Eat, Slay, Love: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure (The Good Guys Book 10)

by Eric Ugland

  “’Might’ is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence.”

  I frowned at her, tempted to give her a gentle shove off my shoulder and into the snow.

  But I didn’t. After all, I am a kind and benevolent man.

  Instead, I walked around until I got as close to the big guy as I could, and then I climbed up on the corral.

  “Hey big guy!” I shouted out.

  The big guy looked over at me, blinked a few times, then sighed. He remained completely unmoved.

  “Mind coming closer?” I asked.

  Another sigh, but he pushed his way through his brethren to me. I barely reached the top of his horse legs, and his entire human torso continued on above.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  “Duke,” he said, his voice an incredibly deep basso profundo.

  “Why are none of you moving?” I asked.

  “I believe there is some confusion,” he replied.

  “Will you go?”

  “To be your slave? I don’t think so.”

  “At what point did slavery come into this?”

  “You said we had to swear to you—”

  “I said you needed to be loyal to me, but that doesn’t imply slavery. I also said you could go. And in case you didn’t know, slavery is illegal in the Empire. There is no slavery whatsoever there. And nothing even approaching it in my lands. I won’t have it.”

  “You won’t have slaves?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is that thing on your shoulder?”

  “A pauldron.”

  “The living thing.”

  “An annoyance.”

  Bear smacked me with her scepter, but without a helm, it just rang my bell.

  “I am no slave,” Bear snapped. “I am my own creature, and I have sworn fealty to this man. He is a good man trying to do good things.”

  “You are of the Feedoheem?” the centaur asked.

  “I am.”

  “And you swore to this, erm, duke, of free will?”

  “I did,” she said, which was a sort of truth. “He means what he says. He will offer you a home. Shelter, food, a place of safety. Many have argued against it, and yet, the duke wills it, so it is.”

  “You know nothing of us,” the centaur said. “Why offer us so much at the expense of your own?’

  “Because I don’t think you should be killed just because.”

  “You know nothing of what we have done.”

  “What did you do to get culled?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “The intricacies of the Spear’s culture are beyond my understanding.”

  “Is that herd the spear?”

  “That is the name they have taken, yes.”

  “Ah, then tip of the spear—”

  “Their leader.”

  “And you’re not part of them?”

  “No longer, no.”

  “You weren’t born into them?”

  He shook his head. “I joined them during their passage through the Endless Grains.”

  “And now they want to kill you.”

  “We are being kept here for the fiends.”

  “That’s what we feared,” I said. “And it was another reason I came. I can’t imagine that being a worthy punishment for anything but the worst crimes. And from what I’ve seen, I don’t think you’re a criminal.”

  “Again, you know nothing of me.”

  “True. But are you a criminal?”

  “No, but is that not what a criminal would answer?”

  “Meh. I’d rather hope people tell the truth than live assuming everything is a lie.”

  “Then you are a fool.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “Perhaps there is truth in numbers.”

  “Eh, a lot of people liked Nickleback; doesn’t make them a good band.”

  “Nickel back? What is this?”

  “It is a terrible joke,” Bear said. “The duke here is an optimist, for whatever foolish reason. But he works hard to make good things happen. If you wish to live in safety, his lands are a genuine option.”

  “Regardless,” I said, “we need to get moving. There’s not exactly a ton of time until shit hits the fan, and I’d really rather get you guys settled before we’re all stuck inside for Fiends’ Night.”

  “You have space for all of us?” the centaur asked, holding his massive arms out wide.

  “If not now, we will. Besides, it’s winter. We can all just have a big cuddle.”

  “Your duke is strange,” the centaur said.

  “You do not know how right you are.”

  “Okay, I’m going to go,” I said. “You two can work this out.”

  I jumped off the corral and started walking toward the gate.

  There was a crash behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see the big centaur just walking through the wooden wall of the corral and stepping over to walk beside me.

  “I am known as The Tower,” he said.

  “Montana,” I replied. “That’s Bear.”

  Bear was zooming through the air, heading toward the gate.

  “It is good to meet you, Duke Montana.”

  There was noise behind me, and a quick glance over my shoulder showed that the culled centaurs were all following me and The Tower to the gate. I wanted to talk to the big guy, find out a little more about centaurs in general or the Spear herd in specifics, but The Tower seemed content to walk along in silence. He was attentive, and wore armor over his horse body, but had his human torso mostly exposed. It must have been rather challenging to get dressed as a centaur. I was, suddenly, insanely curious about how the centaur lived. What did they eat? How did they bathe? Could they wipe their own butts?

  I stopped the thought train there and focused on issues I actually needed to address, like getting a small herd of centaurs back across the valley.

  20

  As we went through the gate, I noticed the Tower slow down a little.

  “Where is your city?” he asked. “Your home?”

  “Good question,” I replied. “It’s on the other side of this valley.”

  “How large is the valley?”

  “Depends on how you measure it,” I said. “But we’ve got a quick way across.”

  I pointed over to the Air Fritz platform.

  “What am I looking upon?” the big centaur asked.

  “It’s a platform—”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “That a roc picks up and flies across the valley.”

  The big centaur’s head snapped to focus on me.

  “A roc?” he asked.

  “Named Fritz,” I answered. “Fritz!”

  The enormous bird dropped out of the clouds, thankfully a decent distance away, making a dramatically steep bank before landing. The nerves and fear in the centaurs was positively palpable.

  “That monster is yours?” The Tower asked, definitely working on keeping his voice from shaking.

  “Don’t think of him as a monster,” I said, raising a hand to wave at the enormous bird. “Think of him as Fritz.”

  “Fritz...”

  “Yeah. He’s a friendly fellow.”

  “Who could eat us in a single bite.”

  “In theory, yes. He could. But he hasn’t yet.”

  “The ‘yet’ does not make me comfortable.”

  “Well, that’s common. Air Fritz rides are, um, convenient, but certainly not comfortable.”

  “I suppose as long as I am not riding in his belly and exiting from his—”

  “Nope,” I interrupted. “Ride the platform.”

  Slowly, almost glacially, the Tower walked on. I could see his clenched fists in my peripheral vision. I had to give the guy credit — he was pushing through the fear remarkably well. Finally, we got to the platform, and I opened the gate. His hooves clopped on the wooden floor.

  “How many of us can he take?” The Tower asked.

  “Hopefully all of you?”

  “I meant at onc
e.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Let’s see. Fill it up.”

  After introducing Ragnar and Yuri to the centaurs, I found out Yuri knew a little centaur, enough to provide some guidance and reassurance about things. I had the feeling it helped that there weren’t all human faces around. The centaurs smiled at the lutra as Ragnar went through extensive mimes to show how to be safe while on the platform.

  I stood at the front, wanting the centaurs to know I trusted this method of travel enough to go as well, and left Bear and Yuri behind to get the next group on. It was going to be a rather long night for Fritz. There were probably around four hundred centaurs joining Coggeshall, a distressing number of which were just young foals. Children? I wasn’t sure of the appropriate word. We’d gotten roughly thirty centaurs on the first round, so likely ten or eleven trips to go, depending on Fritz’s ability.

  I was nervous watching Fritz come around to grab the handle of the platform. We were a heavy group. Thirty horses weighed a lot more than thirty people did.

  But the huge roc talons wrapped around the platform, and we were airborne without a second’s hesitation. Fritz’s massive wings pumped hard, and air blew every which way.

  Then we were freezing for a while.

  21

  I’m not sure any of the centaurs were happy with flying. There were plenty of curses, a few shouts, and a few, um, biological accidents along the way, but otherwise we made the journey without incident. Thankfully, the storm had lessened somewhat, so we could kind of see the landscape below.

  No one in the group spoke in any meaningful way, but as soon as the platform was on the ground, there was a general push to get off. I hopped up on the railing and sat there, keeping out of the way as much as possible while the mini-stampede happened.

  Nikolai was there to meet us. The somber chancellor stood under the weight of a heavy fur cloak, a clipboard in one delicately gloved hand.

  “How long have you been out here?” I asked, walking up to him with a swagger and a smile.

  “A few minutes,” he replied.

  “Impressive timing.”

  “Is it?”

  “I mean, not like I called to say I was coming.”

  “You do realize we have scouts watching the skies, your grace.”

  I looked up at the wall of MountainHome, seeing plenty of windows, but nothing that looked like a lookout tower.

  “You did not,” Nikolai sighed. “We have lookouts, your grace. They warned me you were on approach.”

  “Well, um, good,” I said.

  Nikolai looked over the group helping each other off the platform. As soon as the platform was empty, Fritz dropped down and scooped it up, heading off into the gloom once more.

  “Not as many as I feared,” Nikolai said, looking at his clipboard and almost sounding happy.

  “About a tenth of what we’ll be bringing.”

  Nikolai’s face dropped, and he groaned.

  “A tenth? So, three hundred?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  “How close to three hundred?”

  “Four hundred. Or so.”

  “Remind me to get you a mathematics tutor. Four hundred centaurs is not a small group. Are they all coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fantastic,” Nikolai said, looking at his clipboard.

  “Is it going to be a problem?”

  “Of course it is, your grace. But what is our life if not sorting out problems?”

  “Big philosophy for so late at night.”

  “I have grown used to not sleeping when you are around.”

  “Oh stop. You sleep all the time.”

  “I take several naps during the day — I would hardly call that sleeping all the time. I need to go have a chat with Harmut and see how we can alter his schedule to make rooms for these new residents.”

  He turned on his heel, and a long fur scarf whipped me across the face.

  Ragnar giggled.

  “What are you laughing at?” I asked. “Go get the centaurs into the cantina and make sure we have something they can eat.”

  “Yes your grace,” Ragnar said, giving me a snappy, if somewhat satirical, salute. Then he sprinted over to The Tower and began his excited miming.

  I was just about to follow Nikolai, but Nathalie walked up to me.

  “Your grace,” she said, “it appears we have a night goblin issue.”

  I sighed. “Of course we do.”

  22

  Nathalie led me over to the western wall. We took the stairs to the top and looked over the edge. Which, you know, meant we were looking at cleared land covered in snow, and then heavy forest. Also covered in snow.

  “So what am I looking at?” I asked.

  “The snow?” Nathalie replied.

  “Where are the goblins?”

  “Out there,” she pointed west-northwest. “I doubt you could see them from here.”

  “Why do we need to talk here, then?”

  “Away from prying ears.”

  “Not sure I’ve heard that one before. What’s up?”

  “You know we have patrols that go out in our neighboring area, yes?”

  “I assumed as much.”

  “There are also rangers who spend more time out there and—”

  “ Sure, like Amber.”

  “She is among them, yes. They have discovered several pieces of evidence pointing to Night Goblin activity to the west and northwest.”

  “What kind of activity?”

  “They found at least two camps, large enough that the night goblin attempts to hide them failed. We believe there have been additional camps in the area that have not been quite as large.”

  “War camps?”

  “That much is unclear, though I would imagine any night goblin camp in this valley is likely a war camp. But the larger issue is that we believe there is a camp set up right now, and there are some who would like to mount a force to strike out at this camp.”

  “The camp that is theoretically out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do we know where the theoretical camp might be?”

  “In theory, yes.”

  She looked over her shoulder one way, then the other, then pulled a small roll of paper from what I’d thought was a sheathe on her hip. She wiped the snow off a crenelation, then unrolled a map showing Coggeshall and its surrounding area.

  “Here,” she said, stabbing her finger at an ‘x’ on the map, “is where camp one was. Camp two was at this ‘x.’ These,” she pointed to small circles on the map, “were all our suspected camp sites. You can see they are following a pattern.”

  It took me a second to get it, but, sure enough, it seemed completely reasonable to expect a camp to be — “Here,” I said, pointing to the map.

  “Yes, your grace.”

  “Why, though?” I asked.

  “That is not a question we can answer until we get out there and see exactly what they are doing.”

  I turned my back on the outside world so I could watch the centaurs make their way into MountainHome.

  “Not exactly the best time to be doing this,” I said. “We’re a bit busy.”

  “I understand your grace. It’s just—”

  “They might be planning something for Fiends’ Night.”

  “Yes, your grace. We will have no one on the walls that night, nor anyone outside MountainHome. Should the Night Goblins brave the fiends, they could breach our walls and make sure we have a tough fight merely to regain Coggeshall. Or, worse — they might occupy enough of Coggeshall that you will lose control of the holding.”

  “That can happen?” I asked.

  “Of course, your grace.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “I told you it was a problem. But there are plenty of potential solutions. You do have most of an Imperial Legion at your command now. You could send the Legion out to smash whatever they find.”

  “I could.”

  “You could send out your kobold force, h
ave them fight—”

  “That too.”

  “Or even the Coggeshall Guard. They are willing to”

  “The Legion is not the right move,” I said.

  “You wish their presence to remain a surprise.”

  “Right?”

  “There is wisdom to that, your grace.”

  “And this is just a camp?”

  “What we have found are camps.”

  “How big?”

  “Sadly, I cannot make any sort of accurate guess. Amber believes these are work camps. A group of goblins set up a camp for one or two nights to accomplish some task that cannot be done within their caves. Kiernan believes these are training exercises, meant to condition the goblins so they can fight and live better outside their caves. Preparing to fight us.”

  “I’m going,” I said.

  “Your grace.”

  I started pulling things out of my knapsack, getting ready for a little run in the woods.

  “Get Amber,” I said. “And tell the Legion they are to stay off the walls. Our guard on the walls only.”

  “I must protest,” Nathalie said. “You should not do this on your own.”

  “I’m not,” I replied with a smile. “I’m taking Amber--“

  “Duke!” came a cry at about the same time a guard came sprinting my way along the ground. “We need you at the gates!”

  “Put a pin in this,” I said, and jumped off the wall. “Gather my team, and I’ll meet you back at this wall!”

  The guard skidded to a stop and got a salute of sorts up.

  “Your grace,” he said, “we need you—”

  “Yeah, at the gates. I heard you,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We ran to the gates, which were currently covered in soldiers. I didn’t stop until I got up to the top, and leaned over to see a pair hulking monsters outside.

  23

  The rolegurdaüdi waved to me with what seemed like big smiles on their terrible faces. It didn’t surprise me to see the two gray beasts, with their long creepy fingers and pug-like noses, standing at the gates.

  It was the third one who surprised me.

  That one was slightly smaller than the others. It looked like—

  “Hey!” I yelled out. “You took my leg!”