Home, Siege Home

by Eric Ugland

  The only other tent with static guards was Caticorix’s, and it was a posh affair. The fabric wasn’t the shitty canvas of the other tents; it was shiny and dark blue. Maybe silk, maybe some Vuldranni equivalent. I thought about casting my identification spell on the thing, but then I started to get paranoid: what if the hotshot dude who casts all these illusion spells has anti-magic guards or alarms on his tent?

  I didn’t want to chance waking up the camp because I needed to know what his stupid tent was made from. I pulled out the ring and put it to the tent, peeking through. There was no alarm, but as I peered through the golden circle, I realized that would have been just as likely to cause an alarm as an id spell. More or less.

  Internally, the place was pretty much wide open. There were layers of carpets down, a massive platform bed, and a big table with a map on it. A large three-paneled wooden screen covered with intricate carvings provided a modicum of privacy on one side. There were multiple figures on the platform bed, and as someone who’s had some experience with paid pleasure, it seemed pretty clear there were some people in the bed whose job it was to be there. It was just the way they slept together. Or, you know, slept in the same bed with as much space between them as possible.

  I could see a stack of books on the table with the map, and I figured that was the best place to start. I wondered how in hell I was going to break in, but then I remembered it was just a tent. All I had to do was to crawl under the edge.

  It smelled inside, a heady mixture of unwashed bodies and the intense use of perfumes. Basically, like the medieval version of a middle school boy’s locker room. Very weird.

  Keeping crouched, I moved the short distance across the tent to the table. I had to open each book to check the title, partially because the titles weren’t on the spines, and partially because I was using dark vision, and I couldn’t tell any colors, let alone differentiating dark blue from light blue. It was the third book in the pile. I took all of them, just to be sure. Then I snatched the map off the table, for good measure.

  A small piece of wood representing some military unit tumbled to the floor, and I shot my foot out. The carving hit my boot, flipped a few times, and bounced off the carpet.

  There was a sharp inhalation of breath from the bed, and one of the figures sat up quickly.

  I rolled under the table.

  Light flared as the woman lit a match.

  She stood, and I saw ample evidence proper foot care was not in evidence in Caticorix’s camp. Also, bare legs.

  The woman looked around for a moment before some grumbling came from the bed. The match went out. The woman struggled to get back to bed, hitting a few things on the way.

  And then she was none-too-subtly coerced back to work.

  I crawled from the table out of the tent, and knelt there for a moment. Waited for things to pass, trying to see if guards might come on by on their patrol. I waited for noise. Nothing. I mean, there were the sounds coming from the inside of the tent, but other than that, nothing. So I got up, brushed the bit of mud and dirt from me, and headed for the food tents.

  The kitchen tent was still empty, and even though I wasn’t exactly sure why, I didn’t question it. The place was divided into two sections, food prep and food storage. I started in food storage, grabbing everything I could and shoving it into my bag. Sacks of potatoes, hundreds of pounds of flour, all sorts of dried and fresh meats. It was a frenzy as I loaded up. Casks of wine, ale, and other liquids went in. Breads, oils, pickled vegetables of all kinds, everything went into the bag. Within minutes, the tent stood virtually empty. I even took the knives from the butcher’s table and the tripod and cauldron hanging over the fire.

  I stepped out of the kitchen, and headed towards the other side of the road. The bad side of town, as it were. I walked past several groups of patrolling guards, and I suppose because I made sure I answered their greetings in their own foreign tongue, they thought I was part of their army. Remarkably lax security, though I had the feeling that this sort of escapade likely wouldn’t work twice. It took a minute to get over to the common man’s food area, but once there, I realized how much more storage was involved. The second largest tent was the cooking area, and the larger of the tents was the storage area. It was a space nearly 80 yards long, maybe twenty wide. Definitely the biggest of all the tents in the encampment. And full.

  The kitchen was awake, cooking breakfast, baking bread.

  The head cook looked at me, and shouted, “Oi, what do you think you are doing here?”

  “Special request from Caticorix,” I replied.

  “That fuck needs to stick to his own supplies,” the man shouted. I was about to respond when the large man waved at me.“Bah, not your fault soldier. Get what he needs. Just stay out of our way.”

  “Will do,” I replied, and slipped through into the massive storage area.

  It was wall-to-wall crates, barrels, and sacks. Just as before, I started filling up the bag. More and more and more stuff went in. Fruit. Meat. Vegetables. Grains. I started to get a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of food the assholes had, and I started to wonder if this was enough to take Coggeshall through the winter. I kept thinking one of the cooks or assistant cooks would come into the storage area and see I was liquidating it. There was a growing tension, wondering how long I could keep stealing from them before getting caught. But somehow, I got to the far end of the tent, leaving almost nothing except for a few barrels overflowing with rotten produce.

  Then, I slipped out the bottom, and strolled down the road as if hadn’t a care in the world. No guards were posted at any point along the southern portion of the road, nor the horses. I leaned against the fence for a moment. I really considered walking into the field and slaughtering the horses. It didn’t make me feel good. I didn’t want to do it. I understood the tactical advantage I’d gain if I took out all their horses, but it just wasn’t something I could do. Stupid love of animals…

  Northwoods was kneeling in a slight depression, popping up here and there to look around. It was like watching a giant hairless groundhog. He had no chill.

  When I got to him, he wasn’t quite frantic, but he wasn’t far off, either.

  “Where have you been?” he snapped.

  “Had to pick something up real quick,” I replied, tossing the blue book to him.

  Congratulations! You’ve completed a QUEST!

  The Book Score

  You have retrieved a book.

  Reward for success: (unknown), 1200 XP

  That was a remarkably underwhelming quest.

  Someone back at the top of camp started shouting.

  Northwoods flubbed at catching the book. Then he snatched it off the ground and smiled, relief flooding over him.

  “Time to go,” I said with a smile. Then I tackled him into the water.

  The man was not happy about my chosen escape route. And, well, I couldn’t exactly blame him. The water was quite cold. Frigid, perhaps. I mean, it was kinda snowing out, but there weren’t, like, chunks of ice floating down the river. I pulled him out about two hundred yards downriver, and then propelled him up the bank and into the woods.

  “What in gods’ names was that for?” he asked.

  “I thought you were a hunter,” I replied. “Makes it harder to track us.”

  Then I started booking it through the woods. Not full speed, since naturally, the older man was having trouble keeping up. After five minutes, his breathing got seriously labored, and he needed a break. He plopped down on a log, and I leaned against a tree. There was certainly some camp kerfuffle happening, but it was nice and distant. I imagine it was incredibly confusing. The prisoner disappears, along with the money chests and all the food. That had to be both frustrating and mind-bending.

  Still, not my problem.

  Not any longer.

  I got Northwoods on his feet, and we were off running once again.

  It took three more rest-breaks to get to the mountain wall, and then another two rest
-breaks before we got to the secret entrance. An entrance guarded by two Lutra.

  “Morning, boss,” Ragnar said.

  Skeld just nodded at me.

  “Brought a friend over for breakfast,” I said, gesturing to the red-faced and out of breath Northwoods.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Unloading the food turned the morning into a celebration. The cooks were flabbergasted to see so much coming from the bag, and while there wasn’t much chance of the food taking us all the way through winter by itself, it certainly seemed within the realm of possibility that we’d be able to supplement enough with foraging and hunting to make it until spring. Or, at least, until the underground farming complex came online and started producing.

  I brought Northwoods to his daughter, who shepherded him to the healers, promising me we’d talk later.

  I also got a quest completion notification, which was always nice.

  Congratulations! You’ve completed a QUEST!

  Farther and Father

  Rescue Lord Northwoods and return him to safety.

  Reward for success: 4500 XP, Unknown

  I felt pretty good about things, right up until I saw Nikolai. He glared at me.

  I waved.

  He continued to glare. He obviously wanted to yell at me, but he didn’t have a place where he could do that and still maintain the illusion of proper protocol.

  “Good morning Nikolai,” I said.

  “Your grace,” he said. “Perhaps we could take a walk?”

  “I suppose,” I replied. “Are we looking for something that resembles privacy?”

  “That would likely be best, my lord, considering my office is somewhat destroyed at the moment.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  He just glared at me. It was becoming his go-to expression when I was around.

  I headed west, angling towards the southwest corner of Coggeshall, trying to get as far away from everyone as possible. Essentially, I took him to the former sleeping spot of Amber the Kitsune-girl.

  Nikolai refused to do any climbing, so we were forced to stand below her sleeping platform. And stood there we did.

  “What in the fuck did you think you were doing?” Nikolai asked.

  “Saving Eliza’s father,” I said.

  “You do understand that these are not our friends?”

  “They are now.”

  “They never will be.”

  “Nah, they owe me.”

  “You seem to forget how this works here,” Nikolai said. “I know your world is different. I know you seem to have momentary lapses in concentration. Perhaps you need a refresher. At the top there is an Emperor—”

  “Not right now.”

  “Do you mind not interrupting me?”

  “It’s a bit hard when you’re being so fucking patronizing.”

  “I will stop patronizing you when you start learning. This is the simple version, okay? Emperor - Archduke - Grand Prince - Duke - Sovereign Prince - Margrave - Count - Viscount - Baron - Baronet - Knight - Squire - Gentleman. You only have the Emperor above you and no one yet below you. You answer to no one right now, because there is no one on the throne. And, with no counts, barons, or anything below you, yet, you owe nothing to anyone. But all that is because you are new. The Northwoods family is old. They exist deep within the Imperial hierarchy. Your new most loyal friend Lord Northwoods is actually sworn to the Mikkelsen family and their dukedom. So no matter how close you feel he might be to you, no matter how much he even feels he might owe you, if Duke Mikkelsen decides to call you an enemy, Northwoods will side with Mikkelsen and go to war opposite you.”

  I looked out at my little slice of land. I wasn’t sure how to reply. The man had a point. A good point. I hadn’t even considered the hierarchy I was a part of. Likely because I felt I was basically at the top, and so didn’t need to think about it. No one asked me to do anything. Well, scratch that, people asked me to do shit all the time, but no one ordered me to do anything. I had the choice. There were certainly people beholden to me, like a ton of them, and while I might be disappointed if some of them decided to jump ship and swear to a new lord, I was starting to realize that it wasn’t done. That these people who had sworn to me had sworn themselves to me for life. It was a very strange thing to contemplate, especially given the upbringing I’d had back on Earth. Moving from a representative democracy to a feudalistic absolute semi-elective monarchy (or whatever someone who’d actually studied this shit would call it) was bizarre.

  “Okay,” I said, “but my choices were: save the man and potentially get some juice from him later on, or his son, the one that had me imprisoned, gets the whole Northwoods estate.”

  “You made the right decision,” he said. “I am not upset at you, necessarily, for the decision to save Northwoods. I am more concerned with your reasoning behind it, as well as the manner in which you chose to go.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means that you still view yourself as the right tool for every job.”

  “I did a good job.”

  “What was your goal? To rescue Northwoods? If so, why then did you steal the payroll? Why did you take the food—”

  “Uh, we need food.”

  “Yes, and now Caticorix knows we are low on food. And he knows that you took Northwoods. He knows that you snuck out and got him.”

  “How the fuck is he going to connect those dots?”

  “Do you think your magical bag of holding is a well-kept secret? Hell even the cooks know about it now. And this man has spies in camp — those spies will have told him about your magic items. So he knows it was you who came out. He knows you did not come through the tunnel, so he knows we have a back entrance somewhere. His spy is likely looking for that entrance as we stand here having a pointless conversation. Do you see the problem?”

  “That our enemies might find a way around our big wall?”

  “Yes. That is our largest problem.”

  “Maybe they won’t.”

  “And that way of thinking is how we lose Coggeshall. Do you want to lose Coggeshall?”

  “I’d really prefer not to.”

  “Then smarten up and—”

  Nikolai shut up, and put a hand on me before pointing over my shoulder.

  Eliza and her father were walking towards us.

  “It was the only thing I could think of doing,” I said softly. “We needed food, I saw the opportunity, and—”

  Nikolai nodded at me.

  “In the future, bring these issues to me so I might assist you, your grace, in making decisions which will impact us as a whole.”

  Northwoods had a hunk of bread in his hand and was just going to town on it. Eliza just smiled, holding both hands together as if she were a little girl. Maybe she had that thing, which we all kind of did, where we regressed around our parents.

  “I want to thank you once again,” Northwoods said. “You have saved me, and likely saved my family as well.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “I imagine your advisor is not pleased with you,” Northwoods said.

  “You clearly know Nikolai,” I replied.

  “I am sure I will have a long conversation with my own advisors the next time I am permitted to see them. But I feel we need to talk.”

  “Agreed,” Nikolai said. “What do you know about the army outside?”

  “They are not what they seem,” Northwoods replied.

  “I noticed they’re speaking another language,” I said. “Carchedonian”

  “So not from Valamir, then.”

  “It is not Valamir,” Northwoods said. “I would not have been held prisoner by Lord Valamir.”

  “It surprised me that you were held prisoner by anyone,” Nikolai retorted. “This is unusual behavior.”

  “These are unusual times. There has not been a contested election for Emperor in generations.”

  “It is not necessarily contested now,” Nikolai said.

/>   “I have heard the princess might be nearby,” Northwoods said with a bit of a side eye towards me.

  “She might be.”

  “She is,” Eliza said. “But in my conversations with her, I doubt she will step forward to take the crown.”

  “That’s not the way I felt,” I said.

  Northwoods frowned, and shook his head. “Even if she comes forward, even if she tries to claim her father’s votes, I fear she would face the rest of the Senate turning against her. She is not right for the Empire.”

  “You would vote against her?” Nikolai asked.

  “I would.”

  I thought about it for a moment. I considered what the option would be. The way the Senate worked, the Emperor had exactly one fewer vote than the entire rest of the Senate, so a single vote dissension would end everything in a tie. Me, as a duke with no counts, no barons, no-one below me, I controlled all my votes. Multiple. So if I voted yes for the princess, she’d be the Emperor. Or Empress. However she chose to have it styled.

  “I don’t know that I would vote against her,” I finally said. And it was a bit of a lie. I wasn’t exactly ready to proclaim leader of the country I’d tied myself to, but, at the same time, she seemed a hell of a lot better than Valamir. “And doesn’t that mean she’s Emperor?”

  “I would have to see how the votes are being tabulated at present, but more than likely, yes. A duke voting for her would give her enough votes to move to the Testing. But would you trust her with the Empire?”

  “Is Valamir better? He killed my father.”

  “That is rumor and conjecture,” Northwoods said. “It borders on libel. Were he the emperor already, it would be treason.”

  “See, that’s horseshit,” I said. “The people should be able to talk shit about their leader without fear. Especially when it’s true.”

  “Unless that is the pathway to rebellion,” Nikolai said. “There are reasons certain rules are kept in place, your grace.”