BECMI Chapter 43 – Filling Up the Time

“Eryis, Revered Cruxin, Prince Ukker, Sir Horn, Skifners, attend on me. We’re about to save your troops thousands of gold coins in training costs.” My smile was pure malice. “I’m sure they will all remember your largesse forever.” The six all managed to look slyly thoughtful as they rose and headed to my table, leaving everyone else to their tasks of the day and maintenance work. Soon enough we were bent over in council, going over what needed to be done to keep everyone busy, what people needed to learn, what we could contribute to the efforts. If little chuckles escaped everyone and caused their followers’ levels of dread to rise, well, that was only appropriate. ------- We were gathered out in full kit, everyone there rather praying that there be some worthy battle and combats to the death and exploding magic and dread beasties, instead of whatever was going to be filling up their time without it. The moon rose, and I raised my hand while everyone tensed. Most of them had seen me do that just before the Portal began to gather from disparate particles, folding into existence from out of the timestream. There was no answering Portal this time. Breaths slowly hissed out as the seconds ticked past, then a minute and more. “Everyone back up to the main room. Our road through time is closed this night. We will have to wait. The Waiting Protocols are going into force. You will learn what they are shortly. “I am going to put spells in place to alert us if the Portal allows something to come into our time, but does not manifest for us, or if it suddenly returns for some reason. I will join you shortly.” Nobody challenged or refuted me. The combat-ready team and the loaded headed back upstairs to await a new type of effort to come. I watched them go, preparing a few spells of warning and dissuasion, as I’d said, but also one other. ------ I was just walking into the room when all the walls gave way, save those by the east facing. With a groan and crack, they pulled away from the floors and chambers, all the people there shouting in alarm, enchanted weapons coming out ready for use, shields up, bows drawn and arrows ready, gasping in alarm and shock. I walked right past and through them all, out into the revealed area of stone, and as they stared after me, I said, “Follow me into our exercise yard.” Swallowing, the officers laughing with their eyes only, the men and women and dragon piled out eagerly after me, looking up and around in wonder. The interior had doubled in all dimensions. The gabled roof was now over forty feet above us, and all the rooms of the Inn that had connected to the walls were now exposed, their windows on the opposite walls with hooks and mirrors there. The new ‘back yard’, as it were, was a whole lot more empty room, a plain flagstone floor that I was going to be working with, and a lot of open upper area. I waited for the officers to get everyone into Formation, although the had been left behind for now. When they were done moving and looking at me expectantly, I began. “The Waiting Protocols will begin when the Portal closes. I have come almost a thousand years in three nights. I do not expect that speed to improve. That means that we are facing another three months at least before we get out of here. “This does not mean we are out of danger. You are all warriors. What happens when you see smoke is coming from somewhere it never did? When there are lights in windows where none was before? When you can smell cooking on the wind from miles away, food where none was before?” I pointed at Cirruluxul. “You investigate, because dinner might be found there, Mistress!” the blue dragon said emphatically. They were warriors and adventurers. They understood quite well what that meant! “Indeed. If you look around, there is quite a lot of food standing here.” I let that sink in. “We are in the middle of one of the wildest and most monster-infested lands known. We aren’t going to starve, we are going to cook our food, and things will be coming to investigate us every time we have to stay here. “We are a gourmet meal box wrapped up and waiting for unknown hordes to come and devour us. Only this time, instead of coming out of a Portal, they are going to be coming through the front door… and if they are raiders, we are going to let them.” Unlawfully taken from NovelFire, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. They blinked, and then they smiled hard. Of course we were! “The Waiting Protocols are designed to keep everyone ready for a fight, because the fights are coming, and in the meantime, you will be training. “By the time we go through that Portal again, you are going to be hard and tough, and anything that comes into this Inn to do battle is going to know that we are the masters of this place, and pay for it in blood.” Hoots and cheers broke out at that statement. “First protocol is armor and weapons need to be stored where they can be retrieved quickly.” I gestured grandly, and a massive stone block, over twenty thousand cubic feet of stone, materialized across the exposed back side of the Inn, shocking everyone with its volume and appearance. The bottom of it promptly began to flow away, forming boards and poles as I walked past it. “We are going to be building a training area, one built on multiple levels, including up and down.” I pointed down, and they blinked. “Yes, the basements are doubled in every dimension as well. “All of you will claim a numbered locker to store your armor and weapons in. If and when the attacks of raiders from without begin, your armor and weapons will be here, you will know they are here, and if they are required for your training, they will also be here. “I am going to be forming the raw components of the training area out of this stone. You will all be helping to assemble the minor portions of it to fit together. “Rockborn, I will be making minor apartments down below if you prefer to rest underground. The area under the original basements will be allocated to you. “Elven, I will make an apartment up near the roof if you prefer to rest high instead of inside the rooms of the Inn. “All walls of the Inn that are currently missing will be replaced with stone. Additional walkways and stairs will be put into place to exploit the additional room. Training areas will be designated and worked on. There will be a multi-story running track in place before sunrise. “During this upcoming month, your seniors will be instructing you in weaponwork, armorwork, literacy, languages, combat tactics, and any craftwork that you may have the desire to help with or take up later as a profession in your lives. Specifically, we are going to be upgrading all your skills with the bow, hammer, axe, spear, sword, and shield, as well as unarmed combat. “You are going to be exhaustively busy for the coming month, broken only by a few minutes of raw and bloody deadly combat when the things outside these walls come here to investigate the buffet table here and available for them. “Claim a locker, doff your armor and weapons there. Every evening, we will regather to present them for Enchantment once more. “We prepare for Freedom or Death, everyone. Until the full moon rises once more!” “Until the full moon!” they repeated loudly, and then the process of unburdening themselves for work began. ------- Layers of clothing from the full closets became padding for a training area, leather armor over top of it from humanoids killed was stitched together for a covering. If we had to replace the padding every day, that was fine. An agility course that went up forty feet in the air was rapidly taking form, anchored to the ceilings and walls of the interior Inn that I covered up, multiple fenced-in training areas were put in place, and of course I put in the multi-layered interior running track, complete with stairs, ramps, slides, wall climbs, tire holes, bars and ropes. It actually had six stories to it, going up and down around the perimeter of the place. A lot of Stone was and moved around by hearty hands, building up the training area, while the main room was prepped to defend with barricades and walls going up where the edges of the room had once been, behind which we could stand and fight against virtually any numbers… or push them in to help barricade the door, if required. Training schedules were drawn up, priority given to endurance training, the new weight-training room downstairs, and weapons-training. There was a lot of work to do, but we had a lot of time to fill to do it. ------ Buck headed up the kitchens, but I took much of the load off of him by use of who could do the work if directed, leaving him time to get in the training with everyone else. I was the main Spear instructor, as well as open-hand guidance. A whole lot of the men were quite happy to try to grapple with me, and I kept choking them out with advanced mixed martial arts moves they didn’t have the slightest idea how to counter, along with complex joint locks and leverage moves that kept blindsiding them, complete with throws and take-downs, pressure points, and of course the fact I freaking hit like a greatclub. I could spin the brawny Skifnirsons around like tops and throw them like they were children, to the utter befuddlement of everyone. The multi-level running track earned a lot of attention and enthusiasm for all the multiple obstacles along the way. Soon enough, times for a complete round were being posted, challenges and boasts made, rules set for who had to do what, no magic used, and over the next few weeks a lot of the lads spent a lot of time running up and down that thing. I ran it only once for time, after Bjorn challenged me following a particularly good run by him, and I did not finish. It was great fun, but nobody ever challenged me for time again. I might not have had a truly working lightfoot, but I’d put enough into my Running Mastery to be very fast on my feet, and even a Northman’s vitality and athleticism wasn’t going to match that without them doing the same. All in all, I had a pretty good inherited idea of what it meant to train all these people, and I could keep them busy during this forced down time, which upped everyone’s survival chances. One thing they really liked was the progress on their Stats, watching that Health rise a point every day they wanted to invest in it. Over this time period, they were really going to see the results of that, if they didn’t invest in anything else. The other thing was going to be introducing them all to their alternate Classes, as I had Hyn and Dwarf. Humans had their Racial Class, too, and like anything, it helped out those at low Levels the most… and all of these people were low-Level in my eyes. Mid-range was maxed-out Racial and initial Ranks, or the Teens for humans, and High-Level was top Ranks for non-humans and 20+ for humans. They all had a long, long way to go, but if they wanted to make it there, I was giving them some help to do so…