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Simon spent a whole afternoon just searching the back of the thing, and it seemed like the previous owner had just stolen whatever wasn’t nailed down and taken it on the road with him. There were copper kettles, cast iron cookware, knives of various quality, strings of garlic, a box of potatoes, and a half-full bag of flour. These were hardly the trade goods he’d have expected of a merchant in a fantasy world. There wasn’t a scrap of dragon hide or a vial of fairy dust to be had.

Still, they received a warm enough welcome thanks to his silver, and Simon and Freya put the inn’s beds to good use most nights. He still couldn’t understand her, though. Sometimes she seemed like she was falling for him, and other times he half expected to wake up and find her gone. This mystery was finally resolved when she said, “You know, I always thought that when someone proposed to me, it would be more romantic, but I don’t think there’s a single romantic bone in your body Simon Jackoby!” during one of their tiffs.

“Married?” Simon asked dumbly, not connecting the dots.

“What? You’re keen enough to sleep with me and to introduce me as your wife, and now you’re going to what… say that it was all some big act just for show?” He could hear the fury in her voice getting ready to erupt if he made a misstep here. However, he wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he tried to channel his inner rom-com again, even as his mind grappled with the fact that this might not be the random fling he thought it was.

“I would be delighted for everyone to know you’re my wife,” he said finally as he pulled her down to sit on the bed beside him, “But I don’t want you to be with me because you know - you have to. Danger and zombies aren’t very romantic, but—”

Freya eventually shut him up by kissing him before he could ruin the moment. “You stupid, stupid man,” she said softly, “how could I not love the man that saved my life!”

Simon really didn’t know what to say after that. He’d only ever dated two women longer than six months, and both of those had ended poorly a decade ago. He was pretty sure that he’d proposed to Freya just now, or she’d proposed to him. He honestly wasn’t sure which, so in the end, he just held her while he tried to sort out his feelings about what had happened and how he felt about it.

Regardless though, she was in better spirits after that, so on the fifth day of their journey away from the undead, they found another small village, and while Freya was busy at the inn restocking their supplies and trading them a little bit of this, for a little bit of that, he took a trip over to the blacksmith and paid the man the scraps of gold that would be leftover to turn one of his coins into a nice ring for his girl. In the end, it was an ugly thing, and he was sure he’d tragically overpaid for it, but she loved it just the same. They both agreed it was a strange relationship and an even stranger courtship, but what could they do with the world falling apart like this?

“I always thought I’d save up a decent dowry and marry one of the men that worked the river boats or maybe one of the city guards,” she said one night, lying next to him. They’d managed to sell or trade almost half the crap in the back of the wagon now, so there was actually room to lay down. “But a foreigner with a strange accent and a knack for killing monsters? Never.”

Simon didn’t really know what to say either. He never expected to fall for, well - anyone, really. Anyone that wasn’t a 2d waifu anyway, but here he was, holding a half-naked woman that might even stay with him once the danger passed. It seemed too good to be true, but he vowed to enjoy it for as long as he could.

. . .

On day eight, they exited the woods they’d been riding through on a particularly dreary day and discovered Crowvar. They’d known it was coming from the last couple of villages they’d gone through. Apparently, the little town that occupied a strategic hilltop location in the otherwise flat region they’d been traveling through wasn’t considered the nicest place. The reputation of their lord, Baron Raithewait, wasn’t considered the best either, but he had something no one else had so far: walls, and that was enough for Simon to decide that this might be the place.

The quaint little town with its tightly packed houses and their red-tiled roofs spilled out from behind its city wall and part way down the slope, and it wasn’t a proper castle that protected it, but that was still good enough. For Simon, a small and imposing keep beat life on the road indefinitely. He was tired of looking over his shoulder, and he would never know if what was growing between him and Freya was real until they could settle down and have a normal life together. Not that he really knew what normal was in all this.

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Once they reached the town, Simon saw the buildings weren’t in the best shape, but the guard at the gate didn\'t give him many problems. The man just asked both of them for their names and their business before sending them on their way. Simon paid for a week at the inn, which definitely wasn’t the worst place he’d been to, and then they did some exploring. The market was hardly thriving, but they discovered there were enough artisans and craftsmen they’d be able to get his needs addressed regarding armor and a new backpack, which he didn’t really need but desperately wanted.

“Well,” he asked Freya after they’d finished wandering around the place in a few hours. “Could you see yourself staying here a while?”

Simon had explained his desire to find somewhere defensible, and she’d agreed with that, but despite the lovely chapel and the reasonably friendly people, she didn’t seem convinced.

“I mean, it’s nice enough,” she said, holding his hand, “but it’s hard to think of any place as home when I don’t speak the local tongue.”

Simon swallowed hard. He hadn’t realized that they’d transitioned to a new region or country or whatever, and he had no idea that he’d switched languages at some point. He’d wanted to ask her when exactly it was that he stopped speaking northern and started speaking southern, but he really didn’t want to explain one more strange thing about him just yet.

Instead, he said, “That’s fair. I understand.”

Her answer was good enough for him, though, and first thing in the morning, he decided to see if Lord Raithewait was receiving visitors, so he went to talk to the man’s guards. As it turned out, the answer was rarely, but when he explained that he was a mercenary that could be useful if trouble made it this far south, they told him they would see if there was any need for his services.

Simon honestly didn’t think he’d be hearing from the Baron and set about trying to find a cottage that they could buy or how it was that you got one built in the era before DIY and general contractors, but he didn’t have much luck there either. That was when the Baron’s messenger arrived.

“My Lord would welcome both of you to dinner tonight at six,” the haughty young man said with a sniff. “Please wear something appropriate, if that’s possible.”

It wasn’t, really. Freya had spent much of the week sewing a new outfit after he’d bought her a few bolts of cloth, but for the moment, neither of them had anything but the clothes on their back. Still, they showed up. The worst thing that could happen was that they’d be told to leave, and though Simon liked this spot, he was sure there would be other places to go, and they could find another instead, if they needed to.

Dinner turned out to be roasted suckling pig with the elderly man and his two sons. While Baron Raithewait wasn’t quite out of villain central casting, his gray hair and high cheekbones certainly made it possible that he was the villain in some horror movie. The room that they ate in didn’t make things any better. It was a large room that wasn’t quite a dining hall, flanked by two very large fireplaces, and the southern wall was covered in weapons and trophies of various victories. Still, he was nice enough to them both, though, and once Simon name-dropped Baron Corwin, the man became almost warm.

“Gregor is a good man, though it has been an age since we’ve been able to meet with all the recent troubles,” Lord Raithewait said with a small toast of his glass.

None of that affected his son’s attitude toward them. Even after the pumpkin soup and the lamb chops, the two younger Raithewaits still spent much of the night looking down their nose at them. When they found out that his wife was from near Schwarzenbruck, they asked no end of hurtful questions about the whole affair. Fortunately, she couldn’t understand a word they said, and he could pad the jabs quite easily with a little tact here and a few omissions there.

“How does it feel to know that everyone you knew is dead now?” became “What was it like to live through that?” and so on. Simon had dealt with passive-aggressive bullies like this his whole life. It was the reason he’d dropped out of school, but he was long past caring what strangers thought about him. He had a beautiful woman that loved him and a couple spells up his sleeve, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to burn every asshole at this table alive.

Instead, he just held Freya’s hand under the table a little tighter and tried to smile while he told them all about their harrowing and completely fictional escape from a city full of zombies.

“You two must have been together for a long time then if you were together when Schwarzenbruck was actually overrun then. That was years ago,” the younger son, Jeffery, said. “You’d better start trying for children sooner rather than later. Your bride is getting a little long in the tooth.”

Jeffery snickered at his own awful joke even though it earned him a rebuke from his father, but Simon was too distracted by what the man had just said to be offended. Years? Had it really been so long since the city had fallen, and the problem still wasn’t completely resolved? Did that mean the gateways were in time as well as space? Was that what Helades had meant when she talked about the Pit so long ago? It was hard to say for sure, but it seemed likely. If so, it was a shocking revelation. Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly something he could discuss with anyone.

“Please forgive my son’s rude behavior,” the Baron said, snapping him out of his reverie.

“Of course,” Simon said, pretending to be gracious instead of oblivious.

“I think I might be able to find you the accommodation you’re looking for. Though I don’t expect that the zombie hordes will ever get this far south again, there are always good reasons to keep a few sell swords around, just in case,” the Baron said with a cruel smile as he steepled his fingers in front of him. “Of course, I’ll have to see if you can actually fight first.”