After finishing the pig dung, my new job was to mix the compost.
“Mix it real well, then cover the whole thing with dirt, top to bottom,” Gintanen explained to me—or ordered, rather.
“Then what?”
“Get some water from the river and get the pigs something fresh to drink.”
“All right, got it. And after that?”
“After that, we’re finished. You better get moving, though, or things are gonna get messy.”
“Messy? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gintanen put her hands on her hips, her bountiful chest bouncing slightly.
“It’s gonna pour soon. So get moving.”
I glanced at the sky. Enormous, ashen dark rain clouds spilled over the northern mountains. So, hell, I grabbed my shovel and got moving on that compost.
While mixing compost wasn’t exactly a cakewalk, it was kind of similar to what I’d done as a civil engineer, so it wasn’t anything I couldn’t manage. I just wished it hadn’t been so long since I’d done it. I don’t know if it was an insurance problem or what, but at some point people just quit hiring freelancers like me to do construction work, civil engineering jobs, any of that junk. They looked down on us part-timers, I think, especially if there were any workplace accidents. If you were wondering why I was so rusty at manual labor like compost production, there’s your answer.
After mixing the compost for a bit, I heaved some dirt over the top of the pile. The stench of fermenting compost was ungodly enough already, and the fresh dung and filthy hay dragged things still lower. I stunk something fierce up until the day before, but this smell turned the air itself rotten and clung to everything. It was the kind of job absolutely nobody would want to do, so hey, why not make some shmuck from another world do it instead?
With the compost mixed, I got to work replacing the water in the barn’s troughs. Seeing as Gintanen was likely to kill me if I poured the reeking old water out in the barn, I hefted every one of those rectangular wooden troughs myself, and let me tell you—they were heavy. They weren’t even filled to the brim with water and they were still too much to take all at once.
So I didn’t. Dumping the water in the barn was out of the question, sure, but I could take a small bucket and scoop it from the troughs bit by bit. Once I removed enough water by bucket, I dragged the troughs outside and poured out the rest.
I kept an eye on the black clouds as I worked, racing against the rain to get all the old water out of the troughs. When I finished, I grabbed a long wooden laundry pole and hung buckets on each side, hoisting the whole thing on my shoulders to get fresh water from the river.
A river, even though there was a perfectly good well nearby. I asked Gimul about going to the well and—
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Then where do I get water from?”
“The river.”
There was a river on the outskirts of the village, apparently. Not…very close. But the well seemed like it was reserved only for a special few. Just delightful. With a bleak smile, I shouldered my laundry pole and hurried off to the river.
I was actually quite familiar with these long poles, thanks again to all that karate. Your fists are your main weapon, but you’ve got to learn to use more than that—forks, even poles.
The long poles I was used to were about six feet long, a little taller than your average guy. You could use them to control a confrontation in all sorts of ways: downward swings, thrusts, overhead strikes, and even a quick trip to knock someone still.
Good for immobilizing your opponent, easy to deal more fatal damage. Out of all the weapons I tried in the dojos, it had to be my favorite.
I never thought that a laundry pole like this would become an everyday part of my life, though. After about ten trips to the river and back, the thing was really digging into my shoulders. God, I wanted a handcart or something, but of course I didn’t have one. Maybe nothing like that even existed here.
While on my umpteenth trip to and from the river, I happened to notice Gimul sitting down in the shade of a tree. He was drinking from a bottle—a very familiar bottle.
The bottle of wine from the village chief. My reward for all my hard work.
“Gimul! What do you think you’re doing?!” I tossed my pole to the side.
“I’m wetting my whistle. Obviously.”
“But that’s my wine!”
“Yup.”
“Then you’ll repay me, won’t you? Tell me how. Now!”
“Shut it.”
Gimul left the bottle on the ground and stood, drawing his sword.
Oh. He was serious. Maybe he was buzzed, or maybe he really just didn’t give a damn about me, or hell, maybe both. He readied his sword, gripping it tight with both hands.
He’s really going to do it. Really going to kill me. Again and again the thought raced through my head (really going to kill me, really going to do it, really going to), but I stepped forward. I had to get the right distance between us, roughly the same length as Gimul’s height and length of his sword combined…because I had a weapon perfect for fighting within that range.
With my bare feet, I lifted the long pole off the ground and sent it flying upward. I snatched it out of the air, ready to fight for my life.