I was up before the watch came in to check on us. I think the lack of pain in my foot actually woke me. When I compared between both feet it looked like they were the same size, and even the calluses from years of wearing boots had regrown. I laughed but quickly cut it off so as not to disturb the others. When I looked around I caught Allison staring at me from her pallet on the floor and I held up my leg and wiggled my toes at her.

“You can’t keep a good man down.”

“What you do with men is none of my business, Jack. Just try and do it quietly would you? It’s not even dawn yet.”

I bit back a less than polite response. I had some sympathy for a non-morning person rudely awakened. I was in too high a spirit to return to bed though, so I got dressed and packed up my gear for the last time before I walked out of the keep. John was on watch and we exchanged companionable head nods but neither felt the need to talk. It was nice to work with someone who didn’t feel the need to keep up a constant stream of chatter. I stepped into the treeline to take care of business and made a mental note to look into the latrine issue. I remembered hearing about a kind of portapotty they used in India that collected methane from human waste and supplemented the power needs of rural properties. A more convenient place to go and power, what’s not to love? I’d wikipedia later and talk over options with Debbie and the others before we spent all our XP.

Back up in the clearing I looked around until I found a clear spot not too close to the fire and knelt down. I pulled one of the t-rexes out of my messenger bag and tried a little exploratory surgery. The skin was thicker than gator, with kind of a sandpaper texture I associated with shark. I managed to take most of it in a single piece despite the unfamiliar body plan and started cutting off anything that looked worth keeping. Internal organs mostly went into the burn pile. I kept the intestine because thoughts of catgut violin strings had given me an idea to try and go with one of Allison’s homemade bows. I kept the brain because we were always looking for more tanning supplies. The tail was solid muscle but a paler color than beef. Not quite the light pink of pork, but close. I sliced off some thin slices to put on for breakfast. Eat me Mr. t-rex? No, I believe we’ll eat you instead.

The sun had come out and John went in after the others while I was still cooking. I dished up lizard meat as folks came up with their plates and tried to ignore the gentle ribbing about my cooking with what I thought was quiet dignity. Debbie shot that thought down.

“Guys, I think you’re hurting Jack’s feelings. Look he’s all quiet and pouty.”

“Fuck all of ya’ll. You don’t like t-rex, don’t eat it.”

Everyone laughed but I snatched the piece of meat back from Debbie’s plate. She just grabbed another from the spit over the fire, but I felt better about it. She made a point of staring me down while she ate it, daring me to try and take that one but I knew better than to try it when she was expecting it. When she’d finished, she put away her dishes and stood to address everyone.

“We’re heading back today. Everybody was supposed to pack up last night, but just in case you better go over your kit now. I think everybody has an inventory bag like this right?” She said. slapping her fanny pack.

I looked around trying to figure out what everyone else had bought. It made sense that everyone got one, they were just too useful to skip. Allison had on the backpack she never seemed to take off, and John patted at the pocket on his overalls like it held something special. Jeri had a little leather pouch hanging off of her belt that I was betting was one, but I couldn’t tell with Hunter and Steve. Before I had a chance to ask what theirs looked like, Debbie started speaking again. “We’ve been loading the canoe as we went along with the trade goods. Johnl if you and Steve will clear out the smokehouse. Hunter and Jack, do what you can to secure the door of the keep. The girls and I will carry the last of our stuff down to the boats. Questions, comments, concerns?”

Nobody said anything and we all headed out to our assigned tasks. I followed Hunter over to the door of the keep. I stuck my head inside to make sure nobody had left one of the oil lamps burning or anything crazy like that. Hunter just leaned against the wall until I’d come back out and waved a hand in the direction Debbie had gone.

“So was she expecting us to mine some ore, smelt metal, and forge a lock in the next twenty minutes? I’ve got no clue what they expect us to do here. No way we’re putting the bar in place from the outside.”

I shook my head and looked around, trying to come up with a good idea and not seeing anything useful. The only thing anywhere near us was the stack of brush and firewood we’d slowly been accumulating. I shrugged, guessing that was as good as we were likely to get.

“We can drag that shit over here and pile it up in front of the door. It wouldn’t stop a determined human, but an animal? None of the monsters so far have been too long on brains thank God.”

He agreed that it was the best we could hope for in the time available. We were still working when John and Steve finished with the smokehouse, and they pitched in to give us a hand. With four guys moving the wood it went fairly quickly and we wrapped it up in short order. We all walked down to the water’s edge together to find that the women had already dragged the boats down and launched them into the water. Debbie and Hunter were in my pontoon, Allison had her kayak and the rest took the canoe. Despite all the stuff we’d loaded into the canoe, it wasn’t riding any lower in the water than before and I was impressed by the features of the visually unimpressive wicker boat.

Traveling down the river was a lot easier than traveling up it had been. Without the need to fight the current Allison just reached over and grabbed onto the edge of my boat to lock herself into place, and we all traveled at the same speed. We were traveling at twice the speed of the earlier trip and everyone had time to just sit. John and Steve both broke out fishing gear, and to my suprise Jeri joined them. I pulled out my antler sword and a file to start trying to reshape the blade a bit. The material was hard enough I knew it might take a while to accomplish anything but I had nothing but time.

Everybody was discussing what they should spend their XP points on when they got back to the village, and I decided it was time to try a little expansion of my own entrepreneurial endeavors. I pulled the t-rex intestines back out of my bag. I’d flipped them inside out and cleaned them before I cut them into sections. I’d braided a few together and rubbed the result with creosote to make a pinkish gray line strong enough I couldn’t budge it. It ought to serve as a bow string just as good as the composite materials available nowadays. It wouldn’t handle wet weather, it had a tendency to stretch under moisture, but other than it would be serviceable. I shifted over to get close enough to hand it to Allison, careful not to rock the boat.

“You still working on a longbow?”

“Pretty much have it figured out. I’ve got a couple of bow staves in the cargo hold of the canoe.”

“Check this out.” I handed her the strings I’d made, and made my pitch while she held one up and tugged on it experimentally. “I’ll spot you these and show you how to make more, but I want a slice of your bowyer business.”

“I might buy a couple of these from you, but a share of the business? I doubt it.”

“The lines come pretty damn dear, and if you think you’re gonna reverse engineer them good luck. They look like braided bark from any of the plants you bumped into back at the keep? Where they grow is a trade secret, and wouldn’t a complete bow sell a hell of a lot better than a bow stave?”

“What kind of percentage were you thinking?”

“Halvsies would sound good to me.”

“So the plant apparently has some kind of hallucinogenic properties, Jack? You have to be tripping balls to think I’ll give up half.”

“No need to get testy, Allison. If you don’t like that number, give me another one.”

“What’s your split with John, 5 percent and you kick in some startup XP? How much XP are you donating to my venture?”

“My deal with John has nothing to do with this. I’ll go 5 percent, and I kick in the line and the knowledge of how to make your own. I’ll even donate materials to make them when I come across them.”

“5 percent of my net, not the gross, right, Jack?”

“Of course.”

We shook hands on it. When I told her what the lines were made of she looked kind of pissed. I had no doubt she would have figured it out on her own eventually, but being able to sell complete bows instead of just the staves she was still going to come out ahead on the deal. It’s just that now I’d be coming out ahead too.

I pulled my file and antler back out, working while I listened to the conversations flow around me. I never could stand to sit with my hands empty and since coming here I’d found myself almost constantly with some little side project to work on. I mentioned my portapotty idea to Debbie and while she seemed skeptical she promised to check out our options when we hit the XP store. I was out of good ideas and spent the time working on my gear and occasionally chiming in to the conversations that flowed around me. We were pretty much cruising along when Debbie pulled out her oar and signaled to everyone to beach the boats.

“We’ve already hit the patch of chocoberries from last time. Everybody with a ranged weapon should keep watch while the rest of you guys pick every single berry we can find. As monotonous as the diet has been I bet we can make as much from the berries as we do from the pottery.”

John stopped her. “I want to transplant a couple of canes too. When I finished the garden and planted something the other day I got a notification it rates a 7 point growth index. I don’t know what it means, but I’d like to replant some of the chocoberries there to compare them to these.”

Debbie nodded at him. “Sounds good to me. I’d love a steady supply of them back at the keep. God, I miss candy. Anybody else have anything to add?”

No one said anything and we beached the boats and went berry picking. There was a pack of wolves lying in wait as we disembarked, and Allison loosed an arrow before most of the rest of us registered their presence. John, Hunter, and I charged as Debbie and Jeri started to fire and the pack broke, running away before we made contact. I started field dressing the bodies that had dropped before they retreated, while the rest of the group moved on to raid the berry patch. I finished first and dropped the bodies into my messenger bag. I only had a single slot left, and the amount of stuff the bag was carrying was unbelievable. It felt kind of heavy on my shoulder, but it was probably several hundred pounds worth if I unloaded it all. I made a mental note to try and sell off everything I could when we got back to the village.

I helped pick berries for a while, but I ate probably as many as I put into the buckets. Within an hour the canes in the area were looking pretty bare and we were running into the law of diminishing returns. We loaded back into the boats and continued the trip. Debbie called out to gather our attention, and we had another one of those company meetings.

“When we get there, things with the village might be, tense. We’ve been gone a while and there were some hard feelings with the way Jack handled stuff.” She looked over and shrugged at me. “No offense. It was heartfelt but not exactly diplomatic. At this rate we should get there late this evening. We don’t have enough information on what markets are like to start trading right away, so we use dark as an excuse to wait for the morning to negotiate. Everybody wander around and try and get an idea of what they have and relative scarcity and value of goods. You can do what you like with your own goods, but nobody make any commitments or negotiate the company stuff until we meet back up in the morning and set a price. I’m not out to screw anyone, at this point goodwill is probably preferable to profit, but we can’t come across as easy marks either. It’s all about the long game, remember. Trade for as much as we can get, then we’ll take turns running through the XP store. That work?”

Everybody else turned and looked at me for some reason. I looked back and made a face trying to break the moment. Debbie took silence for assent and we all settled back into our own private conversations. My mind wandered to the implications of the group looking at me for feedback. When had we shifted into a coherent group instead of me just tagging along with the company, and how was this so different from staying in the village in the first place? Debbie was a hell of a lot better looking than Ken I thought, and that elicited a snort and I shook my head to focus on more mundane tasks.

A few more hours of riding the current and the landscape started looking familiar. We were coming up on where we’d first entered the river from the village. I’d been careful to memorize landmarks on the way out, and apparently so had Steve because he called out to alert the group before I had a chance to. Everybody brought oars out so we could head to the shore when in a few, but nobody was expecting what we saw when we arrived.

The village had been hard at work. Trees had been cut back in a swath a dozen paces wide in a trail leading back from the water's edge and there was a little hut built just off the shore. We started grounding our boats and a guy in coveralls with a crossbow in his hands stepped out of the hut.

“Hey, who are you guys?”

Hunter must have recognized him because he stepped forward and gestured to the rest of us to lower our weapons.

“Dude, Aaron, it’s me. I went with the other people who left the village. Who were you expecting?”

“Hunter, man I kept expecting you guys to respawn. I can’t believe you made it back in one piece.”

He slung his crossbow across his back and came forward to slap hands with Hunter and they had a brief conversation filled with so many ‘dudes’ and ‘bros’ that I can’t repeat it. They’d laid in a trail for a water wagon that made the trip every day. Some kind of troop of vicious monkey things they called war baboons were prone to ambush them here if they didn’t leave somebody on guard. Apparently it was one of the less popular postings and Aaron had gotten stuck with it because he’d forgotten and left his crossbow behind at his post in the village. It seemed like most of the weapons were purchased with the village tax and not a lot of people had come up with the gear to go hunting on their own. Aaron had a ton of questions for Hunter, but at least Hunter had the sense to stay pretty vague on his answers. We left Aaron there with a pocket full of chocoberries in return for keeping an eye on our boats as we followed the road into the village.