by Jez Cajiao
“Oh, don’t worry,” Yen piped up grimly. “It’s not just you.”
“What?” Grizz asked, whipping his head back up and noting the expressions on both Yen and Tang’s faces, then the wide grins on the faces of the rest of the Legionnaires that passed by.
“I was conned,” I said shortly.
“You never heard the saying, did you?” Yen asked me, quirking an almost-sympathetic smile.
“Which one?” I asked.
“‘If you think you’ve won when it comes to a Centurion Primus, count your fingers, toes, then relatives,’” she said sadly.
“That’s not a real saying,” I scoffed, ducking under the canvas edge of a large grey-green tent, and shaking myself, sweeping my hair back from my face and running my fingers through my beard to get rid of the water. “Damn, I need a trim.”
“Well, I can do it,” offered Bane, materializing out of stealth. “Just let me near that throat with my blades…” He finished in a low growl.
“Not a chance!” I said, grinning at him. “You brought this on yourself, mate!”
“How?!” he growled, and I opened my mouth to tell him when Lydia and the rest of her team reached the tent, coming inside in response to my waved invitation. Romanus was heading across the grass, and with him were a dozen or so other Legionnaires, carrying tables, chairs, and more.
“Hi, guys…” I said to the squad, smiling at their return greetings. “Look, I’m just going to get this over with...” I sighed, giving up on any chance of sugarcoating it. “There’s no good way to say this, but you all know who Centurion Primus Restun is, right?” I asked, grinning evilly when Arrin spoke up.
“The guy who was torturing you last night?” he asked cheerfully, eliciting a few chuckles.
“Yup, that’s the guy. Well, there’s good news and bad news, so what do you want first?” I asked.
“Bad news,” Lydia replied. “Always th’ bad news first.”
“Fair enough. He’s decided to take over the training for us all,” I said, glancing around at the rapidly shifting looks on their faces. Lydia looked like all her Christmases had come at once, and Arrin looked like he was going to be sick, with the rest of the group falling somewhere in between.
“What the hell is the good news, then?” Arrin gasped, appalled.
“Well, if you want to come explore the Sunken City with me, you can probably put off beginning the training for a day or two,” I chuckled.
“I’m in,” Grizz said straight away. “Anything that keeps me out of his clutches for a little longer? Hell yes.”
“Me too.”
“Oh yes.”
“Can we go now?”
The others spoke up quickly, falling over themselves in their haste to escape Restun, with only Lydia and Jian looking disappointed at our imminent departure and the delayed opportunity for bodily torture.
“So, boss, the Sunken City…” Grizz prompted, and I nodded for him to continue. “Is this a, oh, you know, a situation where… if, just as a wild example, off the top of my head… where if a certain Legionnaire was to loot some stuff; gold, jewels that kinda thing… that Legionnaire would keep them, or would they have to give them up?” he asked mildly, trying to appear innocently curious.
“It’s a case of looting for the group,” I said firmly. “Everyone gets a cut, but the majority of high value stuff goes into the coffers. If we find Spellbooks, Skillbooks, or memory crystals, those definitely go into the vault, but… I’ll be giving a bonus out at the end of the dive, as you’ll have damn well earned it, and you know, risked your life and shit.”
“What about gear?” Tang asked, and I shrugged.
“Depends what it is. You’ll note the Drow weapons everyone has?” I pointed out, and he nodded. “They were all looted. I don’t have any issue with handing out the gear we take; I just want to make sure it goes to the best person for it. None of that shit about claiming stuff when you can’t use it, to just sell it later, understand?”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Yen said nodding her agreement. “We’ve all heard about people in the adventuring parties doing that. For the Legion, it’s a lot different. Usually, we give up everything to the Legion coffers, and then we get a bonus for it. Most gets sold to keep the Legion going, but sometimes you can buy the gear you want from the internal auctions before it goes outside.”
“You loot it, hand it over, then have to buy it out of the pot with your own money?” I asked suspiciously.
“It’s the fairest way, Jax,” Romanus interjected as he joined us. “It’s never been popular, but when it costs as much to feed and clothe the Legion as it does, not to mention healing potions and other supplies, well, it has to be done.”
“You buy potions?” I gaped, shocked to my core. “Surely you have people who can make them?”
“Yes and no. We had a single alchemist, and he had an assistant. That was the Legion General‒the alchemist, I mean‒and his assistant had only been studying under him a few months, as his previous assistant died last year.”
“That’s unlucky…” I said, frowning suspiciously at the too-convenient obstacle.
“Yes, you could say that.” Romanus said grimly. “It was right after we’d started to sell our own potions, due having teams of Legionnaires to harvest ingredients. It was a way to get out from under the thumb of the nobility and their taxes on the people, or so we thought, until the man who was making the potions came down with a bad case of dead. Steel poisoning.”
“Steel poisoning? I didn’t realize… you mean he was stabbed, don’t you?” I faltered, sighing at the confirming nod, and moving on. “So, the assistant was making them, or the Legion General?”
“His assistant was making the vast majority, as the Legion General was too busy, understandably. Their death meant we started having to buy them in again, instead of selling them. Then when we lost the General, with his new assistant only half-trained… well, the costs rose again,” he said grimly.
“Gotcha.” I met his embittered eyes firmly. “Well, I’ve got some good news there, then.”
“Oh?” Romanus asked, lifting one eyebrow. “Do tell. Gods know we could always use some of that…”
“Do you have access to many Skillbooks or memory crystals in the Legion?” I received a snort of derision as an answer.
“They cost more than a Legionnaire makes in years, Jax. The exceedingly rare times we loot them from battles or monster hunts, we’ve been forced to sell them, as whoever uses them gets murdered in the city shortly after, otherwise,” Romanus scoffed, anger and bitterness tinging his voice.
“Well, I’ve got a few hundred of each back at the Great Tower,” I admitted, casually dropping the bombshell into the conversation. “Spellbooks, too.” Silence spread around me as Romanus and the rest of the Legionnaires present absorbed that information. “I’m an alchemist as well, I’m crap at it, don’t get me wrong, but I can do it.”
“You have access to hundreds of them?” Romanus asked me slowly, his eyes searching my face with nervous hope. “Truly?”
“Yeah, and they cover everything from the basics to master level. Don’t get me wrong; there’s not a full library of everything… but it’s pretty packed,” I confirmed, shooting a quick look up at Oracle, who still sat, smiling proudly, on my shoulder.
“You… I…” Romanus spluttered, trying to get his words out, before turning and locking eyes with Tribune Alistor. “You see! I told you the risk was worth it! This is truly the rebirth of the Legion!”
“Yes… Prefect,” he said flatly, his eyes never leaving me, only forcing an oily smile when he caught me watching him.
I glanced from him to Romanus, realizing that Romanus had entirely missed the exchange and was lost in imagining a future where the Legion wasn’t barely scrabbling by, but was instead respected, well-supplied, and supported. I felt my heart clench when I realized what he was seeing. He wasn’t thinking of personal wealth or glory; he was picturing a world where the men and women he w
as responsible for weren’t hated and reviled. Despite seeing the causes of this desire already, knowing the weight of it, it still filled me with a simmering fury.
“Lord Jax, Prefect Romanus, they’re here,” a Legionnaire stationed outside the tent announced, and I nodded my thanks to him, swallowing my rage. The adjutants had finished setting up the inside of the tent and were filing out quickly, leaving chairs and a low table covered with food ready for us.
“We can discuss this later, then,” I reassured Romanus, dismissing the Tribune’s odd behavior from my thoughts, and turning to walk out of the tent. Romanus and the others followed my lead, with Tang and Yen staying close by. Bane was hidden somewhere close as well, I presumed, while Lydia guided the rest of the team away to give us some room to talk. Oracle lifted from my shoulder to hover at the edge of the tent, just inside the protection from the rain.
I stopped just outside the entrance, taking in the scenery for a moment. The slight drizzle was picking up to a steady downpour, making the branches of the trees surrounding the clearing shake as rivulets of water ran from their leaves.
The Battleship had landed as gracefully as it could, all things considered, but due to its size, it had still taken out a sizable swath of forest when it had come to rest. This clearing, which the Legion was leading the delegates to, was only large enough to accommodate the bow of the Battleship at one end, and that was surrounded by broken trees.
I glanced back at the devastation, then shook my head, wondering about the damage the forest must have caused to the ship. I abandoned that line of thought, however, as the first group left the tree line and walked out into the clearing.
They were led by a tall, slim man who was impeccably dressed in dark knee length boots, white trousers and shirt, topped by a red jacket and gold flashing ostentatiously at both collar and wrist, with a black cloak flapping behind him, which had been lined with a golden interior.
His long, dark hair was pulled back and tied up atop his head, a variety of feathers sticking out of the arrangement, and he totally ignored the slightly built man who hurried alongside him, holding one side of a square sheet over his head with a pair of poles. The child who bore the other side of the sheet stumbled as he tried to avoid catching it on a tree. Both he and the slight man, who motioned frantically for him to keep up, were dressed in well-worn, rough clothes, frequently mended tears in the knees and hems clear to see as they moved closer.
The pole-supported sheet was the local equivalent of an umbrella, I realized, as I watched the water streaming down the sides and off the back as the first man strode forward. He was followed by a coterie of eight guards, and unlike the guards from the city, they were heavily equipped.
Their heavy plate armor had been painted or dyed a glossy black, with a streak of red slashing across the helm and down over the right pauldron. Each was armed identically with a large triangular red shield and a spear, a heavy short sword clattering against their leg with every step.
“I am High Lord Faustus, and I own this relic,” the man said, coming to halt several feet back from our party and speaking before I could. “I have come, as a gentleman, to discuss your immediate removal from my property, and to accept your apologies and the restitution you owe for this damage.” He gestured toward the flattened trees.
“What?” I started to growl in shock, but he merely strode past me into the tent, followed by two of his guards as the rest took up station nearby.
I started to turn, fully intending to give this stuck-up fucker a piece of my mind, when Romanus quietly interrupted me.
“The second party is here…” he said discreetly, and I growled under my breath, shaking my head in frustration as I ignored the prick inside helping himself to the food we’d laid out.
The second party proved to be larger than the first, with fewer guards, but far more people. Where the first group had topped out at eleven, counting the guards, noble, and his umbrella bearers, the new group was composed of at least twenty. Only four guards were easily noticeable, but two men dressed as nobles were being carried along on separate palanquins. Each was supported by four muscular beings, the one on the right borne by heavily muscled cat people, the one on the left by people that made me think of velociraptors given humanoid form. Following behind the palanquins were another ten or so men and women of various species, each dressed in an odd blend of fashions, but all talking excitedly and occasionally pointing at the Legion and the ships.
They came to a halt a few steps from me, and both men slid down, the older man being helped from his palanquin by a young boy I’d not noticed before, while the other younger man jumped clear himself.
Where the first noble had dismissed me as unimportant, these two looked me over curiously before eyeing Romanus and shooting an unreadable glance at each other.
The older man took the lead, speaking clearly to Romanus, while the younger peered around warily, stopping only when he spotted the first party standing off to one side.
“I am Lord Hannimish, Count of the Southern Woods and the River Gaige. I have come at your request. Where is your master?”
“Hannimish!” the second noble snapped, interrupting Romanus as he opened his mouth to respond. “Look! That ass Faustus’ men are here!” Hannimish turned to look in the direction his companion indicated and growled, his color bleeding from lightly tanned to florid with anger.
“I see Faustus has beaten us to it. Very well; where is your lord, Legionnaire? Tell him I have an offer for him that will eclipse whatever that thief Faustus thinks to offer! Hurry up, man!” he snapped, glaring past me as though I didn’t exist and squinting into the tent, where Faustus glared back at him. Romanus turned to me and bowed, fist to heart, and spoke loudly and clearly so that both parties could hear him.
“Lord Jax, Scion of the Empire and High Lord of Dravith, Master of the Great Tower, and Champion of the Himnel Arena, Count Hannimish feels he can make you an offer, although what that is, he has declined to state.” With that, he straightened up and returned to a position of attention.
“Thank you, Romanus,” I ground out, trying to remain as calm as possible. “Sit with me. I think I need to reevaluate this meeting, as I’d expected common courtesy, at the very least.” I turned, walking into the tent, and shaking the rain from my hair. Once inside, Oracle shifted, blurring to full size, and joined Romanus and I as I strode purposefully to the back of the tent, tipping Faustus’s jacket onto the floor and sitting in the seat he’d obviously decided was his.
“How dare you!” he gasped, dropping his hand to a slim rapier that hung on his hip. Instantly, the atmosphere of the meeting changed, as the Legion came to life. The Legionnaires around the outskirts of the clearing spun to face the tent, one in every five facing outwards to maintain their watch, while the rest drew their swords and stood ready.
Romanus had his hand on his blade, Augustus and Restun had appeared from seemingly nowhere, while Tang and Yen joined the two Legionnaires stationed in the doorway.
The two small groups of guards were surrounded in seconds by dozens of battle-hardened veterans, and the air crackled with the promise of death. I turned to Faustus, who had frozen, his rapier only half-drawn, as he registered the reaction of the Legion.
“I’d recommend you sheath that,” I said flatly.
“Who do you think you are!” he snarled at me, eyes flinty with hatred. “I am L…”
“Lord Faustus, high muckety muck, chief wanker and all that.” I waved my hand dismissively, cutting him off as I sat back. I casually braced my naginata across my lap as Oracle came to stand behind me, one hand resting lightly on my right shoulder. “You see, there’s a problem with any title you claim,” I said slowly and distinctly, biting the words off. “I am the High Lord of Dravith, and all titles, deeds, and laws in my lands are officially up for review. As such, you can call yourself lord, king, or whatever else you think you deserve, but it doesn’t mean shit.” I steepled my hands in front of me as I watched him gape indignant
ly.
“Now, you stormed past me as if I didn’t matter… okay, I’m not dressed appropriately, so maybe that’s on me, but the way you acted before the Legion Prefect and his men? Legionnaires that you damn well had to recognize as officials of the Empire? No. That’s not acceptable.” I stared him down, my tone flat with anger.
“They are Legionnaires!” Faustus interrupted me, glaring indignantly, while Hannimish and his companion kept silent, observing.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “They are Legionnaires. Men and women who dedicate their lives to making sure the Empire is protected, to hunting monsters, defending the weak, and standing between innocents and the evil of the realm. And. You. Just. Treat. Them. Like. Shit.” I enunciated, punctuating every word with scorn.
“Ridiculous; they’re just legionnaires!” Faustus snapped again, totally unaware of the effect his attitude was having. “Anyway, they don’t matter! I was deeded this relic by Lord Barabarattas himself! To that effect, you are trespassing, and you will leave immediately! You have ships, I see… they look similar in design to the great Airships of Himnel, although they are obviously inferior. I will permit you to take two of the smaller ones. The rest will remain here as restitution for your crimes! Legionnaires, I have spoken. Do your duty!”
“You sure that’s what you want them to do?” I asked him, my voice dropping to a low purr. “You want these Legionnaires to perform as their duty tells them?” I could see the Legionnaires in the tent shift, and the fool went on speaking.
“Silence, you oaf!” he snarled at me. “Learn to hold your tongue when your betters speak, or lose it! Legionnaires, I ORDER you to do your duty!”
“Very well. Romanus, do ‘your duty’, please, and inform those outside as well.” I smiled coldly, leaning back in my chair as I reached out to the nearby table, picking up a slim wedge of pale cheese, and taking a bite.
Romanus saluted smartly, and, barely able to keep the grin from his face and the satisfaction from his voice, he called out clearly to the Legionnaires around the clearing, his voice only slightly muffled by the tent fabric.