The Good Guys Chronicles Box Set

by Eric Ugland

  I picked him up and gently laid him on the carpet, then rolled him up until his head was just sticking out.

  “Wait,” he said, struggling, “I—”

  “Either we leave you here, or you come with us. Your choice.”

  He struggled, but there was no way out. Too much weighed on him, and even though he was squirming like mad, he made zero headway on his egress.

  “You know,” I said, sitting on the carpet, “you could just come with us all the way.”

  “All the way where?”

  “To my dukedom.”

  “You cannot get out of this prison, even with me. You will never make it back outside.”

  “Yeah, we’re not going that way, we’re going the other way.”

  “There is no other way.”

  “The dungeon.”

  “’Tis just a myth we let fools believe so they only escape into darkness.”

  “You’re just saying that to discourage me.”

  “What is the tale you have been told? That you may find a path from the oubliette into the dungeons left by the ancients?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “And you believe we would not know of this entrance? That we would not have blocked it off a long time ago? Or that we would not be using the dungeon to bolster the city’s strength? You are a fool if you believe that nonsense.”

  “Not the first time I’ve been called a fool. Probably won’t be the last.”

  “Then get off me, fool! I can barely breathe with your great weight upon this carpet.”

  I stood, and shook my head.

  “You clearly have no sense of adventure,” I said.

  “Of course I do not. Are you insane? If that story is true, which it is not, you are speaking of going through the oubliette, a terror in itself, before making your way through an ancient dungeon, which exits where? Which version of that story have you heard? The Emerald Sea? The Council Building? The Treasury? Did you think you will finally find the lost treasure of the ancients in their dungeon, which does not exist? None of these things are positive experiences. Nothing could possibly be contained in the horrors below which might entice me to accompany you, and that is not withstanding knowing my life would be forfeit to Osterstadt should they ever find me.”

  “Yeah, I can see your point there. Okay, how about this: you say the oubliette is the danger zone, right? And there’s no escape?”

  “No escape is correct. I am unfamiliar with the other term.”

  “So what’s the problem in letting me into the oubliette?”

  “You have been brought here for a reason, Duke, and I daresay, you have yet to provide whatever it is that is wanted from you.”

  “My land, right?”

  “Again, I do not know.”

  Skeld hissed at me.

  “Someone comes,” Skeld said.

  I picked the carpet up and stacked it in the corner that would be hidden by the door. Then I shoved some hay in the man’s mouth, much to his consternation. I got plenty of dirty looks while he tried to spit the disgusting straw out.

  Skeld and Ragnar stood on either side of the carpet, and I went to the center of the room, holding my hands as if the manacles were still in place.

  The small hatch slid open, and a man wearing a helm looked inside.

  “You Lord Coggeshall?” the man said.

  I raised an eyebrow while I considered my options.

  The truth was always a good way to go.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Duke Coggeshall?” the man asked.

  “Same man.”

  “Montana?”

  “Yeah. That’s me. Lord Montana Coggeshall, Duke of Coggeshall.”

  The man nodded once. Then he closed the hatch, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. He was dressed as a guard. Wore the armor, had the tabard, all the bits and bobs to look like he was a real guard. Hell, he could have been a real guard. He had a rather rough face with a nose that looked like it had been broken more than not. He pulled the Unfillable Knapsack from under his tabard, and passed it over to me.

  “A friend gave me that for you,” the guard said. “He also told me to give you some directions and a means of egress.”

  “Directions?”

  “From what I been told, you are here for someone who’s in a heap of trouble, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was paid to give you the way there.”

  “Oh, that’s awesome. Mind if I ask how the hell you found me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, thank you.”

  He pulled out a small piece of paper, one that looked like it had been folded over and over again. He pushed it into my hand. Then, he gave me a heavy ring of large metal keys.

  “Keys are only to the doors you need. I am leaving now,” the guard said. “If I see you again, I will be forced to kill you. Start that way.” He pointed to the left, and then turned and headed in the opposite direction.

  I looked at Ragnar, then at Skeld, then at the retreating form of the guard.

  “Holy shitballs,” I said, not able to hide the smile on my face, “I can’t believe he came through!” I purposely avoided using Philomon’s name.

  “It is quite a stroke of luck,” Skeld said. “I admit to being a little fearful we were at our end.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Not by a long shot.”

  Unfolding the paper revealed a bunch of directions and a cell number: 6. Cell 6. In crap handwriting, the note explained that the directions would lead us past all the patrols, provided we followed it exactly. Down, down, right, left, right, left, down, down, left, left, down, left, down, right, down, right, down. Fourth door on the left.

  Notably, our friendly guard didn’t bother to lock our door, or even close it. And he definitely didn’t look behind it, thankfully. Which meant our grey robed guest didn’t get a look at the guard.

  I pulled the knapsack on, and Skeld tossed me a robe. It was a tight fit, but better than walking around like I was. The two Lutra pulled on their robes, which were comically large, and I took a last look at the rolled up man in the corner, his eyes wide.

  “Dude,” I said, “I’m not really one for leaving you here like this, because most likely you’re going to really get hurt. But you refuse to come with us. And even though your people are the ones who will hurt you, you’re probably going to do the dishonorable thing and start yelling as soon as you think I can’t hear you. So what I need to know is, are you a man of honor?”

  The man nodded immediately.

  “You boys think that was a little too quick?” I asked.

  Skeld nodded and Ragnar spit at the man’s feet.

  “You’re gonna have to chance surviving on your own then,” I said, shoving some more hay into the man’s mouth. “Maybe think about a career change, bud.”

  Then we left, the man inside screaming through a mouth full of disgusting hay.

  Chapter 110

  We moved down the hall as quietly as we could. But despite our best attempts, all the prisoners in the cells we passed seemed keenly aware of us. Some called out to us harassingly. More often, we heard the scuttling of feet away from the doors, clearly broadcasting their fear that someone might come into their cell. Finally, we reached the end of the hallway, where there was a door. It took a few tries, but one of the keys worked and we opened the door to reveal a stairwell.

  The stairs spiraled in both directions, but our little crib sheet had instructed us to go down. Round and round we went. But the time we got to the next doorway, I definitely couldn’t tell which direction was which, in a cardinal sense. Thank god for the directions. We moseyed out of the stairwell and headed down the next hallway. It was functionally identical to the prior hallway, but at the far end was a guard station. A few guards stood at something that strongly resembled a nurses station in a hospital, talking in muted voices. They were way too far away to give us much notice though.

  Otherwise, the brick was the same
, the doors were the same, and the candles were in the exact same positions as above. With three ways we could go, we would definitely be lost without directions, but we followed our notes and it almost seemed easy.

  One thing we noticed: as we got deeper, the ceilings got lower. The stone bricks had moisture on their surfaces, moss growing in the cracks. It seemed much older, or like the place had been largely ignored over the years. The floors were dusty, muddy along the edges where rivulets of moisture finally ran to ground. The candles and their holders seemed more rudimentary, still magically smokeless, but without the finery there’d been upstairs.

  Somewhere in the middle of some random floor, I heard footsteps. The hard boots of guards tromping about. We’d been following the directions even though ofttimes seemed ridiculous, and we’d only seen the backs of guards so far. I’d heard guards moving away from us a few times, either up the stairs when we headed down or down the hall when we crossed over, but this time, it sounded like we were going to run right into them.

  Thing was, if we ran back or tried to hide, I was almost 100 percent certain we’d get lost. It was just too easy to lose track of where we were going. Sure, we had the cell number, which meant we’d be able to find Nikolai eventually. But the directions made it much faster. And up until now, much safer.

  “We stand and fight,” I said. “But no killing.”

  I reached into the bag and pulled out the macuahuitl. I was ready for blunt weapon bashing.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “You realize we have no weapons, right?” Ragnar asked.

  “Shit,” I said. Into the bag, and then my mind froze. Weapons. Preferably non-lethal. Clubs. I thought of clubs.

  Nothing.

  At the end of the hall, a door opened, a creak echoing off the brickwork.

  We were out of time.

  Armed men and women tromped through.

  “Behind me,” I hissed, and stood up straight. I kept my arm holding the macuahuitl down at my side, and pulled up the grey hood.

  “They’ll never buy it,” Ragnar whispered to me. He had a point. The robe didn’t exactly fit. In fact, it would probably be more truthful to say that it didn’t fit at all. The fabric stretched to its absolute limits trying to cover my body, several seams already having given up the fight sending tendrils of thread out into the world. Then, there were the two Lutra. They were smaller than any human, and their robes were massive on their tiny frames. Like kids playing dress up. I realized I should have told them to stand on each other’s shoulders to make one skinny dude, but now I had to hope my tiny otters in their giant robes would pass unnoticed.

  I started walking as if I was exactly where I needed to be. My goal was the door they’d just come through, so by necessity, we would cross paths.

  The guards stopped when they saw the grey-robed figure coming towards them, moving to the side and getting out of my way.

  I walked along, head held high, looking out the side of my eye at the guards. They wore heavy armor, small plates of metal over thick leather, with swords hanging off their hips on the right and non-spiked maces on the left.

  Their eyes were all glued to me, and I could almost hear their cogs turning as they tried to parse out the truth of the situation.

  I counted four of them. A man with a busted nose, a man with a scar down the side of his face, a woman with a missing ear, and a man with a single blonde ringlet peeking out from under his helm. All human. Which seemed a little odd until I remembered how Osterstadt was largely a human city, and that they tended to view non-humans as beneath them. In that light, it made sense that all the guards of their jail would be humans.

  As we walked by, both Ragnar and Skeld slipped along the outside of the hall, mostly able to blend into my robe.

  I heard the intake of breath first, and then the tell-tale noise of someone in armor moving. I’d just failed my bluff check. It was game time.

  As fast as I could, I got the macuahuitl up in the line I figured would be where my opponent was swinging.

  There was a sharp sound as the guard’s mace smashed into the macuahuitl, followed by the hard sound of the volcanic glass breaking. The obsidian hit the walls, making an almost pleasant tinkling noise.

  I pushed back, stepping away to give myself room and survey the scene.

  Two of the guards were looking away, their hands in front of their eyes. Scarface and Nose. The one closest to me, Ringlet, had his sword out, swinging it my way. That left Missing Ear, the lady, with her mace against my macuahuitl.

  I had just enough space to lean back, feeling one of the Lutras squish against the wall as the guard’s sword swooshed by. But the tip caught my robe and cut through. I brought the macuahuitl up, tilted it down to force the lady’s mace down, then I whipped the macuahuitl across, smacking the woman with the flat of the weapon. There was a deep thud, and the woman stumbled a few steps.

  With my left hand, I grabbed Ringlet’s sword arm and slammed it into the wall. Pain blossomed across my back, and I got my head around to see Scarface’s face covered in blood and smiling big.

  “Gonna enjoy gutting you,” Scarface snarled, “boy.”

  Pro-tip for fighting in confined spaces when you’re outnumbered: let your opponents fight themselves as much as they fight you.

  Nose hauled back his mace, which hit the wall behind him with a solid bong.

  I let go of Ringlet and got my leg up on the wall. I shoved back, smashing Scarface between my back and the wall. Missing Ear swung her mace, managing to both miss me and get in the way of Nose. She didn’t exactly hit him, but they tangled each other up, giving me just enough time to haul Scarface over my shoulder and slam him into the wall in front of me. A wall where Ringlet had been just a moment ago, but my two comrades had pulled him down to the ground and were busy tying him up.

  Scarface made a disconcerting noise when he hit, and another when his face met the ground. A sort of low moan. I left him for the Lutra.

  Ear and Nose finally got untangled, and squared off against me.

  I had the macuahuitl out, waiting for them to make a move.

  A moment of sizing each other up.

  Nose bolted. He just turned and burned.

  Ear looked stunned, snapping her head to see her wingman leaving her behind.

  I whipped the macuahuitl out as fast as I could, spinning it through the air. It smashed into the back of the sprinting coward, the heavy wood weapon making a really tasty thunk as it hit. The man’s body sprawled across the floor, sliding a surprisingly long way before coming to a stop when his helmeted head hit a door.

  Ear looked back at me.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said. “But do I look like the type of man who will?”

  She nodded at me, eyes a bit wide.

  “So how about you put your weapon down, and open up this door here,” I said, pointing to a random door on my left.

  She set her mace on the ground, walked the few steps to the door, and opened it up. It wasn’t locked because it was the medieval equivalent of a broom closet.

  “Shit,” I said. “Any of these cells here.”

  She pointed to a door that looked just like all the other doors.

  “Okay, open that one.”

  A cell like the one I’d spent time in, but somehow a little worse. There was more water leeching off the walls, the straw in the corner was somehow dirtier and more repulsive, and the hole in the corner for waste was big enough I could see the waste water, ie mostly liquid poop and other horribles, running along at quite a clip. Anyone placed in this cell had a literal shit river as a companion.

  "In," I said.

  She hesitated. I had a very bad feeling about things. Just the way she was operating, the way she was looking at the cell, it was too much for her. However intimidated she felt, she wasn't going to go inside. She drew her sword and swung it around wildly, fast and with power, but without aim.

  Her strike sailed past me with room to spare, and it left her way off
-balance.

  These people were guards — they'd mostly trained to intimidate, to overpower with numbers and unfair tactics. In a straight-up fight, they were pretty garbage.

  I took a strong step forward, and brought my manacled wrist down with an overhead chop, slamming it into the poor woman's shoulder. There was a sharp crack as her collarbone broke. She cried out in pain, and brought her sword up, but I was already moving, going down this time, stomping into the side of her knee.

  Her leg buckled, and she started to fall to the ground. I put my foot into her, and she went sliding into the room. She started to get up, but as soon as she put weight on the leg, she crashed right back down.

  Working together, my hirð pulled in the two guards that I'd left behind. I went and grabbed the coward, Nose, and dragged him back. He wasn't altogether conscious, so while he made an attempt to struggle, he didn't have much fight left to give. I shut the door, locked it, and opened the small hatch.

  "Dudes," I said into the hatch, looking at the guards. Two were tied up using belts taken off themselves and the grey robes. One had a clearly broken leg, and the other was nursing a serious concussion, and was vomiting all over himself. “I’m sorry to have done this to y'all, and I'll make it up at some point. Maybe. Keys are here in the lock, so, you know, once we're gone, you can get out. Again, I had no desire to hurt y'all."

  Then, we motored, racing down the hallway towards the stairs.

  Chapter 111

  We got to the hallway where the directions ended. It was depressing. For one thing, the stairs had finished. It seemed we were at the lowest level possible. The ceilings in the hallways had shrunk until my head was basically rubbing against the top. Sure, I was a tall dude in Vuldranni, but I wasn't the tallest thing I'd seen. Darius the minotaur would definitely have to duck down to make it through there.

  We counted four doors down, and stopped. I opened the little hatch.

  Whomever was inside scuttled back from the light pouring in. I frowned — this wasn't the behavior I was expecting from Nikolai. I wondered if it was an elaborate trap. Though, the dude who gave me the note with the directions was also the dude who gave me the Unfillable Knapsack. Didn't make sense that he'd have given me such an object if it was just going to end in a trap. Slight advantage knowing that at least some others knew the value of the bag I carried.