Virtus Chapter 2: Gor

"It is a world in which men and women stood closer to the fires of life," he said. "It was a world of tides and gods, of spears and Caesars, of games, and wreathes of laurel, of the clash, detectable for miles, of phalanxes, of the marchings of legions, in measured stride, of the long roads and the fortified camps, of the coming and going of the oared ships, of the pourings of offerings, wine and salt, and oil, into the sea."

– Dancer of Gor

 

Eugene Phillips became aware that he was chilly. Sleepily, he tried to pull the blanket up over his head and somehow failed entirely.

There were itchy, crawling sensations on his skin. Absently he scratched himself, pressing his head against his pillow and keeping his eyes shut.

It was too late. Already he was beginning to think about what had happened yesterday. The sight of Laura and Watney fucking each other, the gut-twisting feeling of misery, of betrayal. The way he'd been reprimanded at work. The trip to the bar last night – fuck, he was going to be so fucking hung-over today.

His body was racked with another chill. Again, there was no blanket in reach. Groaning, he pressed himself closer to the bed, which felt cold and uncomfortable.

What, exactly, had he done last night? He'd gotten hammered, yeah, and things had kind of gone hazy, and he oughta have a pretty bitching headache right about now ….

But he didn't. He realized that his head felt pretty clear. If anything, he felt refreshed, as though he'd spent the night in a nice soft bed instead of passing out at the Pullman.

Beside his head he heard a slight noise, a crunching sound. Some primal sixth sense sent a frisson of tension through his spine at the sound – it just sounded like someone walking, yeah, but somehow it sounded like someone was trying to walk quietly. Someone was quietly walking towards him.

Groggily, he opened his eyes and firmly banished this unpleasant wisp of dream. The sounds stopped. Wakefulness began to filter the clouds from his mind, separating reality from whatever hazy vision had been conjured up by his unconscious mind. He focused.

The bedroom ceiling was blue and dotted with white cumulus clouds. At the edges of his vision, stalks of grass swayed and dipped in the breeze. A bird flew overhead.

“What?” Eugene propped himself up on an elbow. All he could see was waving green grass, still glistening with dew, and a couple of feet beyond it a skinny, ragged figure hunched over something. “Hey, what the ….?”

The figure's thin head came up in a short, sharp jerk like that of a wary animal. Eugene stared at it, trying to get a closer look.

That was a mistake. Upon the sight of Eugene's gaze resting upon it, the creature's wide green eyes narrowed to slits and its entire body tensed.

The thing was extremely fast. No sooner had their eyes met than there came a blur and a rush of scrabbling movement like a spider and Eugene became aware of a gleam of metal slicing up towards his throat.

“Aaargh!” Eugene shot to his feet, adrenaline hammering through his body in a rush of energy and alertness. He bounced, leaping a full three feet off the ground and coming down as lightly as a cat, arms flailing wildly, trying to knock away the flashing blade. His arm shot out, connected with the center of the ragged figure and sent it flying – the thing rebounded from the end of his flailing arm and sprawled unmoving on the ground.

“Hey, what the fuck?”

Eugene's heart pounded as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. He was naked. He could see small red marks where crushed stalks of grass and small stones had dug into his bare flesh. Groggily he looked down, saw a tick digging into the thin skin of his inner thigh, and quickly ripped it off with a grimace of disgust.

Where ….how had he ….what the fuck?

And then he remembered his argument with Watney, his getting progressively drunker, Will was trying to comfort him, to tell him about how women couldn't be trusted or that he was really doing well or something else that wasn't actually comforting.

When you'd just gotten into an argument with someone, you didn't want to wake up naked in a deserted area with a knife at your throat. Eugene looked around wildly for some other threat.

The thing that had attacked him stirred, but didn't seem to be in any hurry to pick a fight now that its target was standing up. Nothing else was there.

“Will? Watney? Guys?”

Okay, what the fuck? Slowly, Eugene lowered his hand and stopped covering himself, seeing as he did that nobody was around aside from the attacker and a few small birds sitting in a thicket.

His adrenaline began to abate.

Nothing was familiar. He didn't see the crumbling brickwork or rusting smokestacks of Youngstown, nor did he see any signs of human life at all. He stood in the middle of a vast field of tall grass that came up to about the height of his waist. The sun was low in the sky, and there was a chill in the air, yet Eugene didn't feel very cold. Perhaps he'd only arrived here recently. Now that he was no longer sheltered by the grass, the breeze raised goosebumps over his bare skin. Hastily he covered his penis in his hands.

Could there be any clue as to his whereabouts? How far could he have gone? Why couldn't he remember any of it? He looked around frantically, trying to find some landmark, some sign. The plain was dotted by clusters of trees, rolling hills, and in the distance a large blue shimmer that might have been the ocean. Far off in the distance were a line of mountains.

Maybe it was one of the Great Lakes? Lake Erie? But he'd been to Lake Erie and he didn't remember seeing any mountains.

He wasn't at the end of any road. There were no signs of car tires in the grass, and yet he seemed far enough away that it would've been hard for anyone to carry him.

Trying to orient himself, Eugene staggered around and almost tripped over a large round device something like a dinner plate. Next to it was a long stick, about six feet or so in length, that he saw was a spear. The spear was lying on the ground, but the shield was propped up on a bundle of other stuff. Eugene carefully touched it, not because he was afraid of anything specific, but because this whole situation was so unfamiliar that almost anything could potentially be a threat.

He heard a coughing sound. The figure he'd hit was sucking wind and trying to grab for the little dagger that had fallen to one side when he'd knocked it on its ass. Eugene raised the shield and grabbed the spear by the middle (it swung like a pendulum when he attempted to control it), turning to face the figure.

The hunched shape that had attacked him looked less threatening now than before. It was a human being. Its age and gender weren't immediately obvious – the figure was thin, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and sticklike limbs bound with wiry muscle. It was covered in mud and dust, and its skin had been weathered from what looked like long exposure to sun and wind until it looked much older than it must have been. The only clothing it wore was a sort of wool dress that came down to below the figure's scabbed knees. It was perspiring heavily despite the morning chill, sweat carving little lines in the dirt and grime coating its features, and staring at him with a vicious expression in those wide green eyes that were its only attractive feature.

When it saw the spear, it immediately went still. Eugene laid down the spear and before it could react, he grabbed the dagger. “Who the hell are you?”

The figure, or person, as he saw it was, lowered its gaze. Limbs trembling, it flung itself to the ground and, before he could stop it, pulled the wool garment over its head. It then lowered its head and raised its crossed wrists. Eugene didn't understand the gesture, but it obviously indicated some kind of submission, that this person was harmless.

The figure was naked under its garment and despite the fact that it had tried to kill him, Eugene felt a sense of pity for it. It was female, skinny and what little body mass was present was composed entirely of bands of muscle wrapping around it like cords. Its groin and underarms were covered with a mass of ungroomed hair and its body was smeared with dirt and deep purple bruises. The interior of its skinny thighs were bruised heavily, so much so that he was surprised the figure, or person, could walk.

Eugene moved around behind the creature – the girl, he could see that now – who made no effort to track his movements but who shuddered when he left its – her – peripheral vision. Her back had been bruised as well, but these marks were regularly-spaced and Eugene, who'd experienced something similar in his youth, knew that someone had deliberately beaten her, maybe with a belt or a stick.

“Okay,” he said shakily, becoming aware that this was a human being. It must have been a hobo or junkie who'd seen him lying there in the grass and tried to rob him, maybe someone who'd run away from home. “You can go now.”

The naked, kneeling girl didn't move.

“Just fucking leave me alone, okay? I don't have anything for you. I have nothing, got it?”

She trembled, but held her position. She said something, but he didn't understand it even though the words sounded somehow familiar.

Eugene became aware that he was naked himself. He carefully moved the spear and the knife to the other side of the bundle, away from the beaten girl.

He slid the shield onto his arm. It was fairly light for its size. It had a concave shape with leather straps on the inside. His arm fitted neatly through the straps. It was large and round, with a surface texture of leather but with something harder underneath – probably wood. It was trimmed with metal, likely bronze.

For most people, this would have made things more confusing, but Eugene was a member of the SCA and he recognized a prop when he saw one. Could this have something to do with the Society? He knew that members sometimes geared up and went on quests or adventures, and he also knew that Pennsic, the yearly meetup, was held on an open field like this one.

And after all, hadn't Will Hulsey told him that he'd been doing well? Maybe Will had thought it was time for Eugene to get more involved. Maybe Eugene had agreed to participate in this while he'd been drunk.

That explanation raised questions of its own, but at least it gave Eugene some possible reason why he might be here. It could have been arranged as a test for the new guy, or maybe as an induction into the ranks of the more committed players.

At any rate, it was something to go on. Eugene looked back at the girl. “Hey, none of this is yours, right?”

She said nothing, but he couldn't imagine that it would be, especially given how difficult it would be for her to carry the shield and spear alone. Besides, anyone who could afford good historical replica equipment like this would probably dress a lot nicer.

He decided to examine the other items which would probably be valuable in his quest, even though that required the removal of his shield. First and foremost was a brownish tunic made of some kind of scratchy wool. Beside it was another strip of some fuzzy material like wool or felt that, upon experimentation, wrapped around his waist and covered his genitals like a loincloth. Also wrapping around his waist was a leather belt with strips of leather studded with brass rivets dangling between his legs, which contained a leather scabbard and a short sword like the kind he'd seen Romans use in movies. A gleaming metallic lump turned out to be a helmet and a shirt of chain mail. Nearby were a pair of sandals, with very long laces that would reach up to the knee when fully tied. The final piece of equipment was a pack that looked to be made of leather and felt moderately heavy when he hefted it.

“Huh,” said Eugene. It was this or what the fuck.

Eugene stood there, at a loss for what to do next. The wind blew across the grass. No further clues presented themselves.

Out of habit, he strolled around in a circle, flexing his arms and legs, trying to test out how comfortable all this gear would be.

Not comfortable exactly – the wool was scratchy, the straps dug into his skin, the loincloth felt tight and a little uncomfortable – but it fit him exactly, even the chain mail being easy to move around in. Only the shield was difficult – it fit him, but it seemed extremely bulky and unwieldy. He shifted it, noting the adjustable straps on the inside, until he was able to move his arm with the giant thing still attached. As soon as he got the shield working, he had to take it off and lace up his sandals. These laces were stiff leather and went all the way up to his shins and he fumbled, glad nobody was watching. He also adjusted the leather skirt with the metal studs and the helmet, assuming that these things were necessary.

Eugene was impressed. Everything here looked authentic. It was clearly well-made, but not too well-made – it had the same simplicity, the same tarnishing and dents as you would expect to see in genuine, period-accurate equipment. It was all functional, but clearly not the work of a master craftsman. The spear had a long metal blade – it looked like steel – bound with leather thongs on one end, and a heavy metal point on the other end which acted as a counterweight. The helmet looked something like a Roman infantry helmet from the movies in that it had metal flanges at the sides. It was not a solid piece of metal like a Corinthian Greek helmet. It had no crest, no decorations, and was tarnished, with some rust around the flanges. It was, however, lined with felt and it fit perfectly on Eugene's head.

It was then that he experienced another stirring of doubt. Sure, his loadout gear was pretty impressive, but it looked a bit too realistic. He tested the spear blade and found that while it wasn't razor-sharp or anything, it came to a decent point and if you poked someone hard with it, you could probably do damage. Dropping it, he pulled out the sword. That, again, wasn't very sharp, but did come to a wickedly honed point with a diamond shape at the tip to ensure maximum penetrating power.

“What the fuck?” If Will and whoever else had set this up were really such pros, they really should've known that you did not use real weapons in the SCA. There was already a high likelihood of injuries in what was essentially a full-body contact sport without adding sharp blades to the mix. That was why the bulk of Society armor and weapons were made of rattan and rubber.

Well, Will thought you were good at it. Maybe he trusts you with live steel.

But that was ridiculous. It ….it just wasn't sufficient. Every explanation Eugene could think of just left him feeling more confused. “I have no idea what the fuck is going on,” he said out loud, and immediately felt worried that the pros with the extremely accurate equipment who were bad-ass enough to use live steel in their role-playing games would somehow hear and look down on him. They would decide that he wasn't good enough, that he couldn't rise to the challenge, that they'd been wrong to think him capable of anything better.

Could it be that these really were just props? Maybe the scenario didn't involve any fighting. But why come up with such good weapons, then? And if Will was really behind this, then he'd know that Eugene was inexperienced with these kinds of props and so he would probably not just hand them out without any explanation. Jesus, this level of recklessness could fucking kill someone!

Eugene opened the pack, looking for more clues. It contained some hard bread, a little piece of steel that confused him until he found a chip of flint, a leather water bottle, a strip of something that looked and smelled like beef jerky, and a piece of paper that he hoped would explain this further. Now exposed to the wind, it fluttered in the breeze and Eugene grabbed it before it could blow away.

Thank Christ, some instructions. Maybe he had to gather a series of clues to solve a mystery or something. Eugene read the handwritten message.

Hello, Gene. We are sufficiently advanced aliens of unfathomable power who have forced the inhabitants of this planet to worship us as gods (you have watched Star Trek, so we trust that we do not need to elaborate). You have been taken to the planet Gor (we know that you have some Gor books in your collection, so hopefully we don't have to explain this either), a barbaric world of violence and oppression.

Currently, you stand within the bounds of the Empire of Ar or, more accurately, one of its tributary cities. It is a regime of bloodshed and decadence, built upon the backs of countless miserable slaves and expanding its borders with fire and the sword. Their legions tramp over the surface of Gor and in their wake smolder the ruins of cities. With every conquest comes more slaves, and these are put to work laboring to feed their masters' insatiable hunger for conquest.

The screams of dying men, the weeping of women and children borne off to foreign slavery, the prayers of the oppressed; all these have reached our ears. In answer to the desperate cries for succor, we have sent unto these people a savior to heal their world, to banish evil and to take a stand for truth, justice, and the Gorean Way.

Your challenge from now on will be to survive, but you come highly recommended and we have faith that you will go far in this new world. Don't try to make advanced technology, but if you can put your knowledge to work in other areas, you may succeed in becoming the hero that Gor needs. At the very least you can gain what you lacked on Earth – status, respect, money, women. And if all else fails, we firmly believe that your exploits will be amusing for us to behold.

Besides, your life wasn't really going anywhere in the first place, was it? This could be all for the best!

Best of Luck,

The Priest-Kings of Gor

P.S. Discard this letter when you finish reading it – that is, right now.

So that was the quest, huh? He thought that whoever had set this up – presumably Will – could've done a better job laying out the objectives. Really, this whole fucking thing was just way over the line. He hadn't agreed to any of this. For Christ's sake, that kid alone could've killed him while he lay unconscious, and while Will and the others probably didn't know about her, the fact remained that leaving someone naked, unconscious, and unattended was inherently dangerous.

The paper felt warm in his hands, and was getting warmer, as though it had been left atop a stove. Looking down at it, Eugene could see that all lines except the last one had vanished.

Discard this letter when you finish reading it – that is, right now.

“Huh.” said Eugene, turning it over, shifting his fingers as it was getting too hot to touch. As he turned it, another line of text appeared on the back, upside down in relation to the original message, but exactly in his line of sight at that exact time.

DROP IT, YOU IDIOT .

Eugene dropped the paper, rubbing his blistered fingers. As the note fluttered lightly to the ground, it was suddenly wreathed in bluish flame like that from a Bunsen burner and almost immediately crumbled into smoldering ash. Eugene smothered the tiny blaze with the cloak to make sure it didn't light the surrounding grass on fire, thinking that however these guys had arranged the effect, they weren't as professional as he'd thought – lighting fires like that was a great way to get kicked out of a venue. And how had they arranged for it to happen? Maybe it had been impregnated with some volatile compound ignited by sunlight? If so, that was pretty careless of them. What if there had been some mistake and it had caught fire while he was laying there helpless?

“Gor,” he said out loud, trying to keep his mind on the situation. “I'm on Gor. The planet Gor.”

Whoever wrote the note had been correct – Eugene had heard the name before. He tried to recall what he knew about the Gor books. It wasn't much, and it called up some embarrassing personal memories.

As an overweight and bookish teenager, Eugene had not been particularly attractive to the opposite sex, nor had he fit in well at Warren G. Harding high school where football was a way of life and nerdy young men generally had not been burdened with overcrowded social calendars. Thus it was that young Eugene Phillips had taken perhaps a little too much interest in a book he'd found called Hunters of Gor. This book was written by John Norman, who was of all things a philosophy professor, and it chronicled the adventures of a warrior by the name of Tarl Cabot as he pitted his wits against a tribe of Amazons living on the planet Gor. Unfortunately the cover depicted a grim-looking man leading a woman in a fur bikini around on a leash and so it never would have gotten past his mother. Eugene had read through half the story by the time the library closed, and then when he finally came back someone else had taken the book out. The forbidden thrill had never gone away and when he'd gone off to college, Eugene had made a point to stop by the nearby bookstores and pull out whichever Gor books were available, holding them face-downward so that other customers couldn't see the book covers.

It wasn't really unheard-of for authors to write fetishes into their work, but over time the Gor books and their discussion of bondage acquired a certain degree of controversy. He recalled the flush of shame on his cheeks and the way that he couldn't meet the eyes of the (attractive) female cashier when she rang him up, but this very censure of the novels gave them a “forbidden fruit” appeal in Eugene's eyes and led him to compulsively check book shops and thrift stores for tattered paperback copies, usually purchased alongside several other, more innocuous books to give his illicit acquisition a veil of plausible deniability. Over time he'd accumulated several, including the salaciously-titled Slave Girl of Gor which depicted a musclebound man standing over a half-naked woman and glaring truculently at the reader. He'd further heard that a number of women's-lib groups had taken exception to these stories, which only reinforced the idea of Gor as some sort of erotic, taboo male fantasy.

Unfortunately for John Norman's bank account, Eugene found these books to be somewhat disappointing – sure, they'd inspired a number of sweaty adolescent fantasies in which notable members of the volleyball and cheerleading teams were clad in skimpy slave girl costumes while Eugene Phillips stood over them with sword in hand (and something else also in hand) – but the actual sexual content was fairly tame. It was honestly not much different than Piers Anthony or Robert A. Heinlein or any other author who felt the need to insert gratuitous sex scenes into his work. What the feminists were angry about, Eugene couldn't quite tell.

At least the SCA wasn't so angry. In fact, one faction which was not technically part of the SCA but which often came to the same events were called the Tuchux, which was apparently the name of one of the Gorean groups. They had a reputation for being very intelligent in their personal lives and retreating into the persona of brutish barbarians as a form of escapism. So yeah, it made sense that an SCA quest might have something to do with the planet Gor.

“I might do quite well for myself in this world of Gor,” said Eugene out loud, both to get further in-character and to relieve the emptiness of his surroundings. “It is a world where sharp steel commands its price, and in such a world there shall always be a place for the Black Knight.”

His voice seemed to echo, disturbing the peace, and Eugene fell silent. It felt like talking in a library or museum. Everything you said sounded unbearably loud and gave you the feeling that someone was going to come over and tell you to shut up.

What this place did not look like was a deadly world of steel and blood, no more than it looked like a lascivious world of sexual bondage and submission. Eugene used his imagination to populate the land with murderous orcs, slavering and snarling, but it was far more difficult to do here than it had been back in Ohio (unless he was still there in some remote national park or something) because of the air of quiet peacefulness that lingered over the rolling green fields.

Why the Gor books? Was Gor a popular subject for these games? You'd think they might go for something more well-known, like Lord of the Rings or Conan the Barbarian or John Carter of Mars. Was it just because of the Tuchux?

Had he ever spoken of them to Will and Watney and the other guys? He might have – they were pretty standard heroic fantasy novels – but the fact that he'd come upon these depictions of seductive sex slaves during his lonely adolescence meant that in his mind, the series had become linked with shameful thoughts and forbidden desires. And yet whoever had written the message knew that he had some on his shelf, which he probably did now that he thought of it, but he certainly hadn't read them very often.

Probably he'd mentioned them at least once or twice in his fantasy role-playing. But the sense of violation increased. Once more he felt lost, alone, frightened, at the mercy of unfriendly strangers.

“Unfriendly, hah!” he grunted, tightening the straps on the pack. “If it's steel they want, then it's steel they shall have! Lord Alypius has never backed down from a challenge.” He drew the sword, swiped it menacingly through the air, and then replaced it in its sheath. This last operation was more difficult than it looked, and he had to look down at the opening to guide the blade in.

The girl had flinched when he'd drawn the sword. “Oh, sorry,” said Eugene. “But you did try and kill me. What do you expect?”

She lowered her head. What was wrong with her?

With the barbarian origins of his world in mind, he looked back at the naked girl kneeling and trembling in the grass, having clearly been beaten recently. He remembered pictures he'd seen of black slaves in the Old South who'd been strung up and whipped so that their backs were covered in scars. Could this kid right here be a Gorean slave, possibly one who'd run away from her master after abusive treatment?

Well, if so, she was really in-character. He considered himself a reasonably dedicated role-player, but he couldn't imagine anyone voluntarily allowing themselves to be starved and beaten for the sake of a game. This looked unhealthy. And the way she'd lunged for him with that knife! That couldn't be fake, could it?

Unless, he thought with another thrill of fear, unless she'd been dumped here like him. Just as he was supposed to play the role of the warrior, so too was she supposed to play the role of the damsel in distress? Had she also woken up in the middle of a field and gotten a note of her own? Maybe that was why she was so hostile to guys in Renaissance Fair costumes who carried historical weaponry.

It also occurred to him that her ragged, filthy appearance was not that of someone who'd been out in the wilderness for a few days or even weeks, but someone accustomed to hard living. Could she then be an actual hobo or junkie who'd been abducted off of the street? How many people had been kidnapped and brought here, anyway?

If these people were dragging kids into these dangerous role-playing games, that was going too far. Of course there were kids at the SCA – they loved the whole dress-up and make-believe aspect – but to put them in the middle of a wilderness area near bodies of water where they could drown and other reenactors with live steel was something that would never be tolerated.

Eugene forced himself to calm down. He didn't actually know what was going on, and there was no point in frightening himself with unfounded conjectures. The first thing to do was to see what else had been provided for him. The second, he thought, was to share notes with the kid here and see what was going on. He wasn't very well-disposed towards the little shit who'd tried to put a knife in his neck, but she seemed to be docile enough now and who knew, maybe she thought he was an attacker? Of course nobody lying naked and unconscious was likely to be a threat to anyone else, but still, he wanted to know her story.

“Gor,” he said to the girl. “Have you heard of Gor?”

Her head raised as though he'd said something familiar, but no recognition crossed her features. She said something back in a foreign language.

“Ubi sunt amici?”

“What? Uh, no hablo espanol?” The woman or child, while tan, didn't look Mexican or South American or whatever. Her hair was light brown and filthy, matted into clumps.

The girl's hollow, bloodshot eyes bounced from the sword to the shield to the spear. Her own, thin, hands trembled. She sobbed, a pitiful sound that, once again, seemed like it would be difficult to fake. Her crossed wrists were thrust upwards as though already bound.

Oh, yeah! This was from the Gor books, which meant that this person was probably a role-player, though obviously one who was either very committed or who had genuinely gotten lost, probably separated from the main group. But this gesture had been used by the princess Talena when the hero Tarl Cabot had successfully abducted her and forced her to submit. Eugene picked up the dagger and tested it with his thumb. Yep, live steel.

Another shiver of terror struck him. Not just that this woman or child could've fucking killed him, but that this whole thing was more than it seemed, that the feeling of this whole scenario being more than a game was about to become solid, undeniable fact, and Eugene didn't know what he'd do when that happened. Once more he simply had no reference, no idea of how you could possibly react to that kind of thing.

Wait, he did know. He'd read lots of stories with the same premise. In fact, he'd played the role of such a character in the past. Really, if there was one thing Eugene Phillips did know, it was how to react when you were dropped into a fantasy world.

He drew his sword and struck what was hopefully an imposing posture, imagining himself and his young captive on the front cover of a tattered paperback novel. A shiver ran through the woman's – girl's, she was so small that she had to be pretty young – whole body. “La captive, domine,” she said in a hoarse voice.

Once more the words sounded familiar, and yet Eugene couldn't quite make them out. He just nodded grandly. “I ….I accept your surrender,” he said, remembering all the stuff in the Gor books about capturing women. “I'll get a fine price for you, my pretty.”

The figure looked very small and utterly dejected. Eugene couldn't really see this as a game. “Look,” he said, trying to stay in-character, but trying to rein in the absurd commitment that these people had, “I shall get more money for you if you are in good condition, my little slave girl.” He tried to laugh in a maniacal fashion.

She remained kneeling. Her condition was hard to ignore. “Timeout,” said Eugene, putting his sword back and making the appropriate sign with his hands. “I am not going to hurt you. Have you been out here very long?”

“Quid?”

“Do you speak English?” Once again Eugene was struck by the feeling that this was more than a game, but of course lots of people didn't speak English. “How ….long ….have ….you ….been ….out ….here?” Idiot, do you think she understands if you talk slowly? “How long? Quousque tandem?” Wait, what? What had he just said? Tandem what? The words had just sort of occurred to him, but now that he thought of it he had no idea what they actually meant.

She frowned and held up three fingers.

“Three what?” Oh, fuck it, this was pointless. “Look,” he said slowly and carefully to the girl, who was still kneeling on the spot, “are you hungry? Is that why you tried to steal my stuff?”

Dropping his shield and spear, and then carefully putting his sword away, he rummaged around in the pack until he took a chunk of that hard bread and handed it to the girl.

As far as Eugene could tell, the girl's attitudes consisted of passive submission and rabid aggression. She switched from the former to the latter with the speed and viciousness of a wolverine devouring a newborn lamb. It took some gnawing, but she broke off a chunk and crunched it eagerly, her multiple missing teeth notwithstanding. In minutes, she'd polished off every single bit of bread he had in his pack.

“Gratiam,” she said warily, looking less desperate than before. Eugene understood this as thanks, though he wasn't sure how he knew that – maybe from the tone? Because it sounded like the English word “gratitude”? Because it was spoken in response to a favor?

The girl saw him frowning and looked away. “Gratiam, domine,” she said hastily. He was sure he'd heard the word “domine” somewhere before – wasn't it Latin for “Lord”? Or was that “deus”? He couldn't remember.

Somehow, these words the girl was saying sounded strangely familiar to his ears, as if their meanings were on the tip of his tongue. But he didn't see how that could be. He didn't know any languages besides English.

“I'm Alypius,” he said, pointing to himself. “Lo Alypius. Dominus Alypius est. Civitatis Midrealm et ….what the fuck?”

Eugene had meant to speak English, but words he'd never heard, never spoken, words which he did not understand in the slightest, had come spilling out of his mouth. His whole body shivered in a wave of goosebumps, in man's inherent terror of the unknown and the unexplainable.

The girl looked at him curiously. Oh, thank fucking Christ, it wasn't that he was magically speaking a foreign language, he was just babbling in some kind of pseudo-Latin and she was looking at him like the fucking mental patient he was turning into.

She pointed at her own chest. “La Kore. Var civitas Midrealm est? My lord, condition of being unable to know. Forgiveness/mercy.”

The wave of supernatural terror once more washed over him, making his eyes sting with tears and his knees tremble uncontrollably. She hadn't actually spoken in English, no, but he'd understood her just the same. Somehow, he'd picked up a new language in the time between passing out at the Pullman and waking up in this field.

His hope for finding a rational explanation began to diminish. There really didn't seem to be any way for any of this to happen besides magic. And at this point, he was suddenly very grateful for the girl's presence. In the midst of this new and terrifying paradigm, the presence of another human being was a comfort.

Where had she come from? Had she awakened here, like him? Or was this really another world, but one where human civilizations existed?

“Uh, Kore, is that your name? Do you mind if I break character for a second?”

She stared at him. He'd spoken in English. In a way, that was a little comforting. If that weird speaking in tongues thing didn't happen again, he could pretend that it was all in his head. Maybe she had spoken in English, just with a weird accent or a dialect or something. Yeah, that made sense. Maybe this really was a foreign country, but one where they spoke English as a second language and so it was hard to understand on both sides.

“Look.” He tried to sound stern, though he really had no idea how to deal with kids. “That knife you were using, it was steel. It was sharp. It could've hurt someone, you swinging it around like that. You can't use sharp weapons in that way, or else you could hurt someone.” And then he realized that he'd lapsed into the other language.

The girl gave a truculent shrug. “Negatory to-kill,” she said with a touch of petulant defensiveness that really did make her sound like a teenage girl. “Conditional to-awaken. Conditional to-leave dependent to-sleep.”

Jesus, that was so fucking creepy. Eugene stood. “Alright,” he said, shaking his head. “Okay then. Why don't you put your clothes back on?” English. He accentuated the point by picking up the filthy dress, which was torn and stained with blood, then dropping it over her head. Quickly Kore pulled it on, still kneeling. She smoothed it down over her thighs and brushed her tangled, matted hair out of her face with her fingers, a charmingly feminine gesture from such a wild little savage.

“Gratitude.” Though now he understood the word to somehow mean “gratitude of-me,” probably from the way it was conjugated or something. “Specify gratitude of-me, my lord.” She bowed her head.

Oh, right, he was supposed to be a Warrior of Gor or something. He clutched at that explanation, suddenly feeling that he'd be very grateful if this did turn out to be an elaborate SCA quest. He decided to act as though it was – sure, this wasn't adding up, but the SCA was still the best possible explanation for what was going on and logic dictated that if you had a number of different explanations for something you went with the one most likely to be true.

He was also aware that this was a form of rationalization, but really, what else was he going to do? He was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a psychopathic kid who needed a good meal and a shower, if not immediate medical attention.

“Well,” he said to himself, “let's pretend this is a role-playing scenario. What would my next move be, if I were a fictional character in a fantasy world?”

This made him stumble, because Lord Alypius first and foremost would've been fucking pissed at being thrown into this situation against his will. He would've done the opposite of any proposed scenario just to spite the organizers and to teach them to respect his decisions. The Black Knight was no man's plaything!

But Eugene tried to make himself think clearly. Sure, he could have words with these people later on, but now it was important to just get his bearings and find out more.

Okay, first things first, get in-character. Eugene closed his eyes and imagined himself as the Black Knight, as Lord Alypius. It wasn't hard. He'd gotten pretty good at imagining old factories as castles and high-school baseball fields as tourney grounds and guys in rubber masks as chivalrous knights, so this wilderness in which he could not see a single human presence besides himself and a miserable slave girl was pretty easy to envision as a remote fantasy world populated by monsters, strange beasts, and bands of savages.

“By Crom,” growled Lord Alypius, “these Priest-Kings, whoever they might be, are great fools! To think that I, the Black Knight, would bow my head to their will like some city-bred priest with soft hands! Hah! If the gods wished anything done, they would not need me to do it for them. This upstart Empire of Ar must learn to fear Lord Alypius and his Legions of Terror. I shall gut the decadent swine in their velvet boudoirs and ravish their women! My barbarian hordes shall drink wine from their skulls in the burning ruins of their capital city!”

That felt sort of out of character, like it wasn't how the Black Knight would really react, that it wasn't what he might say. He muttered a few more lines about strangling the organizers with their own intestines and hearing the lamentations of their women, but he found the same strange language pouring out of his mouth and cut it off, terrified.

Not as terrified as Kore, though. The bit about women's lamentations seemed to have gotten to her. Eugene smiled and tried to say something reassuring, but of course the words came out in English.

Eugene thought of the quest he'd been given. This place was apparently barbaric, which explained his attire, and he was playing the part of someone fighting an evil empire who was supposed to gain something by it – money, fame, women.

The “women” part, he felt, was really uncalled for when you recalled that he'd confided in Will about his cheating girlfriend. Did the guy really have to rub it in? Hadn't he been the one to say that women were all whores or something?

Whoever these guys were, they were way more hardcore than Eugene. His little weekend practices weren't much to brag about compared to this challenge. But the Senschal had thought he was ready, and after all, he knew more about this kind of thing than Eugene.

It was probably all part of the game, but he still felt pissed. He'd have some sharp words with whoever was in charge of arranging these things – he might have agreed to this if anyone had asked, but to just take it on yourself to drop him here without letting him prep was beyond the boundaries of what Eugene considered acceptable fun.

Oh, shut up, he told himself. This is an adventure. People probably do this all the time. And Will must think you're ready for this, or he wouldn't have sent you.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that Will had just set this up – well, him or the greater SCA organization – without asking him, and Eugene didn't like having people just do things to him without fucking having the goddamn decency to get an okay beforehand. It made him feel like a toy. And besides, he was supposed to be at work right now. And where the fuck was this? He was sure that it was nowhere near his hometown.

The first thing to do was to find out more. In fact, that was probably the first task on the quest for him to accomplish. And he sure as hell wasn't gonna do that right here in the middle of nowhere.

For a while he stood there, listening to the wind blow across the grasslands, bending the grass. A flock of birds swirled out of the grass in response to some disturbance, shrill alarm calls carrying across the expanse. Clouds scudded across the sky, which looked vast and deep and blue, the way the sky sometimes looks after a storm has passed. Two large white birds soared. They looked very large, but he couldn't tell if they were close to the ground – their speed made it seem like they were very high up, but they still looked big enough that they'd be enormous if they were really that high. They had long bills like storks.

His shiver wasn't solely due to the breeze. This whole situation felt weird.

The chilly breeze came again and quickly Eugene threw on the wool cloak, though it fit awkwardly over the shield. Really, he didn't see why he needed that.

The note hadn't specified a destination. But the lake, or ocean, seemed as good a target as any.

“That lake, or ocean, seems as good a target as any.” English. He stared at the girl and took a deep breath. “I said that lake, or ….oh, fuck it.” He pointed to her, then to him, then to the lake.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Then let us make haste, wench.” Really feeling like a medieval explorer, Eugene strode through the tall grass, reminding himself to check his bare legs for ticks.

To his surprise, he felt pretty good. There was a spring in his step, and he felt a kind of energetic vitality, that the very air around him was richer, more nourishing. He remembered that Gor, like Barsoom, was supposed to have low gravity and so Earthmen could become great heroes if they went there. Women, of course, became beautiful sex slaves – maybe the low gravity allowed them to dance really well or something.

The idea of keeping women as slaves was a tempting one, but still infused with bitterness and he firmly decided not to think about them anymore. He was the Black Knight, Lord Alypius. Maybe he'd ravish a wench sometime, maybe not.

“Now,” he said, messing around with the bronze buckle of his leather belt to try and get it to fit better, “let the rulers of Gor beware, for Lord Alypius is among you and your world will never be the same!” He struck a pose with and grinned at Kore, who lowered her gaze.

“Yeah, okay, fine, let's go.” Feeling foolish, Eugene continued to walk. All around him was the fields, the trees, the lake stretching in front of him.

Kore walked alongside him, weaving unsteadily as if drunk. “Where were you going?” Eugene found that the words came out more easily if he didn't think too hard about them. Somehow he had this knowledge without being consciously aware of it. He didn't want to think too hard about the implications of that, either. “Where were you going? Am I speaking right? Anyway, I am going to lake.” He pointed in case the words hadn't come out right. “You follow me?”

“Yes, my lord.” She lowered her head.

Eugene sort of wished this junkie or vagrant hadn't found him. His companion was staggering, clearly weak with hunger or exhaustion. She was constantly foraging, making him wonder if she were mentally stable. Maybe that was it – she was psychologically disturbed in some way, and had wandered off from her caretakers. Still, it was pretty irresponsible of them to let her out here in the first place. Really, whoever ran this thing had a lot to answer for.

“Uh, sweetie, don't do that,” he said as she pulled a small insect from a shrub and opened her mouth to bite down on it.

“My lord?” She looked up with the reluctance of a little kid being denied a cookie. The bug wriggled, fat green legs kicking.

“Don't ….” he tried to speak her language, but somehow the words didn't come when he wanted them to. It felt like riding a bicycle, like he'd fall down if he actually stopped to think about what he was doing. He grabbed her hand and pried her fingers open, letting the insect fall to the ground. “No eating bugs, okay?”

“Oh-kay?” Her eyes were wide and she looked frightened. He realized that she'd spoken English, or at least that he'd been able to understand her. “Forgive me, my lord. I grow faint with hunger.”

“We are going to the lake.” He pointed to the blue shimmer in the distance. “We will find other people.” Again the chill, when words spilled forth which he did not know.

Apparently the feeling was mutual. The girl paled under the layers of dirt on her face. “Your band?”

“What? Quid?”

“The others like you.” She spoke slowly and carefully.

“I don't know where they are.”

“You are alone?”

“Yes.” He nodded to emphasize the point, then at once felt like he might have said something stupid.

He shook his head. Come on, what was this kid gonna do to him?

She stared at him, apparently bewildered, but said nothing. They continued walking, grass swishing. He saw her looking at some of the green insects, her thin chest heaving in a sigh.

“Look,” he said, speaking English, “we'll get you something to eat, I promise.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The sun climbed and the faint chill was replaced by increasing warmth. His gear was getting hot and uncomfortable, and he didn't see any signs of anything other than a large plain with trees and a lake in the distance. Christ, he must've been walking for hours at this point! The laces rubbed at his skin. The shield was heavy and difficult to hold at rest without it banging into his pack. The sword bounced off of his leg whenever he made a sudden movement. The wool tunic was hot and itchy. Even the mail shirt, while padded by the tunic, was uncomfortable. And the helmet strap was digging into his chin.

“By Crom, I would give much for a flagon of wine and a joint of beef!” He glared at Kore. “Sometimes I wish I hadn't given you all my bread.”

She looked up at him with the same nervous hesitation.

“Okay, time-out. Uh, I mean, verily, I deem it proper and fitting for us to pause in our travels.” English again, goddammit. “Hey, uh, can you start talking? This language seems to work best when I'm talking to a Gorean.”

More English. Of course Kore wouldn't start talking until he said something – she seemed to think of herself as his prisoner – and of course he couldn't say something until that weird language started coming out of his mouth. Eugene added the wizard who'd cast the translation spell to his list of people with whom he'd exchange words.

Eugene took off the cloak and stuffed it into the pack. He fumbled with the shield and tried to tie it to his pack or something, but when he did, it swung around crazily. It was easier to keep it on his arm, but it was still stiff and awkward. Still, Eugene refused to discard it. This was so well-done that it was probably expensive. He knew from experience that really authentic reenactment gear could cost a pretty penny, and didn't want to be charged if anything was damaged or missing.

There was a trail through the long grass and he followed it, but the way was patchy and meandering. Piles of what looked like deer droppings lay by the path, making him think that it was a game trail.

His path passed a thicket. A yellowish creature that looked like a deer or antelope raised its head as it looked at him. It had a long horn on its nose, kind of like a rhinoceros, but its build was light and graceful. It froze, ears pricked, and then bounded away in long leaps, crashing into the thicket.

“Huh.” There wasn't much else to say. Had he imagined that? Was it some kind of animal he didn't know about? Was he in another country, maybe Africa? He hefted the spear, wondering if he'd be able to use it if a lion or something came after him.

Time went on. The blue expanse of water got nearer, but not near enough that he felt like he'd be able to reach it anytime soon. The water in his bottle got low, and it had an unpleasantly leathery taste. Eugene was getting blisters from the way that the straps on the sandals were rubbing his skin. He stopped to rest, take another drink, and check for ticks. There was a large tree, populated by birds with iridescent green feathers who called out to one another in grating screeches that belied their lovely appearances. He sat down at its foot, in the shade.

Now, resting wouldn't get him any nearer to the lake, but then again, he couldn't remember the message telling him that he should go to the lake – it just seemed like the only thing out there, and Lord Alypius would have made for it so as to refill his water bottle, since Lord Alypius didn't worry about things like giardia and tapeworms. But while it was now distinctly warm, the clouds drifting across the sky had gotten bigger and heavier. Hopefully they would cover the sun. If it rained, he could refill his canteen.

Once again Eugene wondered where the fuck he was and what the fuck was happening. He was tired, hot, and thirsty, and his legs and feet hurt from the unaccustomed exertion. The SCA had improved Eugene's fitness, as fighting in armor (even rubber armor) was very tiring. But it hadn't prepared him for long hikes, even across flat terrain.

He wondered why his anger was mostly on principle – he might have agreed to this, but didn't like the decision being made without him. Maybe it was because there was something peaceful about this landscape of green meadows dotted with trees and thickets. It didn't seem like anywhere he'd ever been, but it wasn't a bad place to be.

What if this was another world? A silly idea, yeah, but as he leaned back and stared up into the branches of the tree, watching the birds pick at the green clusters of fruit, he decided to toy with the idea – just in the spirit of role-play, obviously. Maybe that was the real next step for the SCA – if you spent enough time trying to escape your mundane existence, they sent you somewhere else.

Could Gor be real? Of all the fiction to be true, why some schlocky paperback novels from the seventies? How had the author of those books figured out about this place? Did a lot of people from Earth come here? Or maybe this was a computer program – he'd read science fiction with that premise.

They continued walking. The sky had at least gotten overcast. Rain spattered down here and there, but not enough to fill his water bottle. The terrain sloped downward, and the lake stretched out in front of him.

Eugene picked his way carefully along what looked like another deer trail. The thickets were getting higher and more tangled. Flowers sprouted around them, white and blue and pink. There was a drone of insects.

At this point Eugene got another indication that he definitely wasn't in Kansas anymore. It came in the form of a little whistling noise, and a movement in the branches. Out of the tangled thicket a face popped out, and not a human face either. He had the impression of big eyes, a narrow, ratlike mouth with prominent incisors, and large ears. It looked like a cross between a monkey and Noseferatu.

“What the fuck?” said Eugene for what felt like the hundredth time that day. He had trouble reacting to this just as he'd had trouble reacting to everything else because he'd never been in this situation and had no idea what reactions might be considered appropriate. “What was that?”

“What is it?” Kore peered forward.

“I dunno, it was like this monkey or something.” Huh, there was a word for “monkey” in Gorean.

“I have never seen one of those.”

Ahead he could hear things moving in the brush. “You know what's up ahead?”

“Rodents.”

“They sound too big to be rodents. Listen.” The rustling was from all around him. He could hear something snuffling behind him on the trail.

“My lord, this is a rodent trail. There will be rodents.” She said this with a touch of scorn.

“Well, stay behind me. I will not let them hurt you.”

The sounds were now from all around him, in front and behind, so he continued to walk forward, Kore walking with him but glancing around warily. He was relieved to see the trail opening up around him onto a flat plain, though still one surrounded by thickets and trees.

All around him were animals, feeding on the grass. They had tusks like pigs, but their narrow faces, pointed snouts, beady eyes, and long, whiplike tails made him think of rats. Their size was the most unusual thing about them. He estimated the biggest at maybe fifty to seventy pounds, and not only did they have tusks, they had the same massive incisors and huge jaw muscles as a beaver or a rat. Eugene thought that whatever they were, they could do some damage if they wanted to.

At a distance he'd been ignored, but as soon as Eugene approached the creatures, they began to move away from him, giving him wary glances. Huh. Maybe they weren't too threatening.

Another little goblin face popped out of the undergrowth. It made a sort of jabbering sound and lurched forward, moving unsteadily in quick, darting motions. It was very small, about the size of a child, with big eyes, big ears, and prognathous features. It had a nose and lips like those of a human being, not a flat, apelike muzzle.

One thing that reassured Eugene was that while it could stand up, it moved on its knuckles like a monkey. At least that way it seemed more like a strange animal and less like something impossible, something which did not and could not exist, something which could alter Eugene's entire perception of reality if he acknowledged it.

“Do you see that?” Eugene pointed at the little goblin with a trembling finger.

Kore glanced incuriously at it. “Yes.”

It occurred to Eugene that if he were really insane, then Kore might be imaginary as well. Who knew, maybe he was wandering around a field somewhere talking to rocks and garbage cans? He considered the possibility that he was dreaming. He'd read a story about a hero called Thomas Covenant who'd found himself in a similar situation and believed himself to be in a dream.

This was not a belief that Eugene could hold for very long. The world around him felt too vivid. He could hear the snuffling breathing of the giant rats, the squeals of protest whenever he got too close, the cries of birds and the weird whistling sounds made by the goblin and its fellows, who seemed to be moving among the rats.

He had to get out of here. There was something very unsettling about the little goblins, and while the rats looked more like animals that could actually exist in real life, they still scared him. “Alright,” he said, trying to summon a sense of heroic bravado, “these things do not ….” he realized that he was speaking English and tried again. “They have no danger.” Good, Gorean. Apparently the translation spell or whatever it was worked better with simple sentences. “Follow me.”

As he strode forward, the rats looked up sharply. At first they gave way, pattering off, but as he approached the part of the path around which the largest number were gathered, they seemed to find courage in numbers. The ones closest to him began to squeal, a horrible, high-pitched, ear-splitting shriek that seemed to spread through the herd, each one picking up the cry in turn and passing it on until the whole thicket reverberated with their hideous screeches. The hair on their backs lifted, making them look bigger than they were. They stamped their feet in a rhythmic tattoo and champed their teeth, grinding their molars with a sound like scraping woodsaws.

But as alarming as they were, the goblins were worse. They had longer arms and fingers than humans, and they made noises in a kind of squeaking jabber that sounded oddly complex, like a language. They had evidently been plucking leaves, insects, and other food sources, then throwing them down to the rats. One took a handful of peeping baby birds from a nest, popped one into its mouth like a piece of candy, and threw the rest down to the gigantic rats. Others were sitting on the backs of rats, running long fingers through their fur and plucking fat, swollen ticks. Still more peeped out of the grass.

Jesus, the whole meadow was full of these things! Eugene tried to back away, but every time he moved a new set of squeals went up. He lifted the spear and pointed it, hoping that he might jab a couple of them if they got too close.

The instant the spear raised, the attitude of the rat-herd underwent a sudden shift. A loud, piercing, high-pitched squeal burst from the creatures and, much like the antelope, they rushed away, barreling through the grass, squealing madly like a herd of wild pigs. The goblins left with them, riding on the backs of their giant rats, their little piping noises receding into the thickets. A few remained in the trees where they squealed and hurled berries at Eugene.

“Well,” he said, breathing heavily, “that was ….see, no danger at all.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Kore, who sounded disappointed.

As he made his way out of the thicket he kept his eyes firmly forward – he did not want to see those hideous little faces looking out at him – but once his breathing had calmed, he felt a little better. And he remembered how the animals had fled once he'd raised his spear. Now that he thought of it (thinking rationally helped calm him down), that implied the presence of men. Unfortunately, it also implied that spears were common weapons around these parts.

Come to think of it, maybe Kore here knew something. “What were those?”

She didn't respond for long enough that he thought he'd spoken English, but before he could try again, she frowned up at him. “The urts?” Eugene understood the word “urt” to mean something like “rodent” or “rat,” so not very illuminating.

“No, the other ones.”

“Oh, the Rodent People.”

“Is that their name?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“What ….what are they?”

“They live among the rodents as goatherd with goats. They are ….tricksters, bad luck. It is not well to offend them. They cause much mischief.”

“Uh-huh.” Maybe that was the native mythology surrounding a perfectly natural race of monkey? But Eugene was having a harder and harder time believing it.

He pushed forward. He really didn't know what else to do. As long as he had a goal, he could put all this weird unexplainable bullshit out of his head and just focus on accomplishing his aim.

It was then that Eugene and Kore crested the hill leading to the lake. It was a beautiful sight, small waves formed by the breeze, rippling with the patter of a light rain. What Eugene especially noticed was the presence of small shapes out on the water. Boats, but small wooden ones, like canoes. Was this part of the medieval technology, or was this a foreign country (that might explain the weird animals) and was there some kind of primitive tribe living here? Had they met other members of the SCA? Did they know about these elaborate, extreme role-playing games? Were they in on the joke?

In the distance, there were several other man-made structures. The presence of those animals had gotten Eugene seriously considering the possibility that he was on another planet, and so he felt both relief at seeing some signs of human habitation, along with a sense of disappointment. He'd kind of liked the idea of being a lonely traveler in a strange and beautiful world. But no, he could see a wooden palisade, and outside that palisade were clusters of tents. People were moving around those tents, looking like insects at this distance.

Oh, right. This actually looked pretty similar to descriptions of SCA meetups – they typically took place in open fields with lots of tents. That was the mission, to find your way there over a couple of miles in flat terrain. Not easy, but not too difficult.

Once again an explanation raised questions of its own, but at least now Eugene wasn't one of only two human beings on an entire planet, and now he'd be around a lot of other people once he confronted the assholes who'd done this to him about their stupid prank.

His heart sank further as he remembered that while there were still many unanswered questions, he would eventually find a reasonable explanation for all this. And then, far from being a Warrior of Gor, he'd have to go back to the office. Assuming that he still had a job. And of course he'd have to see Laura again, so there was that confrontation to look forward to.

And so the sight of civilization raised not joy but dread in Eugene's heart. What would happen if he just walked off in the opposite direction? Those animals were eating the fruit, so he supposed that it was edible. He could use the spear to kill some of the animals, and he had what looked like the means to start a fire. He could live forever out here, eating fruit and giant rats, never having to worry about stupid bullshit. Like the Garden of Eden, man.

With a sigh, Eugene realized that he actually felt grateful to whatever asshole had dumped him here in the first place. Of course he hadn't really believed that he was on an alien world, but the lack of other people and the strange wildlife had been enough to create a convincing illusion. It had been a – well, not a nice feeling, but a good one. Almost therapeutic, really. Just you and your equipment in the middle of an exotic landscape, no bullshit. Those hours of exploring a genuinely new and beautiful world – they had been a precious gift. Maybe he should see if he could do this again someday, though with more prep time and advance notice.

At least the adventure wasn't over yet. He walked downhill to the shoreline and looked out over the water. It was blue and stretched off into the distance with no sign of a far shore. He could see the figures of men in the boats, and some of them stared at him, but none looked surprised to see him. Near the shore, he cupped water in his hands and tasted it. Fresh, so it was a lake. He was thirsty enough to consider drinking, but no, he'd get a cold beer at the meetup. Well, shit, he didn't have any money on him, but maybe he'd find Will and prevail upon him, since a beer was literally the least Will could do after putting him through this bullshit.

When he glanced back to see how his companion was doing, he was astonished to see tears slipping down the thin, hollow cheeks. “Hey? Kore? What's wrong? You need a break or something?” English again. He couldn't help but feel relieved – it was extremely fucking creepy to have words in a foreign language come out of your mouth without any conscious input.

“My lord,” she said, “would you sell me in the city?”

“What city?”

“You will get more money for me that way.”

So she was playing a slave. Or more than playing, when you thought about those strange animals, but Eugene didn't want to think about them, any more than he wanted to think about the weird language the girl spoke, which he sometimes seemed to speak as well.

Eugene summoned his Lord Alypius persona. “I will do as I wish,” he said, and of fucking course that came out in the foreign language and the girl flinched as if he'd hit her.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Look, we don't have to ….goddammit, uh, non necesse est ….Jesus, that's creepy. Look, I just have to find out where the fuck I am right now.”

The lakeshore was broad and curved off into the distance. In some cases the banks were high and muddy, but sometimes they sloped down to sandy beaches. On these beaches were further signs of human activity: circles of charred wood and stones, discarded, dried fish scales, fins, and bones. Some of these remains were large – he picked up a pectoral fin that looked like a small fan. There was a pair of jaws about a foot wide that had triangular white teeth like a shark's, even though this was fresh water.

“Look at this thing. Where could it have come from?”

“ ….it probably came from within the lake, my lord.” He looked back and saw more tears. The girl was about to break down.

If there was one thing Eugene wasn't equipped to handle, it was kids. He clumsily tried to put an arm around her shoulders, but when he did she flinched at the initial contact and then froze. Her body felt hard and wiry under his arm, as though she'd been carved from wood.

“Okay,” he said. “I am not going to sell you anywhere.” Yes, that had come out in her own language. She appeared wary. “We don't have to keep playing. We can take a break.” He didn't really want to do this, though. He wanted to keep exploring this place, but even if she hadn't been having a breakdown, Kore looked like she could use a breather.

There were beds of rushes at the side of the lake. Ducks and geese burst out as he passed. He could hear the croaking of frogs, which fell silent at his approach. Spring had come, which, considering that it was also spring in Ohio, meant that he should be in the Northern Hemisphere. Unless, no, wait, winter was the rainy season in the tropics, that was right. And it was raining, the clouds hanging low, fat raindrops plinking into the surface of the lake. He also saw, to his amazement, not only turtles but what looked like small crocodiles either resting on logs or floating in the water.

“Look at those,” he said, pointing to the reptiles. “What are those called?”

“Tharlarion,” said Kore dully, which he understood as “reptiles.” Not an imaginative kid, this one.

Trees grew more thickly around the water's edge. In one grove he saw a long green snake basking on a branch. There were splashes as the turtles and small crocodiles fell off low branches at his approach, heads coming up yards away to watch him warily.

A sudden movement in front of him made him jump. Several ropes were stuck into the water, attached to stakes in the ground. Some of these lay limp, while others were pulled taut and were jumping up and down. Obviously this was a setup for some fisherman.

He continued forward, a little heartened by signs of human life on the shore. As he looked closely, he could see drag marks where canoes had been launched.

The footpaths were a bit more distinct. The trees were also set closely together. He could see birds flitting from branch to branch. A large green katydid stood within a flower, placidly munching the white petals in little semicircular bites.

Human voices came from one end of the trail. Kore turned white and looked like she was about to faint. Eugene felt sheepish – what if these were just regular guys? He'd feel awkward running around in this comical outfit.

But the two men approaching along the footpath did not disappoint. Both were shorter than Eugene, but one was taller and stockier than his companion. He had long yellow hair and a beard, with an axe and shield slung over his back and a long sword at his hip. He also had a medium-sized animal slung over his shoulder that looked like one of the large rats.

The other was lean and wiry, and he had stubble clinging to his cheeks and roughly hacked brown hair. He carried a spear in his right hand but no shield, and had a short sword much like Eugene's own. Eugene thought to himself that in a real fight, the short sword would be more effective than the axe or long sword on the narrow path, surrounded by dense brush.

Aside from their obvious medieval accouterments, these men were also dressed appropriately. Both wore cloaks and tunics with sandals, though no armor. Clearly these were SCA members, though they looked dirty and ragged, like they'd been camping out here for a while. It reinforced the idea that these guys were really committed to their role-play. They didn't seem happy to see a fellow player, either, although maybe they were just in-character.

“Greetings!” Eugene lifted his hand.

“Tal,” said the wiry man, lifting his own hand. He seemed to speak the same language as the girl, or else the translation magic worked on him as well. “Who are you?”

Kore sobbed, burying her face in her hands.

Eugene looked at her. “Uh, do you know these guys?”

“She knows us well,” said the stocky man, grinning obscenely and revealing that he also had missing teeth. “The little bitch had us tracking her for three days.”

“We only caught up with her this morning.” It was the wiry man. His eyes were cold and flat, and his gaze had the same expressionless quality as the reptiles in the lake. The way the stubble clung to the hollows of his cheeks gave his face a skull-like aspect.

“It is not morning.” Eugene tried to speak slowly, though actually the other language seemed to come more easily when he wasn't thinking so hard about it.

“We saw that she was following you,” said the stocky man gruffly and impatiently. “Then you caught her.”

“We did not wish to enter into difficulties with you,” said the lean man. “You might have men nearby. So we followed, unseen, until we were sure that you were alone.”

“Yeah?” Lord Alypius would've said more, but for some reason this didn't feel like a game.

“And now we are sure.” The lean man smiled, though his expression was not reassuring in the slightest. “You are alone. We are two. Return us the woman or we will kill you.”

“Is that so?”

The stocky man took out his axe. They must have been SCA players, and yet the mystery of the language and the strange animals and the lack of civilization had introduced a worm of doubt into Eugene's mind. He was starting to consider the incredible – that he might actually be on another world, a world which resembled worlds of swords and sorcery, like in the Gor Chronicles or Conan the Barbarian. And if that was the case, it meant that men like these might not just be playing around.

In fact, they might actually want to kill him.

Eugene told himself that this was a pretty big leap of logic, and that just because you didn't have a ready-made explanation for something, it didn't mean that you had to be outlandish. But these guys, like the girl, did not look like they were joking, or that they were just playing games.

Suddenly Eugene was immensely glad that he hadn't thrown away his shield. He stood up straight, remembering that these guys were smaller than he was and if they really were fantasy barbarians, then they wouldn't know that he wasn't a great warrior or something.

“The woman is ours,” said the lean man in a reasonable tone of voice, as though this were some routine, petty disagreement. “It is we who took her.”

“He wishes to keep her,” said the stocky man. “I will kill him now.”

“He is large. Let us kill him together.”

The stocky man gave his companion a look. “I am an Alar.”

“What are you ….fuck, what are you ….god fucking damn it ….quid faciam si non revertes?”

The lean man shrugged. “You speak strangely.”

“Answer the fucking question.” So there was apparently a word for “fuck” in Gorean.

“Sell her. The Tenth Legion approaches. In its wake will come slavers.”

“You want to sell this woman?”

Hendix stared at Eugene. “I think he is of simple mind.”

“I do not think she is healthy.” Did that mean what he'd intended it to mean? “In good form. The woman.”

The lean man shrugged. “She need not last long, only until we reach the follower's camp. Then she is the problem of the slave merchant.”

“And she is not your problem in any event.” Hendix now looked grim. “Surrender her to us.”

Eugene, again, wasn't sure whether he was expected to fight or go along with this. He usually played a villainous character, so in this case it wasn't really strange for him to join a group of bandits or barbarians or slavers or whatever.

And if it wasn't role-play, these guys could probably kill him without much trouble. They handled their weapons very naturally and easily in a way that told Eugene that they were accustomed to using them.

He looked at Kore, whose head was down and who had a numb, resigned expression. Could she be hurt by this? She didn't seem to be in very good condition anyway. He'd really hoped to get her to civilization.

Well, even if these guys weren't about to be reasonable, maybe Eugene would find someone else if he went with them. The similarity in their accouterments left no doubt that they were involved in the same type of game or role-play or scenario as he, so he was probably supposed to go along with them anyway.

“Very well,” he said, this time falling easily into the strange language. “I shall give her to you.” He felt a stab of guilt, but Kore didn't seem affected by this one way or another. Had he spoken these people's language?

Besides, he told himself firmly, almost hysterically, this was all just a game. Just an extreme level of role-play. That was apparently in another country. And involved giving Eugene the ability to speak a foreign language he'd never spoken before in his life.

“A wise man.” The stocky man stepped forward, seized Kore's thin wrists, and expertly lashed them together with a loop of rope which he seemed to be carrying for this purpose. “Did this bitch have a dagger on her when you caught her?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Give it over!” He held out a hand, palm open.

“That is not your dagger,” said his companion.

“Caudex has no further need of it.” The girl went pale and shuddered. “It shall be mine. Unless this big fellow has anything to say?”

Eugene did in fact have the dagger, but he just shrugged. “It fell,” he said, folding his arms and trying his best to look tough, despite the hammering of his heart. He reminded himself that in the unlikely event that these guys were for real, he was bigger than them and just as well-armed. “Into the grass. I do not still have it.”

The stocky man looked him over and then, with a snort of contempt, turned his back. “Very well,” he said. “Shall we return? Or is it your wish to sell this wench ourselves and split the profit? We might tell Sergius that she escaped?”

The other seemed to consider this. “Sergius would slay us both,” he said.

“Sergius may not be first in the camp for very long.”

“Let us do nothing rash. The Tenth is still far. We have time.” The lean man frowned at Eugene. “You have done us service, Fellow. We mean you no harm.”

“He does not have band/group/association of his own,” said the stocky man. “We could sell him as well.”

“Hold on!” Eugene slammed his spear against his shield, eyes watering as he accidentally crushed his own thumb. “You cannot sell me! There ….there are other men! They are hidden! This could be a trap for you!”

“Not if they're like you.” The lean man grinned. The expression looked anomalous on his guarded, emotionless features. “You blundered through brush like cow.”

The stocky man slung the dead rodent across Kore's shoulders, making her stumble and grit her teeth. Then he turned to his friend. “What shall we do with cow, if it is not your wish to kill him?” The other did not respond for some time. Then, suddenly, he addressed Eugene. “Man, I see by your shield that you are an outlaw.”

“Uh, if you say so.”

“Know also that we are outlaws.”

“Okay, cool. I got no problem. I'm not a cop or anything like that.” No, wait, that had been English. But it didn't seem to matter. They were talking amongst themselves.

The stocky man shook his head. “Sergius will not allow another member.”

“He is not an additional member, he is replacing Caudex, and avenging him by capturing the wench who slit his throat. And if Sergius still does not agree, the wretch may always be sold to the slavers.”

“Sergius or this fellow?” Both laughed. The second man turned back to Eugene. “We could have slain you when we followed you with our woman, or captured and sold you. But we are giving you the chance to join our band.”

“If I don't?”

“In that case we will sell you for a slave. Unless you fight us. Then we will kill you.”

“We should do that anyway. He is a soft and weak man. He will be of no use to us.”

“As I said, that may be determined later. You, Stranger, what say you?”

Well, this seemed like a good setup for the adventure. And it beat being sold into slavery. “Sure,” he said. “I am ….Lo Alypius.”

“Hendix,” said the stocky man.

“Glauco,” said the lean man.

Eugene, feeling both confused and frightened, but also somewhat relieved that he had a script to fill, headed off with the two men, who he guessed were bandits. He was also supposed to be a bandit – yes, the second Gor book, Outlaw of Gor, had a scene where the eponymous outlaw got a shield with no insignia. Well, okay then. So that was his character.

“I am new here,” said Eugene, who found that he was less likely to speak English if he kept his sentences simple. “What is this?” And he spread his arm wide.

“Idiot,” said Hendix. “As I said; he is simpleminded.”

“I am not.” Eugene had the impression that it wouldn't be good if these guys thought of him as weak or stupid. He was reminded of something he'd read about sharks – big ones would eat little ones, but if they were all the same size then they might swim together since it would be too much of a risk for them to attack something as big as they were.

“You are not simple,” said Glauco soothingly. “You are by Lake Ias. That is the large blue thing with all the water. It is where the Issus leads.”

Oh, yeah, wasn't the Issus from John Carter of Mars? Or was that something else? Eugene nodded.

“From where did you come?”

“From Ohio – uh, Midrealm.”

“Ohio?” Glauco frowned and Eugene wondered if he'd made a big blunder and broken character.

“Yeah, you know, it's high in the middle and round on both ends? We invented Superman and golf balls.” A blank look. He'd spoken in English.

Eugene sighed and tried to let himself talk without thinking, something which had never before posed much difficulty.

By the time the sun had climbed to the center of the sky, Eugene had managed to get that he was near the cities of Corcyrus and Argentum, neither of which he could recall from the books. The part from the first book where the city of Ar had formed an empire seemed to be true – in this world, Arians weren't followers of a religious sect but inhabitants of a city. And yes, this empire, which sounded like the Roman Empire just like how the Gor books described it, had a lot of slaves. Some of these slaves had run away from their masters and were now launching raids on rich people, collecting various goods. And joined with those slaves were tribes of barbarians, who were looked down upon by the empire but also liked to raid it.

This sounded like a pretty solid setup for a fantasy scenario, and Eugene began to congratulate himself on not having quit. Sure, he still had problems with the lack of advance notice, not to mention having been stripped naked, and he still found the language thing to be weird, but all in all, he was still glad that he'd stuck it out. Now he was a member of the Rebel Alliance, fighting with runaway slaves against the Evil Empire – a little cliched, but when you considered Eugene's previous scenarios, he was hardly in a position to complain about a lack of originality. He hoped someone here had called himself “Spartacus.”

His new friends were both good characters or personas, though in Eugene's opinion they seemed kind of flat and didn't really have as much depth as he did. Glauco had been from Corcyrus, which was subservient to the empire through being conquered (there was an evil queen somewhere, but the translation spell seemed to fail whenever anyone talked about anything complex) and he'd joined the Dark Lord's Legions of Terror but had defected to the Rebels. Hendix had been an Alar, which was some tribe of barbarians kind of like Vikings except without boats, and he had also joined the empire's legions.

“Was there some point where you quit?”

“Would we be here if there wasn't?”

“Well, yeah, but why?”

Glauco shrugged. “There is no point in fighting armed men for little gold, when you can raid undefended caravans and get much gold.”

“Okay,” said Eugene, “but what's your deeper motivation? Is it because the empire looks down on people like you? Did you decide that you could no longer be complicit in committing atrocities?”

“No,” said Hendix, “I give less than shit of cow what imperials think of me. I fight for gold.”

Amateurs.

In addition to the unclear motivations, an issue Eugene had with the Rebel Alliance was the Problem of Kore. The young and battered woman was struggling ahead of them, clearly in bad shape, exhausted, filthy, and hungry, and these guys had talked about selling her. Now, that had been an element of the original Gor books, but since these guys were former slaves themselves, surely they wouldn't be complicit in the enslavement of others, right?

“Was she a slave owner?” Perhaps this was revenge? Hadn't the black slaves on Haiti risen up and slaughtered the white masters back in the nineteenth century? Eugene didn't think he would support something like that – but he reminded himself even more firmly than before that none of this was real, that it was just a setting for a game. Nobody was really going to die, nobody was getting enslaved.

And yet, Kore was a real person and she really didn't look too healthy. She could probably use a break. She wasn't even wearing shoes. Blood from the dead rat was seeping down over her shoulders, and flies were crawling over her face. She just let the insects walk over her, blinking when they got into her eyes, though with her hands bound she would've had a tough time shooing them away.

“A peasant slut?” Hendix once again looked as though Eugene was the stupidest man alive. “Not very likely.”

“So why enslave her?”

“Why not? She is worth gold, or at least silver. Even if she is of low class.”

Glauco nodded. “She was foolish to wander far from her village.”

So this was a morally gray setting. Okay, that was interesting. Like, there was an empire, yeah, and they were obviously bad guys, but the Rebel Alliance wasn't squeaky-clean either. That wasn't a bad thing. In fact, it was probably more similar to real-life history than most SCA scenarios.

On the other hand, Eugene had always liked the simplicity of fantasy worlds. After all, real life was a morally gray setting without distinct good guys and bad guys – look at politics, for Christ's sake! It was a relief to retreat into a world with sharp lines, where people were knights in shining armor or monstrous villains, where you didn't have to look too deeply to find out if someone was a good guy or not. He identified with Tolkien, who'd once claimed that Lord of the Rings was not a metaphor for World War Two and that if it had been, the Hobbits would've been enslaved no matter who was victorious.

Perhaps it was the instinct of man to want heroes and villains, an instinct that had emerged in the days of tribal warfare where your tribe was always right and the enemy tribe was always wrong. That was why so many mythological heroes did things that sounded pretty bad to the modern reader – to the modern man's refined sensibilities, the morality of one's actions didn't change depending on one's tribal allegiance, and so nobody could really be said to be universally “good” or “bad.” But to ancient peoples, it was very easy to tell who was right and who was wrong – the people who looked like you, spoke your language, worshiped your gods: those were the good guys. The outsiders were the villains. He recalled reading through the Old Testament as a young boy and being disturbed at the number of times the writers joyfully celebrated the wholesale slaughter of enemy cities.

So yes, he told himself, a world of black-and-white morality might actually play into mankind's darkest, most brutal impulses, offering a fantasy of people who could be butchered at will without pangs of conscience. Tolkien had enjoyed such fantasies, but at least he'd clearly distinguished them from real life. And from a role-playing perspective, a gray scenario really did offer more possibilities when it came to alignment.

Though if somehow this were not a role-playing game, then these guys were really going to hurt this poor girl. Speculating on the overall moral alignment of a human being was probably useless, since you had no knowledge of their entire life, but it was easier to condemn a single action. Such as, say, the abuse of a young girl who might or might not be mentally disturbed.

She tried to kill you, said Eugene to himself. Let's not forget that, okay?

Anyway, Eugene was not about to draw his sword on these two guys who looked more than capable of killing him. Not until he learned some more about who they were and why they were here and what they were really doing.

The rain increased, plinking off of the helmet. The two men simply drew their cloaks over their heads, but Eugene held his shield up over his head, his feet soaked and freezing. None of his clothing was waterproof. Kore stuck her tongue out to catch the rain. Blood washed down her shoulders and stained her dress, but at least it kept the flies off. Eugene moved the shield until it was over her head as well – Hendix and Glauco looked but said nothing.

“At last,” said Hendix.

“I thought ….three days?”

Hendix ignored him, but Glauco didn't. “We were already heading for the side of the lake. Hendix and I were tasked with finding the girl.”

“The little fool went the opposite direction from her village,” said Hendix. “She probably believed that she was being clever, that we would not expect her to take such a route.” He shook his head.

“She was clever,” said Glauco. “We lost a day. In fact, we only caught up with her when she doubled back.”

The stand of trees near the lake was similar to most others, but as Eugene looked closely, he could see tendrils of smoke coming up from between the branches.

“Here,” said Glauco, “now you shall meet your new comrades.”

They entered the shelter of the trees and thankfully the rain was not so intense, though the ground was muddy and the leaves dripped. About twenty or so men were gathered around a small campfire near a clearing.

Each wore a vaguely period-accurate costume, usually a mix of a tunic and a cloak, but some of them had shields, and others had mail shirts. A lot of them had scabbards with swords in them, or daggers. They wore earrings and nose rings and rings on their fingers, necklaces, jeweled girdles, and silver belt buckles, and some of their clothing was dyed scarlet or purple or black, but the rest of it was the same plain brown material as Eugene's tunic and stained with sweat and hard use. 

Eyes rested on Eugene, flickering over him with a look of predatory appraisal. A few of the men spoke to each other in low mutters, while others stood up and swaggered over, hands on the hilts of their swords or knives, some holding spears.

“Ho, Glauco, Hendix,” called one of them, a swarthy man with dark, curly hair and a burn scar in the center of his forehead with three designs that looked like Greek letters. “You recapture bird that takes flight.”

“And with it a fat duck.” Hendix grinned. “This fellow ….”

“ ….this fellow,” said Glauco firmly, “was good enough to hold her for us. He is a strong and stout man, and wishes to join our numbers.”

There was more laughter, and Eugene had a sickening flashback to his days in grade school.

Glauco drummed the butt of his spear against the ground and eventually the guys shut up. “What say you, Sergius?”

In the grove of trees, one with white bark had fallen over, creating a clearing. In this clearing was a sandy pit, and in this sandy pit a bird, probably a small chicken, was roasting over a fire. The smell was delicious.

So these were the rest of the role-players. Eugene was suddenly glad that he'd been provided with such accurate armor and weapons – there was nothing modern about any of them, nothing about their clothing or weapons that looked like it had been made with twentieth-century techniques.

Even so, there was some sixth sense telling Eugene to be careful. These guys were a rough bunch. Some of them had scars like a mark from a hot iron, either on their thighs or their foreheads. A few were missing noses or ears. Makeup, probably, but very skillfully applied. And they weren't giving him friendly looks. It was as though he had interrupted their role-play.

In fact, the closer he got, the less they looked like SCA members. There was scar tissue around their injuries, and they were lean and gaunt. Some grinned and spoke to each other, revealing missing teeth. Were they foreign? Was this really some country with lower standards of living? Was it common in this country to drop people off naked in the middle of a field for the purposes of role-playing? They had olive skin, mostly, with dark brown or black hair that looked ungroomed. A number of them had scruffy beards and all looked to have experienced a lot of sun and wind exposure, with skin browned, chapped, and tanned to a leathery consistency. They reminded Eugene of nothing more than a group of winos living under a bridge. He couldn't really place their ethnicity – one of them was black, and another looked Asian, but the rest had a vaguely European appearance.

Still, he wanted to find out where he was, and fellow SCA members (or at least guys with the same fashion sense) seemed like the people best suited to tell him. “Greetings, good sirs!” said Eugene, drumming the butt of his spear upon the ground. “I am Lord Alypius, the Black Knight of Midrealm. I have come to join your band.”

“Tal,” said the man sitting on the fallen tree. This one looked like Conan the Barbarian. He had unkempt black hair, broad shoulders, and a leather belt holding up a sort of wrap, kind of like a loincloth but larger. A sword and a dagger were thrust into the belt. He wore a shirt of mail and a helmet with a nasal guard.

“Who is this?”

“A new comrade, to replace Caudex. He has his own armor and weapons.”

“I told him not to bring the wretch,” spat Hendix.

Glauco shrugged. “We tracked him. There were no others in the area. He caught our fleeing woman, and returned her with very little persuasion.” He took the rodent off of Kore's shoulders and dropped it near the fire.

“Did he now?” Sergius grinned at Kore, who looked terrified. “Three little rats, caught by the hunter! By the Sardar, when I've finished with you, I promise you'll regret costing me a man, to say nothing of leading two others on such a merry chase!”

Kore trembled, falling to her knees, face white as paper beneath the grime and blood.

"Hold on." While far from sure that this was the wisest course of action, Eugene felt that he really had to say something. "Uh, I don't think this girl's in very good shape. Can you guys, I dunno, take it easy on her or something?"

Real heroic. He winced, hoping that the words sounded more impressive in Gorean. But what was he supposed to do? This whole situation was insane and he still had no idea who the fuck any of these people were.

Sergius finally devoted his attention to the newcomer. “And as for you, stranger,” he said, “how dare you think to share our kettle? How dare you think to join us? What do you offer – your virgin asshole to each of us? By Hersius, I ought to bend you over that fallen tree and make you squeal just like the pig you are.” He laughed and shoved Eugene hard in the chest, making him stagger back.

“I ….I want no trouble.” Despite what he was telling himself, this was seeming all too real to Eugene. His heart was hammering madly. “Look, I can leave if you want.”

“You do not wish to fight me?” There was rough laughter. In his peripheral vision, Eugene could see the men gathering around with moronic grins on their faces, evidently thrilled at the prospect of imminent violence.

“No!” He was sweating, despite the chill and the rain. “I don't want to fight!”

Glauco sighed.

“Draw your sword!”

“No, please!” Eugene raised his hands in surrender, palms glistening with nervous sweat. His bladder contracted and he felt a few drops of piss squirt out into his loincloth. This guy was insane. This guy really was a barbarian. He felt at that moment that, whether this whole scenario was real or imaginary, that this particular man was absolutely capable of cutting his throat without a second thought.

“As I thought. A coward.” Sergius slapped the back of Glauco's head. “Such a man is not fit to join us. Bind him and sell him to a slaver.”

“What?” Eugene's voice came out in a high-pitched, strangled squeak. “But I surrendered! Don't kill me! Please, please, don't fucking kill me, guys, I didn't do anything to you, Uncle, Uncle, I'm not gonna ….” but he realized that he'd lapsed into English.

“I did tell you,” said Hendix amiably. But his manner was deceptive. He moved swiftly, seizing Eugene's forearm and shoulder and twisting, throwing the larger man off of his feet. Eugene's knees hit the mud.

Kore's glazed eyes suddenly focused. She threw her head back and gave a shrill scream of triumph. “Now who is captured, my lord?” she cried, her upper lip curled into a sneer. “You are not so strong now, are you?”

“Be silent, little doll,” said Sergius, who had gone back over to the fire and tore off a piece of bird with his fingers. “I shall deal with you soon.”

Hendix's hand was on the hilt of his dagger. “Submit,” he said to Eugene.

“No! What the fuck? This is way too intense, guys, holy fuck, I didn't agree to any of this! Let me go!”

Conan stared at him. Eugene struggled – and the men holding him looked startled, because they were lifted and shaken like children. He yanked free of the grasp jumping easily and lightly to his feet, and Hendix's eyes widened, and he reached – oh fuck, he reached for the dagger at his belt!

Eugene swung wildly, but with every bit of strength he had, a jolt of adrenaline going through him at the sight of a blade being drawn. Even in a contest with rattan swords, there was still something terrifying about the sight of someone bearing down on you with a weapon. To see it happening with edged steel sent Eugene into a state of pure, unreasoning panic.

Everything seemed to move very slowly. He saw the point of the knife aimed at his throat. He saw his own fist, swinging, crashing into the shaggy head. That head jerked sharply and the man stiffened, collapsing, fingers and toes trembling.

“Aaah! Oh fuck! Fuck! Stay the fuck away, guys!” Eugene grabbed his spear and clumsily stabbed at the air with it. “Fuck off! Leave me alone!”

“Hendix?” Sergius, not taking his eyes off of Eugene, jerked his chin at the twitching man.

Glauco ran his fingers over Hendix's neck. “He is dead.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said one with a missing nose and ears. “You fought together, did you not?”

Glauco shrugged.

Wait, what? Had he just ….had that guy just fucking died?

He'd just killed someone. This was a role-play, yes, an extreme one, one which might be illegal, but even so, he, Eugene Phillips, had just killed or seriously injured a human being.

Desperately, Eugene looked down at Hendix, hoping the man would move or stir. Aside from spasmodic trembling in his fingers, he did not. The crotch of the tunic was stained with urine. His legs kicked.

“Oh, fuck,” Eugene groaned, feeling sick to his stomach, expecting at any moment for the rest of them to draw their weapons and cut him apart, or for cops to suddenly show up in the middle of the clearing, sirens wailing and guns drawn, and haul him off to prison.

Eugene felt tears streaming down his cheeks. He was trembling all over, and not from the rain. It seemed that his whole life was divided into two parts, the part before he'd struck that blow, where he'd been Eugene Phillips the office worker and SCA member, and the part stretching before him, where he'd killed a man. What would they do to him? If this was another country, would they send him back to the US? Could he go to some third-world prison?

“Kill me,” he sobbed, blinded by tears, “I deserve it, I didn't mean to kill him, I'm so sorry, I didn't think, I just wanted him to go away ….”

But the reenactors weren't talking to him. They were arguing about him amongst themselves. Sergius had not returned his sword to his sheath, and now he waved it menacingly.

“Well,” said Glauco, “I suppose that he should stay. He slew Hendix; he ought to get Hendix's place.”

“No!” The noseless man got to his feet. “He was not accepted as one of our band. He had no right to challenge Hendix!”

“He returned the slave woman!”

“He is a coward. He was merely lucky.”

The clearing erupted into shouts. Some of them thought that Eugene should remain as a member of the band. Some thought that he should be killed. All spoke the same language, and while Eugene had difficulty understanding, he recognized the essential inexplicability of his situation.

Everyone here was resolutely in-character. Nobody was talking about medical aid, or notifying Hendix's next of kin, or calling the police. As far as these people were concerned, they were actually bandits in some medieval setting.

This was real. Whatever the setting, whether another world or just a different part of Earth, it could no longer be denied that there was no game being played right here, no play-acting.

Somehow that made things very simple.

Lord Alypius stood, tall and terrible, drawing his sword with a slither of steel on leather. “Now,” he said, trying to keep his voice from cracking, “who is next, you sons of dogs? Who dares to stand against Lord Alypius of Midrealm? Accept me, and I'll lead you to riches and plunder, but if any of you swine tries to set himself against me, well, consider the fate of your comrade and tremble!”

Sergius considered him, whole body poised, hand on the hilt of his sword. “Very well,” he said. “Welcome to the brotherhood.”