Chapter 60

Tom was released within the hour. The misapprehension that he was Emil’s son, and that Emil was the one who was truly responsible for the changes that had been made to the city recently, was largely responsible for his release.

It was a reasonable mistake to make, as for the most part during the construction of the water tower and the roads, Emil had been calling out instructions and Tom had been following them wordlessly. To the uninformed observer, it had looked as though Emil was directing the construction with his own magic, rather than guiding the one who was truly responsible.

Adding to that mistake was Tom’s youth; most observers incorrectly assumed that the fourteen year old hadn’t even unlocked a class yet and was simply there to watch his father work.

Regardless, Tom was released early, while Emil got to find out what prison food tasted like in Welsius. Stale bread and boiled beans without any flavoring. He decided, after a bite of each, that he wasn’t that hungry after all.

Fortunately he wasn’t mistreated; the guards, while forced to follow the instructions of their immediate superiors, who were following the instructions of the council, knew perfectly well that Emil was connected with Madame Silva, one of the more famous members of the knighthood.

So it was that when the Winged Knight finally heard of the insult done to Emil by arresting him, and she stormed the local prison, she found Emil in high spirits, chatting with a young guardsman trainee.

“You’re the second hero I’ve met, you know,” the lad was saying. “Strange in that I haven’t heard of any new ones for the entirety of my life, excepting the Vanquisher of course, and now suddenly I’m bumping into them left and right.”

“There’s four of us that I know of that came through a gate recently, Rory,” Emil answered. “So there’s two more for you to meet yet. I’m curious though, who else did you meet?”

“Oh, the dark-skinned doctor lady,” Rory said. “She was looking for volunteers, but I suppose you know about that already beings your friends and all. Between you and me, I had to think of me grams the entire time I was volunteering to keep from embarrassing myself. She’s mighty pretty.”

“She is quite beautiful,” Emil agreed.

“A bit too old for me, of course,” Rory continued. “I mean, beggers can’t be choosers, but if I’d have to be climbing the ladder quite a bit for her to look at me that way. Only reason she was interested in me at all was to see my lifelines.”

“I’m sure you’ll have many prospects with women your own age soon, Rory,” Emil assured the lad. “Seems to me that a lot of women would appreciate a sturdy young man with steady employment.”

“You’d think so, but I’m just a Commoner. I haven’t even picked up the Guardsman subclass yet, although hopefully delving the dungeon tomorrow will fix that,” Rory said. “Oh, who’s there?”

Silva and the local captain of the guard entered the hallway, and the young gardsman-trainee abruptly saluted. Emil, seeing the lad straighten through the door, came over to stick his head through the bars.

“Oh, Silva! Excellent. Here to spring me, are you?” He asked.

“You never should have been arrested in the first place,” Silva grumbled. “This entire exercise in civil authority is a waste of time. They can’t even get their facts straight considering that they think you’re the one responsible for the creation of the dungeon.”

“Well, I did help design it,” Emil pointed out. “And the council is technically correct that I failed to file for permits for the water tower and the road construction projects.”

“Regardless, you were acting with royal authority, and therefor your own authority supercedes that of the local town council,” Silva declared. “In fact, Captain, once you have released Mr. Stefanson, I will require your help in writing arrest warrants for the village council. If they want to play petty political games, then I shall oblige them.”

“The entire city council?” the captain asked, sounding more amused than anything else. “Not just Ken and Karen, the pair that authorized the arrests?”

“Let them debate who is responsible for this misapprehension while they enjoy the hospitality of the city watch,” Silva declared. “The fact that Mr. Stefanson was traveling in the company of myself should have been reason enough to give them pause before enacting this silly little power struggle.”

“I see,” the captain said, a malicious grin on his face. “I certainly can’t fault the logic in that. I hope that you’ll refrain from extending your wrath to the members of the city guard who were simply—”

“The chain of command exists for a reason, and I respect the restraint that the watch has shown in their handling of the situation. Unless Mr. Stefanson has been abused during his time in your care, then I see no reason to punish honest guardsmen for doing their jobs,” Silva said.

“Aside from serving me swill, I haven’t been harmed in anyway,” Emil volunteered. “In fact, it’s been an interesting experience. I might end up designing a prison or two out of necessity, so seeing the inside of one has been an educational experience.”

“In that case, I thank you both for your restraint,” the captain said. He produced a keychain and unlocked the door. “Guardsman Rory, if you would help the Royal Engineer recover the items that were confiscated during his arrest, I will take Madame Silva to begin writing those arrest warrants.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“R-right away sir!” Rory exclaimed, leading Emil through the halls to the room where prisoner belongings were kept. Silva, meanwhile, followed the guard captain to his office to fill out the necessary paperwork to complete her threat against the city council.

The arrests were made the next morning, and the town was filled with gossip as the news spread.

~~~~~~

Vella and the Weavers never knew how close the attackers came to capturing them.

The attackers didn’t know who their targets were, exactly. They had been given descriptions, and told which of the targets to kill and which to kidnap. But for the most part they were local mercenaries barely a step above bandits. Two of them had a Warrior class and one of them was a Rogue, but the rest were simply Criminals who passed themselves off as Commoners whenever they could get away with the deception.

Anaxis had noted them following the Weaver’s caravan during his aerial patrols. If they had been wise, they would have turned back at that point, but they either failed to notice the griffin rider or simply didn’t care. They were still some distance from the caravan, so they may have expected that Anaxis was unrelated to their target. Which was in fact the case; the scouts who saw the Griffin had assumed that the rider was completely unconnected to their mission.

Their mistake would prove lethal, but not for them.

The mercenary-bandits were following the caravan’s trail, but when dusk fell, they made camp rather than proceed through the night. Another mistake which would prove lethal, although it would also save lives.

The scouts were in the low level twenties, and their perception was not nearly enough to break through Anaxis’s stealth. He might as well have strolled openly through their pickets on his way to the tents. It took him a short while to identify the leader, who was eating from a bowl of bean stew when Anaxis spotted him.

A rival spy, one he recognized.

One that he had no compunction with stabbing in the back. Literally. The man cried out as the blade pierced his heart, and a moment later he was still, Anaxis standing over his body with blade bare as the camp roused itself from slumber.

The leader of the mercenary bandits – the spy that Anaxis had just killed had been their employer, not their leader – stepped forward with a smile on his face.

“Well, my friend, you seem to have cost us, oh, I think it was about six hundred marks by killing our friend here. Not that we had any personal attachments to him, you understand, but we were mighty attached to the promise of coin,” the bandit leader said amiably. “Might be that if you want to leave this camp--”

“I suggest that you do not try to shake me down,” Anaxis said, interrupting the man’s monologue. “The only reason I allowed myself to be discovered was because I intend on hiring your services myself, in the place of my deceased rival here.”

“Is that so?” the leader said, perking up. “Well, it does seem that we are recently unemployed. Exactly what sort of services do you require? And what sort of renumeration will you be providing? As I said, ‘twas six hundred marks you cost us, and--”

“And I’ll give you twelve hundred,” Anaxis assured him. “Six hundred for the lost opportunity to spend your lives foolishly, and another six hundred to spend your time righteously.”

“Twelve hundred? Yes, my friend, I believe that we can do business,” the bandit leader agreed. “But you haven’t explained what our tasks shall be.”

“It is literally the opposite of the task which your previous employer had you set upon,” Anaxis explained. “Rather than attacking the caravan you have been following, you will instead guard it from the shadows. You will scout ahead, behind, and to the sides for the caravan, and you will report any other potential threats to me as soon as they are identified.”

The bandit leader scratched his short, well kept beard in consideration for a moment, before saying “That’s awfully good pay for lawful work. Not that I’m going to try to talk you down from your initial offer. But if I’d known you had deep pockets, I might have lied about what we were being paid, and let you double the inflated price. Oh well. The offer is accepted, my friend.”

Anaxis inclined his head in acknowledgement of the agreement, then tossed the leader a heavy purse. “There’s three hundred in there. A downpayment. Unfortunately it’s all the more that I’m carrying on me, but I assure you that I’ll happily give you another three hundred once I have a chance to confer with my money-changers on the subject. That will be fifty percen up front, with the remaining six hundred marks to be paid upon the completion of the assignment. Whatever value you can extract from your predecessor’s corpse is yours to collect for the task of burying him. Are these terms agreeable?”

“I’d say they’re heavily in my favor if anything,” the bandit leader agreed. “Wasn’t looking forward to running from the law all the way to Velund with three hostages in tow. Being paid double for a quarter of the task, why, if every caravan paid prices like yours I’m certain that the trade routes of Welsius would be the safest in the six kingdoms.”

Anaxis bowed to his new employees, and then he blurred and vanished from sight. The bandits cursed as the realized, belatedly, how lucky they were that their mysterious visitor had been more interested in securing their services than ending their lives.

~~~~~~

Emil joined the others in the inn where they were staying after having been released from custody and reclaiming his property, which mostly consisted of the various instruments of his trade and his notes. He ordered a strong drink and a proper meal as the others questioned him on his experience.

“I guess it shouldn’t have been all that surprising that the local government would take issues with us making significant changes to their city without consulting them,” Emil said. “I should have inquired what sort of permits would be required to build the various public works that Tom and I have been working on.”

“That’s crap,” Jessica said. “The water tower isn’t even in the city, it’s a half of a mile from the nearest building! And what kind of idiot arrests someone for improving the roads? It’s completely bonkers if you ask me.”

“I didn’t think we were doing anything wrong,” Tom admitted. “I’m not surprised that people are upset about the dungeon. I mean, I’m still not exactly sure why it was that Cores need to have a dungeon, or why some cores spawn monsters and others don’t. The books I’ve been reading on the topic think there’s an invisible statistic that we can’t see as Controllers, and that a monster spawns whenever that statistic gets too high.”

“Yes, well, considering that the dungeon you created is significantly deeper and filled with enemies more powerful than the level fifteen zombies of the dungeon we accidentally destroyed, hopefully that problem is successfully solved,” Emil said. “I met a guardsman during my stay with the watch who said they’re going to be delving tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how much experience you gain from their efforts, Tom.”

“Yeah,” Tom said, “It’s a little frustrating that I don’t get experience directly, but I do have five dungeons now which are open to the public. It will be interesting to see how fast I start to level once the adventurers of Welsius take notice and begin delving them.”