little like some sort of itinerant freakshow.

“And where is it we’re going, exactly?” Sam asked, sticking to Will’s shoulder like glue and refusing to release her cramping hold on his hand for one moment.

“I thought I’d show you some of the sights,” Will replied, speaking loudly to be heard over the bustle. “It’s nothing impressive, so don’t get too excited, but you might as well see it while we’re here.”

Sam nodded. She had no problem letting him take the lead.

They traveled for maybe half an hour down a very gradual decline before catching sight of a tall building whose steeply slanted roofs might have once shone golden, but were now a tarnished brown.

“The church,” Will explained once they got to the small square surrounding the building, which was nearly abandoned. “People used to be a little bit more pious back in the Better Times, and they would come here to worship the goddess Era. But, well, then she went and got murdered, and most people don’t see any point praying to a dead god.”

Piles of refuse littered the area outside the church’s great iron-banded doors, and partially scrubbed-out graffiti marred the walls, but Sam did think she could hear a mournful chant echoing from inside. “Are there people in there?”

Will nodded. “That’d be the resurrectionists. They think that if they pray hard enough, for long enough, the goddess will come back to life and reward all the true believers for their faith.” He cleared his throat. “Needless to say, no one really takes them seriously. They have to travel in groups when they go out into the city, or they get robbed of everything they own. The guards usually don’t bother to do anything about it, because they find the resurrectionists just as annoying as everybody else.”

“Everything in this city seems so… sad,” Sam said.

Will chuckled joylessly. “Told you, didn’t I?”

They moved on. Only a few streets down from the old church was an even larger building, a complex of domed towers and ornamental struts and blocky annexes that looked just as, if not more rough than the previous landmark.

“This is the library,” Will said. “It’s actually a pretty useful place. I learned at least half of what I know about the Frontier from the books in there.”

“All that is a library?” Sam asked, frowning. It could cover a whole city block by itself.

“Well, it used to be an academy in the Better Times, but no one really cares so much about higher learning anymore. You probably won’t get a lot of time to use it when the average life expectancy is like five years.”

“Oh.”

“Fletcher is the guy who runs the library now. I think he used to teach at the academy, but he’s the only one of the faculty that’s left.”

So sad.

“Fletcher’s cool, though. He’s actually one of the highest-level people in the city.”

“That’s really interesting, Will.”

Sam did not ask to go inside.