The guards were there to meet us when our group finally left the Tawnay building. It wasn’t surprising, the sheer level of violence that had been on display during Vaozey’s massacre of the criminals inside had naturally generated a lot of noise, and we hadn’t been inconspicuous during our approach. With no less than thirty men and women in armor, weapons drawn, standing at the edge of the property, the guards had obviously prepared for us based on the previous encounters we had during the day. Thankfully, Shahpao was with us, and losing five fingers hadn’t hurt his speaking ability in the least. If anything, it seemed improved.
“Surrender yourselves peacefully,” a guard in a more decorated uniform than the rest shouted, using a metal cone and possibly a bit of magic to amplify his voice to painful levels. The civilian crowd that was just behind them winced at the volume, shirking back. “We have you significantly outnumbered and have brought in local kehpveht mercenaries to assist us. Your survival is not guaranteed if you resist.”
“We will do no such thing!” Shahpao yelled back. “My people have rescued myself and four other men from unjust imprisonment within this building, and we will be returning to our boarding house to rejoin with the rest of our group. You do not have the authority to obstruct military operations, release us immediately.”
“You are not authorized to conduct law-enforcing operations inside of the city limits!” the captain argued back. “Your warriors have committed no less than two dozen criminal murders over the course of the day. I will repeat, surrender yourselves into our custody immediately or we will attack.”
“We have every authorization to conduct military operations against organized groups of detested and other groups hostile to Rehv’s cause within city limits!” Shahpao barked. “It is only because of the negligence of your organization that such criminals were allowed to fester within the borders of Towrkah, to begin with. Over the course of our operation, my warriors were told several times that members of the Towrkah city guard were taking bribes in exchange for turning a blind eye to the criminal activity of this group!”
“A baseless assertion!” the captain spat. “Where is your evidence?”
“I do not need evidence to order an audit of your guards and your office!” Shahpao snapped back. “Your actions attempting to obstruct us are all the evidence I need to convince my superiors that their attention would be better directed inward instead of outward to defend the people of this city from corruption and false gods. However, if you insist, I am certain that the documents contained within the building behind me will provide ample evidence of the involvement of your organization with this one.”
“Aim crossbows!” the captain ordered, and about half of the guards pointed weapons at us.
“This is treason!” Shahpao yelled, and his words began to attract even more attention from the civilians. “The Towrkah city guard are engaging in an act of treason against our people in the interest of protecting organized criminals who prey upon the good and honest folk that they and we are charged to protect! True followers of Rehv have every justification to refuse to be subjected to illegitimate authorities such as these! What happens next is on your hands, not ours!”
I was getting ready to fight, as was Vaozey, but then something interesting happened. Someone up in one of the nearby buildings yelled an incoherent curse at the guards and threw some food at them. The piece of what looked like wet, moldy bread struck one of the crossbow guards in the back, and that guard quickly turned around to aim his weapon at the civilian attacker. This incensed some of the people at street level, who began to act belligerently toward the crowd of guards. Within a minute, they were more occupied with pacifying the civilians than keeping us in place.
“Guess it wasn’t a secret they were taking bribes,” Vaozey remarked in response to one of the louder yells from the crowd of “corrupt ngaazmayjh”.
“We can push our way out if we’re quick,” I said, watching one specific section of the crowd that seemed to be opening.
“Good, everyone follow Yuwniht,” Shahpao ordered. “Once we’re through, if we have to split up, wait until sundown before coming back to the boarding house. Got it?”
“Got it,” the four soldiers said in unison. Thirty seconds later I gave the signal, and we all rushed the weakest part of the formation, crashing through it without getting stabbed or causing any significant injury to the guards. By the time the captain realized we were escaping, the group had already split up, with Vaozey and I taking to the rooftops with our enhanced physiques to keep an eye out from above. Just like the last time we had run from the Towrkah guards, they didn’t pose much of a challenge, except for their number.
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“Rehv grant us mercy, we are so screwed,” Shahpao sighed once we all managed to make it back to the boarding house just before sundown. I accompanied him inside, having kept watch on him while Vaozey assisted the other soldiers in evading the guards by attracting their attention. The common area of the house was practically in an uproar, and the rest of the soldiers were dripping water from having bathed as soon as they arrived. Vaozey was glancing at the bathroom as well, her helmet on the floor beside her, but she clearly didn’t want to go in if there was a chance she would have to do more killing soon.
“You’re back,” Zhoyv said, walking over. She usually served as something of a backup leader when Vaozey and Shahpao were both gone, so I assumed she had been playing the role while the rescue was happening. “Are you alright? Your hand-”
“No time for that, we need to get out of this city tonight,” Shahpao said, breaking into a cough. “Agh, sorry, choking on my spit. There was a… regrettable chain of events today and I don’t think we’re going to be able to maintain our cover if we stay here.”
“Not confident in your smooth talking?” Vaozey asked, amused.
“Not long term, no,” he answered, clearing his throat. “Everyone start getting your things together and loading the wagons. Vaozey, wash off and get into a clean set of armor-”
“We don’t have another full set,” someone said.
“A disguise then, I don’t care,” Shahpao continued. “Yuwniht, same thing. Your armor is less damaged, take it off and give it to… Toyyngeyv to wash off.” He snapped his fingers to summon the soldier he was talking about, one of the ones who had been on the shooting team, and I handed him my helmet and began to disrobe. “Can we get the beasts over here quickly?”
“The stable has already closed for the night,” another soldier said. “I was going to go over and pick them up, but they need payment and we can’t-”
“Seyt!” Shahpao swore, slapping the wall with his mangled hand. “Okay, new plan for that: We wait until sundown and then take them under cover of darkness. If anyone asks, we have permission. Ten of you, once the wagons are loaded, move them into position to be hitched in the street. I don’t care who.”
“What about the shaatg-er, shard bullets?” one of the female shooters asked, and the room froze. In the panic, everyone seemed to have forgotten about the ammunition we ordered. I still remembered where the smith was, but I doubted the smithy would be open by the time I got over there if I moved at a rate slow enough to not attract significant attention.
“The gods really seytm us on this one,” Vaozey sighed. The first thought that popped into my head was that she played a significant part in why the day proceeded as it did, though I couldn’t necessarily say that a less direct approach would have yielded the same results. As I slipped off the last of my torso coverings to leave myself bare-chested, I heard Vaozey suggesting that she go get the bullets now.
“No, I’ll get them,” I said. “Once the sun goes down I can get them without being detected. We can do that at the same time that the animals are being hitched to the wagons, and I’ll meet you all at the southern gate.”
“Right, you can turn invisible,” Vaozey scoffed, and a few others nodded. It seemed that the soldiers who hadn’t seen my new cloaking ability were more doubtful, and someone muttered that they thought it was a joke.
“I can work with that,” Shahpao agreed. “In fact, it’s probably the best thing I could have you do besides move a cart. I don’t think they managed to track us back here in the midst of the chaos, but you two have very distinctive appearances, even in armor. It won’t be long before the whole city is looking for you.”
“They didn’t seem very willing to stop us back at the Tawnay building,” I said.
“There wasn’t a reward then,” Shahpao countered. “You can bet that by now they’re already out putting up bounty notices.”
“Even if we’re soldiers?” I asked.
“Especially because of that,” Shahpao nodded, frowning. “They need to settle this fast if the bribery went as deep as I suspect. So long as we’re here, they’re at risk, at least they would be if we were who we said we were.” Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Vaozey looking at something, and my attention shifted to her.
“Ants, there and there,” Vaozey said, pointing to some spots on the ceiling. Again, everyone froze. Not enough to potentially hear us clearly, but they’re definitely looking for us, I thought.
“They’re trying to narrow down our location,” I said. “How many soldiers are in the city?”
“Enough that it’ll take a few hours to find us,” Shahpao said. “Everyone who needs to bathe, do so, then get uniform scent on. No more open discussion of plans, whispers only. We don’t know if the city’s colony can listen in, and I don’t want to find out.”
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With a new pouch of pills, a single dagger, a cloth face mask, and some clean dark clothing, I left the boarding house through the rear exit just after sundown. There was a small wall around the property that was about three meters high, not enough to stop me from jumping over it but certainly enough to be useful as a platform for reaching the roofs of nearby buildings. The sheer vertical ascent speed that was possible with proper use of force magic always impressed me, and soon enough I was hopping across roofs in the direction of the smithy. The city wasn’t dark enough yet to hide me entirely, but a bit of lensing magic directed downwards allowed me to largely blend in with the night sky and obscure my outline.
Descending was always a bit harder than ascending, but my recent use of armor in conjunction with internal force magic had sharpened my reflexes and precision enough to allow me to take the five-story fall into the alley behind the smithy with only minor impact fractures to my feet, a far cry from the snapped knees and ankles that I would have expected during my first trip to Towrkah. With the majority of the lantern light from the streets not reaching me, I took a few seconds to set up an invisibility cloak, then pushed only a tiny bit of my magic fuel into it to activate it. I wanted to conserve energy, even if I had enough pills to get by, so I was going to use it as little as possible.
There were only two entrances to the smithy, not counting the window on the front of the building, and I took the rear of course. The door was locked, not with a key but with a simple bar on the inside, but that wasn’t nearly enough to stop me. There was a time when using force magic outside of my field of vision was extremely difficult, but I had gotten over it. A few bits of probing telekinesis later I had a good idea of how the mechanism worked, and I slid my hand gently along the wood of the door as I pulled the metal bar aside. With a clunk that sounded deafening to my ears, but was really quite faint, the door bent inwards, revealing the interior. No creaks, I thought, smith keeps it oiled.
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There was only one source of light in the smithy, and it was a fading candle beside the sleeping man who was slumped over his work desk. I hadn’t been expecting the smith to still be inside the building, but I supposed that he must have been lower class due to his mark of ire, so it made some sense. Closing the door but not locking it, I began letting more light pass through me until the power draw was detectable but manageable. I estimated I was around thirty percent transparent, enough to make me very difficult to spot in shadow, when I began crossing the room to search through the section of the shop where the finished products were stored.
This is a mess, I thought, gently moving a sword to the side and leaning it against the wall. The smith’s soft snoring kept my nerves at ease as I worked, trying to figure out where he had put the iron balls he had made so far. There were all manner of tools, knives, pots and pans, hinges, and other metalwork, but nothing that might contain my order. Did he not start it yet? I wondered. We did ask for quite a lot, but maybe he already has a method of producing them quickly. I don’t know enough about Uwrish metallurgy to know what techniques are available.
Putting everything back where I found it, I began looking around the shop for any stashes or other hidden areas, supposing that the smith might have decided to conceal the order to avoid drawing attention from customers. As I was opening a cabinet, the steady breaths of the man suddenly jerked, and I forced my cloak to maximum power, plunging me into complete darkness because I had neglected to make eyeholes. Slowly, I backed away from the cabinet, making no noise whatsoever, and formed a single tube-like lens to peer through with my left eye in the smith’s direction. His snoring had returned to the same pattern as before, but I wasn’t convinced, so I decided to wait a few minutes. After all, the line between pretending to be asleep and sleeping is thin for someone who is tired, I thought.
After a time I was convinced that he wasn’t faking, so I went back to the cabinet and slowly pulled it open. The fact that the smith seemed to obsessively maintain all of the hinges in his shop was very beneficial to my work: not a single hinge had creaked so far. As I finished with one cabinet, I moved to the next, pulling it open a bit more quickly than the last and making a fatal mistake. A wooden box had been stacked against the door precariously and fell out as soon as it was given enough space, clattering to the ground and making an absolute racket as it spilled out the thin bars of iron inside. I had already started moving back as soon as I saw it fall, which was a good thing because a hammer flew through the air where I had just been standing, thrown by an angry and half-awake man.
“Yeyhhayseytay,” the smith mumbled, sucking down deep breaths as he struggled to wake faster. “I knew I heard somethin’. Wherever yer hidin’, you better come out now!” To my surprise, as he stood up he drew a pistol from inside of his apron, swinging it across the room and flagging me with the barrel unknowingly. “This here’s not a fake!” he yelled. “They kill Mehtsiyahns with these things, it’ll kill you just the same! You ain’t bulletproof!” It was almost amusing how similar his threats were to some I heard on Earth.
I guess I’ll knock him out, I thought, charging up my hand, but I didn’t approach immediately. Humans had an uncanny ability to detect when someone was sneaking up on them, something I had experienced both ends of. I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, but I knew that moving around increased the likelihood that I would be detected even if my footsteps were perfectly silent, so I stayed still. The smith, looking four meters to my right, began to slowly approach the opened cabinet and spilled iron bars, occasionally looking around as he did so. Then he reached into his pocket with his left hand and withdrew a long cylindrical object wrapped in leather.
I didn’t have time to identify it before the flare ignited, blasting the whole room with bright yellowish light and shattering my cloak immediately from energy overdraw. For an instant, I hoped that he wouldn’t see me out of the corner of his eye, since I was standing at nearly ninety degrees to him, but then his head snapped in my direction and the pistol followed it. Caught between charging the man and dodging, my brain chose to dodge, and I once again found myself jumping to grapple onto the roof with force magic. Midway through my jump the smith’s weapon went off, and I felt my right shin pop apart. I could still feel the torn flesh hanging on to the rest of my leg as I flattered against the ceiling though, so I knew it wasn’t severed.
Inexplicably, the smith gaped at me as I clung to the ceiling, having no idea how to react, then threw the flare and ran. Between the choice of trying to stop him immediately or trying to fix my leg, I chose the leg, and dumped power into it; feeling the flesh and bone knit back together so quickly that the limb vibrated from the forces being applied. I jumped off the ceiling a moment later, landing behind the smith as he was trying to pick up a sword and shocking him. Instead of going limp, he screamed and convulsed, then elbowed me in the groin and swung his weapon, missing because I stepped back just in time.
“Sehpeylay ngaazmayjh,” he growled, breathing heavily and gripping his weapon with both hands. “We’ve got more than enough npoytz in these parts usin’ that kind’a magic for counterin’ it to be a useful skill. Put yer seytoydh hands up unless you wanna get gutted.” An uncomfortable thought popped into my head: I’m probably going to have to kill this man, he’s seen too much. I wasn’t sure why it didn’t sit right with me, but it didn’t. “Hands up, I said,” the smith yelled, shoving the sword at me.
“I’m sorry about this,” I said, feeling strange as I uttered the words, then I batted the sword from his hands with one gesture, sending it flying towards the front of the shop, then punched him in the chest and sent him to the ground. A second later, as I was getting ready to stab him in the skull with my dagger, he spoke a word that gave me pause in between his winded gasps.
“…Roydlow…” he choked, making me hesitate again. He’s not even a Rehvite, my own voice said, What would Vaozey say, if she saw this? The smith looked up at me again, tears of pain falling across his red face, displaying the ugly burn on his right cheek again. I should kill him, I thought, I really should kill him right now and be done with this.
“Where did you get that pistol?” I asked.
“What’s it… t’you?” the smith coughed. “Kill me… ya npoyt. My god’s waitin’.”
“I saw two just like it today,” I said. “Do you have more?” The smith looked confused for a moment, then recognition washed over him.
“Yer the on who-” he breathed.
“Answer the question,” I demanded.
“Seyt yourself,” he growled. “I don’t talk to Mehtsiyahn scum like you.” That’s a yes, I thought, he might even have a stash of powder. And, if he’s this stubborn even in the face of death, there might even be a way to…
“What if I’m not a Rehvite?” I asked.
“Then why are you robbin’ me?” the smith demanded. “We don’t rob our own kind here, and ain’t no detested I ever seen can turn invisible or move like that.” Instead of trying to explain myself, I just held out my left hand with its palm up and then made a small orb of light in it.
“What if I had a good reason to be here?” I asked, using the thick Gwahlaob accent for the question. The orb of light seemed to mesmerize the smith, preventing him from responding, so I let it fade out, then took off the cloth mask to reveal my face. “I was in here with the soldier a little over a day ago, I ordered the iron balls.”
“You don’t look like him,” the smith said, and I felt my jaw tighten. That fucking statue, I swore internally.
“Would you prefer I just kill you?” I asked.
“An ihlzheyv of Roydlow wouldn’ do that,” the smith countered. “He’s an honorable god, if yer him, you can’t kill the undeservin’.” Of course he is, I sighed.
“Why do you think I’m talking to you right now instead of killing you?” I shot back. “The people I’m with don’t have much time, we’re leaving the city tonight. I need the ammunition I ordered, and if you have any more pistols I’m taking them.”
“So you’re still robbing me?” the smith scoffed, and I had to stare incredulously at him for a moment. He was still on all fours, and he obviously knew I could kill him with a single blow, yet he found it a good idea to be sarcastic. “If you’re him, tell me who you killed last time you were in Towrkah,” the smith challenged.
“I’m pretty sure I killed more than one person,” I replied, trying to remember. Yeah, the guards when I first tried to get in, I killed a few of them.
“The rich npoyt, his name,” the smith prompted, and I knew what he was looking for.
“I didn’t kill Awptheyn,” I said. “That was Vaozey. I killed the bodyguard.” There was silence for a second, then the smith pushed himself up to his feet. He looked at me hesitantly, and then his eyes moved over to the flare on the shop floor and went wide.
“Seyt!” he yelled, running over and quickly batting out a fire that was starting on some nearby wood chips. Once the flames had settled down and the flare had been placed further away from anything flammable, he sighed and looked over at me. “Let’s say I believe you,” he murmured. “Not sayin’ I do, but let’s say I did. What would you be doin’ here, decade later, in my smithy, cavortin’ with people dressed like Rehvites?”
“Do you have the order?” I asked.
“You have the money?” he asked back.
“No,” I admitted.
“Why’d you need them fancy bearin’s anyway?” he asked. He didn’t say he didn’t have them, I noted.
“If I tell you, will you give them to me?” I asked.
“You’ll kill me if I don’t,” the smith scoffed.
“I thought you said I wouldn’t kill someone who didn’t deserve it,” I scoffed back.
“Didn’ say I believe yer him,” the smith countered. The hissing of the flare finally began to die out, and the smithy dimmed, so I lit another ball of light above my head, adjusting it to be orange like the average firelight. Once again, the smith gaped at it. “Okay, maybe I’m bein’ convinced,” he muttered.
“Do you sell pistols?” I asked.
“Nah, I bought that one,” he replied, sighing. “There’s a smith ‘round the richer part of town who makes them in secret. I knew him growin’ up, so he gave it to me cheap. What’re the iron balls for?”
“You have wax here?” I asked.
“Yeah,” the smith replied.
“I’ll show you,” I offered, “but then I need as much of the order as you have, and all the black powder you have.”
“You show me, and you tell me what’s goin’ on, then I’ll decide on the rest,” the smith countered.
“Fine, but let’s make this quick,” I relented. “I have an hour, maybe two, before I need to meet back up with my group and get out of here.”
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Well, we’ll have enough double-aught buckshot at least, I thought as I hopped along rooftops, making sure not to jostle the contents of my new backpack too badly. Black powder wasn’t overly unstable after it was finished being mixed, but I had no desire to accidentally blow myself up with the several kilograms of it that I had been given. The smith, once I explained my objective and that the iron balls were actually for a type of ammunition, had been more than willing to give me nearly everything he had along with the means to carry it. And I would never have found it if I killed him, I thought, recalling how he had to remove a completely innocuous section of the shop floor to access the secret box where the items were stored. As it turned out, he had known it was probably illegal all along.
Now where is the caravan? I asked myself, looking around near the south gate. There was something of a commotion going on, but I didn’t see any wagons, so I perched on a nearby building and began to scan through the crowd. The voices all merged together into one roar of noise, but the movements were clearer: A bunch of poor-looking civilians were rioting with sticks and throwing rocks at the guards, who themselves were taking cover and looking very much like they wanted to return fire with their weapons. Hm, I wonder… I thought as I dropped to the ground in an alley and casually walked out, finding someone on the edge of the crowd.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked a short and dirty man waving a wooden bat with a nail through it. He finished yelling an obscenity at the guards, then turned to me, having to crane his neck back to meet my eyes.
“These zteyyngaawz have been takin’ money from criminals while the rest of us barely make ends meet!” the man spat. “They’re even tryin’ to stop anyone from leavin’ the city! Couple’a soldiers had to nearly fight their way out half an hour ago. It’s not right, I tell ya!” Damn it, I growled.
“How many wagons did the soldiers have?” I asked.
“Huh?” the man grunted.
“The soldiers they tried to stop, did they have five wagons?” I asked.
“Uh…” the man mumbled. “I think so. Why?”
“Thank you,” I said, slipping back into the alley and dashing up the wall as soon as I was out of sight. I’m sure they didn’t want to leave without me, but if things went the way that man said I doubt they had a choice, I thought, looking along the edge of the city wall. Towrkah’s tall buildings made what I was going to attempt much easier, but still not exactly safe. A few jumps later, I was standing on a flat roof close to the southern wall, trying to plot a good launch trajectory. I could also see a few stray fires in the distance that probably belonged to the caravan.
Okay, if I aim for the trees, I should be able to grab one on the way down, I told myself. I hope that smith mixed this powder as well I expected, or this might be very stupid. Walking to the north edge of the building, I flooded my body with magic fuel and burst into motion. Two steps later, I kicked off the south edge of the roof, flying through the night sky invisibly with the wind whipping past me, then fell into the dark sea of leaves below with nobody atop the wall any the wiser. When the impact came, no explosion followed, but I broke enough bones that I probably wouldn’t have noticed regardless.