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.

“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 3rd 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 6th century made her pretty old, healthy life expectancy in the 6th 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.