by Hugo Huesca
Half an hour later, Ed met with Queen Laurel. She waited for him, standing atop a stream that rose slightly above Ed’s head. Judging from the shine in her thorax, she had been bathing.
“Dungeon Lord Wraith,” Laurel greeted him as he and Tulip approached. “We meet again.”
Ed looked away while the Queen finished her bath. He was aware it was a nonsensical gesture, since she was a pony-sized spider, but it was just the way he had been raised. “Queen Laurel, pleasure to see you well.”
“You look like a bear chewed you and spat you out, Lord Wraith,” the Queen said with brutal honesty. She shook like a dog to dry herself off, and Ed felt that the sight would likely traumatize him for life.
He also noticed that she was covered in a dozen tiny scars that hadn’t been there before, last time he saw her.
“It was a wraith. The real deal, in fact. It is still out there.” Ed then told her in as few words as possible about his nighttime adventure. Laurel listened to him with a neutral expression—not that she had any other—and her fangs twitching empathetically in the high points of his tale.
“There are two things that worry me most about you, Lord Edward,” Laurel told him when he was finished. “The first is the ease with which you find yourself in dangers far above what your experience points should allow. The second is that, so far, you are surviving all of them.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“It means that, if your luck, or whatever is fueling you, runs out, the explosion may engulf more people than you, Lord Wraith.”
Twenty people for twenty experience points…
“Luckily, I have you to help me balance the scales,” Ed said.
“Indeed. Walk with me, Lord Wraith.”
“You can call me Ed, you know,” Ed told her as they left the stream. The two rulers were flanked by Princess Tulip and two spider warriors. The royal guard kept their distance and were barely visible under the foliage. Ed was aware that there were many spiders hidden farther away that he couldn’t see.
“Never in the sight of my sisters and daughters,” said Laurel. “There’s a protocol, Lord Wraith, and it separates arachnidhood from the beasts of the land, but protocols are fragile. They must always be protected, lest they erode.”
“Queen Laurel, you called for me saying it was a diplomatic emergency,” Ed said. “What is going on?”
“Kaftar,” Laurel said. “As you are aware, my cluster made… contact with an itinerant cackle when we were still under my mother’s rule.”
“Cackle?” asked Ed, who hadn’t heard the word used in such a context before.
“A group of hyenas is called a cackle,” Laurel told him. “Kaftar are proud cousins of the hyenas, claiming their birthplace is the same continent—Plekth—where hyenas dwell. Thus, they call their clans ‘cackles.’ ”
“Got it,” said Ed. “Is this cackle giving you trouble?” He eyed her half-healed scars.
“We thought they may,” Laurel said, “since the fight for territory with the neighboring clusters is putting a strain on my family, leaving us vulnerable. But yesterday, the cackle sent an envoy.”
“To you?”
“He was headed for the Haunt,” Laurel clarified. “We intercepted him, obviously. The kaftar asked for an audience with you and me, regarding a truce between their people and ours.”
Ed hadn’t been aware that his people were in conflict with the kaftar. Then he corrected himself. The spiders were his people, too, and if Laurel had a problem with the hyena-men, then so did he.
They spent the rest of the walk with Ed questioning Laurel about all she knew regarding the kaftar as a people. The Queen had never seen a kaftar with her own eyes, at least not one she hadn’t been trying to eat. But the spiders had ancestral memories, transmitted from Queen to Queen via a… family dinner.
Thus, Laurel knew quite a bit about the kaftar. They had come from Plekth a long time ago, and some cackles still maintained contact with the old continent, where it was rumored they had a gigantic empire that dwarfed even Heiliges. This, of course, was said by kaftar and confirmed only vaguely by the few merchant ships that dared cross the ocean.
Kaftar were proud warriors, with a society organized by castes. Warlords at the top, merchants at the bottom. Their religion boasted Plekthian gods that didn’t care about the conflict between Alita and Murmur, and thus, many kaftars cared little for the stigma of dealing with Dungeon Lords, which they did somewhat frequently, if they liked the offer.
Slowly, Ed built a mental image of the low-level mobs that he had been so used to fighting behind a computer screen while playing Ivalis Online. Many of the dungeons he had raided included a couple dozen kaftar that formed the backbone of the dungeon’s defenders.
The chance of adding a cackle of his own to the Haunt excited Ed. It was exactly what he needed to protect his people from Nicolai.
On the other hand, the kaftar had never managed to put even a dent in Ed’s raiding party in Ivalis Online. In fact, he had killed hundreds of them.
The realization hit him like a sack of bricks and his good mood evaporated. How could he ask the cackle to fight for him when he was personally responsible for the deaths of so many of their people?
“You have the gaze of one who has killed scores of my people,” the kaftar told Ed as soon as they reached speaking distance. “What an excellent development! Many of the elders had expressed doubts about your military might, and this news will do wonders to calm their fears. Did those kaftars you fought satisfy your battle-urges, Dungeon Lord Wraith?”
What in the fuck, Ed thought. He adjusted his expectations on the fly. Of course, Laurel called them “warrior people.” Aren’t hyenas supposed to be carrion eaters?
In any case, the kaftar in front of him clearly had an insight-related talent, like Alder’s bardic empathy, perception, or at least alert. He’d know if Ed had lied to him, but the truth was, all of Ed’s battles against kaftar had been a mere formality between the start of the raid and reaching the Boss.
On the other hand, the question had been, “did they satisfy your battle-urges?” and Ed’s battle-urges involved surviving unscathed and, if at all possible, richer.
“Yes, they’re very satisfied,” Ed said.
The kaftar nodded with evident pleasure. “My name is Kaga. My cackle has looked forward to speaking with you.”
The meeting took place in the midpoint between Ed’s dungeon and the cackle’s encampment, which for the moment remained hidden.
Kaga was a humanoid hyena, true to Laurel’s description. He had a long snout with jaws so powerful that there was little doubt he could split bone without a second thought. His fangs were yellowed and dirty, and his mustard-colored fur was coarse and caked with accumulated dirt and other, thankfully unknown, solids. He reeked of rotten meat.
He wore a loincloth and nothing else, besides the bunch of leather straps that he used to keep his weaponry close to his body. Ed counted a longbow, arrows, a silver knife, a rough sword with a bone handle, and knuckle-dusters made of bone and tipped with iron spikes. These last weapons hung around his neck on a strap decorated with teeth.
“Kaga, I believe you know Queen Laurel already. You talked with her about a truce, and of the possibility of joining forces with me?”
The kaftar nodded, but did so reluctantly, like there was something slightly embarrassing yet to be brought up.
“Well, then…” Ed realized he had little idea of what to do in this situation. He looked at Queen Laurel for help.
“Lord Wraith has,” Laurel said, “an eccentric view of the world. He won’t allow my kin to eat our rightfully hunted prey if this prey is intelligent. A demand that we happily accepted on the grounds that, otherwise, he would’ve hunted my cluster to extinction.”
“When you put it like that…” Ed started, but he had earned the interest of Kaga, who regarded him with bestial eyes injected with yellow.
“An eccentric Dungeon Lord is hardly anything new,
” Kaga said. “It would be suspicious if your Deviousness were perfectly normal—”
“Please no ‘Deviousness,’ ” Ed said. He had allowed the spiders to call him Lord Wraith, and now the name had stuck. If he allowed your Deviousness or your Cruelship… No, better to nip that in the bud.
Ed had heard the stories Alder and Lavy told him about marauding bands that raided towns and villages to feed the ever-hungry maws of neighboring dungeons. There were things that he was willing to tolerate, but if Kaga and his cackle crossed that line, Ed would have nothing to do with them, no matter how much he could use the extra hands.
“Tell me about your cackle,” said Ed. “What it is that you do? How do you survive?” He almost bit his tongue over that last question, because the wording reminded him of Earth’s Human Resources interviews, which had no place in this world.
Luckily, since Kaga was a diplomat of a sort, the kaftar didn’t question his strange wording. “Queen Laurel has already made me aware of your situation as a foreigner from another world. If I understand your emotions right, you wish to make sure we aren’t murderers and rapists. Many cackles are. You’ll find those roving the countryside in Lotia’s general direction, or pirating in the ocean between our continents. My cackle has another calling—one that requires a certain amount of goodwill from the humans and their kingdoms.”
So far, so good.
“Tell me more,” said Ed.
“We hunt monsters,” Kaga said, “and get paid for it. There’s much work in Starevos, but when we heard that a mindbrood was sighted near Undercity, my cackle figured that work was about to become much better for us. To our surprise, we found a city unconsumed by flames upon our arrival, and only the wildest rumors as an explanation. Eventually we heard about you. Mankind may never think of consulting the creatures of the forest, but we understand the company that a Dungeon Lord keeps. If it is in your interest to hunt monsters, and you plan to do so often, then we are interested in striking an alliance.”
“Then you arrive with good timing,” said Ed. Suspiciously good timing, in fact. He eyed Laurel, who stood next to him, oozing innocence. “There is a wraith around—a real one—and if we are unlucky, perhaps more of Sephar’s Bane.”
“There are always more mindbroods,” said the kaftar in the exact tone one may use to say, “business is booming.”
“Join me, then, and have your fill.”
“I’m afraid there are… issues,” said the kaftar.
Ah, thought Ed. This is where you wanted to end up all along, didn’t you, Kaga?
“My cackle doesn’t work for free,” Kaga went on. “And word around Hoia is, well, your Haunt isn’t exactly affluent at the moment. The cackle demands three months’ payment in advance, non-negotiable, for the amount of—”
He named a price in a coin that made no sense to Ed. He made sure to memorize it, so he could ask Kes or Lavy about it.
“Besides that, we require equipment of good quality, access to silver weapons, runes, medicine, and decent armor. Private housing is also a must, as is a special facility where our warriors can train under the tutelage of an experienced warrior. The teacher must be a master of a style that is unknown to the kaftar…”
Kaga and Ed pored over the details of their agreement over the course of an hour. From what Ed could put together, he wasn’t actually hiring the entire cackle, which boasted more than half a hundred warriors—and a hundred and half non-combatants. He was hiring as many squads of ten warriors as he could afford and house. The contract would last until the warriors mastered the style of the instructor that Ed provided for them. He suggested Kes’ style, but Kaga rejected her on the grounds that the mercenary’s fighting technique was already known to the cackle.
Apparently, this was the most important part of the deal, and Kaga wasn’t willing to compromise on it. His cackle cared not only for money, but also encouraged a martial culture that involved comparing and learning from many styles all across Ivalis.
“Will you give me and the Queen a minute to deliberate?” asked Ed when the negotiations ground to a halt.
He and Laurel walked far enough from the kaftar to speak without fear of being overheard.
“What do you think?” asked Ed.
“I have no concept of money,” said Laurel, “but his demands do seem very imposing. According to my memories, most cackles only ask for payment—and much less than what he wants. On the other hand, the cackle did seem awfully good at killing spider-kind during our brief clash under my mother’s reign.”
Ed instincts told him that, although the price was high, he’d get what he paid for. After all, these hyena-men lived for fighting and killing monsters…
“We need them,” said Ed. “Truth is, the Haunt is too vulnerable right now, and we have even more enemies today than we did last night.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Laurel. “I wished not to burden you further, but my cluster’s fight against the other Queens is going badly. We’re losing territory left and right, and our numbers are diminishing. Even the few spider warriors I have guarding the Haunt will be needed soon, or we’ll die.”
Ed studied the Queen’s many wounds, which were displayed without shame. Then he closed his eyes.
What’s going on? he thought. A cackle of monster hunters didn’t come out of nowhere just when he was in dire need of hiring monster hunters—he didn’t have that kind of luck.
If it wasn’t fortune, it had to be by design.
Could the kaftar be a trap?
Nicolai had no idea I existed until a couple hours ago. Kharon is technically on my side, and Gallio is away.
His gaze couldn’t leave Laurel’s scars. Then his eyes narrowed. Maybe the truth was in front of him all along.
They did seem awfully proficient at killing spider-kind during my mother’s reign… Ed chewed on Laurel’s words.
Oh. Of course.
“Laurel,” Ed said slowly, “what if I helped you get those other Queens off your back?”
“Lord Wraith, that would be very chivalrous of you, but you aren’t in a position to take your forces away from the Haunt—not with the wraith roaming around.”
“Then it is a good thing that I don’t have to use my forces,” Ed said, then he turned in Kaga’s direction. “Come, I believe it’s time to make our friend here a final offer.”
Kaga waited for them, bouncing softly on his inverted knees. Ed guessed the kaftar was trying to keep his muscles warm in Starevos’ cold—in case he needed to leave the meeting in a hurry. That kind of paranoia earned Ed’s respect.
“The Haunt will provide the installations you’re asking for,” said Ed. “But I’ll need some time to figure out how many squads we can hire.”
“Then we are in agreement,” said Kaga.
“There’s only one thing, though,” said Ed. “Consider it a test of your cackle’s abilities. You told me your clan works for human settlements, right? Then I wish to request your services for a single mission first.”
That earned a raised eyebrow from Kaga. “Tell me more.”
Ed gestured at Laurel’s scars. “Queen Laurel has found herself in conflict with the rest of the horned spider clusters of Hoia Forest. Those other clusters should learn sooner rather than later that it’s in their best interest to stay the hell away from my people.”
“Your people,” Kaga muttered. “That’s one interesting way of saying ‘minions.’ How many clusters are we talking about?”
“Five other Queens,” Laurel told him. “My cousins. They are a bickering, devious bunch, but they work alone since they don’t trust each other.”
“Yes, we know of horned spider politics,” said Kaga, with the distant expression of a soldier figuring out the best way to perform a mission. “Always in conflict with each other over tiny increases in territory that they lose the next day.”
“You’ll do it?” asked Ed.
Kaga nodded. “Our fireball runes will cost you extra.”
After finishi
ng their negotiation with Kaga, Laurel and Ed headed back toward the secret trail that would lead the Dungeon Lord back to his lair. The sun shone over Ed’s back, creating the interesting sensation of his skin burning under the sunlight while the rest of his body shivered from the cold.
At his feet, a fine mist covered the ground.
There was something about Hoia Forest that had tugged at his attention since he first arrived in Ivalis. It was the way the light changed the colors of the dead leaves. During the afternoon, they looked warm and welcoming, a living painting that could’ve inspired any artist. But at night, that very same image transformed into something threatening, dark, and silent—like a wolf lurking behind a bush.
“That was an excellent idea you had back there, Lord Wraith,” Laurel told him. “Using the kaftar in alliance with my cluster will free my warriors to bolster the Haunt sooner rather than later. It seems like you are a natural at this.”
That was too much. Ed laughed and patted the spider on her bulbous back, which was bigger than himself. “Are you mocking me, Laurel? Let’s not pretend this idea belongs to anyone other than you.”
The Queen looked surprised, which was an amazing feat when she lacked facial muscles. Ed certainly would’ve never figured out spider-kinds’ emotional range a couple weeks ago. “Lord Wraith, how can it be my idea? You came up with it on your own—”
“Laurel, monster-hunting kaftar don’t fall out of the sky at the same time your cluster is having trouble with the others. I don’t have that kind of luck. You set it up, didn’t you? Found the cackle, approached them, got them to talk to me and make me an offer. You knew their help would mean reinforcements for your fight. The way I see it, you got me to pay to have your enemies killed for you.”
“That’s… an interesting assessment,” said Laurel. “If that was true, how would you feel about it?”
“Why, I would be proud of you,” said Ed. “You’re turning out to be an excellent monstrous Queen. Isn’t this your first royal scheme? It worked out well.”
“Aren’t you angry at this hypothetical machination, my Lord? Even if, of course, it helped you as much as it helped me.”