by Eric Ugland
“You come closer,” Titus said, “I kill more.”
Titus was going to kill everyone he could. He had to know I wouldn’t let him leave alive; holding my people hostage was the only chance he had. But I still had one card to play.
“I’ve killed most of your men here,” I shouted at him. “Look around, see who is left guarding you right now. Any of you throw your weapons down now, I will be merciful. Otherwise, you will all die.”
The slavers looked around at each other hesitantly, trying to gauge what their fellows were doing.
In that momentary doubt, I charged Titus.
Titus pulled a huge sword out of nowhere, and brought it up in a massive overhand chop.
I got my shield up in time — but the blow was enough to drop me to my knees, and the shield deformed completely under the hit. I tossed it to the side and swung at Titus. He parried without thought, but the swords came together with a remarkable crash. My sword failed catastrophically, bending all the way over until it almost cut his arm.
He pushed me away as I let the sword go. The blade got him tangled up, and gave me enough time to grab another sword and get into position.
Laughing at me, he swung his huge blade around again. I parried it, taking it at an angle so I wasn’t getting the whole force of it. But like before, my sword couldn’t take it, and got mangled by his weapon.
I tossed another sword to the side, but as I attempted to grab another weapon, Titus brought his gargantuan blade around faster than I thought he could.
With no other options, I took it on my forearm.
The sword bit deep, then came to a stop on my bone. It hurt like a motherfucker, and I wanted to scream. Instead, I just grinned, maniacally. I felt myself start to lose it, feeling that blood rush coming on.
Titus, for his part just stared at me.
I shot my fist out and punched him right in the midsection, as hard as I could.
His plate armor dented under my fist, and he stumbled back.
Eyes wide, he took a step around me.
Blood poured out of my arm, and I felt laughter coming up, unbidden. This was just so ridiculous.
“You made a big mistake,” I said, swallowing the giggles.
He tried a stab, but his sword was made for chopping. It was essentially a giant cleaver, but with more style. It mostly looked like something from an anime.
I shifted my hips a bit to dodge the sword, the edge missing me by less than an inch. Titus’s mouth opened in surprise, and I saw an opportunity.
I jabbed out, but instead of punching him in the nose with a closed fist, I opened my hand and grabbed his jaw.
He tried to bite me, but I had a good grip on him. I pulled down as hard as I could, getting my knee up against his chest. For a second, his mouth held, but as soon as it dislocated, his tendons and ligaments popped, loudly, and I ripped the fucker’s jaw off.
A loud sound escaped from the man as his tongue flapped about, hanging out of the upper portion of his skull. Blood gushed out of his ruined face, and he dropped his sword as both of his hands went up to feel what had happened.
He stumbled about, making a horrible noise.
I picked up his giant sword and sent a quick identify through it, curiosity getting the better of me.
The Sword of Weight
Item Type: Epic
Item Class: One-handed Melee, Two-handed Melee
Material: Hepatizon
Damage: 100-250 (Slashing)
Durability: 500/800
Weight: 18 lbs
Requirements: Str 18
Description: An oversized sword designed for cutting and slashing, hits with triple times the weight.
I held it in one hand, confused by what hepatizon might be, looked a bit lark dark gold. Or bronze. But the sword felt remarkably balanced for its size. I hefted it around, building up momentum before angling it right towards Titus in a mighty swing.
It even surprised me when the blade cut right through the man’s torso.
For a moment, he stared at me, uncomprehending. Then his disconnect came through, and his upper chest slid off and hit the ground with a resounding squish.
Silence reigned, save the occasional crackle of the fire.
“Nice sword,” I said.
I looked out over the gathered slavers, and they started tossing their weapons to the ground. I did intend to be merciful to them. More or less. But there was one person left to deal with.
Carolene.
The color had gone from her face, as she stumbled through some sort of excuse, trying to get the right story together.
“I’m sure everything you did was forced upon you by the big mean man,” I said, walking her way with the massive sword resting on my shoulder. “I’m sure you were just trying to keep your brother safe while you looked for some sort of an escape from the evils of slavery.”
She nodded at me.
“You understand,” she said quickly. “You know that I would never have done anything to—”
In a quick motion, I brought the sword down in an overhand chop, and she was suddenly of two minds about the whole thing. And that was a little gross even for me.
I didn’t puke. That was some of the slavers. I think, in addition to be disgusted, they were suddenly really fucking afraid.
Chapter Thirty-One
The surviving slavers, 22 of them, were gathered together and chained up. The bodies of those I’d slain were stacked outside the walls, surrounded by wood, and covered in oil. They were lit unceremoniously, and though I’d argued to let them rot, it was pointed out that that many dead slain in violence would likely cause some undead to rise up, and then they’d have to be killed again. So it was honestly just better to burn the bodies.
Our dead, that was a different story. Those, we took outside the walls, sure, but we put them on individual pyres. Words were said about each person, songs were sung, and the fires were lit as the first rays of sunlight touched each pyre. There were six of them. And even that was too many. I didn’t know any of those that died. Four were dwarves, two were battenti. Somehow it was worse that no humans died, given that all the slavers but Titus were human.
I stood on the wall, watching all the fires burn. I couldn’t look away, even when it was just ashes blowing into the river. Sometime closer to midday, Nikolai walked up the rampart and stood next to me.
“It’s my fault this happened,” I said without looking at him.
“Partially, yes,” he replied.
“So much for blowing sunshine up my ass,” I said.
“I believe you have others for that.”
“Really? I’m not sure we filled that position.”
“Perhaps after this conversation we can do that.”
“Is this where you chew me out for letting anyone in?”
“I was thinking along those lines, but I wonder if that would do any good.”
“It wasn’t completely my fault. I was trusting, and if we just turn everyone we don’t know away, that makes us just as bad as Osterstadt.”
“Worse,” Nikolai said. “We let humans in almost unquestioned.”
“They seemed nice.”
“That they did. I had some lovely conversations with Baldwin. And I dare say you finally seemed to find someone you could feel a measure of affection for.”
“Nah, I was just being nice.”
“Oh? Fair enough then. But these were clearly experts at what they do.”
“Which is slavery?”
“It is.”
“Isn’t that illegal in the Empire?”
“Very, but not everywhere else. Our chief rivals to the south, they love slaves. I would wager most historians believe their country depends on slavery to exist.”
“Okay, but we’re on the northern edge of the Empire. How would these asshats expect to get the slaves from here to the southern border?”
“Enchanted wagons,” Nikolai said, pointing over his shoulder.
There were some very bas
ic looking wagons lined up along the walls, though all the draft animals had been taken away and placed in our barn.
“If you go down there,” he said, “you can feel and look and do whatever you like, and those wagons will look empty. But inside, there are benches with iron rings to run chains through. Slaving wagons.”
“What happened to you? Where were you during all this?”
“Holding the treasury with Ragnar and Skeld.”
“How’d they get into the treasury in the first place?”
“Someone forgot to shut the door when he left.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing that when Carolene had come to get me, I’d been in the midst of pulling gear from the treasury. “Yeah, that might have been me.”
“Might?”
“It was definitely me.”
“Baldwin drugged the dinner. People were passing out left and right. I went to look for you, and found the open treasury, so I assumed the worst. I got Skeld and Ragnar before they ate, and we managed to guard our gold, but by that time, the slavers had rounded everyone up. At least as far as I heard.”
“Sounds about right. I got pushed into the river. And shot twice for good measure.”
“I do appreciate your aversion to dying.”
“I guess I do too.”
“And I believe there is a bounty on Titus. We might be able to get a payout from this disaster.”
“I’d rather have those six people back. And our sense of security.”
“Yes, that will be somewhat difficult to fix. However, I have heard that your display of violence was quite inspiring, if disgusting.”
“I didn’t know the sword was going to cut quite like that.”
“Do remember you are a duke, and your people watch your every maneuver.”
“So no more ripping jaws off of people?”
“Did you really do that?”
I nodded, feeling rather disgusted with myself.
“That would be something to avoid in the future, if you can, my lord.”
We stood there a moment, just two dudes watching the river.
“What next?” I asked.
“In what sense?”
“What do I do now?”
He sighed, and bit at his fingernails. “I am divided on how to advise you. Your presence here is both positive and negative right now. You bring a sense of security, and yet, your inability to avoid shedding copious amounts of blood also causes a certain amount of panic amongst the population.”
“I was thinking that we might want to do an exploration of the valley.”
“That needs to happen, yes. Perhaps in a day or two. Let things settle down. Help restore order here. Then head out.”
“Two days might be a bit, well, early to go,” I replied. “Let’s be realistic about what needs to happen before Coggeshall is settled down. And I was thinking of taking Amber with me. Try to get her levels up enough that she can be an actual ranger instead of a courtesan.”
This seemed to vex him more than what I should do.
“Are you—” he started.
“No,” I said firmly. “Look man, I don’t like talking about my past, okay? But I will tell you one thing: I was in love. Real love. And she, she died. So there’s no one else for me. I haven’t met anyone since her that I’d… There’s no one else.”
Nikolai looked at me a minute, then nodded once. “You are a strange man, my lord, but, somehow, that makes perfect sense. In that case, yes, I think taking Amber out into the wilds to work on her ranging skills would be ideal.”
“But I’d probably need to leave Skeld and Ragnar here.”
“Yes. Skeld, Ragnar, and Nathalie are almost our entire guard now.”
I nodded, “So just me and Amber.”
“Hence why I had to question your motives.”
“It’s not like everyone only thinks about sex around her.”
“It is not a fault of hers. It is part of how her species operates. They have been bred for that purpose, and honestly it is rare to find a kitsune-girl who is not of that mindset. And do not paint her with your brush of humanism. Kitsune-girls are their own beings, and they are not humans.”
“Hey man, that’s fine. Dwarves prefer living underground, prinkies want nothing more than to do what I tell them—”
“And kitsune-girls desire to give sexual—”
“Let’s just leave it there, shall we?”
He smiled, shaking his head. “Odd that you who feel nothing about bathing in viscera are prudish about sex.”
“We all have our quirks.”
“That we do.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The mood around the village was mixed. There was certainly a fair amount of ebullience for those who survived. And for the most part, people had survived unscathed. Six out of 300-plus isn’t that bad. Certainly not for Vuldranni where full wipes of small towns are pretty common. A roving horde of gnolls, and there goes a town. Hell, apparently an infestation of goblins can be enough to wipe out a town. Or, you know, four rampaging trolls. So the fact that we’d bested both trolls and slavers in the same fortnight gave our little town quite the boost in morale. Something that the ‘game’ was all too keen to tell me.
Congratulations! Due to a successful defense of your town against a superior force, your holding gains a bonus to morale.
Perhaps it was the bonus to morale that kept the townsfolk from dropping into sadness over the deaths of our friends. Well, their friends. I felt pretty shitty that I couldn’t even picture those who’d died after hearing their names.
There was a brutal amount of gruesome cleanup, and we had 22 prisoners to house securely. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them. I’d said I’d be merciful, but plenty of my townsfolk who were interested in getting a little revenge. Maybe that’d help. Maybe that’d boost morale further. But it seemed like an evil thing to do. Nikolai finally told me his plan: wait until we had some more guards trained up, and then march the 22 men and Titus’s head to Osterstadt and turn them over to the Legion there. Nikolai seemed to think there was the possibility of a reward for Titus’s capture. Or beheading, as it were.
More of the dwarves were pressed into service as guards. Nathalie did her best to train them to some degree, with the help of Rebecca’s brother.
There was a frenetic level of activity after the affair, since it suddenly seemed like we had nothing to keep us safe. Harmut and his dwarves went crazy in the mountains, just really going to town, digging and building and adding in a ton of doors and saferooms. Essie kept busy adding in murder holes all along the main tunnel, and building a smaller parallel tunnel giving us access to the murder holes, as well as small defensive pockets where we could kill anyone who came up the tunnel from safer spots. As soon as that was done, she and Harmut got together and built the escape tunnel leading to the other side of the mountain. Harmut had a couple of his best masons fix up a door that looked exactly like the mountain. I even took a trip down the tunnel and poked around the door on the other side of the mountain. As soon as it closed, I couldn’t find it. I got a nice notification about that:
Congratulations, you have completed a structure in your holding: Escape Tunnel.
Escape Tunnel
Structure Type: Good
Structure Class: Security
Material: Stone
Durability: High
Description: A tunnel with a hidden exit providing a means to leave your settlement in secret.
Benefits: Bonus to morale, bonus to mood - Calm
Thanks to the prinkies, we got the wooden walls replaced with granite in no time, and then we started adding height onto them. I’d been able to climb over them too easily.
In two weeks, we managed to transform the place, making Coggeshall feel much more like a castle. Highly defensible. And yet, there was still a fundamental problem: next to no actual guards.
A facet that became quite clear when strangers arrived at the gates.
The call wen
t out from one of our 10 guards, and everyone able did the arm and swarm, gathering weapons from a miniature armory near the tunnel gate and hauling ass up the wall. We would look the part of having security even if no one holding the bows actually knew how to use them.
But once at the top of the wall, I saw something surprising: the rest of our original caravan had finally arrived. There were seven wagons now, with quite a few new faces, but I smiled at seeing some of the first friends I’d made in Vuldranni.
Cole was driving the first wagon, taciturn as ever. Donner the scarred guard sat on his horse, and gave a slight wave at all of us on the wall. Hademar, the dwarf, was on the next wagon back. The huge black Minotaur, Darius, walked next to a whole herd of horses of all different sizes and builds while Bruna, the young blonde woman, drove a wagon filled with burly looking men.
Nikolai shouted for the gates to be opened, and the caravan rolled in. Tension was palpable in the air, until Lee pushed through and gave Darius a giant hug. And then it was like we were having a carnival. There were all sorts of greetings going on, little baby dwarves running around, and prinkies starting to unload wagons. A ton of horses of all different breeds and styles milled about. It was a gleeful madhouse.
It was an unusual morning for us, for the village. There were a bunch of new people coming in, and they brought supplies. It changed the whole dynamic of the place — it was the first influx of the people whom Cleeve had intended Coggeshall to be for, his Legionnaires. Suddenly, we were awash with warrior types. Sure, most of them were a little on the older side, but they were men and women who knew how to hold a sword and use it to kill. An immense feeling of relief washed all of us. For those of us already in the village, it was because we finally had enough people to hold the walls. And for those those who had just arrived, because they finally had walls to hold.
Naturally, this called for a party. The mead was broken out again, animals were slaughtered and roasted, and even cookies were made. All those wonderful foods and drinks were laid out in our cantina, and everyone partook.
