I took a break looking at the town. Since it looked peaceful, I figured that it was an excellent time to take a break. I might end up making a camp here since the ground looked more stable. It would make it, so the one that was wet wasn’t as needed. It would also let me take the time to look through the town.

I looked around for Blink but couldn’t find her, so I just talked up to the air, “What do you think about looking around the town?”

I felt warmth and happiness coming from her, and the image of her curled up in a ray of the morning sun.

“Okay, I am going to go look around you take your nap!” I said as I dusted off my legs and headed toward the town.

I walked towards the river to see if there were any signs of a dock or landing. When I got close, I noticed that there was evidence that sometime in the past, there had been a pier. However, all that was left were the stone pilings used for supports. The wood was all long since rotted away.

This place was old. Perhaps ancient would be a better way to describe the town. It was so old that there was a feeling of rest and peace that was from the whole place. I walked around the buildings and saw that they were all rotted out as well. There was little evidence of wood anywhere. Most of the support beams were so far gone that I could not even find a mound where they once were. However, there were some mounds that I was guessing were the covered and decaying roof supports from the building acting as kind of nurse logs.

The grass around all the stone walls had grown to several feet tall, but there were only a few places with trees. Those trees were growing up from inside of the house walls and a few in the very center of the town. The trees were enormous, almost the size of the giant ones I found near Ni’bish.

On Earth, I loved history. Visiting forts and old homes was something that I loved to do. There was even one summer after I was in college that I took the time to travel from one historical site to the next. I had always wanted the chance to dig around those places and see if I could find some old relics of the past. But unfortunately, I never did because rules were something that I tended to follow. This place, however, didn’t have those rules.

I had a peaceful lunch in the walls of one of the old buildings before I chose to do what every successful adventurer would do in an abandoned town. I started to look for loot. Not knowing what caused the town to be abandoned, I didn’t know how likely it was that I would find anything, but I knew that in the middle ages on Earth, it wasn’t uncommon for people to bury their savings as a way to protect it. Those savings could be something that would be useful to me for making new cores or upgrading things.

I pulled out my dowsing rods and started to look for copper. I figured that if metal coins were used here like they were on Earth, then copper would be the most likely if the metals were in the same ratio as I was used to. It wasn’t long at all before the rods started to take me to the end of one of the buildings. A little while later, I managed to pull out the stones around where the hearth would have been and found a small clay pot. In the pot, I found ten coins that appeared to be copper. I kept going finding little more than this in each spot. I did find one place that I had to dig for a while until I got out a jar that had a few silver coins and one gold coin. I had spent about two hours working in this place, seeing what I could find. While I had been playing in the dirt, Blink had found a spot high on one of the walls that was in the sun and took a nap.

While I wanted to get to Essex, I knew that I still had to pace myself. So since my last night’s sleep had been short and I had taken the time to become a treasure hunter, I settled down for the day and built a new room. I chose to put it on the hill that I came down, still in the town but not right on top of everything. I figured that if it was on the hill, it was higher than the water around and so should stay dry.

As we bunked down for the night, I found it kind of odd. Since we had passed the spiders, we hadn’t encountered anything that required us to fight. It wasn’t that I was spoiling for a fight. It just bothered me a little. The world had seemed like it was a dangerous place to move around in, and now that there was peace, it was like there would be a price to pay.

That night I dreamed again of Ash.

The army’s camp was in an uproar the following morning when I woke up. I could tell that my mission had gone well. There was a stench of death that hung around the camp now. I could hear the moans of the dying; death by hookium berry was never a pleasant thing.

Some of the men in the cages with me were already dead. However, there were a few that looked like they hadn’t drunk any of the bad water as of yet. It would only be a matter of time before the army moved, or they all died. I just didn’t know which it would be and if I would live.

That first day was long as the prisoners were forgotten about. I tried my active skills, but the cages kept me from being about to use any skill. However, that night a group of soldiers came and opened the cages. I tried to make a run for it but was quickly struck down by a long pole that had a loop at each end.

Many of the soldiers had these poles, and soon we were tied neck to neck, and then our hands were tied. The poles seemed to act like the cages and kept me from any of my skills that might have let me escape. As one of the middle prisoners, I had two of these poles around my neck. One from the front and one from the back. The one in the back pushed hard on my vertebrae, pushing my head forward. At the same time, the rope from this one choked me, forcing my head back. The one in the front was so tight that I had to take shallow breaths so that I wouldn’t damage my neck even more. We were tied into groups of 10, and then two groups were given a wagon to pull.

Then they marched us away from my home and towards theirs. Hundreds of wagons were being pulled. Not all of them were from prisoners, as I could see free men doing this as well. While I thought that my attack would have seen more dead, I was shocked to see vast numbers of troops being moved in an orderly fashion. There were no animals, as it appeared my attack was more effective against them.

We traveled all day. When one of us would fall, there was a guard to whip him till he stood. If that one who fell drew the others down, we all got whipped. The guards didn’t care where they struck us, and so my whole body had thin lines of blood. When we stopped for the night, we were shackled to the back wheels of the wagons, so we couldn’t escape.

The following day the man in front of me didn’t wake up. He had died in his sleep, likely from being choked from the harness as his face was blue. The guards cut him free and tied me to the next one up. Then we pulled a wagon again.

My side had a more challenging time keeping up as there were only four of us, and so we were beat harder this day. By the middle of the day, the man in front of me was cut free. He was still breathing but worthless to us. So the guards left him. I stepped over him, and so did the men behind me, but the guard steering aimed the wagon to roll over him. We heard him yell once.

The next day we were given our first water. I refused it. I would rather die from lack of water than from hookium. I made the wrong call. The barrel that the men behind me got water from was safe. The one that the men next to me got water from killed all but one. We left him moaning. All told, an eighth of the camp died before we even pushed on.

The army just left the dead and more of the wagons, and we moved. This day was hard. It was the third I had gone without water. We pushed through the midday break, and I saw two from the other side of my wagon get cut free. We pushed through and, shortly after dusk, stopped at a river. Everyone ran for the water, and the guards didn’t stop us from trying to drink.

That night the prisoners worked under guard to dump all the water we had and refill from the river. I knew this would be worthless, but I did it anyway. Hookium would taint the barrels, and the poison, while not strong enough to kill, would make a man wish he were for a few days. So, as we filled the barrels, I made sure to drink as much from the river as I could.

The next day went much as the first did; we pushed on without problems. However, when the night rationing of water happened, the problems started. All night long, there were the moans and screams of men. By the next day, the army was sour as so many were sick or dying. Then they tied two us on each side directly to the wagon tongue.

The day wore on, and I was beaten without mercy. The weakling behind me kept tripping, and so I would get pulled down and beaten until we were both up. I couldn’t even turn to help with how our necks were bound. By the middle of the day, he was dead. He died when he tripped on our way down a slight decline. The wagon crushed him and almost got me, but it only pinched the muscles on my arm and missed the bone.

I almost died, however, because the wagon was going on its own and pulled me with it by the leash they had on me. Our wagon crashed into the one in front of it, and the other side of the tongue seemed to be hurt. Our driver was thrown free, but it looked like he was injured as well. Another guard slew the two prisoners and appeared to be looking to do the same to me.

“I can walk.” I said as I stood.

The guard hacked me free from the tongue and roughly started to drag me away. “Come with me there is another wagon for you to pull.”

He took me over to a much smaller wagon. Near the tongue of it, I saw another man lying dead. I was hooked up to the wagon by myself and told to pull. For the rest of the day, I pulled. While the wagon was hard to move wasn’t impossible, and so I endured.

I don’t know how many days the dream me pulled that wagon by himself. The days turned into a blur. At some point in time, the foul water was all found, and no more were dying from the hookium. However, the work was already done. The great army was broken, and a trail of dead flowed back across the plains like a river of pain.

We pulled until we came to a small town on a river. There the army boarded barges and river ships. The prisoners, the few of us that were left, were piled into the hold. As the vessels started to pull into the river, I heard shouting like a battle had begun. It didn’t take long before the yelling was behind us, and we were heading downriver.

* * *