The Clan

by D. Rus

  "He's the King's personal designer, Master. An award-winner. He used to decorate the palace of-"

  "Fire everyone! Once their twenty-four hour contract is expired!"

  "We can't!" Lurch protested. "All this will die!"

  I looked at the glorious beauty around us. At Lena who was sitting amid the flowers that seemed to cuddle up to her, stroking a huge violet blossom that curled up in her lap ringing like a silver bell.

  "Very well. You can leave the bare minimum of staff to care for all this splendor."

  "You really like it?" Lurch asked timidly.

  "Of course I do. But for future reference, all expenses over a hundred gold have to clear my desk. This is official, effective immediately."

  "Yes, Sir!"

  I heard what sounded like the chirruping of hundreds of sparrows coming from the direction of the mosaic paths. Then a screech of metal. This felt like some sick déjà vu.

  I turned my head and my blood turned to ice. Squalling and quipping, a dozen goblins were dragging across the paving stones the enormous egg of a 500K GP bomb, its stabilizing fins bent.

  Chapter Eighteen

  "All freeze!" I squeaked, watching the metal spark against the stone. "Where d'you think you're taking that?"

  Apparently relieved, the goblins let go of the bomb which thumped to one side, crumpling its fragile fins. I shut my eyes and shrunk my head into my shoulders. A second passed. Nothing. Phew. I could live without this sort of surprises.

  One of the cleaners—no idea where he'd got hold of his grubby bandana—wiped his sweaty forehead. "Well, eh... You said eggs, didn't you? We're taking this thing over there," he nodded at some designer art in the shape of a hill two stories high covered in flowers and veined with blue streams.

  I stared at the hill's rounded sides. Then one of the flower beds stirred, letting out the shabbily clad skinny backside of a goblin crawling out from under the amber moss. The creature cast a furtive glance around and began studying his stolen trophies. Raising his left hand to his nose, he sniffed what on closer scrutiny turned out to be another grenade. With a screech of metal against metal, he tried to bite a bit of it off, snorted his disappointment and cast the inedible thingy aside. The grenade thumped up and down on the uneven ground, rolling toward us.

  By then I was quite used to the sight of ordnance being dropped. Stepping on the dirty-green sphere, I stopped its chaotic journey. The same as the one I'd taken from the dwarf, only the markings this time were a sickly glittering acid green. Good thing, anyway. Waste not, want not.

  In the meantime, the goblin was already appraising another trophy. This time he was in luck. An enormous egg the size of that of an ostrich—at least—promised him a hearty meal. The goblin sniffed it greedily, bit the top off, then began swallowing the contents. I, however, was studying the handmade hill with a different eye, recognizing the familiar shapes of various ammunition in its bumps and mounds. If the whole thing detonated, holy mother of God...

  As if answering my thoughts, a dull explosion echoed not far from us. The earth shook quite tangibly.

  "That's nine," Lurch commented.

  I peered at the cloud of smoke rising over the castle walls. "A sapper only gets to make one mistake. And that's when he chooses his profession."

  Only then I noticed the goblins' foreman. He was running past us, his stick shredded, one eye twitching.

  "Harlequin? Where do you think you're going?"

  "Eh? What?" he looked about him. Finally noticing us, he ran right toward me. "Master! Forgive me, Master, but we need more hands!"

  "Really? What have you done with the old ones, then?" I upped the sarcasm in my voice.

  He hung his head. "It's that damn nest. Once I told those idiots we were looking for eggs, they keep tasting everything they find. Also, sometimes the shells break when they drag them. Then we had this big boom..."

  "Casualties?" I grew serious. It was all right laughing at it, but every blown-up goblin was costing me.

  Harlequin made a helpless gesture. "I can't be everywhere at once, Master. These are their clans' castoffs, they have no brains, only instincts. If I could have some warriors or craftsmen, or even free artisans... Those guys over there are junk. All they're capable of thinking of is food, sex and the fear of punishment."

  Oh well. Hint taken. Penny wise and pound foolish. But how was I supposed to know you needed brains to collect junk and sieve through stone debris? True, I'd accepted the cheapest offer available... and a cheapskate always pays twice. "What are our losses, exactly?"

  "One mighty big egg, three medium ones and lots of small ones. They just swallow them whole, the bastards..."

  Illustrating his words, a new Boom! assaulted our ears, much more powerful than the previous one. The earth tried to shake us off. A gray cloud of dust rose to the sky over the outer wall.

  "That's four medium ones," the foreman corrected himself.

  "Actually, I meant workers. And how about this egg, does it count as 'mighty big'?" I looked at the bomb which by now was gradually integrating into the garden's design. The flowers' tendrils climbed its rough sides, generous touches of colored moss streaking the sad metal. Quick job. Better not to drop anything of value here: before you could bend down to pick it up, the lost gold piece would be forever buried inside the trunk of an ancient oak tree. No joke: it looked like the gardeners had overdone it on the growth promoter.

  "That one? That's a medium one," the goblin snickered at the bomb. "The real mighty big one, that was a different story. I was a hundred paces away and my eye is still twitching. So I'm afraid we don't have many workers left, Master! A dozen-plus at most. You've got to hire a few new ones."

  Holy cow. I dreaded to think what it was that they'd detonated over there. No, I couldn't leave it like that. These little goblin rats were certain to blow us all to hell and back. Besides, it was a shame wasting our supplies so pointlessly. Every explosion made my inner greedy pig sob as he mourned, crossing it off his list, every bit of the loot we could have taken off the great dragon Nagafen had we used all that ammo to blow him to smithereens.

  "Lurch? Do we have somewhere where we can store hazardous artifacts? Someplace well protected, preferably underground?"

  "We do indeed," he answered. "The lowest level of the basement, Alchemy Laboratory #2. Before, it was occupied by some spider-like monster and now it's Hell Hounds living there. Master," he hurried to complain, "the hounds disturb the walls' integrity! They're digging two tunnels, one of which is coming out behind the exterior wall!"

  I glanced at the hound next to me. I had little doubt that her mental magic skills were more than enough to listen into our conversations, so openly she sneered and wiped her feet on the grass as if removing the non-existing cobwebs. Actually, I wouldn't want to be the spy who used the tunnel to walk right into the Hell Hounds' lair. Besides, I had indeed promised I'd let them choose any room they wanted so it wasn't quite kosher to backpedal now, not to mention the harm it could do to my reputation. Head tilted to one side, the hound followed my thinking process with some interest. Jeez. I really didn't need another cloak-and-dagger specialist to haunt me.

  "No, Lurch, I don't think we need this kind of time bomb right under our backsides," I told him. "If something goes wrong, God forbid, the First Temple will be blown to kingdom come. At least my friends and I can go back to our respawn points, but the NPCs have no such luck. You'll be reduced to nothing. Hound?" I halted, not knowing how to address her. It really was time I got her a name. "Excuse me, Hound, if you find it too personal, but actually—are you male or female?"

  The pooch glared at me, tensing up. Her mental message hit me like a slap in the face—literally, judging by the Divine Immunity prompt that popped up. I ignored the attack. Sorry pup, I didn't mean it.

  "Female," she mumbled, indignant. "Males are incapable of mental speak. They can't lead the pack," she snorted, bathing me in another mental wave of indignation that sent the squeaking goblins scampering a
way. She was one powerful bitch.

  "Sorry, babe. It's just that I don't know how to address you. I'm fed up with calling you hound. What if I call you... eh..."

  I rummaged through my memory, trying to think of something nice as I hurriedly discarded various Ladies and Lassies. Inferno creatures were fast and deadly. Lightning sounded about perfect, but for me it was more associated with the cute Disney car than a dog, and in this world of wishes coming true you had to be careful about any subconscious slips. I didn't think the Hound would grow two pairs of wheels but nor would she appreciate a postbox-red lick of paint. Oh well, if not Lightning, what then? Spark? More modest but also fast, it too could hurt or even lead to a fire or an explosion.

  "Spark! How d'you like that?"

  The Hound started. Her nostrils flared, her claws crumbling the path's precious mosaic as she retracted them. She tilted her head to one side, apparently listening to herself, appraising her new status. Her eyes glistened with intellect, acquiring a new unusual depth.

  Finally, her heavy armored head lowered in a bow. "Thank you, Priest, for your priceless gift..."

  Aha. There seemed to be a pattern here. Apparently, for all monsters a name was something much more important than just a sequence of sound waves. "It's my pleasure, Spark. I'd really appreciate it if you told me what makes this gift so valuable."

  At the sound of her name, the Hound rolled her eyes and, forgetting herself, grunted with pleasure. "By distinguishing me from amongst thousands of others and rewarding me with this unique mark, you use your power of creation to enter me into this world, giving me a soul and a chance to be reborn. The name is what shields us from oblivion and its ocean of shapeless biomass that forms thousands of creatures every second only to be destroyed in a matter of hours by the death-hungry Undead Ones."

  Oh well. These monsters seemed to have pretty grim afterlife ideas. Now I could understand their unwillingness to die. Wonder if the developers had introduced this behavioral algorithm on purpose in order to improve their combat qualities, or was it some secret knowledge that had surfaced on its own?

  I turned to the foreman faltering nearby, "Harlequin? What do you think?"

  He silently pointed at the gaping holes in his clothes, reached into his pocket and produced a handful of purple fragments. He lowered his head.

  What was that now? Had he already blown himself up somewhere? Then how come he hadn't disappeared like the faceless cleaners had? Did it mean he'd respawned?

  "Lurch?" I called.

  "Master," his voice broke. "Only yesterday I was a mixture of cold logic and a desire to serve. And now I take in the flowers and colors, I feel tickled when the Hounds dig their tunnels, and drool over the mosaic roof tiles in the designer catalogue. Also, there's a couple of starlings made their nest in the donjon's Southern gun slit. The way they sing, it's something..."

  The mind boggles. Who were we, then—toddler Creators, playing with tin soldiers in some celestial nursery? Were we building worlds then destroying them without even realizing it? No. We were still a long way from becoming creators. We were, at best, some Godlike larvae, their gestation period stretching into hundreds and thousands of years. Only then, provided you hadn't lost your soul on the way, did you receive the chance to turn into a butterfly.

  I turned back to the Hound. "Do you think it would be a good idea to give names to all the dogs in the pack?"

  Spark paused, thinking. Then she shook her head, "No. I don't think it's a good idea to grant one a soul casually. Besides, your powers aren't boundless; on the contrary, they're infinitely limited. It's one thing to add one final stroke to the unique portrait of an already-extraordinary creature, finalizing its creation by breathing life into it. And it's quite another to create a unique personality from a faceless outline. I don't think you're strong enough to do it. You need to wait for a particular situation—an event, a deed of courage—when this member of the pack steps out of the ruck. Only then the precious seed of the name you give her can sprout into a fully developed soul."

  That made sense. It felt—how would I put it—it felt right. I had this sense that this was how it was supposed to be. Well, all the more reason to accept this explanation as a working theory until proven otherwise.

  "I see," I said. "Okay, back to our problems. Harlequin, I'm going to hire you twenty top class workers. As for the eggs, you shouldn't drop or drag them. You need to carry them with caution and on tiptoe."

  I paused, comparing the goblins' frail arms and legs with the half-ton contraption. Well, well. What you really needed here was a troll trained in ballet dancing so he could carry stuff around for them. I had to check the hiring board, they had all sorts there. If push came to shove, I could always create my own staff using the manual generation option. True, it was more expensive and had its limitations: you couldn't, for instance, create a vampire hobbit as strong as an ogre. But it probably could build something like a super-cautious and balanced troll.

  "Lurch, I've got a job for you. You need to clean all the stage scenery from the hill. You can add all the props later. Let the goblins do their job first."

  "Both hills!" the foreman demanded.

  I looked around. Which both? Were there two of them? Why didn't I know anything about it? Indeed, at the back of the court lurked another rather enormous heap partially concealed by the first one. Hadn't I told them to put all atypical junk aside? Wasn't that what I'd told the foreman?"

  Greed got the better of me. "Clean it up!" I snapped.

  As Lurch sighed, protesting, the cleaners began pulling apart its colored moss and fragile flowers. I noticed a few of the more intellectual plants that, scared by the prospect of total destruction, tucked up the skirts of their leaves and scurried off the hill all by themselves. So! I'd seen fly traps and I'd heard of cannibal vines, but I'd never come across anything like this.

  In the meantime, the goblins acquired a taste for pulling things apart. "Easy!" I shouted. "We'll still have to restore it all. I've paid for every handful of humus with my own money!"

  "Absolutely," Lurch agreed. "I had to buy everything here, even the earth worms, and these goblins gobble them down like there's no tomorrow! You can't just stick the Singing Bluebells in the ground! You need to provide them with a proper eco system."

  "Very wise," I winced. "Listen, I just pray to God you don't buy any more worms or whatever without asking me first. Are you a responsible building or a market stall? I'll tear you down and build some outhouses instead! That's a promise!"

  "Eh, I-" Lurch faltered. "Root worms, they don't propagate, you see. You need to buy new ones every month..."

  "How many?" I groaned.

  "Only a couple thousand. If no one starts eating them, of course."

  "How much?"

  "Peanuts! A hundred gold," Lurch pleaded.

  I stared at the plants, their jingle anxious now. They were beautiful, nothing to say. Besides, it would be a shame if they died... "Very well, then. And not a penny more. Also, I'd like to ask you to move one bluebell to a pot. I need to make a gift."

  Finally, the second heap bared its sides gleaming in the sun. I poked at it with my virtual cursor, selecting objects as targets to read their stats.

  A ragged piece of metal, the side of a good serving dish, must have made up part of something seriously heavy caliber, judging by the remaining markings and the recognizable curve of its shape:

  Mithril Ore. Metal content: 8%. Weight: 13.4 Lbs.

  About a dozen neat rectangular plates like those used in bulletproof jackets:

  Enriched Mithril Ore. Metal content: 64%. Weight: 0.7 Lbs.

  Oh. It looked like the steel invaders used an octal number system: too many of their numbers were divisible by eight. The length of the gun handle, too, suggested a much wider hand—definitely not a five-digit one.

  I walked over and stuffed the plates into my bag. That was a near-pure ingot of Moon silver that might come in handy anywhere—whether for crafting, selling or repres
entation purposes.

  I paused wondering which one of our technogenic metals it was equivalent to. Something light but robust that you could use to create heavy-duty alloys for making armor plate and things like that. Titanium? Could be.

  I looked over the heap trying to second-guess its size, then shoved a couple more handfuls of frags into my bag. The whole lot probably wouldn't be enough to fill in the financial abyss but with any luck it might cover at least one third of it. The thing was to enter the market wisely, making sure I didn't bring the demand down by flooding it with offers. In that case, even my children might have to sell the strategic mithril reserves one piece at a time.

  I turned to check on my team, still faltering in the courtyard, goofing around as they waited for my orders. That wasn't the deal. We had more work than we could manage and no initiative offered to get it done!

  "Durin," I began spitting out orders, "make an inventory of everything. Then sort it by metal content and anything you find worth noting. Lock all the valuables in the vault and set all the weird objects aside. I'll check them myself later."

  "I'll manage," the zombie grumbled. Rolling his sleeves, he headed for the precious hill.

  "Spark! Check the area quick and find me a cave or a cellar, somewhere to keep all this explosive shit in. I'll give you a troll to move the stuff and a few guards. It should be at least..." I estimated the size of our arsenal, "no less than two-thirds of a mile from the external wall."

  "I'll send someone in a minute," the pooch said, childlike. She was busy trying to shift the armor plates on her neck and scratch it with one hind leg—a very doglike gesture. Lena felt sorry for her. Coming over, she began scratching the dog nice and hard. The pooch groaned in ecstasy.

  "Lena?" I said.

  "I'm busy, sorry. My Dad has just sent me a message. He'll be logging in in five minutes. I need to go and get him. I want to show him the castle."