CHAPTER 66: A shifty mayor
I consider myself an amiable fellow and wouldn’t go out of my way to trouble people. I wouldn’t have bothered our delinquent mayor if it wasn’t for an unfortunate event. Some of his hired idiots suddenly took an unwelcome liking to me. The old man’s warning of avoiding the mayor’s hoodlums came to mind, but it was too late at the time to do anything about it. A group of hired gangster thugs, acting as his so-called tax collectors, stopped Hana and I on the way home. With so many armed opponents, tackling them with without getting ourselves skewered became the challenge.
My father always said that when surrounded by a bunch of thugs do whatever will buy you time, being dead didn’t help anyone. I guess at that stage they got me at a particularly inconvenient time because I was intending to pay Haruhime in advance for the next month’s accommodation. No doubt someone had been keeping a close eye on me and knew when I was in the habit of paying my bills.
“Oi, you two. We’ve seen you around these parts. We’ve been looking for you, have you been hiding from us? Isn’t it about time you pay your taxes?”
“Yes to your first question, and no to your second.”
The thugs looked like a bunch of hillbillies searching for roadkill. Their leader even sported a rather severe crew cut, as if he’d found discount coupons on haircuts and used them all at once. His large ears, clear of any head hair, made him look like an oversized wingnut making it difficult for me to take him seriously. A quick appraisal of some individuals of the group showed none of them sported any special skills and they were just poor-quality thugs. Probably the cheapest out of town hire the mayor could get.
“Are you looking for trouble, son? You don’t want to mess with us.”
“I’m sorry…idiots say what.”
“What?”
“Idiots say what.”
“What?”
I couldn’t get enough of it. Unfortunately for them, I stored everything in my ring, there wasn’t a single copper on me. Realising I obviously didn’t have any money pouches on me, their eyes fell on the ring on my finger.
“How about you give that nice ring of yours there?”
And that’s where the friendship, if it ever existed, ended. At that moment their fates inextricably changed for the worse. With all the ruckus, townsfolk’s heads popped out of their windows like whack-a-moles before they realised what was going on and hastily closed their shutters. Perhaps it was just as well I didn’t have too many witnesses because I was about to teach those idiots a severe lesson in decorum. Hana, picking up my sudden tension, took up a defensive stance.
Then Haruhime made an appearance behind us as if magically stepping out of nowhere.
“What’s the problem gentlemen?”
The thugs opened their encirclement to allow her to enter. She probably walked over from the Screaming Banshee when she heard the commotion. Realising Haruhime was now in the mix they decided not to pursue the issue with me given that Mr. Marset had a thing for her. The last thing they wanted was an issue with their boss, and they knew how temperamental he became when angry.
“Mind yourself. We’ll be waiting for your payment.”
I decided that the next time we met, they wouldn’t want to cross swords with me.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay away from them?”
Haruhime scolded me. It was the second time she saved me from these types after all.
“No. You said I must stay away from Mr. Marset.”
I laughed, but she took my words seriously.
“That’s not funny. Someone could get hurt.”
“Are you afraid they’ll hurt us?”
“No. I’m afraid you two will hurt them. That will give Mr. Marset all the excuses he needs to send more men to arrest you. Even you have a limit on the number of men you can fight at one time.”
I decided to change the topic.
“It’s nice to see you again Haruhime.}
“Stop changing the subject and come, we need to get away from here before they change their mind and return.”
Together we walked back to the Inn. I decided that from then on, it was time to do something about our beloved mayor. There’s a saying that information is king. I recalled crossing paths with Mr. Marset on my first dark evening in the town and I just had a robust feeling his action was key to something important. This time, however, I had the use of my air scan skill. From my vantage point above the inn’s entrance, I could sense the entire road and monitored the comings and goings. Hana complained that the room was cold because I kept the windows open. I forgot just how cold and misty Obon became in the evenings, I suspected it was related to the Wildemere marsh somehow, since the mist always rolled in from the North. Despite the mist, I still didn’t notice Mr. Marset that night, or the second. Only a few small, rodent-like creatures traversed the road. I spent the rest of the time alternately working with Ara on my golems and the town’s future design. On the third night I hit the jackpot.
With my heads-up display I tracked him crossing the road and heading through the bushes. I thought Hana would protest at me dragging her around with me in the middle of the dark, but for some reason she seemed quite interested in what I was doing. Must have been the catkin in her. The mist was starting to roll in again and I realised that without my skill and Ara’s assistance, a person getting lost might become an ugly reality. We quietly caught up to Mr. Marset and soon we heard the crunching of boots and his mumbling chant I only recalled only too well. He was so near to us I heard for the first time what he was mumbling. He was counting out his steps.
“One hundred and thirty-four, one hundred and thirty-five…”
I immediately thought of pirates pacing out their treasure maps. Not wanting to give our position away I took off my shoes to walk barefoot which was clever but then the stony ground hurt my feet, but I found that I was far quieter while following him. He wasn’t difficult to track because other than his noisy stomping his lamp was also clearly visible through the bushes, but he also stank bloody awful. I could have followed him with my eyes closed he smelled that bad. Someone desperately needed a bath.
He stopped and shuffled around. I heard shifting sand as we quietly approached. Through the bushes I could see he had placed some cloth bags on the ground next to him and was scooping copious amounts of gravel out from a hole behind a bush. He let out a large sigh as he seemed to have found an earlier stash and continued to place the bags lying next to him into the hole. He covered up the lot with the dirt he originally removed, stood up and dusted himself off.
Once he did a little look around as if trying to find someone who may have been spying on him. I mean really, I was hardly a few steps from him. He wouldn’t see me even if I waved at him. Seemingly satisfied with his pointless inspection he stomped off in the direction of the town. We waited until I couldn’t see him anymore and walked to the spot he had dug up. Once my night vision returned, we promptly uncovered his earlier work. Twelve heavy bags lay at my feet. Inspecting the bags, we discovered an abundance of silver coins in them but not a single gold coin which struck me as kind of odd. Who would want to lug enormous amounts of silver around when they could simply carry a few gold coins? He was obviously battling to move the silver bags, so why do it then?
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“Hey Hana, why don’t we make a withdraw from his bank?”
She snickered at my suggestion.
“Make one for me too please.”
I asked Hana if she didn’t mind packing the dusty bags into her storage ring while I looked around the area for any other stash piles. When she complained about the bags dirtying her clothes, I sighed and gave her my storage ring to use. It was a woman thing, there was no point arguing. I left her to get on with it, wondered off and tried using earth sense skills to pick up if there was anything else in the area. A loud snort sounded next to my head. I mentally kicked myself for making the mistake of purely focusing on the ground and not being aware of my environment.
Stopping the instinct to run in a wild panic, I simply focused on my breathing. Slowly turning to face it, I realised that the dinosaur like creature from the other night was breathing on me. It was hard not to soil my pants right there. Expecting that I might run into my night-time friend, I was prepared. I pulled out a small bag the size of my two hands, the only weapon I knew few meat-eating creatures couldn’t resist. Beef jerky. Yep, nothing beat the taste of that salty preserved meat when a little human snack was on your mind. Since the bloody thing was right on top of me, there was no point trying to fight it and expecting to win, so I tried food instead. I hoped, of course, that it would be satisfied with it and didn’t treat it as a hors d'oeuvre with me as the main meal.
I gently held out the piece of jerky. From that distance in the dim light, I could clearly make out the muscled features of the creature’s face and its upper body. I could even smell its rancid breath.
“That’s a nice…girl…boy…er, creature.”
I had no idea if the creature even had a sex. It took a few sniffs of the jerky and did something unexpected. With its short spindly talons, it gently took the food bag from my hand. I could see the massive sharp claws tighten around the food bag as it lifted it from my hands, while never letting its eyes shift from mine all the while.
It snorted in my face and turned to walk back into the brush. Why did I get the sinking feeling I had just been monster mugged? What was it about Obon that everyone just tried to intimidate those weaker than themselves? After a while I recovered enough of my wits to carry on. I hoped the creature would be happy with the jerky and leave me alone for the rest of the night. I didn’t have any more beef jerky on me anyhow.
Hana arrived. Her hearing was so good she could pinpoint me even in that mist.
“Who were you speaking to, was there someone else here?”
“Oh, no. Just a monster thug looking to claim a food tax for operating in its area.”
She didn’t ask any further and just shook her head. When we finally managed to get back to bed and I apologised to a sleepy looking Haruhime still in her night gown for arriving late. Before I fell asleep Hana asked me something.
“How much money do you think there’s in those bags?”
Flipping heck. If a hundred silvers made up a small gold, then there were ten small gold per bag, or 120 small gold in all those bags.
“I suspect there’s about twelve thousand coins.”
“Twelve thousand? What are you intending to do with the money?”
“I don’t know yet. Technically it’s not my money or the mayor’s. It probably belongs to the people of Obon. I’ll ask Grenfell tomorrow after lunch.”
I had no intention of taking money from the bags because I felt it was like stealing other people’s hard-working money. I lay awake for a while thinking over the day’s events. Something told me this was not the only stash he had made out there and I felt determined to find it. The problem was when he discovered his stash was missing, he would
The next morning, I again apologised to Haruhime for waking her late. She didn’t look to perturbed by it and simply waved it off with a smile. At work that afternoon, Grenfell was particularly interested in what I had to say. He looked at the twelve money bags sitting on the counter.
“I don’t think this belongs to the mayor, and somehow I don’t think it’s our taxes going to the palace either. You can’t go handing out the money back to people. Only he knows where it came from in the first place so you wouldn’t know who to hand it back to. I’d say that if you’re looking to do something with this, then you only need to consider what should have been done with it in the first place.”
He didn’t complain about me keeping the money in the back store, because at that stage I didn’t have any plan for it and keeping it with me was just too tempting. I was open to any suggestions, but I did promise him that I would not take any of the money in those bags for myself and he seemed satisfied with that. Hana came up with my first suggestion.
“Didn’t you say to Greg that you would like to build a boulevard?”
I started chuckling at that suggestion, it was actually a good idea.
“Greg, who’s Greg?”
I ignored Grenfell’s question, my mind racing at how to organise the paving of the main road running through Obon. It needed a little remodelling of my new town design, but I could replan without any problems.
“Grenfell, how did you and Karato manage to get through that forest?”
“There’s an old disused track that used to be the main road a long time ago. It travels further south and tends to be twice as long a trip, but it avoids a lot of monsters. You would need a guide that knew the route if you wanted to travel through that safely. These days of course, the one that we now use is much better for travelling unless you have monsters crawling all over it. If you’re interested in bringing people over from Shimmerstal, I’d suggest you have a word with Karato.”
Once again Grenfell anticipated my thinking. I decided to speak to Karato the next day we practiced in the dungeon. In my mind, Hana’s suggestion started to plot out. If I could convince Mr. Papadopoulos and his men an opportunity to come here, I had a lot of work ready for them. The need to find those other stashes of the mayor’s became paramount, why did I feel like I was on a treasure hunt? More concerning perhaps was my total disregard for Mr. Marset’s feelings. I wasn’t the sort of person that felt such antagonism towards people, but that oversized goblin we called a mayor rubbed me up the wrong way from the start. That on its own wouldn’t worry me, I was adult enough to take an idiot for who he was, it was how he treated others that really ticked me off.
“By the way,”
Grenfell asked,
“who’s Greg?”
As if providence walked next to us, we bumped into Tomu on the way to the inn. Hana met Tomu for the first time.
“Hi Tomu.”
“Hi mister Shane. Who’s this?”
He said pointing to Hana.
“That’s Hana. I want you to treat her with respect, just like you treat me.”
I’m not sure if it was Hanna’s slave collar that gave him the bravado, but he suddenly spouted some typical Tomu words.
“I dunno. How much is she going to pay?”