The Prisoner of Arabella

by Matthew Kent

  His expression grew serious.

  “Will the council then aid us?” Synon asked.

  Hezman grew still at her question, then he looked at her took a deep breath. “No, the council will not aid you. However, if you assist me, perhaps I can sway the council to…overlook certain inconvenient facts.”

  Tekadan took the bait. “And by assist, you mean?”

  “There is a tribe of goblins encroaching on my people’s lands. By treaty it forbids us from interfering, however they delve deep into areas best left undisturbed. I wish you to remove them.” Tekadan’s eye caught mine, and he gave me an imperceptible nod. He was right; there was more to this than met the eye.

  “Sir Nightshield. If you would allow us to discuss this?” I said.

  “Certainly. I will return in the morning for your answer,” he said as he stood and left. We each eyed one another until he had left.

  Tekadan was the first to speak. “Well, that’s a shit show ready to happen.” I nodded in agreement.

  “What do you mean?” Synon asked with a puzzled look on her face.

  BarbieQ was the next to chime in. “He was hiding something, either about his ability to persuade the council, his aims for this little expedition, or all of it.”

  “I think it's all of it,” I said in reply as I scratched my chin in thought.

  “Obviously,” BarbieQ said. She flipped her skirt before settling down in one of the high-backed wing chairs. “Look, the errata on the dwarven and elven alliance states they are in it for mutual protection from the humans and other races. But it’s an uneasy alliance. He wants to use us as cat’s paws to remove the goblins, because he and the dwarven clans can’t.”

  “So obviously the elves want the tribe of goblins where they are?” Synon asked.

  “Yes,” I said, musing. “Especially if they are supplying something to the elves that the dwarves aren’t or are supplying infrequently.”

  “Metal or gems would be my guess,” Tekadan replied.

  “Now that that is figured out, what do we do?” Synon asked.

  I looked at Tekadan, then at BarbieQ. They each gave me a look. “We wait for the counter offer. There are always more than one side when something like this is going on. We need to just wait and figure out what's the best play for us.”

  “They said you were smart,” came a voice I didn’t recognize. We all looked around.

  “Apparently not smart enough to look for an invisible emissary,” I said. “I take it you’ve been waiting to speak to us.”

  “Yes, but you intrigue me, Wood Sprite. Your kind are so rare.”

  It sounded like he was moving around the room on cat’s feet. His voice came from different areas. I looked at the floor to see if I could detect the movements of his feet.

  “I’m the only one I know of.” I narrowed my eyes and smirked, catching the small depression of a foot on a rug, the tuft pressing down slightly. I readied myself, then cast Levitate, not on myself, but on the carpet, pulling it out from his foot and flipping it over his prone form. There came a crashing as he tumbled down, and then Tekadan was on the eavesdropper.

  They struggled, but with Synon’s aid, Tekadan and she soon had the person bound and in a chair. And visible again.

  “That whole invisible voice thing is intimidating,” I said. “Now can we have a discussion without all the theatrics?”

  He nodded.

  Once the gag was out of his mouth he gave us all an evil glare, but then he spoke.

  “So what do you intend?” he asked us.

  “You know who we are,” BarbieQ said. “It might be polite if you introduce yourself. As my mother said, a good introduction can save you so much trouble.”

  His glare toward her was impressive, I thought. I intervened before she roasted his chestnuts.

  “I’m Lorcan, the man with the knife to your throat is Tekadan. Synon is over there,” I said motioning to her. “And Ms. Manners is BarbieQ. And you are?”

  “I and Osran Steelthistle.” He was still glaring at us.

  “Look, Osran, you are the one who came in here to what? Scare us? Coerce us?” I gave a dramatic sigh. “You had to know we would push back. Go ahead and cut him loose. I’m sure we can have a civil discussion without everyone posturing about how impressive their magic is or how great their weapons are.”

  “Oh, I might enjoy that contest,” BarbieQ quipped.

  I looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

  “Not helping,” I said to her, she gave me a wink.

  “We need those goblin mines open to us,” Osran said, not bothering to beat around the bush. “Yes, we deal with the goblins, but only to get the materials our people need.”

  I admit I was listening to him with only half an ear. BarbieQ had distracted my mind, and I wondered what it was she was up to.

  “And elves don’t mine,” I said. “What kinds of metal is it you need? Maybe we could help?”

  “I doubt it. The dwarves provide us with a specific type of iron we fashion our weapons from. The goblins have somehow found a site that produces it too.”

  “Is that all?” I said then asked the others. “What do you think?”

  “It can’t be that easy,” Tekadan said.

  “I’m bored. Just get on with it, okay?” was all BarbieQ said.

  “What are you going on about?” Osran said.

  “This,” I said as I went over to the desk in the room and extracted a sheet of parchment, reaching for the pen. “Your folk have called mine disruptors of social order. Well, I’m about to do so once more.” I wrote out the formula for the star steel. “In return for this I expect you and the elves on the council to aid us to get the bridge.”

  I finished making the pattern.

  I brought it over to him and looked him in the eye. “This is precious. I expect more than fair recompense for this.”

  He snatched the pattern away from me and looked at it. His eyes opened wide as he read what it contained.

  “How…” was all he said, his mouth agape.

  I gave him my best cat smirk.

  “Will that let us take care of the other matter?” Tekadan asked.

  Osran smiled and replied, “I never really cared for goblins, anyway.”

  “Who does?” Tekadan replied. “Barbie, this is your job, oh lady officer.”

  That was how the EXotic Corp came to assault a goblin tribe on behalf of the dwarves.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Untitled

  Chapter 19

  “You should have discussed this with the council,” Morner said with justifiable anger in his voice. “I don’t know if the guild can take on such a serious raid right now.”

  “Sir, I took that into account,” BarbieQ replied. “The positives outweighed the negatives.”

  With a sigh, the old man glared at her. “Please remind me what the positives are.”

  BarbieQ smiled and enumerated the positives as she saw them. “First, we have a good relationship with the elves on the council.”

  “While alienating the dwarves when they find out about the change in the elven council’s needs for metal,” Morner added.

  “Possibly, but the dwarves get what they want by us taking the mine and ousting the goblins from it. So I think the increased reputation for the guild with both groups is a net positive.

  “Second, the elves will pay royalties to the guild for each piece of metal they produce, not to Lorcan,” she said, giving me sly sideways look. “Third, I was able to wheedle other concessions from them, including access to a new class of spells for our mages.

  ”

  She said it primly and extended a hand out to examine her fire red nails with a smile.

  “Yes, and these spells are? You never quite explained that part of the bargain.”

  We all looked on with grins on our faces.

  “Nothing major just, mass teleportation and gate spells.”

  “Right.” The way Morner said it, it was almost a hissed curse. ”Ma
king ours the only guild that has the ability to move players around quickly to hot spots.”

  “Well, yes,” Tekadan said as he defended the idea. “More than that, it makes our guild the preeminent guild in the game.”

  “I know you mean well by players who will want these spells to sell their services. Once word of these gets out, we will be a target.”

  I was interested in his analysis.

  “The last thing we got, sir, was the second piece of the bridge,” BarbieQ said, holding up a golden semi-circular piece of metal.

  Morner grunted then. “At least we have that. How many pieces are left?”

  “As far as we know,” I started, then continued when he looked toward me. “Just one more. We asked one of their scholars about the riddle, and he laughed, saying in time it should become obvious.”

  “Fucking scholars,” Morner said. ”Tell me about the target.”

  I pulled out the map they gave us, and we set about pinning it to the table. Tekadan began the briefing.

  “The objective is described as an open pit mine. According to the map, it’s fairly large, nearly a mile across and a quarter mile deep. There is a rock spire in the center. Lorcan expressed theories about it, but they aren’t really germane to the operation.” Morner grunted, but motioned Tekadan to continue.

  “The opfor is estimated at close to a thousand goblins and other mixed races. They didn’t have an exact breakdown. Most of the goblins though are mid-level, ranging from five to seven, and most fighters level ten,” Tekadan said, looking up and acknowledging us before continuing. “It’s not confirmed, but it is suspected that somewhere in the crater is a dragon.”

  “The presence of kobolds in the mixed races lends credence to this,” I said.

  “Why would that lend credence to a dragon being on scene?” Morner asked and eyed me.

  “For about the past hundred years since the original D&D, kobolds have been seen as servant and sycophants for dragons. They are also often seen as miners,” I said.

  Morner grunted. ”Continue.”

  “We expect most guards to be roving patrols with fixed guard posts at the entrances. We expect three to four hundred guards, then another three to four hundred miners and other types of fighters.”

  “And what would you have the guild do to get in there?” Morner said, eying the map and pointing out the trails into the chasm. “This is the largest entrance, and it would permit only three people abreast, all the while exposing them to the slings and arrows of the enemy. Here, here, and here are nearly as bad.”

  He punctuated the last bit by indicating at the other entry points.

  “Yes, sir,” BarbieQ said. “That's why we were thinking of getting all Bronze Age on them, then fuck them over as Trojan whores.”

  “What?” Morner asked confusion clear in his voice.

  I saw Tekadan do a face palm. “She means a Trojan horse.”

  “All right, and what is the pretense you would go in there as?”

  “An oldie but a goodie. Trade delegation. Once we were in, then we could have BarbieQ open gates and bring in our troops.”

  “Well, it’s better thought out than Buenos Aires was. Okay, we are a go.”

  X - X - X

  The road to the crater was fairly long, but with the aid of our new erstwhile allies, the trip was cut down to a day instead of the week of travel it would normally have taken. I reflected on our party. We had regrouped with the Angels, and I found it curious of the eight party members, I was the only non-human character.

  “Okay, stupid question, why is everyone playing human except me?”

  “Huh,” Harut said looking around. ”I never even thought about it, really. Samael?”

  Samael looked up and around at us. “It's actually fairly simple. I should think people play who they are comfortable being. Most gamers identify with being human. If you look at most of us, our characters are fairly close representations of who we are in life.”

  He shrugged then, dismissing it from thought. I wondered what it said about me that my character didn’t really look anything like me in real life other than my face. Did I really want to be someone else?

  I pondered this as we rode our mounts across the barren, dusty land. Almost as soon as we were in sight of the crater, we were stopped by a patrol of warg riders.

  “Who you?” the leader bellowed at us. “What you do here?”

  It occurred to me that he wasn’t unintelligent, but that the common language wasn’t his primary language. It had been previously agreed that I would be the spokesperson for the group, since my charisma was the highest in the party.

  “We come in peace. We want to trade goods with you,” I replied trying to keep it simple and understandable.

  “What goods you gots?” the leader barked back at me.

  The rest of his party milled about on the large beasts. I observed them surreptitiously. The goblins were around five feet tall. Their bodies were lean and wiry with muscle. They weren’t graceful or powerful, but they looked more like an old tree root: gnarled, weathered and tough. They sported jagged blades and short bows that, while not well-crafted, were still serviceable and deadly.

  “Food, tools, cloth, and a few other items,” I replied, taking out some cookies and handing them over to the monster.

  He looked at it dubiously before eating it and belching loudly, never taking his eyes off us.

  He then eyed the road to the crater. “You follow, we watch. No funny business.”

  “We meet your traders at the top?” I asked.

  “No. Not top. You go in,” the leader said, his smile showing needle-sharp teeth.

  I looked at the others before continuing. “All right, we go in. You take us to your traders.”

  I noticed the nudges that the other goblins were giving one another. They thought we were ripe for plucking.

  We traveled in companionable silence. The only thing that would have been better is if the goblins were downwind. To say they had an odor was an understatement. It was no wonder they fought all the time—it was to get away from the stench. The trail down into the crater was full of narrow switchbacks, but after a half hour we made it down. Many others had joined the original group. I had last counted twenty warg riders. We had noted different hard points into the crater.

  “Where is the trader?” I asked.

  I really needed to learn the goblin tongue, I thought as I heard the sibilant hiss and gutturals sounds of the surrounding soldiers. The leader pointed to a larger hut on open ground. We headed in that direction. All the while, more goblins were surrounding us. I opened the door and stepped inside, having dismissed my mount just as the others had before entering. The inside was bare, with a few loose sacks on the ground.

  Tekadan was the first to speak. “Good thing we planned for this. Barbie, get started. Lorcan, you’re on.”

  I sighed. He was right. We hadn’t thought that they would honor their word and trade fairly for what we had. Goblins, according to lore, are a predatory species. In Arabella, they still were predatory, and we had set ourselves up for them well.

  I went to confront the goblins. Even as I did, I could hear BarbieQ’s first efforts with her new spells.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the warg rider. “The trader isn’t here.”

  “No trade. You give or we take. We may let live,” he said, fingering an axe by his side.

  Axes are great weapons.

  “I see. Let me go talk to my friends. This should take just a few minutes. You know this will seriously affect our relations?” I said cheekily.

  We had estimated it would take BarbieQ one minute for each gate, and each gate would stay open for one minute allowing about twenty people through at a time. Looking at the hut, there might be forty people. Looking behind me I noticed about seventy goblins.

  I stuck my head in the hut was crowded to the rafters. “Tekadan?”

  Tekadan looked around . “Lorcan, the leader?”

  “Give me o
ne minute, and he will be dead,” I said. “It’s show time.”

  Turning, I motioned for the leader to come over.

  “You give?” he said.

  As he approached, I nodded and smiled.