“So what are you going to do?” Ping asked, scooping the last of the porridge out of the pot and into her own bowl after having just served both Ryan and Tor.

  Tor rubbed his hands together and picked up his spoon. “He’s going to give us all the day off.”

  “Actually, I’ll probably put you all back to work on militia training,” Ryan said, eliciting a groan of annoyance from Tor. “When I said everyone, I kind of mean everyone. I talked to the Reeve, and it sounds like he’s expecting a much larger horde to attack us. Unless, of course, we get lucky and the other village lords manage to take out the horde before they split off.

  “Even the women,” Ping asked.

  Ryan looked up from his breakfast. “Do you want to be left defenseless if everybody on the walls dies?”

  Ping looked down at her porridge and said, “It’s just strange; training peasants to fight.”

  “Why’s that?” Ryan asked.

  “Well, peasants usually keep the village running. It’s the Oathsworn’s job to fight and protect.”

  “Oathsworn and Oathless,” Ryan muttered, more to himself than to the other two, still trying to wrap his head around the society he’d found himself in.

  “No,” Tor said, pointing his spoon at him. A small drip of porridge splashed onto the table, eliciting a frown from Ping. Tor wiped it away with the sleeve of his other hand and continued. “We’re talking about Oathsworn and peasants. Oathless are an entirely different thing.”

  “So what’s an Oathless?” Ryan asked.

  Tor opened his mouth to respond, but Ping cut him off. “Don’t you have somewhere you’re supposed to be?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said, almost defensively. “Time’s difficult without a clock.”

  “What is a clock?” Tor asked.

  ***

  The steward was taking advantage of the large open space now available to him. Instead of his cramped office, had his papers spread across the large meeting table near a hearth that gave off a steady, welcoming warmth.

  “Where would you like to start?” the steward asked as Ryan took a seat.

  “How about the death toll?” Honestly, Ryan didn’t want to go over it, but it seemed like the most reasonable first act of his interim rulership.

  The older man frowned slightly, then nodded and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Eleven dead. We’re still uncertain how many will be permanently injured.” He began reading off a list of names, most of which Ryan didn’t recognize. There were something like three hundred residents of the village—apparently called Ern—and Ryan only dealt with about a dozen of them on a daily basis. The names meant almost nothing. He probably would have recognized the faces, but even Haroki’s brother, with whom he’d likely spoken to more often than Haroki himself, had been nameless to him. He couldn’t tell which entry on the list belonged to the man who delivered charcoal to the smithy.

  “Well, shit,” Ryan said.

  The steward nodded, as if in agreement.

  After a moment that felt appropriately long, Ryan said, “Okay. What’s next?”

  The steward set one list aside and picked up another. “Well, as you know, we’re currently expecting a larger goblin horde, so there’s that. Also, we’re going to have a food shortage. We didn’t get enough harvested—not everything was ripe—and the goblins trampled a large portion of the fields we hadn’t finished clearing. It’s going to be tight. We might be able to supplement with hunting. However, we’re also expecting refugees from the south, because there’s essentially a multi-house war going on down there.”

  “So starvation’s a thing,” Ryan said.

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  “Well,” the steward replied, “so long as we don’t take on any refugees, it’s more a matter of rationing. It’s certainly a less immediate concern, and as leader you probably won’t have to deal with it directly. However, as a member of this village, you will.”

  Ryan sat with that for a long moment.

  The steward continued, “So, apart from some labor shortages due to obvious recent events, the goblin horde remains our greatest threat. And while it’s possible it could be dealt with before it reaches us, I don’t think anyone is betting their lives on that.”

  “So really, my role as interim leader of the village is just to work with the Reeve to prepare for the goblins.”

  Bjorn nodded. “Yes—and keep me in the loop, because I’m the one who organizes everything.”

  “Well, keeping on scheduling, I suppose I want everybody who can wield a spear to go through some sort of militia training.”

  The steward nodded once more. “I can make sure I schedule different groups to continue training, but most of our men have already been through some of the training.”

  Ryan shook his head. “No, I mean everybody. Haroan is probably better off at the forge, and there are likely a few others who are better suited to the work that needs doing. But everybody who can handle a spear and shield should probably learn how.”

  The steward stared at Ryan, blinking several times, an almost confused look plastered across his face. “You mean to force the women to fight?” he asked.

  “No,” Ryan said. “I mean to force them to learn how to fight, in case it’s necessary.”

  “The women shouldn’t need to fight,” Bjorn argued.

  Ryan opened his mouth to retort, then paused and actually considered the wording. He’d said ‘shouldn’t need to fight,’ not ‘weren’t supposed to fight.’ Maybe the place was more progressive than Ryan had been giving it credit for. He let it go. “If that's it, I’ll go talk to the Reeve.”

  The steward sat quietly for a moment, eyes on his papers, then nodded. “Yes. I suppose that’s it.”

  ***

  Ingrid was not the name Ryan would have expected for the priestess. Not that it clashed with her role, it just didn’t fit her ethnicity. She fit the Nordic vibe of the area far less than Ping did. The older woman was dark-skinned with long dreadlocks slowly going gray. And by dark-skinned, Ryan meant deep West African—Bantu dark—not the lighter brown of an African American. Black as a color, not a reference to a people.

  She opened one eye and stared at him, proving that she had known he was there the entire time—standing there like an idiot. “Can I help you?” she asked in a Nordic-accented tone, which threw Ryan off a bit. It sounded nothing like the carefully pronounced English he associated with people from Africa, nor the more casual, ebonic tones of the American Black population.

  “Ah—well, I hope so,” Ryan said, stumbling over his words. He hadn’t really wanted to bother her after finding her in what looked like a meditative state. She looked absolutely exhausted. And considering she still had to treat people injured during the goblin attack, that wasn’t exactly surprising. “Do you—well, um—I guess… do you know if there’s any way to use magic to grow plants?” Ryan asked.

  It wasn’t exactly a high priority, considering there were likely more goblins coming and surviving that was the more immediate concern. However, Ryan had never starved a day in his life, and he really didn’t want to start now.

  She opened her other eye and looked him over, dark chocolate irises boring into him as though she were evaluating his soul. “I’m not aware of any,” she said, “but magic can be used for most anything—provided you have the ability.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said lamely, squirming under the older woman’s gaze and feeling an odd sense of relief when she returned to her meditative posture, eyes closed. He stood there for a moment, contemplating what the hell his next question should be. “Could you give me a basic rundown on how magic works?”

  Ingrid drew in a breath—not quite a sigh, and not quite a preparation to speak—but she did respond. “There are two ways of doing magic.” Her lips pressed together into a tight line. “Let me rephrase that. There are two ways to start doing magic. The easy way is to dump multiple points into Mana Pool and Mana Regen, then pay someone to teach you a spell. The quality of the spell is highly important. A lower-quality spell costs more mana and while you might later find a higher-quality version of the same spell—made more efficient by its creator—you’d essentially have to unlearn the first spell and then relearn the new one. If you go this route, I strongly suggest finding honest people to teach you higher-quality spells. It’s difficult, and the easy way doesn’t really teach you what makes a spell higher quality.”

  “And the hard way?” Ryan asked, because the easy way clearly wasn’t actually an option.

  “The hard way is to have a single point in Mana Pool and to gain the Mana Manipulation skill. This is extremely slow at first. You’re not actually casting spells—just using your own mana to impose your will on the world, little by little. This takes time, effort, and a great deal of trial and error. It is, however, the prerequisite for creating your own spells once you reach the Journeyman level of the Mana Manipulation skill.”

  “Okay… so could you teach me Mana Manipulation?” Ryan asked, half wincing as she opened her eyes again and stared at him as though she were trying to read his soul.

  “Why?” she asked, in a tone that suggested he’d better have a very good reason.

  “Ah—because we’re looking at food shortages, and I don’t want to starve?”

  She blinked twice. “Oh.”

  That single word, and the tone behind it, told Ryan she hadn’t been aware there were going to be issues—making him wonder if that information had been meant to stay quiet.

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