Burt led Gorm to a private room near the back of the tavern. Inside was a small table with a figure in dark robes seated at one end. Gorm looked into the shadows next to the door and saw a couple of fierce eyes staring down at him.
“Evening,” he said.
Darak nodded and turned back to watching the door.
“Were you followed?” said Asherzu softly.
“We don’t think so, honored one,” said Burt.
“Wouldn’t have come if we were,” said Gorm. “Last thing we need is Johan findin’ out we’re meetin’.”
“Agreed,” said Asherzu.
“And if there’s nothing else, honored one, it is getting very late…” Burt trailed off as he climbed up the table and into a fine leather handbag.
The chieftain nodded. “That is all. Well done.”
“Aye, thank ye Burt. Off to your purse, then.”
The Kobold’s hackles rose as he spun on Gorm. “What’d you call it?”
“Uh, I just—”
“A purse!” barked Burt. “Darak, did you just hear what he called your satchel? He called it a purse!”
“It’s not a purse,” said Darak.
“Do you not see the shoulder straps? The studded bandolier? Do you think Darak would carry a purse around like some Elf?”
Gorm held his hands up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything—”
“Yeah, I know what you meant!” snarled Burt. “You thought I—”
Asherzu cleared her throat, cutting off the Kobold. “I am sure our friend regrets his choice of words, but given the pressing concerns of the evening, perhaps we could let it pass. Just this once.”
“Aye, I’m sorry!” insisted Gorm. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
The Kobold stared at Gorm with a bulging eye for a moment, then gave a satisfied snort and finished climbing into the satchel. “Yeah, you’re right, honored one. Apology accepted. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my nap.”
Gorm turned back to Asherzu. “Ye’ve pressing concerns?”
The chieftain shook her head. “What else do we have, Gorm Ingerson? A wicked man sits upon the throne. The city-states are in disarray. There is tension among my people, tension among the Lightlings, and strife between the two groups. And every day, there are new plots to grind us all back beneath the king’s boot.”
Gorm leaned back in his seat. “So just the usual stuff, then.”
“You jest, but I do not see a way forward,” said Asherzu. “Who can say how we will all survive this?”
“An old friend once told me that there ain’t always a light at the end of the tunnel,” Gorm said. “That’s why ye gotta carry a torch.”
The Orcess thought for a moment, and then smiled. “Wise words, friend Ingerson. Shall we get to the business at hand?”
“Aye.” Gorm returned her grin. “There’s much to be done.”
Epilogue
“The paperwork never ends, does it?” Duine Poldo asked as he shuffled through the sheaves in his lap.
The Wood Gnomes perched on the carriage’s red velvet seats cast shifting shadows in the light of the lantern that hung from the ceiling. One of the Gnomes closest to the Scribkin chirruped curiously.
“Look at what remains for tonight!” Poldo held up a bundle of documents. “Insurance claims to fill out for the undead attack, work orders for the repairs to the home, an issue with an invoice from the General Store, and I still owe Mrs. Hrurk a letter. I’ll be lucky if I finish half of it by the time we reach Dunhelm.”
The Wood Gnome chittered sympathetically.
Poldo considered the tasks at hand, and opted for the most pleasant. He took out a blank sheet of paper, set it on his lap desk, and began a letter to Mrs. Hrurk.
He hadn’t finished his greetings before the carriage lurched to a halt, spilling his ink pot. The Scribkin cursed as he helped the Wood Gnomes clean up the mess. “Well, I assumed I’d have more time than that!” he groused. “How have we reached Dunhelm already?”
The door of the carriage was suddenly pulled open. “Well, sir, the fact is, we haven’t,” said the carriage driver, a lanky Human with a hawk nose. “Nove’s razor and all that.”
“What?” said Poldo.
“Nove’s razor?” said the driver. “His third principle of universal irony?”
“I’m afraid I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about,” said the Gnome.
“Oh, it’s a very famous principle,” said the driver, leaning against the carriage. “Nove said that when outcomes are uncertain, irony pushes the result against positive expectations. He had this great experiment where he put a cat in a box with a toxic slime and shut the lid.”
“So I’ve heard. It all seems inhumane,” said Poldo.
“Maybe, but as long as the lid was closed, the fate of the cat was uncertain, right? It could be alive or dead—multiple possible outcomes! But whenever he opened the box, the cat was dead!”
“Yes,” said Poldo. “That’s what you’d expect.”
“Well, yeah, but…” The carriage driver trailed off, scratching his nose. “No, wait… I’m telling it wrong. Maybe it was that he had a real bastard of a cat, and that was the only one that lived?”
“I’m familiar with Nove’s razor!” snapped Poldo. “I’m just not sure what it has to do with our premature stop!”
“Well, whenever you have several possible scenarios, the worst one’s the most likely. Case in point…” The driver leveled a large crossbow at Poldo’s face. “This is a robbery, actually. Put your hands in the air and keep them where I can see them.”
Poldo gasped. Several of the Wood Gnomes leapt to his defense, but the driver snatched one from the air.
“Hang on! Hang on!” he said, lifting the struggling Gnome up over his head. “I like to keep these things nice and neat, but if they need to get messy, I’m not afraid to get a little stain on my boots, if you understand? Squish squish, crunch crunch, yeah?”
“No! No need for that,” said Poldo slowly, hands above his head. “Stand down, everyone.”
“There’s a good man!” said the driver, tossing the Wood Gnome back into the carriage. He guided Poldo down the carriage steps and to the edge of the lantern’s light. “I’m sure you understand that in the current economic climate, it’s become necessary to supplement my income a bit. Take opportunity as it comes, or so they say! And when a bigwig banker hires my carriage, that’s definitely an opportunity. Now, if you’d just stand with your back to the ditch, sir, I think I can do this with one bolt.”
Poldo’s heart froze in his chest. “I thought you said you liked to keep this clean!”
“Oh, I do, sir!” said the driver cheerfully. “As in, I like to eliminate all the witnesses to my robberies. So if you can manage to drop down amongst those big rocks down there, your body should hide itself without a shred of evidence I ever touched you. And you get a quick and painless death, which is much better than what I’m going to do to you if you try anything funny. Everybody wins, in a way.”
“Some more than others,” said Poldo.
“Well, you’re a banker, right?” said the driver with a dark chuckle. “You should be used to that sort of thing.”
“The Wood Gnomes will tell someone,” said Poldo, stepping toward the ditch.
“The Domovoy?” The driver smirked. “Anyone they try to talk to is just going to call an exterminator and be done with it. Now if you’d kindly make sure your back is to the stones…”
“What stones?” Poldo peered down into the darkness.
“The huge stones down in the ditch,” said the driver-turned-highwayman.
“Behind the bushes?” asked Poldo, squinting. “Those look like shrubs to me.”
“Are you blind? I’m talking about the massive boulders sitting at the bottom of the thrice-cursed ditch! They—what?” The driver stopped at the edge of the ridge and stared down at the scrub brush, baffled. “Where could a pile of thrice-cursed boulders go?”
&n
bsp; “You have to consider the worst possible scenario,” said a voice that sounded like an avalanche.
“What?” said the driver, just before something pulled him up into the darkness. He managed half a scream before he was cut short with an unpleasant, burbling snap.
A hulking figure stepped into the carriage light, the driver’s lifeless body dangling from its hands. It towered over Poldo, regarding him with beady red eyes.
“You’re safe now, Gnome,” said the Troll. “Go.”
“Oh!” said Poldo, his heart still racing. “Well, I’m glad you were here. Thank you!”
The Troll’s demeanor shifted from cold to confused. “Aren’t you going to run away?”
“I should think not,” said Poldo. “I wouldn’t be able to go far, anyway. Not without this carriage here.” He pointed back over his shoulder, to where a few of the Wood Gnomes were desperately trying to calm the horses.
“But I’m a Troll.”
Poldo shrugged. “And my best workers are Wood Gnomes, and my tenants are Orcs and Goblins, and my… my dearest friend is a Gnoll. Why should a Troll be any different?”
“I don’t know.” The Troll’s hand moved toward his face, as if to touch his eye. “But it is.”
“I respectfully disagree,” said the Gnome. “My name is Duine Poldo. I used to work in finance.”
“Thane,” said the Troll, reaching down to shake the Gnome’s hand. “I used to be a semi-mythical guardian of the forest.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Poldo shook the tip of the Troll’s index finger. “A guardian, was it? I had a hunch you worked in security.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. The way you handled yourself back there—thank you again, by the way—I could just tell. Quick, succinct, and confident. I especially liked the way you turned the driver’s own remarks against him. A very clever quip.”
Thane scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Well, I’ve heard you’re allowed just one.”
“Ha! Regardless, it’s clear you’ve done this professionally.”
“More of an informal arrangement, really,” said the Troll. “Just saving travelers on the roads from bandits, monsters, that sort of thing. Speaking if which, it isn’t really safe to be on the roads around Andarun these days.”
“That’s what I said when I hired a carriage with an armed driver,” muttered Poldo. “Well, thrice-curse Nove, I suppose. But it’s safer for me out here than it is in Andarun.”
He turned to look back at Mount Wynspar. The city wasn’t visible from this side of the mountain, but the lights of the tiers formed a halo around the mountain against the purple darkness of the night.
“I probably should have been away from the city sooner,” said Poldo. “I just… I just had to stay back and make sure someone would be all right.”
“I know the feeling,” said Thane. “Now, I know that she’s… that everything is going to be fine. But there’s still no place for someone like me.”
“And you don’t want to leave, but staying isn’t an option.”
“There are just too many reasons it has to be this way.”
Troll and Scribkin shared a surprised look.
“Ahem, well, yes, I know that feeling as well,” said Poldo. “I, uh… I don’t suppose you’d be interested in traveling with me?”
The Troll seemed surprised. “You’d want me to?”
“Oh certainly! I’ve recently had a security position open up.” Poldo nodded to the dead driver. “And you seem like good company. Do you have a standard rate?”
“A what?”
“An amount you usually charge for your work?”
“I… uh, I used to just ask for something purple,” said the Troll.
“Ah. That’s unusual. And probably illegal, as I think about it. I’m pretty sure Thug and Goon rules prohibit such arrangements, anyway. Are you licensed yet? No, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just pay you in giltin, and you can buy whatever color stuff you like. Does eighty a week sound reasonable?”
Thane grinned.
TO BE CONCLUDED IN
THE DARK PROFIT SAGA BOOK III:
DRAGONFIRED
###
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In addition to running a failing bakery, Buford Lafont moonlights as a private investigator and a reluctant expert on the paranormal phenomena that threaten humanity.
About the Author
J. Zachary Pike was once a basement-dwelling fantasy gamer, but over time he metamorphosed into a basement-dwelling fantasy writer. His animations, films, and books meld fantasy elements with offbeat humor. A New Englander by birth and by temperament, he writes strangely funny fiction on the seacoast of New Hampshire. Learn more at www.jzacharypike.com.
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Maps
Map of Arth
For a high-resolution map of Arth, please visit www.jzacharypike.com/arth/map/
Map of Andarun
Glossary
Agekeepers: A sect of esoteric historians who keep and update the official records of Arth. It is the Agekeepers who define when an age begins and ends.
Al’Matra: Technically the highest ranked Elven god as the queen of the Pantheon, the All Mother and her followers are really impoverished outcasts. The scriptures say she went mad after the All Father’s betrayal.
Al’Thadan: Formerly called the All Father, the highest Stennish god was once the king of the Pantheon. He is said to have been Arth’s greatest defender against the forces of Mannon until he colluded with the Dark Lord during the War of Betrayal in the Third Age. According to the Agekeepers, Al’Thadan was struck down along with all the Sten at the end of the war.
Andarun: The greatest city on Arth, at least according to most of its citizens, and capital of the Freedlands. Andarun was built on ancient ruins on the southern slope of Mount Wynspar.
Animancy: The solamancer’s counterpart to necromancy. The vibrant magic that gives creatures life.
Arth: A world much like Earth, but with more magic and fewer vowels.
Baedrun: Unlike most Dwarven gods, or most Dwarves, Baedrun is said to be as jovial and curious as he is benevolent. He is the god of mountain springs, underground reservoirs, oases, and other hidden caches of potable water. He is often prayed to as the last resort of men dying of thirst.
Bannerman: The bannermen are
the town guard, armies, and other armed officials of the Freedlands. Every branch of every civic organization within the Freedlands is required to maintain some number of armed men who may be called to arms when fealty demands it. Each bannerman is loyal to such a company, which is loyal to a city, which is loyal to Andarun, which is loyal to the Freedlands. In this way, each bannerman serves his or her country.
Biomancy: Biomancy is a field representing all of the disciplines of magic related to life, death, disease, and medicine. Solamancers and noctomancers alike can find work in biomancy, as it often utilizes weaves from both the warp and the weft of magic, such as animancy and necromancy.
Bloomtide: Bloomtide is the farmer’s name for Dewen’s month, the third month of spring.
Bogling: A catch-all term for the various elementals, spirits, and bipedal creatures that live in Arth’s enchanted marshlands.
Boglurk: An unpleasant monster that is more fish than man, more plant than fish, and more smelly than anything.
Bugbear: Neither a bug nor a bear, but instead a rather large breed of Demi-gnoll.
Class: Professional heroes fall into a variety of classes (e.g. warrior, mage) and sub-classes (e.g. swordsman, pyromancer), largely distinguished by the methods they use to kill monsters.
Crocotrice: Imagine a suspicious-looking log in a swamp. Now imagine it is considerably more suspicious due to having a rooster’s crown near one end and a thick plume of feathers at the other. Now imagine it jumps out on six legs and tries to paralyze you with petrifying venom. That’s pretty much the last few moments of any crocotrice victim’s life.
Darkforged: A derogative term that encompasses the Shadowkin and the monstrous races.
Dawngreen: Leurieth’s month is the second month of spring, and the second of Arth’s calendar year.
Son of a Liche Page 62