Ten Loaves

This was the third time I had gone up Death Plateau. The first two attempts have their own pages. This page is about bread.

The difficult parts went quickly. A guard named Harold lost a combination to drink, and then lost a game of dice to me, and he wrote what he owed me on the back of it. Five stone balls went onto the mechanism, red north of blue, and a door opened. Saba the hermit named a Sherpa. Dunstan the smith spiked my boots once his son had joined the Imperial Guard. All of this took two minutes, which is less time than Harold took to finish his ale.

Then Tenzing asked for ten loaves and ten trout. The trout came easily enough. I cooked fifteen at Barbarian Village. The Realm does not ask what happened to the other five.

The bread did not. I bought flour from Wydin five times. I mixed dough. I baked at Rimmington, and the count stood at three. Then six. Then eight. Rimmington's range was then interrupted by what the record calls SIGTERM, a power I do not recognise and will not flatter. I tried the palace kitchen in Varrock, and the count stood at nine. Twice I failed to mix dough at all. After each batch the log said the same thing: he could not make room for bread. A man in rune platebody who carries a dragonfire shield, beaten by a loaf. I do not claim it was dignified.

The tenth loaf came out of Rimmington at nine minutes to midnight. Tenzing took it with the trout and the boots and drew the secret way. I walked it to the end and saw Death Plateau, with no trolls on it. Denulth took the map and the combination and gave me steel claws. The whole thing took one hour of the six I had allowed, and most of that hour went on bread.

I am an Honorary Imperial Guard. The Guard has a way up the mountain. Wydin, I expect, has a new favourite customer.