“Though the Goblin did fall to the hero most liked,

His foul head at the end of the hero's great pike,

The world could not know what the three of us peeked,

For a hero must leave on his feet.

The hero to all in the kingdom must leave on his feet…”

— The Ballad of Sir Joe, by “Golden-Voiced” Garbeaux.

The trip from the Goblin stronghold had been a difficult one, though not for the reasons one might expect. Joe’s horse, a mighty and magical steed was unavailable as, with most of his possessions, it was actually a magical item. “You don’t have to feed a figurine” he would tell us, which was true, but this meant that the animal wasn’t available to carry him any longer, spell-locked away as it was with the rest of Joe’s riches. Of the lot of us only McGrue could move the titanic can of meat. Between Aimee and I the pallet was built, then McGrue dragged it, complaints of a cold cave forgotten as his labor led to heavy sweat.

“Are we there yet?” groaned McGrue. “If I’d known moving this side of beef would fall to only me I may have abandoned the lot of you.”

“Close enough to where you need to lower your voice. Look.” I whispered as we crested a hill. We looked down on the walls of Fereal, the city-state of commerce that surrounded its King’s Keep.

“Why?” asked Aimee nervously. “Why would we need to be quiet?”

“Let’s just say that we can’t walk in the front gate. It’s one thing to bring a fallen companion into the city but this is the hero upon whom the King himself relies.” I shielded my eyes from the sun, scrutinizing the wall. “There. I see a spot in the wall where the upkeep is poor. A four-foot dip, probably from an old catapult strike or monster attack. McGrue could probably grab the top of it without stretching.”

Speaking of stretching, at this point McGrue was working out some kinks he’d gotten while doing the lions’ share of the work. “Eh? Why’s that important?”

I pondered for a brief moment how to reply but there was no way to sugar coat the situation. “We need to get over the wall, McGrue. Into the city and, somehow, we need to get Joe into his suite in the Guild Hall. And we’d best not be caught…”

—

“Mistletoe allergy, seriously?” asked Aimee as she glared haughtily at the vagrant. Such was the threat she portrayed that he decided to find another wall to deface. She’d gone up the wall first in the hopes of sweet-talking any guard who might happen by.

The weak spot in the wall, it turned out, was also an under-guarded spot. “Why pay guards to guard the poorest district in the city?” the Guard Captain might ask, assuming that this would just be throwing good money after bad.

“He drank a potion of immortality, but cheaped out so there was one weakness,” I said pushing with all my might (what little there was). “If it wouldn’t hurt your average man then the immortality wouldn’t protect against it. So, yes, he wasn’t protected against Mistletoe.”

“That sounds like him, the bloody skinflint,” growled McGrue with his greater might and, between us, Mighty Joe, the greatest hero in the kingdom, tumbled over the wall landing face down in a pile of garbage. “He didn’t even give us enough coin to bribe the gate guards. When was the last time we actually got paid, anyway?”

“The arrears are considerable, I admit, but they are tracked, I assure you!” I clambered over the wall and half fell, half sat, down. “Oh, the madness! I can’t see how this night could get any worse.”

“Uh, like, Gabbo?” asked Aimee.

“Garbeaux, remember? It’s not emphasized but there is an R in there.”

“Whatever. “You are, like, totally sitting on Joe’s head,” said Aimee.

I hopped up, looking down at the massive pile of armor that stayed put no matter what method McGrue tried to remove it. Even his helm, which we thought he’d pulled off, would only pull up, clinging by whatever portion remained touching his flesh at the last. Though the thought that he might die must have been the furthest thing from his imagination Joe had made sure that his body would be un-lootable.

When we’d recovered from the reality that Joe was dead, over the next hour every method to remove his equipment was tried both mundane and arcane. Unfortunately, all of Joe’s equipment was bound to his body, leaving a very large, very dead knight permanently canned in a massive suit of full plate armor.

“I would assume that rigor mortis would be taking hold by now.” I said.

“Fed him an old orc potion, keeps the meat tender and prevents too much rot,” said McGrue.

“Your people have an alchemical potion intended to preserve corpses?” I asked.

“Did I say it was for preserving corpses?” asked McGrue, chuckling a bit. “No, mate, that was a food preservative. Salts and herbs, enough to keep a cow for a month. It is alchemical magic, though, so it sinks in even though I fed it to a dead man.”

“Uh! Where are we, anyway,” huffed Aimee, turning up her nose at everything around us. Run down and clearly filled with desperate people this wasn’t the best place to be under normal circumstances but this was far from normal.

The first King of Fereal had decided that the poor needed a place to live as well as frequent baths so he had them pressed into what he lovingly named “The Floodlands.” McGrue grunted the name matter-of factly. “Best place to sneak in and out, nobody watching, walls are shite. Frankly I’m surprised that our Bard friend knew about it. You’re not one to slum about, after all, are you Gar-bow?”

“Ah, well, no.” I stammered.

“No? So what was that about catapult or monster you was sayin’?”

“Educated guesses. What else can tear down a city wall?”

“High waters, friend. High enough to overflow a twelve-foot wall, carrying stones down and out. That spot of yours took a hundred years to get this bad. My granddad told me that his granddad watched it the first stone fall out as a boy. Year after year. No repair crews ever came…” He seemed almost wistful. I hadn’t ever considered where McGrue came from but, apparently, we were standing in it.

We sat about the fetid alleyway for awhile, stewing in our juices, trying to figure out the next step. Recapping; we were trying to get back into the guild hall where the serving girls would bring Joe dinner, all of them, for hours, presumably so that he could dine on more than simple sustenance. I’d be curious to know how many little Joes there were out there in the world. Somehow, we’d have to keep them at bay, but first we had to get him in and his suite was not on the first floor.

Eyes downcast, tusked jaw resting on Joe’s gauntlet, McGrue toyed with Joe’s helmet. “So what next. How are you going to pay us?” he grumbled.

“Pay you?” I asked, surprised. “Come now, Joe must have some treasure in his room. Now Joe always paid me and he told me to dole out your pay and also Aimee’s.” This was where I came up short, realizing that “But he’s holding onto all the money so he must have some treasure in his room.” My repetition of that statement probably didn’t help my case.

“Unless it is all in Joe’s ‘mystical bag of holding,’ said McGrue. “Which we can’t get into?”

“No, and believe me, I tried. He’s ensorcelled it so that only he can open it.” moaned Aimee, Ammon’s makeup was washing away, exposing her pale white skin. In her simple, purple elven robe, you’d scarcely know she ever claimed to be a Dark Wizard. The dark black hair was a dye that would take longer to remove, but she was a strawberry blonde somewhere under there. “With magic I tried. It’s like magic asking … where is it, y’know? Magic had no answer.”

“Magic!?” I sat up straight, horrified. “We aren’t supposed to use magic without good cause! Joe will be … will be…” I said reflexively then struggled. Sir Joe was dead and now cared for little save the maggots and the grave. Joseph Mulfinger, greedy tyrant, didn’t like us wasting his magic, but his feelings scarcely mattered at this point.

Aimee glared at me then shook her head, “Look, pet, Joe bound all his magical items to his body, and that includes that magical bag he kept all the good stuff in.” She was right. “Just be thankful that he only put the really valuable stuff in there. The bag with my magical components was just hidden in his codpiece.” She shuddered slightly. “For the record I did check his backpack first.”

“Anything good?” I asked, hoping against hope.

“In the pack?” She shook her head. “Just the stuff Joe hadn’t processed yet. There’s a few scrolls of walking dead, that broken flying broomstick and the necromantic focus we took off of that actual Dark Wizard. I can use most of it but selling? I dunno.” Aimee stood, dusting herself off before checking around the nearby corners.

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“Right, the Dark Wizard … uh … Ignus!” growled McGrue. “Poor bastard. That skull fetish was all that was left of him. You’d think he’d killed Joe’s mum the way he came down on the bloke.”

“Clear!” said Aimee. McGrue and I stood from our Joe-shaped couch and grabbed it up. Hauling the corpse to a nearby cart, one used for hauling offal off the streets, in it went. Again, McGrue did most of the work, but I helped and we managed to toss Joe’s body onto the cart before anyone spotted us.

McGrue instantly began to cover the body. “Thanks, runt. Funny, you don’t add much but just lifting the bastard and all that armor when it’s dead weight is just beyond my ken. Another set of hands, even one as weak and girlish as yours, does the trick.”

We began filling in the cart to hide the body when I was struck with a pang of guilt. “Hold on.” I interrupted, looking at this, what could only be called, a shit-cart. “We’re going to have to clean it off,” It was silly but I thought of Joe’s honor and what him laying in shit meant..

“Clean it? The body isn’t even clean!” McGrue glared at me, “You are positive we can use this body to get into his room, right?”

“Yes,” I lied. I was at best mostly sure. “Of course!” Maybe fifty-fifty. But I was also broke and desperate. So were McGrue and Aimee for that matter. We hadn’t been paid in months, living hand-to-mouth with the world’s worst boss holding his debt over our heads to keep us working.

At just that moment a drunk walked by and looked at us with scrutiny; a foppishly dressed bard, a half-naked barbarian and Aimee whose makeup and costume were a cross between a grandmother and a sex-worker. He cocked an eyebrow.

“What are you looking at, bum?” growled McGrue, but the vagrant was strangely unmoved. No doubt his liquor made him brave.

Abruptly my training took over. “Begone miscreant, lest you incur my wrath!” I bellowed in my best mimicry of Sir Joe, not moving a single lip. The drunk looked around terrified and then scuttled off, nearly falling in the process..

All was silent for a moment before McGrue exclaimed. “What the hell was that!?”

“Seriously, how are you so good at … I don’t even know!?” asked Aimee.

Blushing, I waved them off but secretly craved more praise. “Oh, what? That? Simple ventriloquism! Though I was voted in my class at the bard’s college for mimicry.” I said.

“That sounded just like him,” said McGrue.

“That’s the mimicry!” I exclaimed. “Combining the two skills is, admittedly quite difficult but, well, I guess I am pretty good at it.”

“Well now we know you’re good for somethin’.” Chuckled McGrue as he finished covering Joe’s body in garbage. At least for now we didn’t have to worry about the cart’s contents being recognized.

We started moving the cart on our path toward the Guild Hall. “Actually, I’ve gotten way too much practice with Mimicry. I used it to distract the girls he had slept with from the girls he was currently sleeping with,” I replied. I frequently wondered how many little Joe’s were wandering around the world. Usually with a shudder.

“That was what Joe was best at,” said Aimee, glancing over at McGrue.

Glancing about shiftily McGrue brushed that off. “So … Guild Hall, yeah?”

“Yes. We take him to the guild hall,” I said.

“In Cloud District,” said McGrue, “On a shit cart?”

“I can cast a spell to help,” said Aimee waving her hands around and muttering an incantation. A sparkling, glowing powder fell from her fingertips, dusting the cart’s contents. When she finished, I was still looking at a shit cart.

“It's the same.” I said.

“But it smells marginally better,” she said.

“No, it smells like shit with lilacs in it,” said McGrue. Poor thing, orcs had much better noses than humans. “Like a gods-damned Plague Doctor at the end of his shift.” He grabbed both handles in the front of the cart and started pulling hard. “Night ain’t long now. If it takes past dawn the night watchman at the Guild will have woken up, fucked off, and we’ll have to deal with the whole morning crew.” The smell clearly aggravated him. “Somebody push this damned thing.” he demanded as he grunted with effort.

I stepped in because, again, Aimee had the exact wrong shoes for the job. “So … after we get paid, what’s next?” I asked just to break the tension in the air.

McGrue looked over to Aimee as she walked beside him and she gave a little shrug. “It's been fun, human, but I think we should all bail before people figure out what happened.” said McGrue.

“It's a shame, this was kind of fun, in a very strange way,” said Aimee, checking the street while she smoothed her robe. Puffs of dirt came off and I realized she was using magic to clear away the filth she’d accumulated on our journey.

In that moment I realized that this was the end of my hero’s journey. We’d loot Joe’s room and then I was back to being a nobody, a non-combatant Bard that no one cared about. The only friends I’d made in my adult life and I would go our separate ways. A day or so later they’d discover the body and some wizard would spend a lifetime trying to break the protective enchantments on Joe’s equipment. It was sobering.

As soon as they found the body it was over. But … they hadn’t yet. Wait. No one knows Joe is dead, right?” I asked as we cut through toward the Skygate into cloud district. There were several guards trying to keep the riff raff out, like a group of people pushing around a corpse ladened shit cart.

“Any ideas,” I asked McGrue.

“There’s a back gate for servants, but it is still guarded,” said McGrue. “Can you Bard your way past that?”

“Depends, do you still have that helmet?” I asked.

A minute later Ammon strode past the guards, her makeup looking perfect as I pushed the cart towards the doorway with McGrue walking next to me. He wore the cheap armor and magical helmet we’d found when looting the Goblin Stronghold.

“Walk pompously,” I said.

“I am,” replied McGrue, who was famously a bad actor. Joe tried to give him a name, but McGrue was of a stubborn mind. No matter what he did, he was always McGrue. It was almost admirable.

“Just don’t say anything,” I said as we approached the guards. Drawing near they took a single look at the cart and then the older of the two yelled out.

“No carts after dark,” he said.

“No one tells Sir Joe what to do!” I exclaimed, using my Mimicry to speak as Sir Joe. This was a safe phrase and one that Joe said all the time. He didn’t take well to being told no.

“Sir Joe?” said the guard in a low, shocked tone. Looking at McGrue, who was wearing a suit of brigandine taken from the mostly worthless horde of the Goblin Stronghold. It looked decent and hopefully would pass casual muster. Unfortunately, the guard wasn’t giving him a casual stare. “I thought you were taller.”

“I give that impression.” I said using Joe’s voice. The hard part was adding the tinny echo a helmet would make.

“And more physically impressive, right?” said the other guard.

“Yeah, but that one’s clearly Ammond and I’d recognize his spoony bard anywhere,” said the first guard. “That means you’re … McGrue!”

Stiffening up, ready for the worst, McGrue replied “Yeah?” in a questioning tone.

Both of the guards started laughing at what they saw to be a pitiful attempt at deception. When they regained their composure the older one asked “So why are you guys pushing around a cart that looks like it could hold a body?”

I cleared my throat and, imitating the voice of the common folk I implored the man. “Look, I need you guys to do me a solid, okay? Joe was entertaining some girls and I need to take this cart in to … y’know … remove a problem? Eh?” In my humble opinion the performance was masterful.

The guards both stared at me for a moment.

The younger guard looked to his partner, “Oh. A Code 47?” tapping his shoulder.

“A 47?” laughed the elder. “You could have just told us, sheesh.” he said as they both stepped aside.

We pushed the cart past and the older guard shook his head, “So much work for a simple 47.”

The younger laughed. “Man, bitches be dying all over when they sleep with heroes. You’d think the word would get around and they’d steer clear.”

Their merriment continued long after we were clear of the Skygate. “I changed for nothing.” said McGrue, pulling off the helmet, the somewhat useful “Helmet of Disguise” which could disguise only itself, and only itself, as other helmets. Right now it looked like Joe’s distinct devil-styled Hoplite helm with the brush top. Joe was so bulky, so much larger than life, that it was impossible to pretend to be him.

Some blocks passed by but we weren’t accosted further. The few people out on the street, early risers starting their businesses so that the rich folk of the Cloud District could buy there wares, ignored us based on our interaction at the gate.

“Hm. Bread. Already?” muttered McGrue, clearly hungry.

I nodded. “Of course. In an hour, at dawn, no doubt the breads and pastries of that baker will be bought up en masse.”

“Mm. Guess I don’t do much shopping up here. Don’t do much but sleep in the shit room the Guild gave us.” Clearly he was focusing on his resentment of the system in preparation of the coming party breakup. My heart clenched at the thought.

We arrived at the Guild. “So, like… Okay, what are we doing? Flinging his body up and over a balcony?” asked Aimee. “That actually seems like a really horrible idea.”

“Well, I was thinking of sneaking him in like that originally, yes, but…” I looked at the front door, behind which a single guard would be managing the front desk, almost always unconscious. If anyone should need an adventurer’s help they would wake him, sign into the desk log, and fill out a form that would become a job pasted up on the job board. “Maybe we … just walk him past the guard?”

Both of my friends gasped, shocked at the notion. “Oh, that’s rich. Why not just have us place our necks beneath the executioner’s blade while you’re at it?” asked McGrue.

Aimee grabbed at her hair in stress, playing it off as finger-combing. “Seriously, hon. You’re usually the smart one but, damn, when you go stupid you really go stupid.”

“Okay, hear me out. We need the smell to be dealt with, right? Otherwise, no matter what we do, people will know something’s up.” I implored them with my eyes. “So what if he’s drunk? Too drunk to walk.”

“That can’t happen.” said McGrue. “He famously drank the Dwarf Brewlord under the table.”

“Okay! Uh … but he always makes unreasonable demands of us, right? Especially when drunk. He makes Aimee dance!”

“I like it when she dances.” muttered McGrue.

“Uh, well, yeah, he.” she blushed. “Okay, we know he’s a bully. What’s your point?”

Clapping, I pointed at them with both hands. “Help me stash this cart and I’ll tell you.”

—

We made ingress and, rather than slip by quietly, we came in with a flourish. Aimee first, dancing like a drunken tart, followed by me, holding the armored legs of our master, McGrue carrying him under the arms. All around us the cloud of whiskey stink made by the liquor we’d soaked Joe in assaulted anyone and anything nearby.

Even without trying, just by struggling with the load, McGrue made it look like Joe was gesturing wildly. “That’s right, wench! Dance for me! Don’t drop my legs you overgrown monkey!” shouted Joe or, rather, I, shouted as him.

“Who!? What? Where…?” and the guard was on his feet but not nearly in his right mind. “Oh … oh, welcome home, Joe. Were you successful then?”

“Quiet, knave!” I made a false hiccup to sell the scenario. “I go to sleep off the celebration of my victory and I have no time to suffer fools!” I really laid in the contempt in the hopes that the guard would become submissive.

And indeed he did. “Yes, sir, Joe, sir. I am so sorry. Please enjoy your night, Sir Knight.”

The trip up the stairs uneventful, we could finally breathe easy if only for a moment. We hoped that the morrow would yield better for us than the day before.