“I appreciate your sacrifice. Did you get it done?”
“Would you expect anything less? I have written enough propaganda to put a despot to shame.”
“How long until we get it printed? You have contacts, yes?”
“It’s already done, Beno. I didn’t waste every single coin from the profits of our last book. I bought myself a portable printing device from an artificer. It runs on a cog work system powered by crystallized mana, of which I also bought a small supply. All I need do is feed it paper and my beautiful words. It is all done. See for yourself.”
We were in the center of Yondersun now, traversing a street named Jahn’s Row in honor of my core friend who had built the first Yondersun buildings in this very spot. Not long ago there had been nothing but a wasteland. Then there were a dozen wooden lodges, six on each side. Now, there had to be thirty lodges on both sides of the street. Signs advertised barber services, ornamental clocks, baked goods. Yondersun residents and strangers alike wandered from shop to shop, some hunting for supplies they needed while others ambling by without purpose, lured in by the declaration of sales and low prices made by the merchants outside.
While this was always the busiest part of town, I began to realize that the activity today was unusual. Groups of humans, orcs, goblins, and gnomes were standing around, some with their gazes fixed to pieces of paper, others chatting excitedly.
“Word spreads fast,” I said.
“Rumors spread fast, Beno. Not just words. They spread all the faster when someone is actively spreading them, and when that someone is a master scribe.”
I listened to the chatter around me to get a sense of the glorious lies Gulliver had spread.
“I knew we couldn’t trust them No-Cores! Peaceful protest? My arse.”
“To think, I almost joined their last picket. No, not because I don’t like the cores. I just wanted to be part of something. Well…dodged an arrow there, didn’t I?”
“Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Mark me, I always sensed they were up to no good.”
Swarms of chatter buzzed in the air, while more and more people joined the various groups and partook in gossip. Meanwhile, four little goblin boys and girls ran around handing pieces of paper to anyone with empty hands.
“Slipped them a bronze coin each to make sure everyone got a copy,” said Gulliver, proudly. “They’ve done a good job.”
“What lies did you spread?”
“What we agreed on, of course.”
“And the mimic?”
“It’s all taken care of, Beno! Why do you think I’m so tired? Writing a few authentic-sounding lies doesn’t take a master scribe too long, and I had the goblin kids work my printing press. The reason I’m severely lacking in my beauty sleep is that your damn mimic and I have been skulking around town for the last two nights, making sure that we were seen.”
This was all so glorious. It was one thing plotting this whole thing with Gulliver, and another watching it unfold like a well-oiled deckchair.
I could picture it now. The mimic, taking Boothe Stramper’s form, hanging around the eastern part of town in the middle of the night. All-so-conspicuously loitering around the memorial that Jahn was making, that project of Galatee’s that she was so proud of. It was supposed to mark the lives lost in the wars preceding Yondersun’s formation, but I had a better use for it.
All it needed was for Boothe to be seen hanging around there suspiciously. Couple that with Gulliver’s lies…
“Beno, look!” said Gulliver, pointing.
At the far end of Jahn’s Row, a group approached us. There were Galatee and her guards, comprised of four gnomes and three orcs, none of them wearing armor given the ridiculously warm sun, but all of them armed.
“Chief, did you read this?” asked one middle-aged gnome lady, holding up a sheet of paper.
“Not now, Kyren,” said Galatee. “Better that you go inside.”
They walked straight by us and stopped outside a house. Two guards went around to the back, while the other five stayed out front with Galatee. The chief called up to the window.
“Boothe Stramper!” she shouted. She waited a few seconds before shouting again. “Boothe Stramper!”
A half-naked man appeared at the window, his chest and face heavily scarred.
“You want some company, chief, you need only ask!”
The crowds on Jahn’s row quietened now. Every set of eyes focused on the chief and her guards surrounding Boothe’s house.
“Boothe Stramper, we have some questions to ask you.”
“It takes six of you to have a conversation? I know I’m intimidating, chief, but you do me too much honor.”
“Get dressed and come with us.”
“Certainly! Just give me a second, and I’d be happy to go anywhere you want, escorted under armed guard. Wait a second…it occurs to me to ask you why.”
“Boothe Stramper, you were seen sneaking outside the memorial site for the last two nights, by multiple witnesses. Today, we have come into possession of sensitive information, gathered by the diligence of my guards.”
“Stop saying my name before every damn sentence, gnome, and tell me what information is that?”
“Information that I will not discuss in the middle of the street, Stramper, but which you will have to answer for.”
“It’s true,” shouted an orcish merchant, standing beside his shop and waving a paper in the air. “You’ve got a lot to answer for, you and your No-Cores. Plotting to destroy the memorial and blame the cores for it. You make me sick!”
Galatee shot a look at the gnome. “Where did you get that?”
“We found them all over town, and those little goblin scamps have been giving them to everyone.”
“What…forget it! Stramper, we know you and your No-Cores were planning to damage the memorial and blame it on the cores. It would have been a somewhat passable plan, had you not written it down and then used a press to make copies.”
Stramper looked utterly confused. “Destroy the…woman, you have lost your mind! Not only is this a pile of cow shit, but you can’t do anything to me without the other chief to back you up. Everyone knows that you’re powerless without one another.”
“The chief has lost nothing, especially not her mind, though I am close to misplacing my temper,” said a voice. Chief Reginal arrived with his half dozen goblin guards. “Get down here now, Stramper. Don’t make this worse for yourself.”
“I want to talk to Gilleasberg.”
“So do we, if only the craven git hadn’t fled town like a goose with an arrow in its arse. Now get down here.”
“Fine,” Stramper spat. “Let me get ready.”
He disappeared from the window. Even more people had joined the spectacle now. It was the busiest I had seen Jahn’s Row since the mass celebration we’d had on Yondersun’s naming day.
“Well done, Gull,” I said. “This worked out perfectly. So perfectly that I’m beginning to wonder if there actually is a god, and if I have somehow blundered my way into his good graces.”
“Not that I doubt your ability to blunder but if you want to praise anyone, you might praise my skill in spreading lies. It isn’t easy to create something that people will believe, Beno. It takes a scribe’s skill, the years of training behind it, and a healthy dose of scribe mana. I could write that someone was a chicken, and by the time they finished reading the note, they’d be clucking and shitting eggs.”
“You might be overestimating your powers a tad.”
“You see this scene, and you doubt it?”
It was hard to deny that Gulliver’s propaganda had worked a spell on these people in much the same way as Brecht’s bard songs. I supposed that regular propaganda might work on the gullible, but only a master scribe could have an effect like this.
“Stramper?” shouted Galatee. “Enough messing around. Get out here, or we’ll drag you out by your feet. You must be ready now.”
“Oh, I’m ready.”
The front door burst open, and Boothe Stramper leaped out. He was dressed in full-body metal armor that must have weighed more than a horse and would surely boil him alive under the wasteland sun. Yet for all that, he moved with ridiculous agility, seemingly not encumbered in the lightest. He had his curved blade in one hand and a longer sword in the other, the tip coated in a sinister black ooze.
“You wanted to talk?” he bellowed, charging at Galatee and Reginal, “I have a few things to say, you sun-worshiping inbreds!”
While four guards placed themselves in front of both chiefs, two previously-loyal goblins wilted, stepping back in a way that was likely meant to be inconspicuous. They unclasped their armor, tossed their swords, and tried to blend in with the crowd of gawkers. I watched, disgusted with their cowardice.
Stramper laid into the guards blocking him from Galatee. He slashed one with his curved blade, cutting a crescent shape into his thigh and bringing the poor goblin to his knees. He buried his long sword in the stomach of another, yanking it once, twice, and three times before he could pull it all the way out again.
The remaining two guards, their courage just about holding, came at him, one on each side. Stramper took the brunt of one strike by lifting his sword and blocking the blow with a clang of metal.
He turned quickly, slashed the guard across the neck with his other knife, before completing his circle and facing the other again. With a headbutt and a knee to the groin, the final guard, a gnome barely into adulthood, was on the ground, sucking in air. Stramper allowed him one last breath before bringing his sword down again and finishing the job.
“Come on!” he yelled, his face flushed red, clearly under the spell of battle. “Anyone else want to try before I murder your chiefs in front of your eyes, you set of cowards?”
Three guards came running from the back of the house, rushing at Stramper from behind. Yet another three closed in front.
Swords clanged off Stramper’s metal. The man twisted as if he wore no armor at all. He slashed throats and stabbed bellies. After wedging his sword firmly into the gut of a gnome and dropping his curved blade when a goblin cut his wrist where his armor didn’t fully join, Stramper bit ears and noses and he punched faces with his great metal fists until finally, all the guards were on the ground. Nobody stood in the way and him and the chiefs.
It was a surprisingly quick spectacle. Barely two minutes between him launching out of his house and destroying Reginal and Galatee’s guards. In that time, most of the Yondersun onlookers had retreated behind the safety of locked doors, yet couldn’t resist watching from their windows.
I used my core voice now, projecting it back into the dungeon. “Gary, Brecht, Razensen. Get up here. Now.”
“I told Gilleasberg that a protest is no way to get what you want,” said Stramper. He put his foot on the chest of a dead gnome and wrenched his sword free. “Gilleasberg wanted your power for himself, the berk. He thought the way to do it was to stand around with stupid signs and sing stupid songs. Told me that if he got enough people behind him, he could do anything. And the way to get people behind him? Give ‘em something to hate. Doesn’t matter what, just needs to be a target everyone can get behind in mutual dislike. Not the worst plan, I suppose, but too slow for my liking. Start a conversation with words, sure, but if it ain’t going the way you like, then finish it with a sword.”
My monsters weren’t going to get here in time, and there was nothing that I could do on my own. When it came down to it, at times like this, I really was just a lump of rock. Damn it!
Nor would anyone else be able to help. The bulk of Reginal and Galatee’s forces were either doubling as laborers and thus were a few miles away with Jahn, or were on their damned training exercise in the wasteland.
“We can’t just watch,” said Gulliver.
“Razensen is on his way, but not soon enough.”
“Times like this I wish I’d learned a thing or two about swordplay,” said Gulliver. Then he watched Stramper kick a groaning goblin in the face. “Or perhaps not.”
Stramper advanced on the chiefs, the sun beaming down on his metal armor and glinting off it. For all the metal’s weight, for all his exertion, he barely looked out of breath.
That was when I realized why; the armor was artificed. Such an obvious answer! Like Cael with his bag of stones, Stramper must have paid for the metal armor to be artificed to weigh less than it should. But demons below, that must have been an expensive order.
“I was going to give you the option of letting me take a cart out of town without making any more corpses,” he said, “But you’ve annoyed me, to put it mildly, you sun-drenched cretins. Curse the day I ever met Gilleasberg, the lanky git. Curse the day I ever took his gold. Curse the gods’ damned day I ever thought it would be nice to earn a few coins the peaceful way. Should have known no such bloody way exists.”
He sprinted toward the chiefs, sword raised. He brought it down with a roar, the blade set to slice Galatee’s skull in half.
Clang!
Another sword met his and held it back. Chief Reginal stared into Stramper’s eyes as he strained with all his strength, trying desperately to force his metal armored foe into giving up ground.
“Should have given peace a chance,” grunted Reginal. “All those scars, and not a single one ever taught you anything.”
Finally, I saw something that I could do. I floated toward them, straight into Stramper’s face. He flinched, lost concentration.
It was just for a second, but that was all it took.
Still holding his sword in his right hand and pushing back on Stramper with it, Reginal used his left to slip a dagger from his belt and plunge it into the gap in Stramper’s armor where the metal ended and his fleshy neck began. He buried it to the hilt, forcing the man to the ground with a crash that sounded like an elephant falling over.
Stramper hit the ground face-first, blood pooling around him, having received a final wound that would never get the chance to scar over.
Galatee, unused to fighting, was paler than sandstone. Reginal took her arm.
“Come on, now. Let’s get you something to drink.”
She let him keep his grip for a second, before shrugging him off. She acted as if she had recovered herself, though a longer look at her eyes told me this wasn’t true.
Nevertheless, she gave her most chiefly expression and began pointing fingers at the closed doors of the lodges lining Jahn’s Row.
“Regardless of the blinding yellow tint of your bellies, I want everyone with arms and legs to get out of here and bloody well use them. I want the rest of the No-Cores found and arrested. Above all, get me Gilleasberg. I’ll shove a spike up his arse and leave him under the wasteland sun smeared in oil.”
One goblin, wearing his armor once again, approached nervously. “They say Gilleasberg’s gone, Chief Galatee.”
“Gone?”
“Took passage with a corn trader. He’ll be long gone.”
“We have carts of our own, don’t we? Try and run him down.”
“He has a head start, Chief.”
“I don’t care!” roared Galatee. “He plotted to destroy the memorial, blame it on our cores, and take Reginal and my seats, to boot. If that wasn’t enough, his thug almost killed us! The scum might have a head start, but you will at least try to run him down. In fact, I will hold the bloody reins myself. Come on!”
Galatee stormed off, trailed by the goblin. Shop doors opened and gaggles of Yondersun residents stepped out onto Jahn’s row, chatting excitedly. That excitement died when they saw the corpses of fallen guards strewn over a bloodstained street, and an eerie silence settled over the town. They just stood and watched in respectful quiet, gazing at the wounded and the dead.
Surrounded by the fallen, focused on Stramper’s body, was Chief Reginal. He stared at his dead foe, clutching his sword like a long-lost friend while wearing a smile on his face.
CHAPTER 14
Shadow struggled to
keep up with the human and his stupid big legs and giant strides. It would have been easier to just tell him she needed a break, but she refused to do that and so had to struggle on over the wasteland, cursing her stupid kobold luck that she was the one with stealth skills and not Tomlin or Brecht or any of the others.
“Hurry up, little wolf! The sun is already yawning!”
“I have eyes, you big oaf.”
“Aren’t you the grumpy one? I swear, ever since we left your dungeon you’ve had a face like a slapped arse.”
“I suppose the effect is one you’re familiar with if you’ve ever glanced into a mirror.”
“Your words cut me like the sharpest axe,” said Eric, laughing.
That was another of the list of infuriating things about the lunk of muscle. Ever since leaving the dungeon, she’d tried her best to rile him up. She’d tried every insult she could think of.
Not only couldn’t she get under his skin, but his skin must have been made of steel or something. He answered even her worst insults with a good-natured laugh and a modest retort like “Well, my Ma always said there are people who can think, people who can fight, and only the best of us get both. I ain’t the best of us.”
They had barely stopped since leaving Yondersun, pausing only during the middle of the afternoon when the sun was at its peak. Shadow just didn’t know how long she could go on. The heat was never-ending. Spending most of her life in a dungeon, Shadow was used to dim light and cool breezes. Not this, not this endless, unrelenting, scorching hell. She understood now why Core Beno was constantly insulting the sun.
She hated the sun now. She loathed the heat. Worse than everything, she really missed her dogs. Arcas, Tentri, Mossgrove, Fenroy. As much as they drove her mad with their barking and constant need for attention, they were a comforting presence. Out here in the wasteland with only Eric the barbarian for company, she missed their noise.
Without warning Shadow stumbled, falling to her knees.
The barbarian touched her shoulder. “Easy,” he said.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 80