Chapter 5

I related my story of the fight with the lummocks, including Eglos’ futile effort to stop it with her arrows. The man said, “If I had not seen your demonstration of your strength, I would not have believed your story, but now I have no trouble believing it. You are truly a man to be envied.”

“Thank you, but what will you charge me for tanning the hide?”

“Sir, if I did not have a family to house, clothe, and feed, I would do the job at no charge just for the honor that would come to me for doing the job. However, I cannot do that. I will have some expenses associated with the job. And that includes the cost of constructing a frame to hold such a large skin. I feel that the minimum I must charge is one gold piece, and that is not far from my actual costs for the job.”

I noticed that Eglos was now wearing the Ring of Truth, and she nodded to me that the man was telling the truth. “Sir, I appreciate your honesty in quoting me that price, but I cannot pay it.” The man’s face fell when he heard that. “You must make some profit from all of your work, so I will pay you two gold coins for the complete job.” Eglos grinned at that, and the tanner nearly burst with relief.

“Sir, I am stunned by your generosity! For that price, I guarantee that you will be very pleased at the result. You do realize, of course, that the job will take at least a week and maybe as much as 10 days.”

“Take whatever time you need. I want your best work.”

“Certainly, Sir. May I know your name so that I will know who my benefactor is. My name is Agorp.”

“Oh, Agorp, please excuse me for my rudeness. My name is Linc.” I figured that I should keep my name to one word, since that appeared to be what was common in this culture. Besides, it worked for Heracles.

There was a little bit more conversation, and Agorp asked if it was alright with me to tell people of the job that I had given him and what I was paying for it. I told him to go ahead. I figured that this was a good start toward my new reputation.

I could tell that Eglos was having some trouble with her breath, so I took my leave, and Eglos joined me. We had hardly left the tanner’s shop when she could hold herself in check no longer. She burst into laughter as we walked down the street, and she gently punched me in the shoulder.

“By the gods, Linc, I thought I was going to explode when I saw the look on the tanner’s face when you offered him two gold pieces. That is probably more than he can earn in a year of normal business. You are truly a Hero for doing that, and your reputation will be all over town by this time tomorrow. Everybody will be telling the story of the lummocks hide and how you killed it. I can hardly wait to hear the final story that gets circulated around town.”

I grinned and said, “Yes, I am trying to build up my reputation in case I ever have to look for another job.”

Eglos’ face clouded up at that statement, and I thought that she was going to cry. A moment later, her face cleared and she began to laugh. “Oh, by the gods, Linc, you had me there for a moment. For an instant I thought that you might be serious about leaving me, but then I realized that it was just a manifestation of your strange sense of humor. You must know by now that I never want you to leave me.”

“I feel the same about you, Eglos! As far as I am concerned, you are stuck with me for as long as we live!”

That must have been the right thing to say because Eglos grabbed me in a lover’s embrace that I never could have escaped no matter how hard I might have tried. She then planted a kiss upon my mouth that I surely will never forget! A public display of affection like this was very rare in this culture, and I expect that my reputation was about to take another jump even higher than it would be from the lummmocks story. Ah, the things a Hero must endure!

We returned to The Majestic Londor inn to see about renting a room for the time that we would have to wait in Londorhome while the pelt was being tanned. We noticed that Agorp was already there ahead of us, and he must have been telling the story of my visit to his shop this afternoon. I say that because of the way all of the eyes in the room were following my every move.

I went to the bartender and said, “My companion and I would like to rent a room for the time it will take for Master Agorp to tan the lummocks for me. He estimated that it would take from seven to 10 days to complete the job. Can you let us have a room for that long, and how much will it cost?”

“Certainly, Master Linc, if I may call you that. The price will be four copper pennies per day if you want just the room, or I can give you a price of eight copper pennies per day for the room and three meals each day for you and your companion. Which would you prefer?”

Elgos was standing beside me and had heard the entire conversation, so I turned to her with a question on my face.

She smiled and said, “Go ahead and take the combination price—we can afford it.” That put a big smile on the innkeeper’s face, and the deal was settled. That was when I noticed that she was still wearing the Ring of Truth. That made me feel certain that we were getting a reasonable price.

The innkeeper led us upstairs to see the room that he had selected for us. I didn’t see anything special about it, but Eglos was pleased, and that was good enough for me. Eglos lay down on the bed and pronounced it satisfactory. The innkeeper said that the sheets had been changed today, and the whole room had been cleaned today, also.

He turned to go, and I asked him when supper would be ready. He said that we could eat in about an hour, but we were welcome to come back downstairs and indulge in watered wine until the pork roast was ready to be eaten. That sounded good to us, so we went back downstairs with him.

Back down stairs, we were invited to join Agorp and his friends for friendly conversation until supper time, and that sounded like a good idea. By now, they had heard all of the lummocks story, probably several times, and were ready to talk about something else.

Since we were new to the area, Eglos and I asked a lot of questions about what went on in the neighborhood that we should know about. We were particularly interested in the sort of wild animals that were in the neighborhood that we should look out for.

Other than the occasional lummocks, the other main problem was the herds of wild buftons that roamed the neighborhood. The females were generally not a problem, but the males were another story. The males had horns about two feet long that stuck out to the front. For some reason, the male buftons were likely to attack people who wandered close to them. Unfortunately, the buftons were difficult to detect in the woods, and you might stumble on them without realizing that you were close to dangerous beasts.

Well, that certainly was useful information, since Eglos knew very little about buftons.

The main trouble lately was the influx of a lot of new demons and monsters. The yellow demons were the most numerous, and they had bows and arrows. They were not reluctant to use their weapons, either, and had been known to ambush unwary travelers. However, there were several other kinds of demons that could be just as much trouble.

The other really dangerous monster that they talked about was a white monster that sounds like an overgrown polar bear. (Now how did I know that?) That monster had all of the characteristics of a bear, and it could run very fast. There is no way that a regular non-augmented human could have any chance of running away from it. Maybe that is something that I should hunt.

These monsters were plenty to talk about until supper arrived. All of the men with Agorp left for super at home, so Eglos and I enjoyed a quiet supper alone. There were no other guests spending the night at the inn.

The next morning after breakfast, Eglos and I were discussing what we might do for entertainment while we waited for Agorp to finish with the tanning job. We couldn’t think of anything else to do, so we decided to go hunting. The first thing we did once we were out of sight of the town was for Elgo to practice teleporting herself into a tree so that she could escape any large animal that went after her.

That was easy for her to master after only a few tries, so she declared that she was ready to hunt. She looked around with her far-seeing ability until she found a grondal, the polar bear-like animal. It was so far away that we debated chasing it, but there was nothing else closer, so we settled for the grondal.

Elgos had to jump us in two steps because of the distance. She did not want to put us down inside something else, so she had to be very sure of her landing site before she teleported us. She dropped us about 70 yards from the grondal, and got ready to strike with her trick of transporting dust inside the creature’s chest.

Meanwhile, I crept closer to the beast to see if I could do anything to fight it. Dammit, I stepped on a stick, and the crack of the wood breaking was enough to alert the grondal. It turned its head toward me and reacted right away.

The grondal charged me, so I figured that I would try to take care of it the same way that I had handled the lummocks. I charged it as it charged me. I moved a lot more steps than it did simply because I was moving as fast as I could run. I held out my clinched fists and ran into its head as fast as I could go. This time I caught the beast’s snout with both fists and drove them into the head of the grondal at what must have been a combined 60 MPH or more.

One or both fists plowed into the grondal’s brain at full speed, and it was killed immediately. I stopped when my chest bumped rather hard into what was left of the grondal’s head. Other than the mess of blood and brains smeared over my clothes and hands, this had been a notably easier kill than had been the case with the lummocks.

As soon as the grondal dropped dead, Eglos appeared beside me and complimented me on my kill. This time I knew better what I was doing and much more quickly skinned the creature. The job was made easier by Eglos’ teleporting ability. We left the carcass where it was for the scavengers to clean up.

Now I needed cleaning up. Eglos found a stream not too far away and teleported us to it so that I could wash off the blood and other stuff. I quickly found that I could not get it all cleaned away, so I was going to have to use the tent for a final sanitizing effort before returning to the inn for lunch. However, we still had time to look for something else to hunt.