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So I set in my mind that I was going to learn as much as I could while I was inside the walls, and I absolutely wasn’t going to make any ripples. You laugh, because you know. It was too late for that.

A store that took barter was just too novel. Don’t ask me why. People were selling the darnedest of things. A standing clock, three mismatched boots, a woodsman’s axe that needed a new handle before it could be used. All the detrius that normally clogged attics and closets instead found its way to my store. Food, clothing, and medicines found their way out.

I had to employ the local urchins as runners, or in most cases as walkers. The point is that I could use them to deliver messages and (those few I came to trust) as shoppers. Since nobody was selling horses, I put a lot of the furniture in the stables. Toward the back, to start with, although it crept forward at a monolithic pace.

Where I could, I saved money on repairs, just doing them myself. It wasn’t like that; it was like four turns of a screw or two hammer strikes, and then I was off doing purchasing or sales. Mostly, though, I did swaps. I didn’t have a lot of money, and neither did my customers.

And every time a soldier, whether of red or rusty brown skin, entered, the customers left.

“This thing.” one of the dusky brown ones said, “is not permitted. We could kill you for selling this.”

“Oh?” I asked, “Which thing in particular?”

It was the axe. Dull of blade, splintered of handle. You might as well club someone with a fireplace poker. I shrugged. “Take it. Would you like to look at the knives?”

.....

They did. And the hunter’s arrows, and the tent stakes, and a length of rusted chain.

“Would one of you please sign that you’ve removed these items from my shop?”

“You won’t see these items again.” The lighter of the two said, “But I see no harm in letting you keep a record.”

“Then I have no problems with you taking what you want.” I said.

I let the paper dry before folding it, marked reasonable prices on the paper, and found an urchin willing to go outside the wall. To Drick, and her boss the quartermaster.

“Get as many small coins as you can.” I said, providing a bag that was double the size I thought it would need. “And buy yourself some bread on the way back; all of you are far too skinny.”

He returned with fewer coins than I’d asked for, but more than I’d been expecting. The urchins shared two loaves of unappealing brown bread, which they wolfed down as though it were sugarcane.

Me? I got tin and copper and a very few silver. None of the silver made it until mid-afternoon, and shrewd elder folk employed their wiles and tongue wagging to pry copper from my store.

But, come 2:17 in the afternoon, I had a reasonable stockpile of junk.

I mention this time, because this is when a young lady walked in, sniffed, and walked right back out, clutching her nose. Lady Theresa Mockingthrush, although I had no way of knowing it at the time. She had a particular ability to smell blood, which was balanced by her being allergic to that smell.

No, she is not vampir, nor wamphir, nor dhamphir. If such can breed with humans, I can’t rule out that she had some such in her bloodline, but she was freckled instead of pale, and generally tanned of skin, if not so dark a tanning as our Kamajeen guests.

I was busy negotiating price for some over-ripe onions, which might also have been too strong for her delicate senses. I would learn later that she had come to negotiate my wages with me, and provide funds with which to stock the store.

One bag of onions came into inventory; half a cup of rye seeds left. The onions didn’t last long. In groups of one to four, they left.

“Have a paring knife to go with these?” one of my customers asked.

I shook my head. “The soldiers take what they want.”

“That’s the truth of every war I’ve ever heard of.” he said. “Keep your eyes open, young sir. A thumb blade, certainly no more than two, but definitely one that folds into the handle.”

I promised him I’d keep my eyes open for such a thing, but warned him that the soldiers would probably confiscate such a thing, were it to come into the store.

It wasn’t the only thing they took out for the cost of a signature; the coins I got in exchange were... not generous, but it was more than the nothing they thought I was getting.

Oh, and a short note received a reply that Corporal Snorrison was NOT my neighborhood’s tax assessor. He was a hunched hobgoblin man called Mandor Muspelheim.

“I am not amused at such methods to supplement his income.” Mandor said. “I don’t suppose you can describe the man to me?”

He seemed surprised when I could, and pointed out features that hobgoblins used to identify each other, and when I could provide sketches. I’m not an artist; I’ll never be able to live off my scrawlings. But I came close enough to bring a smile to Mandor’s face.

I never did see Snorrison again, and I’m supposed to say I never saw my sword again.

THAT is a tale for another day.

I would keep a hammer in my belt, or a screwdriver, or a leather punch. Never for long, you understand. On the average, soldiers would sweep my store for anything that could be used as an improvised weapon twice per day, sometimes forcing me to open at night for a third.

They never did ask me to empty out my inventory, which was just as well. I kept the woodsaw sharp, and had a vicious little hand axe that only the foolish would mistake for the purpose of chopping wood.

I did what I could to keep the store running. Three times, I tried building a shelving unit, only to have it purchased directly from the store. I tore apart bonnets and re-wove them into stuffed toys or children’s gloves.

It happened slowly, over days, as I slowly sold things. There was a silver-plated lantern; I knew when I traded it in that I’d never sell the damned thing. I hung it from the rafters, and let it just rock back and forth with the wind.

I thought the brass puzzle box might sell, but most of my clientelle didn’t even look at the thing, or they made a few movements of the thing before concluding it was too difficult for them to solve. The one young woman who managed it was distraught over “how small it is inside”.

I got in a footlocker that I kept mostly empty, to use it as a stool when cleaning the walls or desks.

Various pieces of jewelry, mostly copper or brass, but with a few items of silver and gold, decorated a glass display case. Most of these were sold back to their original owners within three days, as seller’s regret urged them to reclaim their treasures.

But however slowly, the generic goods began to be replaced with some few items of quality mixed in. Not the fortified bronze canteen marked with the raven sigil; that one went into my personal inventory. But the silver drinking flask, small as it was, found the pocket of a slumming noble. Cleaning a length of light brown lace returned it to almost its original white color, where it sold, along with a length of blue ribbon for a wedding dress.

I fashioned a soft-brimmed hat for myself, only to see it leave the store on the head of Mattie Hawkwing. She was a farmer and the daughter of a farmer; her demeanor could have been improved by letting a devil possess her. Always, she left with a palm’s coating of coins in her pocket, and whatever in the store took her fancy that day.

Her pies, cakes, and cookies never went stale. Oh, I complained about every copper she soaked me for, but I always seemed to make my money back.

And she was ALWAYS talking. Mostly about gossip, most of that tidbits that she’d invented herself out of nothing more than spite and fancy. But... she could be persuaded to speak of other things. Like the soldiers who had moved her out to her barn, not aware that a very little work patching the holes made it as comfortable, if not as aroma-free, as her house. And those soldiers, they talked of troop movements and patrols and skirmishes.

It was from Mattie that I learned that Narrow Valley fell on the same day the siege began. None of the minotaurs had been captured, but the army patrolled the roads, and the rivers, looking for any bandits they could put to death.

And, they fought always with the spiders. The Kamajeen likened them unto scorpions, and sounded fearless in battle. They bragged about how many they slew, and how, and would gladly pull aside clothing so you could see their bite marks, which would absolutely scar. Their red skinned comrades, on the other hand, preferred to burn the woods clear. They would then mark out squares five hundred paces on a side, and a family of five would live there.

They also, as Mattie lamented, had no issue placing families on existing farms and keeping the old owners as slaves. “Not every farm, you understand.” she said. “But those that can’t pay taxes, or won’t support their wastrel soldiers. Anyone caught with a weapon or so much armor as a winter coat or boiled leather vest, those people are ‘volunteered’ off their land and into the army, and sure as summer follows spring, you’ll find a family of redskins working those fields within a week. Sometimes they split farms up, moving in multiple families at once.”

“Veterans?” I asked, “Can’t be more than what? One household in twenty?”

“Try one in five, young sir. Over a thousand of those sharp-toothed folk on good farmland, such as has been owned by proper humans for generations.”

Five thousand farmers? No, it was a fourth of that, if even that many. So... roughly two, maybe three hundred?

I wondered if they still counted as enemy soldiers.