by Logan Jacobs
“So you think we stand a chance?” Penny asked.
“Of course, we do,” I said, “but I want to get our asses there as soon as we can to make sure that our forces have the best chance possible.”
“Can I do anything?” Twila asked.
“Grab a few snacks for Penny for the road,” I said with a grin, “but otherwise, have you been able to send word to Golierian yet?”
“I sent out my messenger before sunrise,” the golden-haired halfie replied, “and he knows how important it is, so he’ll move quickly.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Other than that, just help Cimarra with whatever she needs. The Capital will need more weapons, more training, and more defenses. I’ll be back here as soon as I help the Gold City, but until then, just stay safe, okay?”
“Don’t worry about us, Wade,” Twila said. “We’ll take care of ourselves.”
“I know you will,” I said with a smile. “Come on, Penny. We need to run back to the Blood City to talk to the others, come up with a plan, and then lead the charge into the Gold City.”
“I’m ready,” the redheaded pixie replied, “just as soon as, uh…”
“Oh, right,” Twila laughed. “You wanted snacks!”
The golden-haired halfie disappeared inside her dancehall, but she came back just a minute later with a sack full of snacks for Penny to take on the road.
“There’s all the usual things you like in there,” Twila said, “plus a couple extra things that I’ve been craving lately, so I thought your hormones might be making you crave them, too.”
“You’re the best,” Penny said and then went up onto her tiptoes to kiss Twila’s cheek. “See you soon.”
“Actually, can you come with us?” I asked. “I’d like to take the horse and wagon so we get to the catacombs faster, but I don’t want to just leave it down there.”
“Of course,” Twila replied. “Just lead the way.”
As soon as the three of us were in the wagon, I drove as quickly as I could through the streets down to the human district. When we reached the sewer entrance that led directly into the catacombs, Penny and I hopped down, but then I felt a brief stab of worry inside the pit of my stomach.
I shook it off and turned to kiss Twila goodbye. It was only natural that I was worried, since we were in the middle of a fucking rebellion that would completely change the face of the empire. I would have been insane or just a fool if I hadn’t been worried at all, but that didn’t mean we would lose.
I still felt sure that we would be triumphant, and it wasn’t just because the Rainbow Keys had told me that I would be king. It wasn’t even because they had shown me visions of my future victories in battle, although that certainly helped. It was because we fought with honor and with the righteous rage of all the generations who had been oppressed by the elves.
Plus, we always fought with a fucking plan.
After Penny and I passed through the portal archway into the Blood City, we hurried to the garrison there to rejoin the others so we could update them on what had happened and quickly come up with a new plan to help the Gold City.
It was still early morning when we reached the garrison, but my friends were already up and gathered around a low table in the courtyard. Leif leaned back in his chair, Ava and Clodia leaned forward as they examined the map of the empire on the table, and Dar drummed his fingers along the map as if the movement might help him generate some kind of idea.
As soon as Penny and I strode into the garrison, all four of them jumped to their feet.
“You’re back so soon!” Dar grinned, but then his face instantly grew serious. “Wait, is that bad? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“We’ve got a little bit of a problem,” I said as I dropped my shield beside the table and sat down in an empty chair. “We’re gonna need to shore up our defenses everywhere a little bit faster than we expected.”
“Damn, Leif, you really cleaned house here fast,” Penny said as she sat down beside me. “Did you already get all the elven prisoners housed and everything?”
“Housed, fed, and all safely locked away,” the big gladiator replied. “Most of them were actually surprisingly cooperative, once they realized that we weren’t going to kill them, or torture them, or throw them into a dungeon with rats and snakes, that kind of thing.”
“I did threaten a few of the more… uncooperative ones,” Clodia said, “but all I had to do was make a little ball of blue flame in my fingers, and that seemed to scare them into good behavior quite quickly.”
“Enough about what we’ve been doing,” Ava said. “Why do we need to reinforce our defenses faster than we thought?”
“Elves are lined up outside the Gold City in preparation for an attack,” I replied. “We assume they came from one of the wilderness forts, so I need to head there as soon as I can to make sure that it doesn’t fall.”
“Is that a possibility?” Dar asked.
“Not if I can help it,” I said. “Since things seem to be pretty under control here, I’d like to take the Elite with me to the Gold City to help fight, but since the elven soldiers from the wilderness fort there have already moved against it, I want to make sure that we go ahead and start to reinforce the weakest cities.”
“To be fair, the wilderness fort closest to the Gold City was pretty… well, it was pretty close,” Ava said. “That one was listed on the map.”
“You have the map on you, right?” I asked.
“It’s right in here.” The blonde assassin patted her tight vest.
“Good, keep it close,” I said. “I’ll be able to mark down the approximate location of two additional forts later, thanks to Azure, but--”
“Thanks to Azure?” Clodia repeated. “What do you mean?”
I’ll explain all that later,” I said. “For now, we need to decide which other cities we think are the most vulnerable.”
“Well, Gold City is only vulnerable because the wilderness fort is so close,” Leif said, “and that’s only because the city tends to have so many problems with wild orcs from the mountains.”
“Yeah, at least Gold City has a really good wall around it,” Dar said. “That should make it easier to defend.”
“That’s the plan,” I said. “So based on the forts listed on the map, plus what we know about all the other cities, where else should we be worried?”
“Riverhome is a problem,” Dar said. “It doesn’t even really have a wall around it, so other than the river on one side of the city, it’s basically defenseless.”
“That is a problem,” I said. “There isn’t a wilderness fort close to Riverhome, at least not any that are listed on the map, so that might be a point in our favor, but that definitely means we’ll need to give Riverhome some defenses as soon as possible.”
“What about the Blood City and the City of Slaves?” Penny asked. “Do we feel pretty secure here?”
“The walls of the Blood City are too thick to attack from the outside,” Clodia said, “so the only way someone would get in here would be through the portals.”
“That’s good news for us,” I said, “especially since that gives us an advantage when it comes to the City of Slaves, too. We can look down the hill and literally see any signs of trouble if it heads toward the City of Slaves, so I think we’ll be okay on that front for a while.”
I had already given Cimarra and Twila instructions to start additional defenses and training at the Capital, so after we had gone over the list of remaining cities, I decided that Gold City and Riverhome were the two places that we needed to focus our attention on first. Gold City was about to be under attack, and Riverhome would be defenseless if the elves showed up outside its borders.
“Okay,” I said and took a deep breath. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Dar, I want you to go to Riverhome and start to work on the city’s defenses, and I also want you to get a few of our archers from the Elite to start training an archery unit.”
“I can do that,” Dar replie
d.
“Oh, and I want you to take Melia with you,” I said. “She’s from Riverhome, right?”
“Uh, yeah, she is,” Dar said as his ears turned pink at the mention of the halfling woman.
“Good, then she’ll be familiar with the city,” I said, “so she can help you with all your work.”
“Then I’ll make sure she comes with me,” Dar said.
“Just try not to get too distracted,” I said with a wink.
“D-don’t worry!” my halfling friend stuttered. “I’ll handle it.”
“I bet you will,” Penny snickered.
“So while Dar and Melia go to Riverhome,” I said, “I want to take Leif, Penny, and Ava with me to the Gold City, along with most of the Elite.”
“But not me?” Clodia asked.
“No, but if I need you, I’ll send for you,” I replied. “I want you to stay here and keep an eye on everything in the Blood City and in the City of Slaves.”
“I understand, although I hate to be separated from you,” the night elf pouted.
“It’s just temporary,” I said with a smirk. “Besides, I still need you to keep an eye on the temple here to make sure that no one from the priesthood tries to escape.”
“Mmm,” Clodia said and then licked her lips like she hoped that someone actually would try to escape, just so she could zap them with a ball of energy. “No one will escape on my watch, Wade.”
“And that’s exactly why I need you to stay here for now,” I said. “Once we’ve gotten the situation under control at the Gold City, I’ll come back here to check on everything with you.”
“Then what?” Penny asked.
“One thing at a time,” I said with a shrug. “It will depend on if there’s another crisis to avoid or not, but we’ll probably head right back to the Capital to check on the situation there again, and hopefully by then, Golierian will be on his way back from his hiding spot in the country.”
“Then I guess we’d better get a move on,” Ava said, “especially since we don’t know how long it will be before the elves attack the Gold City.”
“We’re ready when you are,” I said. “Grab your gear, get the Elite ready to move, and meet me by the garrison gates.”
Ava and Leif had trained the Elite so well that they were all assembled, armed, and ready to go in just a matter of minutes. I let Ava choose a handful of the soldiers to go with Dar and Melia to help with that city’s defenses and training, and after they left to head to Riverhome, I strode to the front of the remaining fighters, raised my shield high, and then pounded the hilt of my sword against my shield.
“Have you had enough?” I shouted.
“No!” they cried back in one voice.
“Do you want more?” I shouted again. “Do you want more elven blood on your swords? Do you want more justice for the wrongs that have been done against you?”
The crowd cheered and pounded their fists against their chests.
“Then follow me to the Gold City, and we will continue our fight there!” I called.
I glanced over the heads of the crowd and saw Clodia on the other side of the massive courtyard. Her dark eyes shone with admiration for me, and she flicked her long black braid over her shoulder. The night elf was so in love with me that I knew she was the perfect person to leave in charge of the Blood City while I was gone, and it sure as shit didn’t hurt that she was also a total badass when it came to magic.
If the priestesses or priests locked inside the temple tried anything while I was gone, they would be gutted in a heartbeat by the guild master. In fact, I was pretty sure that she wanted them to try something, just so she had an excuse to burn someone with blue fire from the inside out.
I nodded at her, and the night elf bowed her head with a smile. Then, with Leif, Penny, and Ava right behind me, I led the way forward out of the garrison again, and the sea of Elite soldiers followed after me toward our next target city.
When we emerged into the Hanging Gardens of the Gold City, I heard the soldiers all murmur behind me, and I had to remind myself that this was all brand new to them. Most of them had never been outside the Capital, let alone to another city, and now they had been to the City of Slaves, the Blood City, and the Gold City, all in less than thirty-six hours.
It was a lot to take in, and it wasn’t that long ago that I hadn’t been outside the Capital myself. Of course, I had grown up outside the city, but my small country village didn’t really count as anything except for a collection of houses that the orcs had been able to sweep through and destroy in one fell swoop. But after that, I had stayed in the Capital until the Rainbow Keys found me and led me to the catacombs, the portal room, and to the magic compass that had activated all the archways from one city into another.
I needed to stay focused, but it was hard not to think about my village, just like it was hard not to think about my family right now. After all, that was what had started all of this for me, even if I hadn’t known it at the time. When the orcs had slaughtered my family and burned my village to the ground, I had been forced to go to the city to survive, and if that had never happened, then I never would have found the Rainbow Keys to begin with.
Of course, that still didn’t answer the question of why there was a file on my father in the elven garrison back home, or why the elves had investigated him for ‘revolutionary tendencies,’ but I had already accepted the fact that there were some things that I would just never know. All I did know was that my father had been more than just a simple woodcutter, and that he would sure as shit be proud to see me now.
But for the moment, I needed to stay focused on where I was headed instead of where I came from, so I let my soldiers look around for just a minute at the beauty of the Hanging Gardens before I started our forward march. Our revolution had been a goddamn whirlwind so far, and I fully intended to keep it that way, but that didn’t mean my troops couldn’t look around for just a second and see the kind of beautiful world that we were fighting for.
So far, our momentum had been incredible, and I didn’t want to slow down at all if we could help it. The faster and harder we fought, the more difficult it would be for the elves to rally and respond to us in time to regain what we had already taken from them.
If we slowed down, then we might give Tevian enough time to ride from one wilderness fort to the next and join all the remaining elven troops together, but if we nipped each fort’s forces in the bud as soon as possible, then we stood a much better chance of stopping them before they could unite into one big-ass army. And even if Tevian did manage to unite all the elves, then at least I had one final surprise up my sleeve.
The elves still didn’t know about Azure.
When I led the troops out of the Hanging Gardens, I was greeted by the gladiator that I had left in charge of the Gold City and the human guard unit here. Sten was one of the gladiators that I’d bought off the auction block in the Gold City, along with Leif.
When we first expanded our whiskey business here, we had started to train the human guards here at the same time, and I had wanted to hire some muscle to train them like proper fighters. And as soon as I told Sten and Leif that they were free to join me or to leave, all they wanted to do was help me in my fight to overthrow our oppressors.
“Sten!” I said and shook his hand. “It’s good to see that the elves haven’t managed to kill you yet.”
“Eh, they’ll have to try a little bit harder,” the gladiator replied with a grin, and then he grabbed Leif in a big bear hug. “Good to see you, my friend.”
“Likewise,” Leif said. “It’s been too long.”
Sten was as well-muscled as Leif, but when both gladiators stood side by side, Sten looked almost small in comparison to Leif’s huge frame. His head was shaved bald, and he had red paint tattooed up and down his arms in preparation for war.
“I assume this means that the elves haven’t attacked yet?” Ava asked.
“No, not yet,” Sten replied. “I’m not sure what they�
��re waiting for, but they don’t seem particularly eager to face us.”
“They’re probably not looking forward to the fact that they’ll need to scale the walls,” Leif said with a shrug. “If they can’t break down the front gates, anyway.”
“Or they’re trying to get some more information before they attack,” I said. “No one has come in or out of the city since the elves showed up, right?”
“Not since they showed up, no,” Sten replied, “but we did send out a few human scouts before the elves got here. I wanted to have a clear picture of everything that we might be up against, so I sent out three scouts to go tell me what they could find.”
“Were you thinking about the wilderness fort close to here?” Penny asked. “Or were you worried about something else, like random elven patrols?”
“I figured the elves from the wilderness fort would come here eventually, even though I thought we would have a little more time,” Sten said.
“Yeah, us, too,” Leif muttered.
“But I did want to see if there were any patrols around or any other signs of elves outside the city,” the smaller gladiator said. “It’s hard to see too far into the distance since we’ve got all those mountains just outside the walls, and I didn’t want anything to catch us off guard.”
“Have any of the scouts come back yet?” Ava asked.
“No,” Sten said and then took a deep breath. “I’m worried that the elves caught them and killed them as they marched toward the city, or worse, caught them and tortured them for information on our numbers. Maybe I shouldn’t have sent them out, or maybe--”
“It was a good idea,” I cut him off. “The Gold City is in a particularly vulnerable position because of how close the wilderness fort is, so it was smart to try to get out ahead of things. You couldn’t have predicted how things would go.”
“You’re right,” Sten sighed. “I’m just happy that you all got here in time to help, because I sure as hell don’t want to lose the city.”