by David Dickie
They picked a door more or less at random and moved through a room that looked like it might be a storeroom but was currently empty. There was another door on the far side, and passing through it, they found themselves in a long corridor. There were windows on the south wall, narrow things with glass inserts. Grim looked at them, then glanced at Lug, who shrugged.
Grim said, “We could break the glass, but I’m not sure staying in the building isn’t safer at the moment. Any more of those explosive devices land, I think I’d rather have a stone wall between me and it.”
Lug nodded, and they moved east, with Grim leading the way. They weren’t too far along when a door opened and a man stepped briefly into the corridor. He took one look at the group in prisoner garb, gulped, turned around, and ran back into the room from which he had emerged, closing the door behind him.
Grim looked at Lug. “Wasn't that Rotan?”
Lug nodded.
Grim frowned. “Not a prisoner, obviously. He’s a Holder; the intelligence guys must be cutting him some slack.”
Fayyaad replied, “You guys move on ahead. I’ll see if I can talk to him.”
Grim looked at Fayyaad with a frown. Fayyaad didn’t seem like the type to worry about someone else, particularly a Holder, when his own skin was at risk. Grim said, “We’ll give it a shot. If he comes, he comes, if he stays, it’s his problem.”
Lug moved up to take the other side of the door with a long sword he’d pulled from a body in the courtyard.
Grim looked at him questioningly. “He obviously didn’t recognize us, but I don’t think he’s going to attack.”
“Panic makes some people do strange things,” said Lug.
Grim nodded, then pounded on the door into which Rotan had fled. “Look,” he yelled through the locked door, “not that I care about you, but there's a black ship headed for this place, and most of the military guys seem to be dead.”
The door opened again, and Rotan stuck his head out. "Black ship? The one that sank the Venture?" He turned pale, clutched his hand to his heart, and said, “Ohulhug.” He glanced at the gray coveralls Lug and Grim were wearing, looked undecided, then scared, then determined, and finally opened the door. “In the name of the High Council of Kethem, I command you to protect me, even at the cost of your own lives.”
Grim looked at Lug. Lug looked at Grim and shrugged. Grim looked back at Rotan and said, “We’ll get right on that. In the meantime, I think you might want to come with us.”
The man let out a breath. “My name is Rotan, Rotan Telini.”
Grim nodded. “I know. We were on the Venture together.”
Rotan stared at him for a moment, then light dawned in his eyes. “Yes, yes of course. My apologies, the prisoner garb… I did not recognize you…” and he stopped, clearly searching for a name.
“Grim.” Grim pointed to Lug. “Lug.” Then he pointed back to the others. “Alan and Fayyaad. You didn’t think to ask what happened with the rest of us after we were all dropped off here?”
Rotan looked a bit sheepish. “I am an ambassador from Kethem, sent to negotiate with the High Lord of Penne. Serious negotiations, important negotiations. I didn’t have time to worry about...”
“A few regular citizens?” Grim said, a little coldly. “I totally understand, my Lord. Only Holders matter in the scheme of things, after all.” Before Rotan could respond, Grim changed the subject “Penne?”
Alan broke in. “One of the Pranan City-States. Up north.”
Rotan nodded and regained some of his composure. “Yes. These negotiations are critical to Kethem’s long-term security.”
Grim snorted. “Can I guess they, perhaps, have something to do with the ohulhug?”
Rotan coughed. “That would be a good guess. If they are attacking, we need to leave this place. They must be after me.”
Grim raised an eyebrow. “An entire ship of ohulhug attacking a Kethem installation to get one person? How would they even know you’re here?”
Rotan went even paler. “Traitors. Traitors in the Kethem military ranks. It is the only answer. My arrival was intended to be a secret. I was originally supposed to go on a military vessel, the Kuseme’s Spear, but it was captured by the black ship. There was some concern they might attack other Kethem naval vessels. Instead, I went on the Venture just to avoid any unnecessary attention or risk.”
The ohulhug had almost wiped humans out during the two hundred years of the ohulhug-human wars. There were the high ohulhug, seven-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound killing machines that were as smart as they were vicious, and the low ohulhug, more commonly called orcs, who were smaller, slower versions of their larger brethren. It sounded a little far-fetched to Grim. Someone in the military cooperating with them seemed as likely as someone in the military cooperating with a nest of mudrakes. But regardless of the reason, it did seem like abandoning the installation would be for the best. He nodded. “Let’s go.”
Rotan said “Come. I know where your belongings are.”
Grim turned to the others, who had been watching carefully but quietly, and said, “Ok, the fire’s burning. Take what you can carry easily and we’ll head out.”
Rotan lead them to another door, behind which was a room where they found the clothes they had been wearing when rescued from the sea by the Fith’s Hammer. The clothes had been washed and folded neatly. They didn’t bother to change, just rolled them up into bundles they could carry under their arms. There were small personal items as well. Alan grabbed his gold ring, Grim grabbed his amulet, and Fayyaad grabbed a copper bracelet. Everything else was left behind.
Out in the hallway, Grim listened. He could hear the sounds of battle sorcery to the left. Grim nodded to the right, and they trudged down the corridor, Grim in the lead. The passageway ended in a door that opened to a courtyard. There was an open gate in the far corner of the outer wall. Grim looked around, but there were no signs of the green gas or other people.
They crossed the open space quickly. Outside the gate were docks to the east with small boats and woods to the south. A small dirt road lead to the docks, with a spur that turned south and headed into the dense forest. Grim could still hear sounds of fighting, but it was more sporadic.
Grim nodded. “I think the soldiers are done for. We don’t want to take the boats. We wouldn’t have any cover. Take the road. We have no time to find mounts, and the attackers may have them, so head into the woods as soon as we reach them. I don’t think they will be able to follow us in the forest. Go!”
They ran.
Chapter Ten
Grim pushed through another set of brambles, ripping two more holes in his already frayed coveralls. On the other side, he unexpectedly found a small clearing. It had been hours since they escaped the fort and the attackers, who Rotan continued to insist must be ohulhug. The sun was not far from setting. If the ohulhug had been following them, there was no sign of it, and they couldn’t keep going in the dark anyway.
“I think we should camp here for the evening,” Grim said, and saw weary nods from the others. They managed to gather enough wood for a fire, using a sword as a marginally effective makeshift ax. Alan used his firebolt spell to light it. Lug brought down a rabbit with a bow shot, not full rations by any means between the five of them, but better than a completely empty stomach.
They were sitting around the fire when Rotan suddenly declared, “I need guards to keep me safe. You seem like a capable group, people who could do that.”
“Right,” said Grim, “protect you even at the cost of our own lives. I remember.”
Rotan, perhaps recognizing that no one was feeling particularly kindly toward him or Kethem itself after their short but unpleasant incarceration by Kethem Naval Intelligence, changed tactics. “I need protection, someone who’s not part of the Kethem Military. I get to Penne or Tendut, the consulates there will know me. I’ll have access to funds. In any major Pranan City-State. You gentlemen get me to either of them, I’ll make it worth your while.”
Fayyaad said “How much are we talking about?”, then gave a thumbs up with a smile when Rotan suggested thirty thousand rimmi each, which Grim had to admit was a tidy sum. In fact, it beat what Alan was paying him by a large margin, but he was on contract. To Grim’s dismay, Alan politely declined the offer, and Lug said nothing, but everyone knew he was with Alan.
Rotan looked at Alan and said, “You know, there are going to be questions about what happened at the Kethem Naval Intelligence installation. There are going to be concerns that you survived when the soldiers did not. Kethem has influence in every major City-State in Pranan. People will be looking for you. Kethem military, Pranan city guards, and maybe even ohulhug. You don’t have someone to vouch for you—it could get ugly.”
Alan thought about that for a moment, frowning. “It would be a tremendous inconvenience if I were to be detained. You would provide this service, clear us of wrongdoing?”
Rotan nodded. “We need to get to Struford regardless. It’s the closest Pranan City-State. Its two days to Tendut by boat from there, a little longer to Penne. One or two weeks of your time, and this will be behind you, and you’ll be well rewarded.”
Alan paused, then nodded. “Very well. Until we deliver you to your destination. The money is not necessary.”
Which made Grim wonder. No one turned down money that was, for all practical purposes, free. At least, no one Grim knew. Grim would have to have a quiet chat with Rotan afterward explaining that the money was totally necessary for him. Double dipping wasn’t breaking a contract, after all.
They were up with the sun the next morning. It took four more days to make it to Struford on foot. At Rotan’s urging, they avoided the occasional village (if you could call a dozen buildings a village) and farmhouses. They left the coveralls behind and changed into the clothes they had carried away from the fort, but Rotan was clear about not taking chances. He wanted to avoid any possibility of recognition by the locals. The weapons they had liberated from the Kethem soldiers had come in handy. Lug used his bow to take down small game, and Alan, a continuous source of surprising if random bits of information, knew enough about the local flora that they had a variety of fruits, berries and tubers to round out the meat.
It had left time for conversation around a campfire, and Grim was curious. “So, Rotan,” he said one night, “what’s this mission that makes you a target for the ohulhug?”
Rotan frowned. “It’s ROW-tan, not Rot-tan.”
Grim hid a smile. “Sure.”
Rotan paused for a moment. “I am the Kethem ambassador to Tendut and Penne, northern City-States in Pranan. The Regent of Tendut and the Overlord of Penne owe me a debt of honor, for reasons that don’t really matter. The ohulhug,” he explained, “have always been a problem for the northern cities, raiding on and off for… well, forever. You know they attacked Nyquet again, in force, just a few months ago?”
Grim nodded. He had heard that, the first serious high ohulhug attack in almost two centuries. Nyquet, who had demonstrated its ability to repel the invaders for the entirety of the ohulhug-human wars, seemed like a foolish target, and this time had ended no differently from the attacks during the wars. The ohulhug had been driven back with heavy losses. Nonetheless, there was a general sense of unease about it. Ohulhug had almost wiped out human civilization, and after two hundred years of nothing but minor skirmishes, indications that they were once again dreaming of conquest left everyone edgy, even in Kethem, separated from the ohulhug by Pranan and Kanday.
Rotan continued, “Now, they’ve become a problem for Kethem as well. That black ship… there have been incidents involving Kethem merchants, and one Kethem frigate, the Kuseme’s Spear, disappeared in the same area. Even ignoring the size for the moment, you saw those tube things. We had top-level enchanters at one of the incidents, and they swear that those things aren’t focal points for any kind of spell.”
“So?” Fayyaad prompted him.
“So, we have a common problem now. We need to find out about these… these demon-powered metal-ball projectors to counter the black ship. Sending the Kethem Navy upriver past Penne without land support would be suicide. But we just finished a major engagement against the trolls with the Kethem Guard. That loss has left the Guard battered and under strength. So, we need someone to supply ground troops in a coordinated assault.”
“Meaning,” interposed Grim, “the Pranan City-States.”
Rotan nodded vigorously. “Exactly. They provide local ground support, we provide naval and magic support, we strike into ohulhug territory and find the secret of these abominable weapons the ohulhug have created.”
“And anyone who pulls off that kind of deal is on the fast path to a Gold Ring,” finished Grim. Rotan nodded again.
It was more information than Grim expected Rotan to share with commoners, but Rotan was getting more relaxed with the rest of them as they travelled. The first couple of days, Rotan had reminded them all that, with him, they stood to make a healthy pile of rimmi and have their name cleared with the military, while without him, they were the suspicious characters who had left a fort full of dead soldiers to ohulhug. Those almost-threats had given way to stories about his childhood, how an interest in the powerful and valuable pre-Fall artifacts from the old empire that had been recovered near his Hold had motivated him to become a high-stakes negotiator.
Grim listened quietly. Grim’s childhood had been spent struggling with his family to earn enough rimmi to put food on the table. Rotan was a Holder’s son, someone who had the freedom to pursue anything he was interested in. It was so far removed from Grim’s own experiences it was hard to imagine. But Grim heard the enthusiasm in Rotan’s voice, saw the spark of interest in Rotan’s eyes, and found himself liking the man.
They continued to move south until the middle of the fifth day, when the walls of Struford came into view. There were guards at the gates, dressed in yellow and red tunics and light leather armor, but the group was waved through without comment.
They did a short stop at the Kethem consulate. “Wait here,” said Rotan, and went inside. Despite Grim’s confidence that Rotan’s word was good, he waited anxiously for the man to return. When Rotan did, it was with enough rimmi to at least see them in a set of simple but functional rooms, and to secure passage on a Pranan merchant vessel bound for Tendut.
“It’s not as much as I hoped. The embassy here isn’t that large… not much in Struford of interest to Kethem. So they don’t have much in the way of rimmi on hand, and I didn’t want to say too much. I used a standard Silver Ring Hold obligation to pull a small amount of funding,” Rotan explained, waving his hand with the sliver ring of his Hold on it. “Didn’t even have to give them a name.”
It was a twenty-minute walk from the consulate to the harbor, where Rotan talked to a harbormaster for a few minutes, handing the man a small pile of rimmi and getting a stamped document in return. He showed it to them as he returned to the group.
“We have passage, half paid up front, the other half when we reach Tendut.”
After finding an inn not far from the harbor, they gathered in the common room, except for Fayyaad, who said five days sleeping on the ground made a bed more inviting than food. The rest of them sat at a table, with Rotan in the center of the group.
Rotan said “I know a Pranan merchant isn’t going to be fun traveling. There’s a Kethem light merchant that would be faster, but it’s twice the cost, and I can’t cover it for all of us. Tomorrow,” continued Rotan, “we’ll be on our way. Tonight, drinks and food are on me.”
Grim ate with the others, but he turned down the round of beers Rotan ordered for the table. So did Lug. When the meal was over, Grim slapped Rotan on the back and said, “You’re not that bad for a Holder. Thanks for the meal.”
Rotan looked a little startled, then yawned and said, “My pleasure. It’s a bit early, but I have to admit, sleeping in a bed instead of under a bush is an offer too inviting to pass up. Let’s meet down here f
or breakfast. The merchant ship leaves mid-morning.” There were nods all around, but when the others moved toward the stairs, Grim hung back.
Lug gave him a look. Grim said, “Not quite ready yet. I like to know the terrain before I call it a night.” Lug shrugged and followed Alan up the stairs.
Grim waited until everyone was out of sight, then pulled Rotan’s coin purse out. Rotan was going to be angry when he found out that Grim had lifted it while he was thanking Rotan for the meal, but Grim doubted Rotan would have handed over the money Grim needed without an argument. Grim opened the purse and glanced inside. It was mostly Hold script, which was as good as real money, but it also had a few Struford gold sovereigns. For what Grim needed to do, unmarked, local cash was his best bet.
He slipped out the front door of the inn and started wandering aimlessly. He had no specific location in mind. He’d know the place when he saw it.
