The Crown and the Key

by Andrey Vasilyev

  “Not a king, yet,” Lossarnakh replied. He looked great—chainmail, a beard, and gray hair. Every bit a king. “For now, I’m just a warrior here to help my brother in arms Hagen, head of the MacLynn clan. He asked for my help, and what could I do but help him? Now, any of you can come to me looking for help as a brother, and the answer will be the same. For we are now all brothers!”

  “Yah!” came the response, already a more uniform cry. Several gelts turned around and shot more amiable looks at me.

  Loving the moment, I just wished the game could veer more into the steampunk genre. He would have looked even better in an armored car with one of those hats on his head. I’ll ask Valyaev.

  “Well, what do you think?” Kro asked as she came over. “Good speech?”

  “You wrote it?”

  “Nope.” She shook her head, and a few locks of hair whipped across my cheek. “He thought it up himself, and I just gave him a couple pointers. Nice work, no? It was well said.”

  I rubbed my hands. “He wants to be king. He tasted power, and he wants it, now.”

  “And we’ll give it to him,” she replied, eyes flashing. “Having your own king is… Well, it’s our chance to make a mark in the history of the game. That’s what you’re going for, right?”

  “Oh, babe, it’s better if you don’t know what I’m going for.”

  Kro snorted, and then snapped her fingers.

  “Another thing—I’m going to have Dorn stay here, too, just in case. He wasn’t happy, but he agreed.”

  I nodded wordlessly.

  “The field of battle awaits,” Lossarnakh called as he pulled out his sword. “There, we will die or emerge conquerors!”

  “Yah!” roared the square.

  “And then, we drink!” Flosi shouted. “The könig has enough for everyone!”

  I caught the glances of the gelts for the third time, and they were finally excited about me being there. This may be expensive, but I’m getting somewhere.

  “Of course,” Lossarnakh replied. “Okay, let’s move out. We wouldn’t want to be late for something as important as a battle.”

  He kissed Abigail in front of everyone, she practically collapsed on his chest, and he stepped down off the porch. Nice work, sis. You’re working hard for my head. Although… If she really started giving me problems, I could have a quick chat with old Hassan. I didn’t think he’d refuse a little favor like that.

  A few portals opened, and I saw Tissa, Dorn, Slav, and a couple of the newcomers standing next to them. It was set up just like those groups of people you see on trips abroad. The only thing missing was a guide shouting, “McFly group, let’s go, time to head out!”

  “We’re coming with you,” Brother Herts said, as usual, appearing from out of nowhere.

  I did my best to reply tactfully. “I have a lot of respect for you, and that’s nothing compared to the respect I have for your bosses. But the king—”

  “I have orders.” Brother Herts wasn’t trying to convince me; he was just letting me know.

  “There’s just one thing I can do for you,” I replied and sent him an invitation to join the clan. To my great surprise, he accepted.

  “What about my people?” he asked, though I shook my head. I already had one accountant in the clan, and I didn’t need anymore. But, most importantly, Brother Yur would’ve thought I was trying to poach his men. I definitely did not need an enemy of that stature.

  Kro and I lined up behind the bearded men from a clan I didn’t know and jumped through a portal. As it turned out, we were the only ones who hadn’t been there. The rest of our clan mates had been goaded into a visit by the omnipresent Tren-Bren.

  It wasn’t a large valley. Two hills stood on either side, and the green field in the middle was the size of… Well, it wasn’t that big. There was a forest around it, and a creek a little farther off completed the picture of natural tranquility. A flock of sheep with a couple shepherds wearing white stockings, and it would have been a Monet painting. Any of the impressionists, really.

  Lossarnakh sprinted up to the top of the hill, followed by Lennox MacSommers. The latter was holding my clan banner and had apparently decided who was most important in his eyes. Brother Herts, who had been right next to us, had somehow managed to make his way all the way up to them, as well.

  “König, come on, we need to get up there, too,” Flosi said from behind me. Wait, how long has he been there?

  “Let’s go!” I barked before looking around and stopping stock still in surprise.

  Everyone in the clan was standing there looking at me. Kro, Dorn, Tissa, and Kale, the ones who’d been with me from the beginning, were there, as were the newcomers—Hobo, Slav, Freya, Snuff, Lirakh, and a few others.

  I realized that it wasn’t the time for jokes. They were expecting something else.

  “I’m not in command for this battle,” I told them. “Sometimes, it’ll happen that you’ll be taking orders from someone else. With that in mind, let’s go find out where we’ll be for this and head that way. I imagine there’ll even be a place for a small clan like ours in the long sagas they’re going to sing near the fireplaces during the winter.”

  That was something I hadn’t thought about. To be honest, I wasn’t counting on breaking my sword out. I thought I was going to be watching from… Well, from that hill, for example. But that dream was over—my people wouldn’t have appreciated it. They might not have said anything, but they certainly wouldn’t have been fans. Suddenly, to my surprise, I realized that I wouldn’t have been a fan, myself. It was an odd thought and a very unusual feeling.

  “Where would you like me, Lossarnakh?” I asked the commander as I walked up to him. He was looking the valley over like a glutton might survey a big cake decorated with candied fruit, icing flowers, and other confectionary junk.

  “The best, brother, would be to have you here with me,” Lossarnakh replied without turning around. “That would be right. Although, it would be even better if you stayed here and I headed up there. There’s a battle coming, and I’m not going to be part of it—that’s not right.”

  “You’re the one who took all this on. And now you’re talking about what’s right and what isn’t right.”

  “I’m just frustrated,” he said, finally turning his head toward me and smiling. “I envy you, that’s all. As far as you’re position in the battle goes, you can decide for yourself.”

  “Stop it, and just point to where you want me.”

  “Head down there,” the bailiff said. His finger pointed at an area near the base of the hill, one that I thought looked like the safest place there. “You’ll be our last line of defense.”

  “Ah…” I shook my head. “You’re worried about me?”

  Lossarnakh went back to looking over the field. “I’m protecting you. If you die, what am I going to tell my fiancée? Also, don’t argue with your commander. You seem to have forgotten your time in the Free Companies.”

  Interesting, so I was right about that promotion. It was fine, though—things were better for me if he was in charge.

  “You’ll forget about them, too,” I muttered. “What, you can’t even take a joke?”

  I went over to my clan mates and told them where we’d be spending the battle. They weren’t overjoyed to hear the news, though I didn’t see any discontent on their faces.

  “Things like this are more fun to watch than to be part of,” Tissa said suddenly. “We’ll have raids, of course, but just a fight like this… Can I head up onto the hill?”

  “Better not,” I replied. “Who knows what everyone else will think of that? They could start complaining or something.”

  Five minutes later, after we’d already taken up our position, horns sounded on the other hill, and our opponents started to show up. They poured over the hill from every side, shouting vulgarities and flashing obscene gestures as they came. An enormous guy in a horned helmet walked out onto the top of the hill with a banner in his hand.

 
; “I guess, that’s Macmillanon MacPratt, himself,” I said to Krolina. “Impressive.”

  “Quite the guy! Look at those horns,” Krolina whistled.

  The MacPratt’s forces kept coming and coming. There really are a lot of them.

  I was so engaged in what was happening that I felt my heart start to race, almost as if we were about to begin a real fight.

  And if it was hitting me that hard, I could only imagine what the hillmen standing a mere fifty strides away from each other were feeling.

  They waved banners, threatened each other every kind of death they could think of, and occasionally slipped their pants down to moon each other. In other words, they were in their element.

  I turned to look up at the hill behind us. Lossarnakh was calm, his face chiseled out of marble like a good leader’s.

  MacPratt cut loose a bellow as he waved an enormous, terrifying mace.

  His people picked up on his energy and threw themselves forward, beards and swords leading the way.

  Our first ranks opened up, and I saw Glen’s archers appear in the gaps. Plucking arrows out of the grass, where they’d placed them ahead of time, they got to work like well-oiled machines—aim, fire, aim again.

  The bodies piling up in the field slowed the onrushing warriors.

  I wasn’t sure how many people we took out before the gelts clashed in hand-to-hand combat, but it had to have been at least a hundred and fifty. Suddenly, it made sense how the English could have routed the French at Agincourt—archers are a powerful force. They’d have a hard time with our Grad rocket launchers, though…

  The field was a mess. Yelling, crashing, blades slamming home against shields, growling, cursing…

  “I don’t want to go in there,” Freya, the fragile healer, said. “That’s terrifying—it’s like the apocalypse.”

  “Yes, this isn’t even 18+,” Slav said, his narrowed eyes fixed on the slaughter in front of us. “Somebody missed something here.”

  “The funny thing is that it’s a social quest,” I said. “And that means it’s supposed to foster a sense of responsibility and civic virtue.”

  For some reason, nobody laughed.

  The battle hadn’t reached us yet, with the exception of a few lone gelts who were taken out by Glen’s archers. They were keeping up a steady fire from the hill. There were a few of them missing, however. Only about three dozen remained.

  “It’s pretty even, so far,” Snuff said.

  “That guy with the horns hasn’t sent everyone in, yet,” Slav replied. “They started off with maybe six hundred, no more, and they were mostly just there to tire our guys out.”

  “What about us?” asked Lirakh, the elf warrior with two curved blades on his back. “Do we have a reserve?”

  “We’ll see,” I replied. “Up on that hill is a guy called the king, and it’s his job to know everything.”

  As the carnage continued, our opponents started tripping over each other and falling. That left them no chance to get back up; they were killed before they could.

  MacPratt roared again so loudly that we could hear him above the noise of the battle, and his reserves marched into battle from their spot on the other side of the hill. And there are their best troops. I could tell by the way they moved and held their weapons.

  Following Lossarnakh’s gesture, our archers quickly crossed our hill, waited for the reinforcements to march into range, and opened fire.

  Suddenly, about thirty warriors waving swords and axes broke away from the main group and rushed the hill.

  “It’s our time to shine,” I said to my clan mates. “Finally!”

  We raced off to help the Sons of Taranis archers.

  Soon, it started to feel like the battle had already been going on for hours, though the sun had barely moved in the sky.

  We fought off one group of gelts, and then two more. Just ten archers remained. Our clan had taken losses, as well—a toothless and terrifying hillman took out Tissa, Snuff and Trid had also been sent to the respawn, and Kale was badly injured when he jumped in to defend Freya, who had run out of mana, from three attackers. He was unaware of the problem with her mana; all he knew was that he needed to fight for his own until the end.

  Oddly enough, the two sides were still equally matched, though the MacPratts just needed a little more to start pushing us back. But if we get even a few reinforcements…

  “What the hell?” Slav yelled.

  The shouts and sounds of battle had broken out behind us.

  Turning quickly, I wasn’t able to suppress a smile. It was a good thing nobody saw me—they wouldn’t have understood.

  Portals flashed, one after another, near the hill and right where I assumed Glen was hiding. Players poured out of them, at least a hundred. The emblems above their heads left no doubt—they were Double Shields.

  Glen’s warriors were utterly confused by the turn of events and were unable to hold off the attacks beating them into the ground and sending them back to their clan castle.

  “What is that?” Krolina asked—the girl who couldn’t be surprised taken very much off guard. “It’s a mass player kill over there!”

  “Everyone to the hill,” I yelled. “My clan, go, go, go! Grab Kale! Flosi, help Freya, damn it.”

  Slav was next to me, and I tossed him a portal scroll.

  “Open it when I tell you, okay? Set it for Erinbug.”

  He nodded without a word, falling in behind me. He’s a good warrior, that one.

  Glen didn’t have a chance. Swords were still ringing, but the result was a foregone conclusion: the Sons of Taranis were defeated, and the battle was lost.

  “Lennox MacSommers,” I yelled as I dashed up the hill. “See that?”

  “I’m not blind,” the redhead shot back. “Who is that?”

  “That’s base treachery, and it means just one thing—the MacPratts are spitting on your gelt honor and trying to win the day by bringing in mercenaries.”

  “I lost my battle,” Lossarnakh said, his voice lifeless. “I had one chance, and I let it slip away.”

  “You didn’t let anything slip away,” I replied. “We were betrayed, tricked.”

  “We have to go, Hagen.” That was Kro. “They’re going to be here in a couple minutes.”

  She was right, and they were coming from two sides—on the one, they’d broken through our allied clans and were running toward the hill; on the other, the Double Shields were hurriedly mopping up the Sons of Taranis.

  “Slav,” I called, and the blue mouth of a portal flashed open. My people started jumping through it.

  “Go, my brother.” Lossarnakh was standing there like a monument to himself, complete with a shield and sword. Any teenage girl would have fallen in love with him right there on the spot. “Goodbye.”

  “Right, right, goodbye, remember me,” I replied with a nod to Brother Herts. The latter swung something that looked like a crowbar, and Lossarnakh collapsed to the ground. He sure is a nice addition to the clan. I didn’t have to say anything. It was just a shame he wasn’t going to be staying.

  “Lennox, go.” He understood exactly what I wanted, picking up the future king and dragging him through the portal. The rest of our group followed suit.

  I looked around at the lost battle and felt a twinge of regret for the gelts I could have used in the future. To my surprise, another portal flashed where the last of our allies were being slaughtered, but I spat and stepped through the portal.

  “You knew!” was the first thing Krolina said when I came out the other side of the portal. She immediately grabbed me by the pauldron and pulled me over to the side. Nobody paid any attention to us, as they were all getting ready to evacuate to the smaller village. Nobody had any doubt that Erinbug would be sacked and burned.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that I knew,” I grinned. “I was hoping for that outcome. There were a lot of little nuances, one thing went the way I wanted it to, and here we are.”

  “You purposely provok
ed Miurat into keeping you from finishing the quest,” Krolina said, shaking her head. “You’re…”

  I stared at her. “What, you think it’s worse this way? Our chances of winning and gaining the crown are ten times better now. Do you still get it?”

  “Better than when?” Kro was practically white with rage.

  “The Double Shields aren't allied with the MacPratts, are they?” I said quietly. “Remember—you heard everything yesterday. They attacked on their own and slaughtered a clan that was allied with us. Sure, they weren’t gelts, but that doesn’t matter. The MacPratts violated the laws of the Borderlands. They don’t know it yet, but that’s fine. We can take them, regardless. The clans are all going to be on our side, and Lossarnakh didn’t lose the battle. No, they’re so afraid of him that they’re willing to stoop to that just to keep him from returning what belongs to him. He’s a martyr. Even in these wild parts, they love martyrs.”

  Kro didn’t say anything. Her fingers flexed and bent, and she looked at me with a different expression.

  “You know, you aren’t a complete idiot,” she said finally. “But what if your plan hadn’t worked?”

  “In that case, we would have won the battle. Glen would have collapsed their flank, and that would’ve been it.”

  “But, what if—”

  “Kro, history doesn’t have a subjunctive mood,” I said. “We need to hurry—those damn Shields could be here any minute. They won’t do anything to the NPCs, but they would be only too happy to cut through us. Just in case… I mean, you understand, besides us—”

  “I get it, I get it.” Kro was thinking about something, laughing fitfully to herself.

  My mailbox dinged, but I decided to read Miurat’s letter latter. I already knew what it was going to say, anyway.

  “You know what I’m going to do to them?” Glen appeared in the square wearing unsightly pants and a matching doublet. He huffed when he saw us looking at him dubiously. “What? I just grabbed whatever was closest. Did you see what happened?”

  “Of course,” I replied. “Unbelievable! By the way, we—”

  “I know, I know,” he said, looking around. “You getting out? Good move—that’s what I came back to tell you to do.”