Blow Me Down

Chapter 2-1

CHAPTER TWO

Here we live and reign alone

In a world that’s all our own.

—Ibid, Act I

It was the sheep snuffling my face that woke me up. I didn’t realize it was a sheep at first, not being in the habit of keeping sheep in my house, where my last conscious moment was, but when something moistly warm blew on my face, followed by a horrible stinky scent of wet wool, my eyes popped open and I beheld the unlovely face of a sheep staring down at me.

“T’hell?” I said groggily, pushing the sheep face out of mine as I sat up, immediately regretting the latter action when the world spun around dizzily for a few seconds. As it settled into place I blinked at the hand I’d used to shove away the sheep—it tingled faintly, as if I had whacked my funny bone. I shook it a couple of times, the pins-and-needles feeling quickly fading . . . but that’s when my wits returned.

“What the hell?” I said again, a growing sense of disbelief and horror welling within me until I thought my head was going to explode.

I used the rough wood wall behind me to help me get to my feet, my head still spinning a little as I looked around. I was in a short alley between two buildings, half-hidden behind a stack of what looked like whiskey barrels, the sheep who’d been snuffling me now engaged in rooting around through some garbage that slopped over from a wooden box. Sunlight filtered down through the overhang of the two buildings, spilling onto a lumpy cobblestone street behind the alley. Vague blurs resolved themselves into the images of people passing back and forth past the opening of the alley.

The game . . . the virtual reality game. I was seeing images from the game. I put my hand up to my face to pull off the VR glasses, but all my fingers found were my glasses-less face. Had they gotten knocked off when I got the shock from the computer? If so, why was I still seeing the virtual world? I lurched my way forward down the alley, stumbling once or twice as my legs seemed to relearn how to walk.

“What the . . . hell?” As I burst out into the open, I staggered to a stop.

Two men in what I though of as typical pirate outfits—breeches, jerkins, swords strapped to their hips, and bandanas on their heads—walked by, one giving me a leer as I clutched the corner of the nearest building.

Beyond them, a wooden well served as a gathering place for several women in long skirts and leather bodices, each armed with a wooden bucket or two. Pigs, sheep, chickens, dogs . . . they all wandered around the square, adding to the general sense of confusion and (at least on my part) disbelief.

A couple of children clad in what could only be described as rags ran past me, each clutching an armful of apples. A shout at the far end of the square pierced the general babble, what appeared to be a greengrocer in breeches and a long apron evidently just noticing the theft of some apples.

It was like something out of a movie. A period movie. One of those big MGM costume movies of the 1950s where everything was brightly colored and quasi-authentic. I expected Gene Kelly to burst singing from a building at any minute.

Instead of Gene, two men emerged from a one-story building across the square, both staggering and yelling slurred curses. One man shoved the other one. The second man shoved the first one back. Both pulled out swords and commenced fighting. The first man lunged. The second screamed, clutched his chest, and fell over backward into a stack of grain sacks. The first man yanked his sword out, spit on his downed opponent, and staggered away around the back of the building, wiping his b****y sword on the hem of his filthy open-necked shirt. A wooden sign hanging over the door he passed waved gently in the wind—a sign depicting a couple of mugs being knocked together beneath the words INN COGNITO printed in blocky letters.

No one bustling around the square gave the dead man so much as a second look.

“What the hell?” I shouted, goose bumps of sheer, unadulterated horror rippling along my arms and legs as I ran toward the body lying sprawled on the dirty grain sacks. I was about to go into serious freak-out mode when I remembered that none of this was real—it might look real and sound real, but it was just a game. No one had actually been murdered in front of me. It was just a bunch of computer sprites and sprockets and all those other techno-geeky things that I didn’t understand. “Okay, stay calm, Amy. This is not a real emergency. However, I’m not willing to lose points or bonus power chips or whatever this game hands out for acts above and beyond the norm. Let’s approach this as a non-life-threatening emergency, and go for the next power level. Yeargh. How on earth did they manage that?”

As I squatted next to the dead man, the stench from his unwashed body hit me. I pushed away the skitter of repugnance as it rippled down my back, and rummaged around the dusty recesses of my brain for any knowledge of first-aid techniques. “Thank God for all of those first-aid classes I arranged when Tara was in middle school. Let me think—a sword wound. CPR?”

A glance at the sluggishly seeping hole in his chest had me eliminating that option. There was no way putting pressure on that would help matters. “Mouth-to-mouth?”

The man’s smell took care of that as a choice. “Hmm. Maybe I should apply a splint?”

I looked around for something to act as a splint but didn’t see any handy splintlike boards, not to mention I wasn’t absolutely certain that a splint was a suitable treatment for a sword wound. “Okay. What’s left? Er . . . raise his feet higher than his head? Yeah, that sounds good. That should stop the flow of blood or something. Inhibits shock, I think.”

I scooted down to grab the man’s mud-encrusted tattered boots, intending to swing them around to a stack of grain bags, but was more than a little disconcerted when one of his legs separated from the rest of his body.

“Aieeeeeeeee,” I screamed, staring in horror at the limb that hung stiffly from my hands.

Just as it was dawning on me that the leg was a crudely fashioned wooden prosthetic and not the ghoulish severed limb I had first imagined, a whoosh of air behind me accompanied the loud slam of a wooden door being thrown open. Before I could do so much as flail the false leg, a steel-like arm wrapped around my waist and hauled me backward into the inn.

Air, warm and thick and scented heavily with beer and unwashed male bodies, folded me in its embrace as I was dragged into a murky open-beamed room.

“Found me a wench, Cap’n,” a voice rumbled behind me. “Toothsome one, too, ain’t she? Don’t look like she’s been used overly much. Can I keep her?”

Now, this was taking virtual realism a bit too far. I pushed aside the issue of how a game could make me smell things and feel the touch of another person, and beat the hand that clutched me with the booted end of my fake leg. “Hey! I am not a wench, and I am not a puppy to be kept, and how dare you invade my personal space in such a manner! Do it again, and I’ll have you up on charges of s****l harassment and physical assault so fast, your . . . er . . . hook will spin.”

The man whom I’d surprised into releasing me stood frowning at me for a second before glancing to the right, where tables—some broken into kindling, others rickety but mostly whole—lurked in a shadowed corner. The dull rumble of masculine voices broke off as the man asked loudly, “I don’t have no hook, do I, Cap’n?”

“Nay, lad, ye don’t,” a deep voice answered. One of the darker shadows separated itself from the others and stepped into the faint sunlight that bullied its way through two tiny, begrimed windows. The man who swaggered forward was an arrogant-looking devil, with thick shoulder-length blond hair, a short-cropped goatee and mustache, and dark eyes that even across the dimly lit room I could see were cast with a roguish light.

He was a charmer through and through—I knew his kind. I’d married one.

“I believe the lass was being facetious, Barn. As for yer request—we’ve no need for a female on the Squirrel. Grab yer things and we’ll be off, mates. We’ve pillagin’ to do.”

The man who’d grabbed me—a blocky giant with black hair and a huge beard—frowned even harder. “What be facetious, then?”

“Later, Barn.”

The behemoth named Barn looked back at me, disappointment written all over his unlovely face. “But the wench—she’s mine. I found her. Ye’ve said we could keep what we pillaged.”

“She’s probably got the French pox,” the arrogant blond said as he started for the door, giving me nothing more than a disinterested glance. “We’ll find ye a woman a little less tartish at Mongoose.”

“Oh!” I gasped, outraged at the slur. I wasn’t going to stand around and let some cyber-gigolo insult me. “I will repeat myself for those of you with hearing problems or general mental incapacity—I am not a wench, nor am I a tart. I do not have the pox, French or any other sort. And I would rather go without my PDA for an entire year than be with that man.”

The blond captain paused in the act of following Barn out the door, slowly turning to face me. “What did you say?”

“I said that I am not a wench nor do I have any sexually transmitted diseases. And I’m not, in case you’re interested, and I know you are because I know your sort, looking to acquire any. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a leg to reattach to a dead man. If you will please stand aside, I will go and take care of that.”

“PDA?” the pirate asked, an odd look of speculation on his face. “You said PDA?”

“Yes, I did. And that’s a very big sacrifice, considering.”

“You’re a player,” he said, starting toward me in a long-legged stride that I refused to notice on the grounds that I would not allow myself to respond to another love-’em-and-leave-’em charmer.

“I most certainly am not! I’m a woman, in case it escaped your attention, and even if I was a man, I’m not at all the sort to cruise the meat market for a little companionship. I enjoy meaningful relationships with men, not one-night stands.”

“Are you?” he asked, a slight smile quirking one side of his mouth.

“Am I what?”

“Are you enjoying a meaningful relationship with a man right now?”

“No, not that it’s any of your business. And don’t you come any nearer,” I answered, backing up a couple of paces and leveling my wooden leg at him. “I have a leg, and I’m not afraid to use it!”

“My sort?” he drawled, interest dawning in those dark eyes as he continued to stroll toward me. “You know my sort? I am a sort?”

I backed up a couple of steps more until I bumped into the rough wall of the inn. I could have kicked myself with the fake leg. Everyone knew the thing a charmer loved most was a challenge, and I’d just presented myself as one. Still, he was a virtual lothario, not a real one, so I could handle him. I’d just do a little defusing and be on my way.

“Yes, you are a sort. You’re a charmer, a man who thinks he can sweet-talk the pants off a nun. Well, I’m immune to your brand of charm, buster. So you can just take your sexy walk and those tight leather pants and the really cool pirate boots of yours—wow, is that a rapier? Very nice. I used to fence in college—and trot off to harass some other unpoxed, tartless non-wench, because I’m not buying any of it.”

“Unless you belong to the Sisters of h******y, you’re not a nun,” he said, stopping just beyond reach of my fake leg. “And you’re not wearing pants.”

I looked down to protest that I was so wearing pants, but the gauzy wisps of cloth that clung to my body in a very revealing fashion could be termed anything but sensible clothing. They were literally rags, exposing far more of me than I was comfortable with—although, really, what did it matter? These were computer people, not living, breathing human beings. Tara had said no one but the developers and occasional press representatives had access to the beta virtual version.