by Eric Ugland
A large man stood in front of the fire on top of a table that had been pulled out of the cantina. Though humanoid, his proportions were off. His head was a smidge small, his arms too long, and the tusky-teeth like protrusions coming out of his lower jaw kind of sealed the whole inhuman thing. I thought he might be getting ready to make a speech, but instead, he just looked over the people brought before him. The man was sorting my people. My citizens.
No sign of Nikolai anywhere, nor Skeld or Ragnar. Amber was already in one group, a group made up mostly of women. Eliza was also in that group, along with most of her ladies-in-waiting. Melissa, the one that was always armored up, was missing. I looked everywhere, but couldn’t see a single guard. Not one of my people was armed or armored at this point. Most of them were sporting injuries of some kind — nothing serious, from what I could tell, but there was plenty of blood about the place.
I watched the sorting process go on for a minute more, trying to get a read on the opponents I faced. The big man on the table had excellent armor on, full plate covered with black enamel. He wore a helmet that kept his face clear, and had a plume of hair coming out the top. Carolene was sitting off to one side, her hand draped lazily in the lap of her brother, Baldwin. I wondered if, perhaps, they weren’t actually siblings. Not that it really mattered — they were dead to me now. I started to count the enemy, and stopped after I got to thirty three. There were a ton of them. And one of me.
Which meant I needed a plan.
I didn’t have a plan. I had no ideas about how to attack this situation. What I needed was Fritz. One of the many problems with having a rather independent monster companion that traveled largely by burrowing underground is that he was pretty hard to keep track of. I had no idea where Fritz was, nor any idea on how to contact him.
A distraction would be useful. So would being able to sneak around. Also a good idea, armor.
I had no armor. I’d emptied it all out into the treasury. There were still some weapons in my bag of holding, plus some food. But no armor. Plenty of spears, a sword and a shield. Really, that should be enough for me to take on an army. Which is almost what I was doing here.
First step, distraction.
I dropped to the ground in the dark corner where our wall met the mountain, and I started summoning prinkies. They’d shown zero regard for fighting, or really their own lives, but I had a different idea for how to use them.
Once I had a mini-horde, 14 of them, I told them to grab branches and light them on fire in the bonfire, and bring the lit branches to the tall man on the table.
Naturally, they took to their task with gusto, running off.
I pulled a spear out of my bag and took a few steps around the edge of the wall until I could see things.
There were a few shouts of surprise, followed by light laughter. Then someone caught on fire, and a lot of screaming happened.
I darted from my position and slid to into a hiding spot behind the longhouse. I was about to peek through a window, see if anyone was inside, but then I remembered I had a magic ring that would allow me to do that without having to find a window.
It took me a second to figure out how to use the ring. In that time, the invaders killed all the prinkies and were tending to the various people who had gotten burned. I could hear all the yelling, and thanks to tremorsense, I knew the location of each and every asshole. Notably, I didn’t feel a bullette moving around, so still no Fritz. The ring wasn’t like a spell of any kind. You literally put it up against an object, and you looked through it. Then you could see whatever was on the other side of the thing you put the ring on. I put it against the wall of the longhouse.
Empty.
Insanely curious, I put it on the ground, and I could see blue sky.
It weirded me out too much, so I stopped.
I crept along the longhouse until I got to the corner, and then laid on the ground to peek around the edge.
An invader was standing there, leaning against a spear.
I slipped my spear back inside my bag. I needed to do this quietly. Taking my time with each and every step, I walked along the path between the houses until I was three feet from the man. I could smell him — the rank odor of a man who eschewed bathing in favor of drinking himself into a self-urinating stupor.
Fast as I could, I swooped in. My right hand went around his mouth, and my left around his chest. Then I pulled him back into the relative shadow between the houses, and wrenched his neck. There was a tearing sound before a cracking sound, and then body went limp. I laid it on the ground, and edged along the longhouse wall to see if anyone had noticed.
All clear.
The table the big man had been standing on was smoldering, and the sparkling remains of prinky blood drifted all around him. The fancy helmet’s hair was gone, which made me smile a little.
I stepped back and knelt next to the dead man. Giving him a once over, he looked gross. His teeth were an even mixture of brown and black, with a few broken into jagged bits. His hands were rough, his body muscled. This was definitely a man who knew how to fight. He had a sword at his side, and the weapon looked well cared for. He might have smelled bad, but his armor was in fine condition.
Naturally, I took his armor. It was certainly a squeeze, but being mostly leather, there was enough give that I managed to get into it. I had to tuck my beard into my shirt to make sure it wasn’t quite as obvious, hoping that in the darkness I wouldn’t be noticed as being different. Then I walked back to the position the guard had occupied, standing there with his spear, in his armor, looking over the situation.
There were other guards spread about the village, in between buildings and up on the rampart. Most of whom I hadn’t even noticed during my initial assessment of the invaders. Taking them out would be step one.
Heading to my left, I walked along the grass towards the next guard. He was a shorter man, had a spear out, wore visibly heavier armor, but the same malodorous funk.
“You see that kitsune-girl?” The short man asked me. “Gonna get a fortune for her. Think I might use my chits to get a night with her on the road though. Never had one, might be me only chance. You fancy—”
He shut up when my spear went through his eye. Like the first guard, I dragged his body back into the darkness.
After a quick pat down of his body, I came away with another spear, another sword, and six daggers. The daggers I put in my belt, but everything else went into the bag. I didn’t bother to loot anything else. Right now I only wanted weapons.
Back out, I continued along my path.
The next guard was a woman, she had a full breastplate on, thick steel that had been rubbed down with oil to make it black, less reflective.
“Get back in position, Ruger,” she snapped.
Her eyes went wide as I continued to advance on her. I saw her about to shout, so I lunged, leading with the spear.
She managed a squeak before the spearhead hit home. I put too much force behind the attack, and I accidentally speared her to the wall of the newest longhouse. A macabre decoration, and one that would have to remain in place because I didn’t have time to wrench it free. I just took the woman’s spear and kept walking, speeding up just enough to where I could move quickly without looking suspicious.
I noticed that all the guards on the rampart were looking out. They thought the inside was safe, that danger could only come from outside. It made sense — probably what I would have done. There were plenty of eyes watching the internals.
So I went to work.
I pulled spears out of my bag, driving them into the ground in front of me until I had one out for each guard on the rampart. I looked around at them one more time, memorizing where they were and what they were doing, how they were standing and when they were moving.
Then it started.
I pulled a spear from the ground, and threw it as hard as I could. Before it hit my target, I had the next spear out of the ground and flying through the air.
Thwock.
Thwock.
Thwock.
As the last spear flew from my hand, I dropped to a knee and checked the results. The hits were hard and wet, slamming into the upper torsos of each guard in quick succession. I hit with enough force to topple each of the guards against the wall and over, tumbling them into the ditch beyond. Nary a sound came from any of them, and no one noticed all the guards on the walls disappearing.
I checked my notifications.
GG! You’ve killed a Human (lvl 23 Slaver).
You’ve earned 500 xp! What a mighty hero you are.
They weren’t super high level, but they sounded pretty damn evil. I appreciated that I was getting a little extra XP for protecting people, but I hated that I had to in the first place. Where were these slavers from? Where were they planning to sell my people? I was getting really angry.
I ran up the rampart and slid to a stop against the wall. Time for Part 2: Electric Death-a-loo.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The sorting had continued unabated. from the looks of it, more than half the town had been sorted. I wasn’t exactly sure what metrics were being used, but it was obvious one group was destined for sex trafficking. For a moment, I considered if this was, somehow, a plot related to Northwoods. But seeing his daughter’s tear-stained face and the large bruise forming over her right eye, and I couldn’t imagine Northwoods being involved. Not that he wouldn’t put his children in peril, but more that something like this would just be too base. Dealing with slavers, that had to have too much potential to hurt his image.
Which meant, ultimately, this was just a fun project from Carolene and Baldwin. So, bonus pain for them.
I crept along the rampart, keeping to the shadows and watching my enemies work. There weren’t really any left standing by themselves. I saw some men in the kitchens, packing up all our food, so that’s where I was heading next.
In video games, you can creep in a crouching position for an unlimited amount of time. Hell, you can even run that way. In the real world, or in this real world, it was awkward as fuck. Still, I tried to keep low as I moved from the rampart down to the cantina. Once there, I took a heartbeat to stretch my knees out. I kept my back against the wall and slid along it. Then I pulled the ring out, and peered through.
Inside the kitchen, I counted eight people going through our stores. Six men of various sizes, and two women. As far as I had seen, every member of the enemy team was human. Not sure what that meant, but I was feeling glad I wasn’t a human any more. And that was a good mental reminder to, at some point when I wasn’t embroiled in a life-or-death situation, to figure out what the hell I actually was.
Smiling, I realized I finally had the chance to use an ability I’d been dying to use: Make an Entrance.
As soon as I thought about using it, I got a vision in my head that someone was walking towards the door. I needed to get a sword out, and as soon as I did, a feeling washed over me: I needed to open the door.
I opened the door, and my hand seemed to move on its own, the sword flashing in the candlelit interior as it sliced through the air and then went cleanly through the neck of the invader who’d been striding towards the door. His head flew off the body, arterial blood shot into the air, and the other seven people in the room froze. Two were standing next to a barrel of fish, one was drinking a mug of mead, three were stacking sacks of flour onto a cart with wooden wheels, and one had thrown some morsel into the air and was waiting to catch it in his mouth.
Swinging in a backhand, I set the blade free. It flew perfectly through the air, burying itself to the hilt in the chest of the man drinking the mead.
Before the mug shattered on the floor, I shot the spear out, going through the man by the fish and into his buddy, bringing them closer together one last time.
I hurdled a table that was in my way and hit the ground just as the first person started coming out of their shock. A man by the flour tried to get a sword of his sheath. But I already had a sack of flour up and ready, and I slammed the 50-pound bag into his face. Then I snapped a fist out, clocking the next dude in the face, his jaw dislocating and hanging off to the side.
The cart got a swift kick, and it shot across the room, smashing into the shins of the Morsel Catcher, which caused him to double over in pain, the morsel bouncing on his head.
I grabbed for my daggers, and then went stabby-stabby until the room was still. Just me, breathing hard, and eight dead assholes.
I paused there, blood dripping off of, well, many things. There’d need to be a deep clean of the kitchen before any more food got prepared there. Looking at some of the entrails across the floor, I wondered if just burning the place down and starting again was the better answer. I waited a few beats, straining to hear anything outside the room, hoping I hadn’t aroused any suspicion.
Nothing.
I gathered up weapons, getting more daggers about my person and sliding more swords in sheaths on my belt. Spears went in the bag.
As I knelt down to pull the sword out of what was once a chest, I heard the door of the cantina open.
“What the fuck?” came a light voice.
A young woman in leather armor and no helmet was staring at the bloody mess inside.
In one motion, I stood up and hurled the sword at her. It went right through her forehead. She fell backward, and the door closed on her.
There was some shouting from the cantina — it looked like my attempts at stealth were over.
Knowing I was going to be facing a lot of enemies at once, I pulled the shield out of my bag, got it on my arm, and twirled a sword around. I had a bunch of skill points just chilling from the times I’d gotten double choices in one day, and I figured this was the time I might need to use them, so I dumped 25 into shield, bringing it up to 50, and 10 into swords, bringing it up to 32 I was now a journeyman in both shield and sword, and both felt more natural in my hands.
I ran out of the kitchen, ready to face hell.
Chapter Thirty
No one outside was prepared for me. Sure, they were all looking my direction, but they all had a mostly slack-jawed look, trying to figure out what was going on.
It gave me a heartbeat to strategize. The kitchen was on the north side of the village, next to the barn in the place the original crappy longhouse had. There was a large open area in front of the kitchen where the fire pit had been dug, with some rudimentary benches and seats surrounding it. Currently, the fire pit held the bonfire. Big man was standing on another table, still sorting people, mostly dwarves at this point, and he was about fifty yards from me.
Between myself and him were 20 of his soldiers. My people were largely to the left, having already been sorted out, though there was a small group still to the right. There were 10 guards on the right and seven on the left. It amazed me that the 300-odd people that made up my village had been taken by such a small number of assholes.
Thinking time over. I had to act. The first of the invaders came at me, leading with a spear. Almost instinctually, I knew how to angle the shield so the spear slid off to my left, leaving the invader open for me to slice through his leather-covered stomach. The sword got stuck in his spine, so I calmly pulled his sword from his sheath and moved my shield in place to take the next hit, pushing it to the right. Completing a spin, I stabbed the sword up through the second man’s skull, gliding perfectly in the slim gap between the breastplate and helm.
I pulled the sword out, and met the next man’s charge, dropping very low so the guy hit my shield hard. I lifted him up and over me, turning and stabbing him on the ground quickly before resetting.
It was almost easy. I just knew where to put the shield and how to swing the sword. It all just went together so well.
Parry, block, stab, shield bash.
Enemies kept coming and kept dying.
And then they stopped.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a trail of death. I was nearer the fire, enough so that I felt a little warmth any time I
lowered my shield. There were low groans and moans from the enemies who hadn’t yet accepted their death behind me, and relative silence everywhere else.
Big man was off the table and staring at me.
I swung my sword to loosen up my shoulder, and also to sling some of the gore off.
“Who are you?” The big man asked.
“Tell me your name first,” I said.
“I am Titus.”
“Titus? Is that, like, a one name thing?”
“You have yet to hear of me?”
“Titus? No, haven’t heard of you.”
He laughed, looking at his gathered men. “I admit, it has been some time since I have worked the Empire, but I thought my legend might have remained.”
“Nope.”
“So, your name.”
“Montana Coggeshall,” Carolene said.
“He’s the Duke,” Baldwin added.
“Oh?” Titus said, suddenly interested in me. “I believed you two had disposed of him prior to my arrival.”
“We did,” Baldwin said. “I saw him go over the falls.”
“And yet, there he stands.”
I was tired of being talked about like I wasn’t there, so I whipped the sword end-over-end at Baldwin. Sure, I had to throw through the bonfire, and I didn’t exactly have the best angle on him, but I had a hefty luck score, and the sword traveled through the air perfectly, sliding between two burning logs in the fire and cutting Baldwin’s face right through the middle. For a second, he remained standing. But then the rest of his body realized it was over, and he crumpled.
Carolene screamed.
“That was a mistake,” Titus said.
“Ask anyone,” I replied. “I’m not very smart.”
“Kill that one,” Titus said, pointing randomly.
One of his men darted a blade out and stabbed a dwarf through the heart. The dwarf sputtered out blood, and fell to the ground, coughing as he died.
Rage blossomed in me, and before I knew what I was doing I ran at the big man.
