Mrythdom: Game of Time by Jasper T. Scott Read Free Book Online

there with long broadswords strapped to their hips and wicked spears or halberds in hand. Aurelius estimated the average man to be two meters tall and the average woman to be only a few inches from that mark. They were all giants, made even more imposing by their thick fur coats. The majority had long golden hair, pale skin and eyes; though a scattered few had red or brown hair.
    After a few minutes of walking, Gabrian ducked down a side street and into a busy, noisy square. It was a marketplace of some kind. As they pushed through the crowd, Aurelius noticed all the strange looks he was getting. People were glaring at him, sneering at him, doing nothing to veil their suspicion or contempt.
    Their hospitality was underwhelming.
    Gabrian squeezed between a pair of hulking men and Aurelius lost sight of him for a moment.
    “Come, elder!”
    Remembering his experience with the guardsman, Aurelius decided to weave a path around the two men in front of him. He found a relatively clear path along the storefronts to his right and he picked his way along there. He’d lost sight of Gabrian, but he had a feeling that the old man wouldn’t let him get too far away. Aurelius passed by a smithy. It was alive with the clanking of hammers on steel and the crackling and whooshing of a fiery furnace. Aurelius still couldn’t believe it. This was like something out of medieval lore; it couldn’t be real! And hadn’t Gabrian said he’d been brought to the future? So why did it look so much like the past? And what had happened to Fogrim city?
    None of it made any sense.
    Aurelius strolled past a storefront with an assortment of fur coats hanging up on display. He stopped to admire a few of them. They came in almost every conceivable color: slate gray, snow white, ash black, fire red, steel blue, and ruddy brown. Sometimes the colors were also mixed, and the coats were patched and streaked. Aurelius reached out to run a hand along the furs and found they were surprisingly coarse. Clearly they’d been skinned from some type of animal, but as far as he knew, fur trading was illegal, and moreover, he’d never seen such magnificent coats before. What animal could have produced them?
    Yet more proof of Gabrian’s impossible story.
    Aurelius moved on. Just as he rounded the rack of furs, a hand reached around and pulled him into the store. A furry brown coat was thrust at him.
    “Put this on, Elder. You are attracting too much attention in antiquated raiment such as yours.”
    Aurelius snorted at the irony of calling his armored, climate-controlled space suit “antiquated” but he was cold, so he gave no complaint as he shrugged into the coat. It came with a thick leather belt which he used to cinch the coat around his waist. He felt bulky and clumsy in the coat, but he suspected it would do a much better job of keeping him warm than his suit. Without his helmet, the suit’s climate control system was all but useless.
    “What about my face?”
    Gabrian tossed a wooly gray scarf at him. Aurelius promptly wrapped it around his neck and retreated his head into it like a turtle to its shell. He watched with his eyes barely peeking out above the scarf as Gabrian haggled with the chubby storekeeper. She had darting brown rat eyes and thick gray furs to match her stringy gray hair. He saw Gabrian place a few metal circles on the counter and watched the woman’s demeanor abruptly change from merely frosty to belligerent. Coins? Aurelius wondered. The only use such physical currency had in the world as he knew it was in a museum or a private collection. Of course, in such a technologically backward place, he supposed he could hardly expect them to use digital currency.
    The storekeeper was gesturing violently and raising her voice while Gabrian tried in vain to calm her down. “You trying to cheat me, oudtlaander?” she shrilled. “You can’t even buy the scarf for that!”
    Gabrian replied in that strange language he sometimes spoke, and