“You could call in one of your dragons to burn one of these louts and put the fear of the Gods in ‘em,” the guard grumbled. “Lazy mongrels. Warden should have ‘em all strung from the gibbets.”
“I don’t think we’ll be burninating anyone today.” I tried to sound cheerful. “Or ever. On that note, we should get back to base.”
The guard jerked his head toward the line of workers. “Don’t feel sorry for ‘em. This was the Mad King’s country not a year ago. They picked the wrong side. It’s their own fault they’re here muckin’ out this wallow.”
We were the first to arrive back at Camp Prichard. When we reached the shanty tavern near the center of ‘town’, it was easy to see why the peasants had hidden their female constituents. Most of our supervisors were partying it up, drinking ale and shooting darts, playing knife and card games, and making the most of their downtime. The Order’s men-at-arms were sleazing all over the matronly barkeep, who was continually swatting away hands from her ass and bosom as she delivered trays to tables. Sergeant Blackwin was keeping a close eye on them, like a stern aunt, but she wasn’t stopping anything but the most outrageous behavior. Our presence here was not only a reminder of who was winning the war for Ilia’s heart, but also a punishment.
I was less and less happy about what I was seeing, fuming silently while we hitched our hookwings and led the two spare mounts to the stables before going back to greet the Sergeant. She was leaning back against the wall, arms folded over her chest. She nodded to us, and as she did, our observation orbs zipped around our heads and flew to the masked and hooded mage. He was the only other person besides Sarge who wasn’t drunk off his ass.
“Welcome back, men,” Blackwin said as we closed in and assumed parade rest. “Two down, I see. Not bad. Report?”
“Six barghests, ma’am. We fought them to the death. Nethres perished in combat,” I said. “Casper deserted.”
“Better now than later. There’s no place to run in the sky,” Blackwin said. She glanced at the mage, who was writing something into a ledger at his table. “Did you take trophies? Proof of the kills?”
“He did. I didn’t want barghest eyeballs in my pack.” Baldr’s nose wrinkled.
I squished my face up between my hands. “’Eeew, Sarge! I dun wun squishy eyeballs in my backpack! Eeeew!”
Baldr barked a short laugh. “Says the guy who was eating bird shit off the road.”
“That’s enough, kids.” Grinning broadly, the sergeant pushed off the wall and stood. “The quartermaster will pay you for every monster you slew, assuming you don’t start slap-fighting like a pair of catty handmaidens. Come with me. I’ll review your performance and issue your next directive.”
I swallowed, thinking back over my conduct during the fight with the barghests. What counted as ‘dishonorable combat’, really? We’d had to flank the monsters to be able to defeat them - not exactly the picture of chivalry. Neither was relying on our mounts for help. Baldr was clearly wondering the same thing. He had his game face on, but his jaw was clenched as we followed the Sarge.
“Missiure Jasper? How goes the report?” Blackwin stopped in front of him, arms crossed.
“I am done with the ssspheres.” Jasper the Mage motioned to the two golden orbs on the table.
Blackwin held out her hands expectantly.
Jasper nodded, then dropped the pair of golden spheres into her gloved palms. He paused for a second to gather his wits and reached out with his gauntleted hand. “Allum barathi.”
As he spoke and gestured, the first golden sphere - and his witchglove - burned with a deep purple light. Blackwin closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. She was silent for several tense minutes.
Then, all of a sudden, she laughed.
“Baldr! My goodness, boy. You should know how to handle a bird better than that!” She chuckled. “Lord and Lady... the Tuun managed to stay on Cutthroat’s back, and you bounced off our lovely Sweetroll, head over ass!”
“Uhh...” Baldr’s face set into stony lines. “Well, uh, ‘Sweetroll’ might need some more training around corpse-eaters. She lost her shit and threw me. Didn’t know what to make of them.”
“Of course she knows what to make of them: minced meat. And that’s exactly what she’s doing in this recording.” The woman still had her eyes closed, flickering under her lids. “You worked out they like to fight in pack formation. So do dragons. There’s a lot to be learned about dragonkind from the hookwings, boys.”
My chest swelled a little. I’d picked that right after all, then.
After a couple more minutes, she grunted. “Alright. Well, looks like a tough fight. All things considered, you’re lucky you only lost two. All seems in order, bearing closer examination.”
Both Baldr and I let out breaths we hadn’t realized we’d been holding. “Yes Ma’am!”
“Listen to you, so full of energy.” Blackwin opened her green eyes, blinking rapidly to clear them. “Must be a Starborn thing. Well, no need for bowing and scraping quite yet. We’ll review this properly at the Fort, but for now, you can relax. Make yourselves comfortable. Get a drink, explore the village. I’ll throw in some beer money, seeing as you’re the first two to return.”
As she spoke, a notification popped up:
Quest Update: Prove Your Mettle
You have passed the first - and the least - of the trials of the Skyrdon, proving your courage, skill, and luck in battle. Have a beer and wait for Round #2!
Reward: 200 EXP + 20 Renown + 50 silver pieces
Special: You may attempt the Trial of Saint Grigori.
[Reminder: Now that you are Level 5, you can take your first level in an advanced Path!]
Level 5? I blinked. Oh, shit! I’d leveled up during the last fight. I grinned as I dismissed the alert, but then I remembered that my first Path level was supposed to be the Knight class and my joy faded. Sword and board, ugh.
“Yes, ma’am. And I’ll take you up on that drink, even if it’s just peasant swill.” Baldr saluted.
I didn’t mind a drink now and then, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Not after watching people being used as slaves in the old battlefield. Instead, I squared my shoulders. “Ma’am, mind if I ask you a few questions?”
Blackwin arched her eyebrows. “Of course.”
“Are there good craftsmen here?” I asked. “Anyone I could learn from?”
“Not of any real worth,” she replied, shrugging. “You’re better off waiting until we get home. Talk to our smith if you want to bang on some metal, though the peasants know a lot about the plants and animals in the area. You can hit up Ethan, at the general store. He’s probably more knowledgeable than most here.”
I nodded. “Everyone has something to teach. Want to come with me, Baldr?”
Baldr rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, I want to go talk to a bunch of hicks about cows. No thanks - I’ll stay here. I’ve got to dish out a stack of points and work on my combat skills.”
“Baldr, you get one mug of ale, then tend to your mount before you settle in to any serious drinking,” Blackwin said, shooing Baldr off with her hands. He rolled his eyes and smirked, but went without complaint.
Once Baldr had swaggered off, I refocused on the Sarge.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“Yeah, there is,” I said. “I was wondering what this bond sickness is about. I have my reasons, but deadly illness is... Let’s say I’m not keen on being sick.”
“I can’t tell you.” Blackwin’s easy humor vanished, replaced by sober intensity. “The nature of the Trials is secret, and for good reason. There’s no harm in your asking, but now you’ve asked, you know what the answer will be. You a plague survivor?”
I cleared my throat. “Of a sort.”
“You just faced down half a dozen corpse-eaters in dual combat, and you’re afraid of a little cough?” She planted her hands on her hips. “If you’ve survived the plague with one foot in the grave, you can do it again. And that’s all I’m s
aying ‘til -- oh, look what the cat dragged in.”
I turned to see what she was staring at, and saw four hookwings gallop in through the gate. Riderless, bloodied hookwings, their saddles torn by claws and fangs. The raptorine dinosaurs bolted for the stables, shrilling cries that were returned by Cutthroat, Sweetroll, and the other mounts. Golden orbs floated by their heads. All that remained of their riders.
“Excuse me.” The sergeant broke away from her place, waving at her tipsy men. “Oi! You louts! Get off your bottoms and go help the stable boys with those birds! They’re wound up fit to bite someone’s head off!”
Well, this pre-Trial test was certainly showing signs of cutting down the competition. At a loss for words, I found myself drifting over to Baldr. He had a mug of ale in hand, his other hand braced on his thigh.
“Four more down,” he said, a mirror of my own thoughts. “Want a mug?”
“Not yet. I need to do that Life Skilling with the locals,” I replied, leaning on the table.
“No point.” He waved his mug in the direction of the village. “They’re peasants. They don’t know shit.”
“That’s not true.” I frowned, thinking of Kira and Owen working on their injured fellows with care and speed.
He gave me a look of sly disbelief. “Have you tried talking to any of them? The NPCs?”
“Here? Not yet.”
“Watch this.” He set his mug down and groaned as he got to his feet, pushing ahead of me toward the inn yard’s fence. He leaned out over it, and waved a hand. “Hey! Hey, you, with the white cap!”
“Me, Missiure?” A man with pockmarked skin, muddy green eyes, and a faded green tunic - and a white cap - gestured at himself. He froze, like a mouse in front of a snake.
“Yeah, you. What’s your name?”
“Garen, Missiure.” He swallowed nervously.
Baldr leaned his elbows on the fence, and propped his chin on his hands. “What’s your story, Garen?”
“Story?” Garen’s expression widened with confusion. He was clearly terrified, his body tense with the need to flee. “Uhh... what do you mean by me story, Missiure?”
“Like, your history. Where are you from, what do you do?” Baldr said impatiently.
“I’m a swineherd, Missiure,” Garen said, eyes darting between me and Baldr. “J-Just a simple, godly man. I was borned here, and survived the War by Kyrie and Liric’s sweet grace.”
“What do you like to do?” Baldr asked.
“Uhh... I like my time out in the commons,” Garen said. “G-Gives a man time to think, away from his wife.”
“What kind of stuff do you like to think about?”
Garen seemed to draw a blank for a moment. “Uh... well, to be honest with you, Lord...””
Baldr waved him on.
“Food, a lot of the time.” Garen’s face suddenly relaxed into a momentary bashful smile. “After the war and all. The herds are just startin’ to recover, so I’m thinking about what pies I’ll be trying come High Spring, but also... I don’t know... normal wonderin’ things, I guess.”
“Alright. Thanks, Garen. That’s all I wanted to know.” Baldr’s mouth sloped to one side in a wry smile. “Enjoy your pie. That’ll be all.”
“Well, it’s not ‘til High Spring until we... am I free to go?” The man regarded us hopefully.
“Yup. Scoot.” Baldr made a little shooing motion with his hand, and Garen clumsily bowed before rushing off at polite speed down the road.
“There,” he said to me. “See what I mean? Dumb as shit. My barracks had a toilet-cleaning AI that was more interesting than these retards.”
Maybe it was his comparison of a person to a bathroom robot, but I felt a twinge of something like irritation. I started walking toward the stables, and to my surprise, he followed.
“You and I are about as real as these NPCs now. And he wasn’t being stupid, he was talking safe to you,” I muttered.
He scoffed. “What do you mean ‘talking safe’?”
“He’s basically a prisoner in what was once his village, and you’re a Starborn nobleman, Baldr. He was scared witless of you, because you could walk into his house, ransack it, rape his wife, walk out and not a single goddamn person besides our Sarge would call you on it. Like he said, he’s simple, and he and his family are the ones who put the bacon on our tables.”
“After he’s had a couple of rounds with the pigs.” Baldr chuckled.
“Whoa there, Houston, we just went from zero to HOLY SHIT BESTIALITY in less than five seconds,” I stalked ahead of him into the barn. Some of the hookwings were eating offal that buzzed with flies. Others were preening or drinking out of wooden troughs, dipping their muzzles and then throwing their heads back to drain it down their long s-curved throats. Cutthroat was eating, and gave me the hairy eyeball as I approached. “Really? I mean… really? That’s where your head goes?”
“You grew up in the city, didn’t you?”
“So?” I went to the tack bench and took down a grooming kit: feather brushes, chalk dust for powdering said feathers, a wide-bristled brush for their scaled legs.
“I grew up in deep hill country. Little hill town in Assfuck-Nowhere, Kentucky,” Baldr replied. “We had about a thousand people give or take, about half of them related. One diner, one cemetery, five churches, and a mob that ran out the census takers every year. The nearest grocery store was twenty miles away. There wasn’t nothin’ to do except hogs, hunting, and crushed up painkillers ‘til the war started.”
“Well, good for you. You should be proud.”
“Yeah, good for me. Damned if I ain’t proof that anyone can make it if they try.” He gestured to the village. “These people could make something of themselves, if they wanted to. I’m guessing the Archemi A.I. lets NPCs have their own thoughts and motivations, right? But what do they dream about? Pies and pigs. Believe me, when the pond is that shallow, you get a crowd of folks what drink themselves to sleep, fuck their critters and marry their sisters. If I want to learn shit, I’ll learn from people who actually know what they’re talking about. I had my fill of moonshine and garlic cures growing up.”
“Fair enough.” I shrugged. Personal achievement, that was admirable. I could get behind it. But for the NPCs? That wasn’t how the feudal system really worked. These people were bound to their land and circumstances. Still… I could see he didn’t care.
“You ain’t nothing if you haven’t fought for it.” He shook his head and scowled.
“Well, I know that.”
“Do you?”
“I got called ‘gook’ and ‘chink’ every day of my life growing up,” I said. “But you’re right – I was born and raised in the city. My mom and dad were on the alien watchlist. We could barely afford to live there because of the asset limits…”
“Wait.” Baldr’s eyes narrowed. “You were on a watchlist? Why?”
“Dad was born in Korea.” I shrugged. “North Korea, South Korea, the government doesn’t care anymore. The party line is that the Pacific Alliance started the Total War and Korea is now part of the Pacific Alliance. We were in a camp when my brother was about four and I was just a baby. We were released, but we never shook off the stigma. We made the best of it. Mom grew and sold meat on the black market. Dad was fucking crazy, but he was a dentist like his father, and he worked hard and took care of a lot of people. Me and my brother were born here, so we were clean slates provided we jumped through all the hoops. No laws broken, all taxes paid, on time. College, no draft dodging… so on and so forth. We had the government come around to interview us sometimes. I would have been able to clear my name once my service was finished.”
“Oh.” Baldr looked down. “Well, it still ain’t rural Kentucky, believe me.”
I did. But in my own way, I’d started from the bottom and dug my way up, working shitty jobs and training with my bike every day. Steve had broken out of the poverty loop by being smart. I’d been about to break out of the same cycle through sheer determinati
on, but then the draft happened – and that was all she wrote.
Baldr didn’t seem to know what to say after that. We fell silent as we worked. Cutthroat snapped and snipped the entire time I groomed her, and even got me once - ten HP down the drain. I left my hookwing preening in her stall as soon as her claws and muzzle were clean. Baldr peeled off in the other direction once we reached the inn yard. No apology, no acknowledgement, but I didn’t need any. I was used to working with guys I didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with on a personal level, and so I brushed off my discomfort at his prejudice and went to level up my Alchemy skill.
Chapter 27
My first stop was the general goods store. It was one of the few wooden buildings in the camp, a long, narrow one-room warehouse filled with rows of rickety wooden shelves carrying supplies. It was manned by a crusty guy who looked like he’d seen it all and done it all. He was tall, stooped and craggy, with huge hands and maybe a bit of troll blood in his veins. When he saw me, his face set into hard lines.
“Good afternoon.” I decided to go with ‘friendly’ rather than ‘chirpy’ with this one. “I was wondering what Alchemy tools you have, if any?”
He scowled. “I don’t do trade with the False Crown.”
This man was clearly out of fucks to give when it came to the Royalist talk. I shrugged. “I’m a foreigner, sir, and I haven’t sworn fealty to anyone here. I want to support the village, though.”
[Negotiation check success!]
“Adventurers always try to pawn off their bits of string and empty bottles onto men like me,” the man said bitterly. “Can’t be bothered carrying it all around. Tinkers! Pah.”
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t done that in other games I’d played. But that reminded me: I didn’t have any string, but I did have a stack of swords that I needed to get rid of. “I’ve got some stuff to sell, but it’s better than empty bottles.”
Some sort of NPC merchant imperative seemed to kick in, and the guy sighed. “Fine. Let’s see it.”
I pulled the mob trash from my Inventory, adding sword after sword to the counter, and the man’s eyes widened. There were fifteen in total, plus some other cheaper drops.
Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset Page 23
