“None of them like the Hounds of Death. And that’s putting it lightly.”
“Huh,” I grunted.
“Yup. So here’s what’s going to happen: six clans, four of whom hate a certain other clan, formed an alliance, and now they’re going to easily and almost without losing anyone, take Mirastia, a location just about nobody else has been able to beat. And the others suffered heavy losses.”
“And nobody will ever hear about us,” I said, continuing his thought. “Nobody writes or talks about the cannon fodder; they only write and talk about the cannon. And those guys over there are going to climb right over our dead bodies straight to Skull Palace.”
Fattah took over from there. “They’ll record the whole thing, too. Then they’ll open up the clan to recruits, say, at Level 15 and higher. They’ll get a river of noobs joining them, and Fortune’s Favorites will have all the fodder they need.”
“That’ll make them one of the largest clans on the continent,” I replied.
“But just imagine how much money they have! Our swords aren’t cheap, and all the Free Companies are here. All of them!”
“Yep. And then they’ll scoop up another two or three clans, and…”
“And?” Fattah looked at me pointedly.
“Now, I see why he mentioned the Thunderbirds,” I responded darkly. “We’re friends with the Hounds.”
“He was letting you know that you’ll have to answer for that friendship,” Fattah said with a smile.
Those may be the clans our leaders split away from, I thought. If that was true, finding my way onto the Thunderbirds’ black list by deserting might be a better option than finding myself on the same list for those other six clans.
“You should leave,” Fattah said. “It may not look good, but you’ll be able to play in peace, at least.”
“Yeah,” I replied with a sigh. “Looks like a clan war is in the offing.”
“Not yet, though…” Fattah looked over at my crestfallen face. “Come on, don’t worry about it. Maybe nothing will happen. They’ll get started, their leaders will have an argument, they won’t be able to come to an agreement, and the whole thing will fall apart. That happens all the time. Remember, we’re just mercenaries. We don’t follow the crowds, nobody really sees us, and nobody kills each other in cities anyway. Relax. Nobody will touch you as long as you’re in the Free Companies.”
“Companies! Line up by number, and board in that order to head across the Crisna. Move out!” we heard a booming voice call.
“Yeah, nobody will touch me,” I replied. “On the other hand, we’re going to die over on the other bank.”
Twenty minutes later, our company clambered aboard one of the enormous rafts ferrying the Free Companies across the Great River. Lights glimmered on the opposite shore, and the clash of steel echoed back to us. The first companies had already joined the battle.
Chapter Seven
In which the hero does his job.
The raft was made out of large, fairly slippery logs. I don’t know if the idea was to hint at the unpleasant fate that awaited players on the other shore by making even the transport across the river uncomfortable, or if time, water, and a lack of electric tools and other instruments had done their work making the floating giants what they were. Either way, I fell in twice as I tried to settle into a more comfortable position, knocking off three percent of my health in the process. I gave up eventually and just laid there looking at the sky and trying to decide if I should tell the Hounds what I’d heard from Chang.
On the one hand, I assumed they had to have heard the news, and were probably very well aware of Fortune’s Favorites. On the other, it couldn’t hurt to give them a show of good faith and the deep respect I held them in. I just had to be careful.
I started by checking to see which of the Hounds from my friend list was online. There were three of them: Turok, Miurat, and Milly Re. Turok could be eliminated right away since he and I barely knew each other. Miurat was too problematic for what I was looking for. Milly Re, however, was perfect.
We were getting close to the other bank, at least judging by the crunch of skeleton bones breaking and the cries of dying mercenaries, so I quickly knocked out a message.
Hey, Milly.
I don’t know if the Gray Witch and Fredegar are aware of this, but there’s a new clan alliance with the whimsical name of Fortune’s Favorites. It just so happens to be full of the Hounds of Death’s biggest and most die-hard fans, including, for example, Fayroll Power. Something tells me that your spheres of influence will be clashing at some point in the future. They’re currently getting ready to turn Mirastia on its ear, a feat that will lend them credence. With that in mind, they hired the Free Companies—all of them. Just imagine how much that must have cost.
Milly, I also have a personal request: don’t mention the fact that I told you about this too widely, as you know my wonderful clan leader. She’ll just get on me about how I told you, but not her…
Sincerely yours, Hagen of Tronje
P.S. You looked great today. X.
It was a job well done. I’d gotten in a joke, but I also gave them some information. Someone somewhere must have checked a box for me—or was planning on checking it very soon.
The shore was already close, and I’d pulled myself up on my elbows when my internal mailbox dinged. Well, that was fast, Milly.
Hi, Kif
You have an amazing talent for turning up where:
- You shouldn’t be
- The most interesting parts are happening
Don’t stay too long on that side of the Crisna—you aren’t supposed to be there.
Also, we’ll be expecting you tomorrow at our office, sometime around eleven. A car will pick you up near your entrance by ten.
Z
Take that. The high command cut in from out of nowhere, and that had me thinking that the battle in front of me was less a chain of coincidences than someone’s plan I had no business being part of. Either that or nobody had even accounted for me—and that wasn’t strange in the least. It would have been silly for me to consider myself someone worth reckoning with in the game. More likely was that I could see something that I wasn’t supposed to see. Plus, who knows what Fayroll’s founding fathers had cooked up? Maybe I should just jump in and let the first skeleton give me an honorable and heroic death. That would send me back to the headstone on the other side having lost nothing—I hadn’t accrued any experience, and there wasn’t much for me to win in Merastia as it was.
Ding!
Hi, Hagen
The GW is aware of the new alliance, as well as the raid it is operating, though we only found out that Mirastia was the target about an hour ago. Their counterintelligence is impressive.
As far as we know, you’re there as part of the Free Companies, so would you mind meeting with me when you’re done? It would be even better if you visited our humble abode to tell us everything you saw before, during, and after your trip to that side of the Crisna.
We don’t have the right to demand that service from you, but if you provide it simply as a true friend, the Hounds of Death, myself included, will not forget it.
Your Milly
P.S. You should have seen how the GW yelled at Fredegar!
Right, “Milly.” Something told me that the most Milly had to do with the letter was writing it up and sending it, along with, perhaps, adding the postscript. The rest of the letter wasn’t like her at all, and I could just guess who it was. Things didn’t sound good, however, as there was only one way to read “their counterintelligence is impressive”: they’d played the Hounds like a fiddle. That had to have been why the Gray Witch laid into Fredegar.
“Company, to the shore!” The raft gently nudged the sand, and the mercenaries slipped and jumped down onto it.
Grunting and cursing, I clambered down and carefully made my way toward firm, familiar land. I made a mental note never to ride anything like that raft again.
Tw
o contrasting thoughts jousted in my head. On the one hand, my bosses had given me clear instructions to die without going too far inland. I wasn’t supposed to go looking for bony adventures to crack my equally bony head against. Their request was significant, and they were, after all, my employers. On the other hand, there was the Gray Witch’s request. Her clan was clearly in for some tough times, but she was still the leader of one of the game’s premier forces—making one little player’s life miserable was certainly within her power. She wouldn’t be giving me anything right away for the information I had, certainly, but it was still nice to have the world’s great and powerful owing you a favor. Her letter was clear: the longer I held out, the better it was for me.
“Oh, screw you all,” I said out loud, earning myself a puzzled glance from Fattah. I pointed at the slippery logs with my eyes, and he nodded understandingly.
Tired of puzzling over who to prioritize, I decided just to go with the flow. I wouldn’t get myself killed on purpose, and I’d just play as if nobody had written me anything. They could get eaten by trolls for all I cared right then. Besides, it wasn’t like my chances of surviving that long were any good.
Mirastia lived up to its dark, deathly, and foul reputation. The ruins of once-great buildings, the shattered remains of sculptures, the piles of trash, the heaps of bones, and the picturesque corpses scattered over the scenery intermingled with the cocoons left by the battle between the first companies and the locals. The whole picture was illuminated by large, bluish-purple bonfires blazing their way out of the ground.
Gazprom: dreams come true. It looks like there’s plenty of natural gas here, but nobody’s mining it. What’s Miller waiting for? This was what came to mind.
“Don’t just stand there, keep moving!” cut in Grokkh’s voice. “Onward with your squads—there’s almost nobody left from the companies that landed first.”
Our ragged crowd dashed forward along a shattered, potholed, but still well-marked road leading to an enormous palace in the shape of a skull that sat atop a tall hill. It didn’t look like it was more than a kilometer away, but the several companies that had gotten there ahead of us hadn’t made it all the way there.
“Fattah, what’s the skeleton respawn time here?” I panted.
“Nobody really knows for sure,” he responded. “But people think it starts when at least one respawned player crossed back over the river to rejoin an ongoing raid. If nobody tries to get back into the fight, there’s no respawn.”
“That’s smart,” I said.
Fattah wanted to say something else, but he didn’t have time. A crowd of skeletons waving rusty weapons leaped out from behind the wreck of a white-stone house and charged our squad, which was in the rear of our company. Their level wasn’t that high, but there were a lot of them: around three dozen.
Most of the column ran on ahead, leaving us to deal with our problems ourselves.
“Mmph.” Lane’s sword buried itself in the ribs of the first skeleton, knocking off a small cloud of bone dust.
“I hate the undead.” Ping deftly lopped off the head of another skeleton, complete with burning eyes and rust-crested helmet.
“Can’t stand them,” his brother added, cutting the legs out from under a third skeleton.
I didn’t say anything, simply catching one skeleton’s sword on my shield and parrying another’s blow with my sword. It wasn’t my first time around the block, and I was used to the whole thing. Can you get loot from them?
The boney undead had long since stopped scaring me—I’d left my fear of them somewhere back in Gringvort.
Our squad ground its way through the creaking joints and ragged clothes fairly quickly, the only injuries we sustained being a few cuts and scrapes.
“Oh, the Ninth Company is coming ashore—look how their corporal is yelling,” noted Torn as he wiped the blade of his saber. The last undead he’d polished off had been kind of damp, spraying slime everywhere—more zombie than skeleton.
It was true about the corporal. He was ripping into his troops with such vim and vigor that I instinctively wanted to stand at attention or fill a bag with rocks and run up and down some kind of hill. My sergeant had made it his personal mission to see me “transparent, thin, and ringing.”
“Our Grokkh doesn’t have anything on their corporal, and Grokkh is even a lieutenant,” said Garron.
“This isn’t exactly the spot to compare commanders in the Free Companies,” snorted Lane.
“Hey, the longer we stand here, the better our chances are of staying alive,” Torn shot back.
“Come on, what chances? We’re right in the middle of the whole thing.” Lane said that last part as if there were a grin on his face, though I didn’t see a single muscle twitch.
“Whatever, what happens happens,” Pong said, jumping into the conversation with some annoyance.
“You can’t run from fate,” his brother added.
The Seventh Company ran by, their lieutenant squinting disapprovingly at the group of us standing there.
Without a word, Fattah dashed off after them, and I followed suit.
The company met up with the remains of the landing force, who were doing their best to beat off skeletons from the road at the base of the hill. At some point, it had probably been a checkpoint or something similar, though all that was left was the rubble from the fortifications, the wreckage of once-powerful gates, and sheer cliffs circling the hill. The cliffs were impassable, leaving Skull Palace in a naturally protected position. It was like the neck of a bottle: there was plenty of space inside if you could just squeeze your way in.
The mercenaries were throwing themselves at the passage, but each unsuccessful attack left fewer of them for the next attempt.
“Why didn’t we bring any mages with us?” I asked.
“The living can’t use magic here—no light magic works,” Fattah replied immediately. “Only black magic, and players don’t have access to it. Neither do any of the free peoples, so it doesn’t really matter if you have mages with you. Maybe divine magic would be work, but there aren’t any gods around to try. I did hear that someone got a quest, something about the legacy of the gods, but nobody’s confirmed them—probably just another trick someone was playing. You haven’t heard anything, have you?”
I shrugged. He really did know a lot, and he was curious as all get out.
“Yes, I heard that, too, but I don’t think there’s anything to it. Some kind of gods, some kind of secret quests…”
“Pretty much.” Fattah nodded.
Yet another wave was repulsed from the entrance to the hill, and this time skeletons poured over the cliffs on top of the Free Companies in a concerted effort to crowd them away from the ruins.
A player fell back and landed right at our feet, three skeletons chasing him and his health barely hanging on to this side of the grave.
“Come o-o-n,” he howled, covering himself with his sword.
I caught a blow meant for him with my sword and knocked the skeleton back with my shield. Fattah took on the second, while Torn jumped in front of the third. The brothers, Lane, Ur, and the rest of our squad were already part of the jumble in front of the gates.
“There I was just living my life,” I heard a vaguely familiar voice say from behind me.
I turned around once I’d polished off the skeleton.
“You!” blurted out Joker, emotions from anger to happiness running across his face.
“The very same.” I did my best to keep the schadenfreude I was feeling on the inside.
Maybe next time you’ll think twice about getting other people involved in your problems.
“You think this is easy service?” the scout yelled at me accusingly, a finger pointing in the direction of the slaughter at the gates.
“It happens,” I replied haughtily. “This is the army, son.”
“It’s an animal’s life, pops!” he said, copying my tone. “Do you have a potion?”
“Yeah, right
, like I’m going to give you a potion,” I snorted. “Here’s some meat. Go hide behind some rocks, so you don’t get killed.”
“They’re going to kill me anyway.” The scout grimaced, though he took the meat. “We’ll talk over on the other side.”
I didn’t have time to answer before an arrow flew in from nowhere and finished him.
“You knew him?” asked Fattah.
“Sort of,” I responded with a shrug. “I’ll take his things in case we survive—I can give them back to him.”
“What are you standing there for, warriors? You want to be punished as deserters?” Grokkh ran by, badly wounded. “Let’s go!”
“There’s your answer,” Fattah said sarcastically, putting away his sword and pulling his bow off his shoulder. “Onward to glory!”
I grabbed Joker’s things and ran after Torn, who’d already jumped into the mess of humans, dwarves, skeletons, and everything else imaginable.
There was no way to tell who you were supposed to kill in the heat of the battle. All I knew was that working my way into the middle would have been suicide, and so I took on a skeleton that jumped down from the cliff and, sadly, didn’t collapse when he hit the ground. The first group of undead shattered into smithereens, though their remains made for a nice landing pad.
I started to realize why Wanderer was sure the illustrious Hew Orcs, My Axe clan, wouldn’t be successful. A hundred and fifty dwarves, no matter how well-equipped and high-level, simply had no chance of making it to the palace. I figured they probably died right around where we were.
The skeleton wasn’t that strong—there weren’t any strong ones there that I could see, as they were all between Level 40 and Level 43. I had picked up my shield and was looking around for a new target when something hit me. My health dropped precipitously.
The blade that did you damage was covered in a powerful poison! You will lose 1.2 health per second for the next two minutes.
Fayroll [04] Gong and Chalice Page 9