Chapter 2

The next morning was something of a surprise for me—Eglos wanted a repeat of last night, but she did want to skip the blowjob. Hell, I reminded myself that she was the boss, so I had better go along with her desires. Okay, okay, I did not put up a fight to avoid the chore! It turned out that became our regular routine, a big fuck at night and a quickie the next morning before breakfast.

Neither one of us wanted to trust my cooking skills after my complete loss of memory, so Eglos fixed breakfast for us from the contents of her fanny pack while I struck the tent and did the other things that did not involve the breakfast. She fixed an excellent breakfast, most of which was strange to me, but very tasty.

As we walked along the road, I asked Eglos a question that had been bothering me. “Eglos, what sort of magic has effected me so that I feel so clean? I had no opportunity to wash, yet I feel perfectly clean as if I had spent at least an hour bathing in warm water.”

Eglos laughed and said, “I forgot about your loss of memory after that wonderful session of sex. The magic tent has a cleaning spell that removes every trace of dirt and sweat from your body whenever you spend more than about a minute inside it. I do find it very relaxing to be so clean as I start each new day. I hope you feel the same way.”

“Oh, yes, the feeling is great! Does it work every time you enter the tent?”

“Yes, it does. All you have to do is to enter the tent and wait a few seconds. The tent senses your presence and works accordingly. There is a separate spell that works somewhat the same way in that it cures minor injuries and mild illnesses; however, that spell does take a little longer to work. It might even cure your loss of memory, but don’t count on that happening.”

I figured that was good news. Maybe I would start to remember something of my former life. It was kind of unsettling not to know anything of my life before the last part of yesterday.

We talked of various things as we walked, and I finally got my courage cranked up enough to ask another question that was bothering me. “Eglos, I don’t want to pry too much into your business, but is there anything you can tell me about your quest? I feel like I could do a better job of protecting you if I knew what you were looking for.”

“Yes, I suppose that is true, but there is no much that I can tell you. I received my assignment in a dream. I don’t remember much detail about the dream, but I do know for sure that I was visited by a god and given a mission. I know this because when I woke up, beside me on the floor of my bedroom were these clothes and weapons. Included was the magic pack that supplies me with any money that I might need. All I need to do to have the amount of money I need is to reach into the pack and grasp the coins that I feel. When I remove my hand, I am always holding the exact amount of money I need in gold, silver and copper coins.

“That reminds me, we never settled on how much I should pay you for acting as my bodyguard and source of sex. Are two silver coins per week enough, or do you want more? That is double what I paid Closos, and I am offering that amount because of the kind of service you showed yesterday in the fights and in bed.”

“Right now, I have no standard of measurement to compare that salary against. As far as I am concerned, I will accept your generosity with gratitude until I find out that I must have more money for things that I need. I’ll let you know if and when that happens. In the meantime, I will be pleased to eat the food that you provide and to enjoy your company when I share your tent with you.”

Apparently, I struck a happy note with that comment. Eglos grabbed me in a loving hug and kissed me on the lips. “Good, then the agreement is struck.”

Well, if that was the way she felt about it, I certainly was not about to argue with her! Eglos gave me a general description of the world I was occupying as we walked.

There was no central government as such; instead, each town or city governed itself in whatever form or style they chose, from a pure democracy to a strict dictatorship. The land we walked through between towns was completely free of government. As a result, each person was responsible for his or her own self protection, as there was no overall police or military force. That meant that there was little communication between communities, as in business or personal contact.

That fact was demonstrated shortly after lunch by an attack on us by four thugs who were looking for anything we had that could be sold in the nearest large town. Of course, sex with Eglos was also high on the list of things that they wanted.

All four men jumped from the bushes beside the road as we were about to pass by. I didn’t know where the idea came from, but it seemed like an old habit, so I was keeping a continuous lookout for trouble as we walked. Eglos had her bow, but that was not of much use because of the short distance between us and the attackers. Therefore, she simply dropped her bow and began fighting with her knife.

Meanwhile, I responded to the attack with my knife and my magic gauntlets. This time, I promised myself that I would not try for an attack on my opponent by stabbing him anywhere in the ribcage. I didn’t want to lose my knife because it became jammed between my attacker’s ribs. Even though he might be dead, he would still have deprived me of my knife, and that was too dangerous to be considered an option.

I held my fighting knife in my right hand and used my left hand and arm as a kind of buckler. The fabric of the gauntlet hardened immediately upon foreign contact, and it was as effective as any buckler that I might have used. Of course, it could not replace a full sized shield if we had been attacked by arrows or other missiles coming from various directions all at the same time. However, the hardened gauntlet was entirely adequate under these circumstances.

Also, I could use my left fist as a mace, and I could strike with what seemed like several times more force than I could have managed with my fist alone. The protection from the gauntlet ran almost to my elbow, so it gave me the kind of additional protection usually afforded by bracers.

The attackers all tried to come at us at the same time, and that gave us some small advantage because they didn’t seem to know how to take full advantage of the way they outnumbered Eglos and me. Often, they got in each others’ way and cut the effectiveness of their attack.

Eglos had managed to snatch a buckler from her fanny pack, but she had not had time to attach it to her forearm properly. Instead, she had to hold the buckler by its fasteners in her left hand. This worked well enough because her two attackers kept getting into the way of the other one. My main hope was that Eglos would keep her two attackers at bay until I could deal with my two.

The first thug I faced came upon my left side, and I was forced to use my left hand to fight with him. He was using a short club and probably figured that all he had to do was to hit me in the forearm with it. I believe that he expected that a hit on my forearm would break one or more bones, and he could finish me off with a second blow to my head from the then unprotected left side.

Well, he hit my left wrist with the club, and the surprised look on his face when his club broke against my arm was simply too much to be believed—I almost lost the fight then when I was as surprised as much as he was by the breaking of the club and his reaction to it. Fortunately, I recovered much more quickly than the thug and was able to poke him so hard in the chest that he fell to the ground unconscious.

I did step back a little to get clear of the second man, and that caused him to miss with a roundhouse swing with his knife at my belly. He might have had me if he had not telegraphed his intent by taking the time to set up that foolish swing. He was badly off-balance as he swung his knife past my gut and was left open for me to attack his neck with my knife.

I was so surprised by his inept try at killing me that I lot my concentration for a moment and only gashed his skin as he fell past me. However, he was now in position for an attack with my left hand acting as a mace. I put all of the force I could manage behind a blow to his face, and my hardened gauntlet smashed his nose and most of the rest of his face back into his brain. My left hand was jammed into his head, and I was helped by his weight as he fell dead to get my fist pulled from his head. Everything was a complete mess from the scattered blood, bones, and flesh as a result of the blow from me.

I didn’t have time to clean the gore from my left hand as I jumped to help Eglos. My fist was a terrible sight as it smashed into the right kidney area of the thug nearest to me. He had not seem me coming because he had somehow gotten between Eglos and me, and he was facing her. He was definitely out of the fight at that point as a result of the shock to many of his major internal organs.

Now that Eglos had only one man to fight, she had no trouble in slicing open his belly and spilling his guts onto the roadway. The rest of the attackers were now dead, too, so we were able to look after the small wound in Eglos’ left arm. The wound had come about when her attacker had thought to overcome her by cutting her badly. He must have assumed that she would not bleed to death before all four men had finished raping her.

Eglos had moved enough that her attacker had only been able to administer a shallow cut, but it was a very painful wound, and we were going to have to stop long enough to bandage her wound and to give time for the magic of her tent to dampen the pain and heal the cut.

I cut enough cloth from the shirt of one of the men to fashion a compression bandage over the cut. I was unhappy with the filth of the bandage, but Eglos had fainted from the pain, and I was unsure of how to find a better bandage from her fanny pack.

It turned out that we were only about 100 feet from the campsite of the four bandits, and there was a stream that could supply us with the necessary water. I carried Eglos in my arms to the camp and made her as comfortable as I could to give me time to go through her fanny pack looking for the tent.