The Good Guys Chronicles Box Set 2

by Eric Ugland

  “I don’t know, Lord Northwoods. I don’t think I can just give away—”

  “It would not be given away. You would be well compensated. And your people would receive fair jobs within my holdings. I do not mean to pressure you — I just know that you are new to these dealings and I offer you an opportunity to exit gracefully.”

  “I’m not sure I can take you up on that,” I said. “But I do appreciate the offer.”

  I didn’t. It felt like he was trying to play me. But at the same time, perhaps he was tilting his hand a little in my direction, letting me see some of his plans. Now, whether those plans were actual plans or just another means of sending me off the deep end, who knew?

  Northwoods seemed to accept what I said, nodding. Thinking.

  “You have little experience in governance, correct?” he asked.

  “Sadly true.”

  “Then perhaps I still might be of service to you.”

  “Sounds intriguing. What’s your plan?”

  “Given my son’s recent breach of protocol and clear lack of understanding when it comes to politicking, I find it hard to expect him to inherit my holdings. Rather, I believe that duty will fall to my daughter. She knows my style of governance, having assisted me since the passing of her mother—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “I— thank you, but it was an age ago. My daughter is quite skilled, but, I fear, rather sheltered, never having ventured from my court. You, sir, though perhaps a little rough around the edges, are a man of honor. If you accept my humble proposal, allow my daughter to come live and work alongside you as an advisor, thus that she may gain experience far greater than I can offer her.”

  I leaned back in the chair, realizing a second too late that it’d give under my weight. But the little camp chair fought resolutely, and I didn’t fall ass over tea-kettle. Small miracles.

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure.”

  Northwoods smiled, then gestured to his guards. One of them ran off.

  “I will be sending along her lady-in-waiting as well,” he said. “You understand—”

  “Of course. As chaperone.”

  “Exactly. Now,” he said, getting to his feet, “I feel as if we are on the way to a beautiful friendship. Please, excuse my men as we vacate your lands.”

  I stood up. We shook hands, and I walked back towards my group, who were all rather anxiously standing on or near the bridge.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I didn’t give anything away.”

  I got a weak thumbs up from Lee.

  Chapter 36

  Now that we arrived, our first order of business was to get all the people up to the cliff face, the spot where the river cut through the cliff, which would be where we’d build a base camp until such time as we could figure out a way to cut through the mountains. Which was going to be a giant pain in the ass.

  There was something along the lines of a road near the river, again thanks to Northwoods. And because of that road, it only took two days for us to get up and in position next to the spot where I’d gone fishing.

  The river was flowing harder now, either thanks to melting snow or heavy rains, I guessed. I hadn’t seen much of the weather lately what with the whole being in a dungeon thing, so it could have been raining the whole time for all I knew.

  Standing there, the enormity of our task really started to get to me.

  There was a cliff face, pretty close to sheer, going skyward a long long way. The mountains above the cliff continued way up high, and seemed to stretch on forever to the west and the east. There was a bit of a curve where the mountains dog-legged to the Southwest, angling down towards Osterstadt. The river cut through the mountain rock almost perfectly, but there was no bank to walk along, nothing. And, because it was all neatly done by water, handholds or crags were nonexistent. When Cleeve and Nikolai had climbed through the canyon, they’d done so with help from Nikolai’s magic. Now, though, that wasn’t really an option. I hadn’t seen on the other side of the canyon, just heard from Nikolai that it was a forested paradise.

  While I stood there and stared at the problem in front of me, I slowly noticed that others had joined me there.

  Nikolai, Lee, Nathalie, Emeline, Ragnar, Skeld, and WarMancer stood around me in a loose semi-circle. Staring. At me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You stink,” Ragnar said.

  “Is this an intervention?”

  Skeld held out a small block of something white. Off white. That smelled flowery.

  “Is that soap?” I asked.

  “You smell like something the worst layers of hell dreamt up to torment us,” Nikolai said.

  “Come on, I’m not that bad.”

  “You are,” Lee said.

  The seven of them, working remarkably well together, grabbed me and pulled me to the river. I didn’t fight much, figuring, perhaps they were right. They shoved me in above what looked like a deep hole, and I plunged into the deep blue water with a bit of a yell. Just for effect. Coming back up though, my scream was legit because the water was freaking icy.

  The water was calmer in the deep hole, and I spun in a lazy circle.

  “Take your clothes off,” Emeline yelled with a wry smile.

  Nathalie blushed ever so much, but smiled.

  As did WarMancer.

  “You know this water is fucking frigid, right?” I shouted back as I tossed my pants onto the riverbank. Nobody touched them. Or my shirt. Or my boots. Everything was in a nice pile there, being disgusting.

  Skeld chucked the soap at me, the ivory brick tumbling straight towards my face. I grabbed it from the air, and started lathering up.

  “Burn the clothes,” Nikolai shouted.

  “HEY!” I shouted back, eyes closed and unable to see anything. “Not the pants. They were a gift!”

  I could hear Nikolai’s harrumph, so I hoped that was his agreement.

  “While you cannot run away,” Nikolai said, “I believe it is finally time to start your governance over this dukedom.”

  I stood up on a rock so I could lather up my torso, then turned to face Nikolai and saw that everyone had taken a seat.

  “Uh, so, is this the council?” I asked.

  “Is it?” Nikolai asked. “Are you having a council?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never done this.”

  Nikolai let a long breath out, the sigh perfectly detailing how disappointed he was with me.

  “I think so,” I said. “Probably a good idea to have a council. And, uh, technically we have one more person to add here.”

  “Who?”

  “I did mention Northwoods’ daughter is coming to work with us, right?”

  “Somehow it appears that little detail slipped your memory,” Nikolai said.

  “Ah, well, yeah. She’s going to learn how to build a settlement and—”

  “Spy on us.”

  “I mean, probably. But we already know she’s going to do that, so we can make that work for us.”

  “You have an impressive amount of confidence in your counter-espionage capabilities,” Nikolai said, deadpan.

  The group looked at each other, and then at me. I gave a little wave.

  “You missed some gore behind your ears,” Ragnar said.

  I frowned at the lutra, but he was right.

  “We have a shorter timeline than I’d hoped for here,” Nikolai said. “Not any fault of your own for once — it just seems to be the weather we are fated to have. Thus, the world dictates shelter is our first order of business.”

  “Shelter,” I said, “that’s key. But your plan was to be in the valley, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right, so how do we get this group through the canyon?”

  “Cleeve said he had an idea, but he never shared it with me. My feeling is that he probably thought he would have time to come up with something.”

  “We have a geomancer — anyone know what she can do? I’m looking at you, WarManc
er.”

  WarMancer frowned, and I realized that he looked remarkably better even though he’d only been out of chains for a short time. His hair was growing back on his arms and his legs. His skin had lost the clammy pallor to it. And, perhaps it was just me being egotistic, it looked like he was growing a beard.

  “I did not intend for you to only call me WarMancer,” WarMancer said. “Just that it would be my title.”

  “You want us to call you by your name?” I asked.

  “Please. As to the geomancer, I know little of her powers. Should I go get her?”

  “Yeah. I think this is important. Make sure she’s, you know, sober-ish. And thanks, Tarryn.”

  He smiled at me as he got to his feet, and then walked off.

  “I feel our best course of action is building a walkway over the river into the village,” Nikolai said.

  “What about a ladder up the cliff face?” Emeline asked.

  “The only real answer is a tunnel,” I said.

  “The valley lies at least a mile through here.”

  “So?” I asked. “There’s no way we’ll be able to construct a walkway over a river a mile long that can support wagons and the beasts that pull them in any reasonable time frame. By the time we get into the valley, it’ll be time to run back to Osterstadt to avoid the winter.”

  “You think we can dig a tunnel in less time?”

  “I’m hoping the geomancer is going to make a dent in that. Regardless, for the time being, this is how I’m proposing we do things—”

  Nikolai held his hands up, looking at me to be quiet. Then he turned to everyone else gathered there.

  “If the rest of the advisors would leave us for a moment,” Nikolai said. “I think the duke and I need to have a chat. Also he needs to put some clothes on. We will resume at the cliff.”

  The group dispersed, most everyone heading towards the fire and food.

  I dove into the water to rinse off one more time, then got out on the bank near Nikolai. I got clean, dry clothes out of the bag of holding, and started pulling them on.

  “What’s that all about?” I asked.

  “You are the duke of these lands,” Nikolai said quietly. “You need to act like it. Whether you feel like you should be or you want to be or what your old world might have had in place, here, you need to be strong, powerful, and dependable.”

  “Okay—”

  “Not okay,” Nikolai said. “Stop saying that. You need to—”

  “Dude, these people are terrified of me—”

  “Should they be otherwise? To many of them, you are a nightmare creation. You truck with monsters, having been given a boon by their god. You have killed more creatures than almost anyone they know outside of legends. You move wagons easier than their pack animals. You smell like death and seem unconcerned that you are covered in the gore from a hundred different opponents. You look like a nightmare who has come out of the wilds. You rarely sleep and you spend all night drawing strange things in the dirt. What do you expect?”

  “When you put it that way—”

  “I did put it that way. What do you expect from these people? They need to see you as a duke. That they understand. To see you in full armor, shining in the sun, defending them from monsters. There is also the issue that some vile creature has been following us since Osterstadt, and everyone in camp wonders if you have some connection to it.”

  “Vile creature?”

  “The fox-girl—”

  “Kitsune.”

  “Yes, she has found tracks around the camp site in the mornings, something large prowling around. I fear it may be a creature waiting for you to be gone and then it will strike.”

  “Nah, pretty sure that’s just Fritz.”

  “Who is Fritz?”

  “Oh.”

  I had forgotten to tell Nikolai about Fritz. Maybe, in my vague defense, I’d been thinking that either Skeld or Ragnar would have told him. Or that Nikolai would have seen Fritz at some point.

  “Fritz is, uh, it’s a little hard to describe.”

  “Please tell the little gerbils powering your brain to run a little faster for a few minutes so you can figure out how to explain this to me.”

  “Fritz is my companion. Typhon provided him for me.”

  “The God of Monsters.”

  “Yeah. He maybe, I mean, it’s part of the boon.”

  “And Fritz is this monster.”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of monster?”

  “Manticore.”

  “A manticore. Oh. Is that all?”

  “Basically.”

  “A monster known for eating humans. And humanoids. Just hanging around a camp where people have brought their children. You know there are babies here, correct?”

  “Yeah, but Fritz knows the rules. He knows that this is his family and that—”

  “He’s a monster.”

  “Fritz is my companion. Just like you.”

  “I was not provided by the God of Monsters.”

  “Well, to be fair, you may not like Typhon, but he did save you in the Dungeon. And we got those cool powers from the indicium—”

  “What powers?”

  “The one for completing the dungeon.”

  “You got the full indicium from the Dungeon of the Ancients?”

  “Yes, did, uh, you didn’t?”

  “No. I did not. No one did.”

  “Oh. Well. Okay, so Typhon wasn’t generous with the rest of you guys, but, yeah, he gave me the full indicium.”

  “Congratu-fucking-lations.”

  “Salty?”

  Nikolai just glared at me.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Fitz—”

  “Fritz.”

  “Whatever his name is, he will make things more difficult for you. He will not make these people fear you any less. You need these people to like you because they are going to be the ones who will build this holding, and allow you to fulfill the promises you made to Cleeve.”

  “I’m really starting to regret this gig.”

  “That makes two of us. But we are stuck with each other, and there are plenty of those out there who are depending on us to make Cleeve’s dream a reality. So stop fucking up.”

  “Okay, how about you start fucking mentoring me and stop yelling at me all the damn time? Can’t be good for people to see their leader screamed at constantly by someone who is supposedly his advisor.”

  That got him to at least stop glaring at me and look out over the river. For a moment it was nice standing there, listening to the running water, feel the warm sun across my back.

  “I have endeavored to refrain from chastising you quite so vocally,” Nikolai said. “Perhaps I need to be better about it.”

  “I get it,” I said. “I’m a bit of an idiot here. Hell, that’s an improvement over back home. There I was a lot of an idiot. Yeah, I don’t get the world here. I don’t know it. I don’t know the people or the politics, the customs or the culture. I’ve never led people or had anyone put their trust in me. I’ve never had to deal with things like gods and monsters. It’s all new for me. Fuck man, I still need to remind myself that I should be the good guy here, and not just murder everyone who pisses me off. Especially because now I can.”

  “We all admire your restraint containing your murderous self,” Nikolai said, a hint of a smile. “And hearing you say those things, admitting where you have issues, that is a good start. I am here to help you with those things. But you must let me.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He tapped his chin as he thought, once again looking out over the water. “We need a means of communicating without others being quite as aware. If I call you ‘my lord,’ you are doing fine. If I call you ‘duke,’ that means you are doing something improperly, or we need to talk about it. If I say ‘highness,’ it is time to stop everything and talk immediately.”

  “I like it. Highness means I’ve fucked up. I guess I should remember that one first.”
<
br />   “Yes, my lord,” Nikolai said with a smile and a little bow.

  “But if it’s just the hirð, no titles.”

  “As you wish, Duke Coggeshall.”

  “Oh fuck you,” I said, stifling a laugh.

  “As his highness wishes.”

  Chapter 37

  By the time everyone had gathered again, the sun was behind the mountains, and the area was bathed in a glorious sort of twilight. A song drifted over to us from the group fire, a low voice singing about a homeland far away.

  The geomancer, Essie, was sober for once, though still dressed a little more lasciviously than I would expect in the wilderness. Her boobs were pretty much hanging out, to the point where I felt uncomfortable looking at her.

  “Can you, uh,” I started, stammering just a bit, “is there, uh—”

  “Duke Coggeshall wants a tunnel,” Nikolai said.

  “Here?” Essie asked, pointing at the cliff.

  “Yeah,” I said. “There’s a valley on the other side of this, well, mountain range—”

  Essie raised an eyebrow, and then walked up to the wall and laid her hand on it.

  “You know how far?” she asked.

  “Nikolai gauged it about a mile.”

  “Which one of you is Nikolai?”

  I pointed him out.

  She looked him up and down, and then frowned.

  “How did you get there?” she asked. “I cannot imagine you made it up the river.”

  “There was a small incident in Osterstadt which has left me feeling a little, under the weather.” he replied, frowning back at her. “I assure you, I climbed along the wall until we got to the other side. And it was about a mile.”

  “How far up?”

  “Up?”

  “Elevation.”

  “That I cannot adequately tell you.”

  “Can you tell me what kind of rock is between here and wherever you want the tunnel to wind up?”

  “No,” Nikolai said.

  “Judging from what’s here,” Lee piped up, “I imagine you’re going to see mostly granite and perhaps other sedimentary layers, but nothing too soft. The soft material would be where the river is, or rather, what the river cut out from the cliff.”