The troupe of sixty workmen left the city early the next morning, accompanied by Randall, Loach, half a dozen of Loach's thugs, Duke Latimer, four Barons and fifty members of the city garrison. Forty six of the soldiers were marching in a column, looking splendid in their shining steel armour, the tips of their long poleaxes shining in the winter sun, while the other four scouted the way ahead, making sure there were no orcs somehow still in the vicinity.

"There's really no need for you to be here yet," Randall told the Duke as they walked behind the wagon carrying their equipment and supplies. "It'll be at least a day or two just clearing the site before we're ready to descend."

"Just protecting my investment," the Duke replied without looking at him. "Wouldn't want any of that gold to go missing before I get a chance to look at it."

"You don't trust your men to keep an eye on me?" asked Randall with amusement, but he already knew the answer to that question. The amount of gold Randall had told him was down there would buy the loyalty of every man in the procession a dozen times over. If it had been the other way around, Randall would have done the same thing.

Randall waited until they were five miles outside the city before quickening his pace to catch up with Loach and walk beside him. Loach looked across at him, and Randall made a hand gesture for him to move a little way to the side of the column, out of earshot of any other members of the expedition. "Are you picking up any transmissions in the area?" he asked.

"One," replied the mob boss. "It's been following us ever since we left the city. It's currently a little way ahead of us, up in those trees." He gave a slight nod of his head to indicate the general direction.

Randall looked but didn't see anything. "Some kind of drone?" he said. "The machines satisfying their curiosity?"

"It's a pigeon," Loach replied. "There are dozens of them in the city. Robots, I imagine, covered with genuine bird flesh and feathers. They first appeared a few days ago. Looking for us, no doubt."

"And you didn't think it necessary to tell me this earlier?"

"You'd have been edgy and scared every time you saw a pigeon. The machines would have noticed. This way, you've been acting normally around pigeons, not acting suspicious. Luckily the machines don't know what we look like. So long as we act like everyone else and keep our head phones in flight mode they've got no reason to suspect us."

Randall nodded. The other man had made the right choice, he realised. "Still, it's a problem," he said. "With all that military grade stuff in your head, is there any way you can disable it? Take it out of action while making it look like it just malfunctioned or something?"

"I've got a bunch of military grade viruses but they only work on twenty first century computers. These modern machines use a completely different operating system. Probably simpler to just shoot it. Have someone put an arrow through it. Even simpler to just leave it alone."

"We can't let the machines see what we're going to do at Gorsty Common. We're supposed to be just digging a camouflaged barracks but they'll see immediately what we're really doing. Does that combat app of yours let you use a bow and arrow?"

"Of course."

"Then borrow a bow and shoot the thing."

Loach nodded and crossed to where one of the soldiers was walking. He spoke to him for a moment and the soldier handed his bow across with a smile. Loach fitted an arrow to the bow, raised it and searched around in the trees they were passing for the pigeon. It took him a few minutes, but then he saw it in the branches of a large oak growing to one side of the path they were taking. "Pigeon stew for supper tonight," he said in case the pigeon was picking up audio. Perhaps it was, because the pigeon immediately took flight and sped across the sky.

Loach pulled back the bow and aimed, the combat app automatically using the swaying of the tree branches to calculate the wind direction and speed. A thin, curving white line appeared in his visual field showing the path the arrow would take when he let it fly, the line moving as he aimed the bow and straightening as he pulled back the string. When the line intersected the pigeon he released the string. The arrow followed the line perfectly and pierced the pigeon through the centre of its body.

"Nice shot, Sir!" said the soldier as Loach handed the bow back. Loach nodded to him and walked across to the downed pigeon. It seemed to have an annoyed expression on its face as it looked up at him, fluttering its wings helplessly. Loach raised his foot and brought it down as heavily as he could on its head. There was a crunch as the tiny, metal bones of its skull were crushed and his head phone informed him that it was no longer transmitting.

"Now we're alone," he said as Randall walked across to rejoin him. "No machines watching us. Now we've only got your aristocratic friends to worry about. What are you going to do when they find out there's no gold?"

"I'm going to call my pet chieftain. The one I took control of in Duffield. It's taken charge of a small garrison of orcs in the vicinity of the city. There's one around every human city, it seems. Even in places where the army's supposed to have cleared them all out. I'll have them take care of the aristocrats when they've finished clearing the site. They probably won't have to do any actual fighting. The mere sight of them'll be enough to send them scampering back to the city."

"Well you'd better make it quick. The machines have probably already sent another pigeon to replace that one, and it won't take more than a couple of minutes to fly the distance."

Randall nodded and took his head phone out of flight mode. *Orc chieftain,* he said, simply broadcasting to anything within range capable of picking up the signal. *Can you hear me?*

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*Affirmative, but you are at extreme range,* came the reply.

*Good. I want you to bring all the orcs under your command to my location. Make sure to keep out of sight of the humans with me, and make sure the machines don't know about it. I want them to think that you're still doing what they want you to do.*

*Affirmative. We will arrive in your vicinity in two hours.*

*And watch out for robot pigeons. Don't let them see you.*

*Affirmative.*

Randall put his head phone back into flight mode with a sigh of relief. "It said earlier that it has about twenty orcs under its command," he told Loach. "That should be enough to take care of this entire expedition." And you too, he thought. Loach scared him, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it in the privacy of his own head. He would feel a lot more comfortable when one of the orcs chopped his head in half with the blade of its halberd. Do I still need him? he wondered. Why not have the orcs kill him the moment they arrive?

Because he'd promised the aristocrats a ton of gold and when they didn't get it they would be furious. If he should need to go back into the city for some reason they would take the opportunity to send a small army of assassin's after him. He would need protection, and the orcs couldn't follow him in there. Okay, he thought. Loach lives for the time being, but probably only for another few days. The moment I have the Gorsty Common transmitter under my control, he dies.

The thought made him smile with satisfaction and there was a skip in his step as he rejoined the main body of the expedition, marching through the green and pleasant Saxony countryside.

☆☆☆

A shaft of bright winter sunlight shone in through a high window of the hay barn of the east gate city stables, picking out tiny motes of floating dust and making them look like a cloud of golden fireflies. Maisey Craddock stared up at them in wonder as she lay naked on the woollen blankets that she and Eddie Fuller had draped over the mattress of prickly hay that covered half the floor of the huge, wooden building.

Edward, also naked, was standing against the wall, trying to encourage his large, proud tumescence to subside enough for him to urinate and wash the sperm out of his tubes. His face, neck and forearms were deeply tanned, but the rest of his body was as white as milk. To a twenty first century man it would have looked as if he were wearing a tight fitting cotton jumpsuit, or it would have if not for the deep crease of his buttocks and the tuft of dark hair that sat at the base of his spine. Maisey called it his tail, which he hated, but when she'd offered to shave it off he'd refused, looking almost embarrassed as he'd done so. No blade will ever touch my body, he'd said, and that included his face that sported the stubbly beginnings of a beard.

Air blew in through the open windows, preventing the methane given off by the decomposing straw from building up to explosive levels. It chilled the front of Maisey's body, covering her with goosebumps, but the rotting straw was warm under her back and the contrast between the two was quite wonderful. In the hottest part of summer Eddie and his two brothers had to turn the straw over with pitchforks to keep it from getting hot enough to catch fire. It made the barn the best place in the city for a little nookie and Eddie was only one of the red blooded city lads who brought their girls here on a regular basis. It wasn't uncommon for two or three amorous young couples to be using the place at the same time but for now Eddie and Maisey had it to themselves except for a black cat sitting in the corner that watched them with slow blinks of its green eyes.

"I have to leave town for a few days," said Maisey, still staring up at the ceiling. "Dolly wants to take me to Hepton Well."

"What for?" demanded Eddie, turning to face her.

"That's where the hot springs are, you know? The place is famous..."

"Yes, I know that!" snapped Eddie, who hadn't known any such thing. He came striding back to her like a father who'd seen his child stealing from the family nest egg. "Why does she want to take you there?"

"A little coddling and pampering I suppose. She said we need a little time together. Just us two girls." She giggled to herself. "Should be fun. They say the staff are all Gree Folk, giving massages and scrubbing people's backs in baths of asses milk. People go from all across Saxony, they say, and from across the sea as well. Gallica and Prussia, even blackskin sailors from the cities of ivory and gold!"

"And you think they'd let you into a place like that?"

Maisey lifted herself up onto one elbow to scowl at him. "Well, the big baths are only for the nobs, of course, but there's plenty of smaller ones for us common folk. It'll be wonderful!"

Eddie was frowning, though. He crouched down beside her and ran his hands up and down her arm. His palm was calloused and rough against her smooth skin but it thrilled her for precisely that reason. "Wouldn't you rather stay here? With me? I can pamper you as well as any Gree man and if you want your back scrubbed I can do that as well."

"You only want to ride me. I know you, Edward Fuller. All you want is a tight hole to poke your wissel into."

"Now Maisey, you know that ain't true! Don't I treat you right? Don't I treat you like a real lady?"

"I've saw how you looked at Sandra Bellwood when she were washing her hair. You were looking at her dugs, staring like your eyes were going to pop right out of your head!'

"I was not! Why would I? You're the prettiest girl in the whole city!"

"Don't go gulling me, Edward Fuller! I know men like girls with big dugs, and look at me." She stared down at her chest where her pale, freckled skin was rippled across her ribs. "I look like a boy!"

"There's plenty there for a man to grab and enjoy." Eddie proved it by placing a hand over her left breast and squeezing. "More than a handful's wasted anyway. I wouldn't trade you for Sandra Bellwood or any other woman in Elmton. Not even Kellie Beckton!"

"Really?" Maisey blushed with pleasure right to the waist.

"Really. You're the only girl for me, Maisey. And I want you to stay right here, with me."

Maisey brushed Eddie's hand away and sat up, putting her arms across her chest. "I'll only be away for a few days. Then you can carry on riding me as much as you want."

"I don't want you to go at all. I want you to stay here."

"We don't always get what we want, Eddie."

He put a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back onto the blanket. Then his hand reached between her legs. Maisey was soon moaning with pleasure and her hand went to his, pushing him deeper inside her.

"You don't want to go, do you, Maisey?" he asked, his eyes suddenly hard and serious. "You want to stay here, with me, don't you?"

Maisey moaned again and Eddie began to withdraw his fingers. Maisey tried to push them back in. "Don't stop!" she demanded. "Keep doing it!"

"You don't want to go with Dolly, do you? You want to stay here, with me."

"Yes! Yes, I want to stay with you!"

Eddie smiled with satisfaction. "You don't have to go to Hepton Well to have a good time. You can have a good time right here, with me. You stay with me, Maisey. I'll give you everything you need. I'm all you need. Just me."

"Shut up and ride me, you VIX damned brute!"

Her head was thrown back, exposing her collar bones and the prominent tendons of her throat, and so she didn't see the smirk of satisfaction that briefly appeared on the boy's face, but then his smile returned to normal as he did as she asked.