Before me was a sprawling city of tents surrounded by a high wooden palisade and a deep earthen ditch filled with sharpened stakes. Pairs of men armed with fine long nces patrolled the ramparts. There were four gates at what I presumed were the cardinal points of a compass. Gasping, I saw that in the center was what could only be described as a great ark of a ship, like some leviathan of the ocean that had been beached.
Its neighbor was a rge golden-domed white structure, reminiscent of the grand mosques I had seen back on Earth. Around the Ark, four main streets of hard-packed earth, sporadically paved with bleach-white stone, flowed from the city’s center. Scattered across the tents were a few rare stone and wooden buildings one and two stories tall.
Towards the east y a primordial forest, golden and green in the te-afternoon light. The smoke of many Charcoal Burners at the forest’s edge rose zily into the air. Near the forest I spied a quarry, or a mining pit, filled with workers toiling away at the abaster rock.
Taken together, the nomadic tents, rough stone buildings, and presence of primitive industry defied direct categorization. But the academic in me pced the level of civilization at around the eleventh or twelfth century, and a rough guess would establish the popution at perhaps twenty to thirty thousand.
Performing these rough calcutions in my head, I was filled with a renewed sense of wonder, realizing that this single area was bigger in scale than the entirety of any of the adventure role-pying games I had pyed back on Earth.
As I stopped in my tracks, lost in wonder, someone kicked me from behind, forcing me to hurry and keep pace with the horse.
It was sundown when we finally approached the southern gate, weary and exhausted. Bogurchu exchanged words with the group of guards at the entrance before handing a length of knotted leather string and a single copper coin to a young boy, who scampered into the city.
The streets were hard-packed mud with occasional deep ruts. Shutters were closing as the city prepared for the night, and the sounds of city life filled the air. I could hear the sounds of when humanity is pressed together—the arguments, the minor violence, the crying of babies.
Close by, I saw a long line of miserable pale-skinned muscur men being led down a street in chains, their eyes devoid of hope. They passed us just as we walked by a rge tent filled with music and merriment. It was their equivalent of a tavern, I presumed. Occasionally, a mounted patrol would pass us, and Bogurchu would salute them with a closed fist over his chest.
Finally, we arrived at our destination: a squat building of rough-cut stone, around two stories high. Every window of the building had wooden shutters and cast-iron bars. Two guards stood at the entrance, looking bored and tired in the way of men who had performed the same duty many times over. They saluted our leader before zily making way for our party.
Inside, a stubby, bored-looking man was reading characters written on animal hide at a desk. He looked up and gave us a quick nod as we passed before I was roughly shoved into a stone cell. The hinges of the stout iron door squealed in protest as it closed with an ominous cng, signaling the finality of my imprisonment.
Through the bars of the cell, I saw the guards turn to leave, jauntily stepping away as if from a job well accomplished. Further down from my cell, the sound of pyful ughter could be heard. Men were giving each other a ribbing, only to be tersely cut short by an authoritative voice.
My new environment consisted of a small cell with a pile of straw in one corner. In the other corner there were two buckets, one filled with water and the other empty. The walls were made from solid stone of uniform length and shape, the gaps filled with damp, rotting mortar. A small window, secured with iron bars just above my head, let a drizzle of twilight into my new, dank dwelling.
I moved to the straw in the corner and sat down, feeling almost catatonic. Gncing at my Health reminded me that I had suffered great damage from my beating earlier. Silently, I cast Heal, noticing that my spell was healing me for five points of Health, a vast improvement over the previous iteration. This helped alleviate some of the aches that were running through my body.
However, magic could do little for the bitter humiliation and the hope that had been cut savagely short. Huddled in the corner on the pile of straw, I hugged myself in the cold, damp cell. I longed to return to the comfort and security of my old life. Frustrated by the absolute powerlessness I had experienced, I wept myself to a troubled sleep, filled with grim dreams of cruel men.
