Freelance Heroics (10 page)

They stopped at the gates. Mazik addressed a pair of harried guards. “Hail!” he said in his usual Houkian. He raised a hand in greeting. “We’re adventurers from Houk. Can you tell us what’s going on here?”

“You’re adventurers?” replied one of the men in Jihnsrian. Fortunately the two languages were similar enough to be mutually understood, with only the occasional hilarious mix-up.

Mazik nodded. “Aye.”

“Great. More vultures.” The second man sneered, though there was some amusement in it. “Though hopefully useful ones. If you’re looking for work, head to the guardhouse at the center of town.”

Mazik bowed. “Thank you. Would you mind telling us what’s going on as well? We hadn’t—”

“No,” snapped the second man. He shoved them toward the gates. “Move along.”

Gavi grabbed Mazik and pulled him away before he could reply.

It didn’t feel any safer inside. The city walls, which didn’t look all that tall or sturdy to begin with, had been breached in several places, and the north gates had been damaged nearly to the point of becoming stuck. The streets were unnaturally vacant, save for the surplus of guards and soldiers shoring up the breached defenses.

Farther away from the walls, Saffir revealed itself to be a rich city. Gavi marveled at the buildings around them. Home to one of the most respected universities in Jihnsruck, and most of its richest nobles, Saffir was renowned as a center of culture and learning. Towers of marble and polished wood rose several stories into the sky, while at eye level, quaint artisanal shops, with their pointed roofs and colorful windowpanes, lent the city an idyllic air. The people, too, were well-off—or at least, they were well-dressed, with less of the obvious poverty that made Houk so exciting.

Gavi’s head swung like it was on a swivel joint as they made their way through the city, taking in the new sights and sounds. She saw beautiful statues and charming shops, and smelled mouthwatering food both familiar and foreign. But even here, they saw signs of disturbances—broken lampposts, ransacked buildings, burned-out husks of elegant shops. As they moved deeper into the city, they passed parks filled with refugees, and ration lines that stretched down the block.

Before long, they found their way to the central guardhouse. Compared to the buildings surrounding it, the guardhouse was squat and unremarkable, like a scrappy bulldog guarding its beautiful masters. It was also hectic—coppers were streaming in and out of the building, the front doors continually vibrating as new hands kept thrusting them open. On the sparse lawn in front, a contingent of soldiers had taken up residence, their weapons prominently displayed as several clerks tried to mollify a small but unruly crowd. Everywhere Gavi looked, there was a pall of barely restrained panic or grim determination.

Gavi pointed to the front doors. “Shall we?”

Mazik examined the crowds. “Screw that. Come on.”

He led them to a side door. There, a guard was leaning against the wall, head down as he enjoyed a cigarette.

Mazik raised a hand in greeting. “Hail! We’re adventurers from the guild Collateral Damage, out of Houk. We hear you’re in need of some assistance. Who should we be talking to?”

The guard took one last drag on his cigarette and put it out against the wall. “Collateral Damage? That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

Mazik flashed a lopsided grin. “I know, right? Our leader has an ironic sense of humor.”

The guard grunted and clomped up the steps. “Sure they do. Follow me.”

Once inside, the guard led Mazik and the others to the sergeant in charge. From what they had been told, he was only in charge because his superiors were all busy somewhere else. Which said a lot.

The three of them settled around the sergeant’s desk in the paperwork pit, a sunken room crammed with more desks per square meter than a sweatshop sewing line before a quilting festival. The sergeant was seated on one side, while Mazik and Gavi took seats on the other. Raedren leaned against an empty desk nearby and crossed his arms.

Sergeant Redsna folded his hands on top of his desk and looked at the trio with the dead, disinterested eyes of a detective on his tenth interrogation of the day. He was a gangly man, with hands too large for his thin frame and an eighteen-o’clock shadow over his pointed chin.

The sergeant inclined his head. “Thank you for coming. I understand you’ve offered to help us with the current situation.”

“Yes, we have.” Mazik folded his hands on his lap. “Or so I’d like to say, but everyone we’ve talked to has been too busy running around like chickens with their heads cut off to tell us what’s going on.”

“Which has only been two people,” added Gavi. She shot Mazik a look, which said
Be nice.

Mazik smiled thinly. “True, but that doesn’t sound as good. So”—he clasped his hands under his chin—“tell us about these attacks.”

Sergeant Redsna nodded. “For the past two days, starting after dark and beginning no later than midnight, a band of up to forty orcks has been attacking the city.”

Humans weren’t the only sentient species on Aegis. To the north, from the Triangle Sea into the uncharted Badlands beyond, the dominion of humanity gave way to that of the orcks.

Standing two meters tall, with dusky blue skin and a wrestling team’s worth of muscles apiece, orcks were humanity’s archenemies—or they would have been, save for one critical flaw. Notoriously aggressive and powerful, and possessing of natural magicks that made them difficult to kill, the orcks’ only saving grace, from humanity’s perspective, was that they were dumb. While the children possessed intelligence roughly on par with that of human children, it gradually faded as they aged. Only a rare few managed to keep it as they matured into adulthood. It was these orcks who ascended to positions of leadership, commanding their fellows in an endless series of territorial disputes, against anyone and everyone, human and orck alike.

To the human nations that bordered the Triangle Sea, the orcks were a constant threat. They were also the only threat on which nearly all human nations cooperated to contain. But Saffir was half a continent away from orck territory, and while sightings this far south were not unheard of, neither were they common—and certainly not in such large numbers.

There was something else that was bothering Mazik. “If you’ve been getting attacked by that many orcks, why is this place still standing? Or, why are they?”

Mazik hadn’t meant it as a slight. The worst thing about orcks, other than the raw, visceral pleasure they took in violence, was how
good
they were at it. Each standing taller than Raedren, and with double his mass in muscle, the magick every orck possessed gave them natural barriers and the instinctive ability to manipulate their auras, making their attacks equally effective against casters. A rare few could even cast spells. Combined with their terrifying speed and strength, a single orck could fight a caster of Mazik’s level to a standstill, and would put Gavi at a serious disadvantage. Which, together with their natural aggression . . .

Sergeant Redsna finally showed some emotion, if only to grimace. “Either because Saffir isn’t as weak as you seem to think it is, or because you haven’t seen the west side of town. They’ve destroyed nearly a sixth of the city, though we’ve repelled them both times.”

Mazik whistled. “That’s not good. Plus, I hear they’re usually more of an attack-and-attack-and-attack-and-smash-the-place-to-the-ground kind of threat, so they must have a relatively sharp commander. Have you seen ’em?”

“Yes. She’s a big, nasty orck, wears red feathers on her arms and legs.” Sergeant Redsna patted his upper arms and thighs. “She’s been present for every attack, but no one has been able to capture or kill her.”

“Where are they coming from?” asked Gavi.

“You mean, where are they camped?” asked Sergeant Redsna.

Gavi nodded.

“Before that, the three of you are adventurers, correct?” asked Sergeant Redsna.

Mazik answered for them. “We are.”

“Before I can tell you anything else, let me ask: Are you interested in a job?”

“Potentially,” said Mazik. “Depends on the job.”

“City defense,” said Sergeant Redsna. “The orcks have attacked two nights in a row, and as far as we know, they’re still out there. We expect them to attack again. We could use help.”

“Depends on what else you have to tell us about these attacks,” said Mazik, who recognized an evasion when he saw one.

Sergeant Redsna held up a hand. “First, I need to verify your status. Please show me your guild stamps.”

Mazik stood up and lifted his shirt. On his right breast was a duplicate of the black starburst that Guildmaster Shaeur had tattooed on his hand.

“You just had to take your shirt off, didn’t you?” said Gavi. She muttered a few words, and an identical tattoo shone through the clothing on her upper right arm. Raedren used the same spell and turned around, his mark glowing on his right shoulder blade.

“Of course!” said Mazik. He let his hand flutter over his abs. “Who wouldn’t want to show off these? Yum!”

Gavi rolled her eyes.

Sergeant Redsna held a hand a few centimeters over Mazik’s chest. He recited a spell in the same language, and his hand glowed with the pale, iridescent blue of a tropical sea. Words flashed in front of his eyes, dimly visible to the others, though clearly legible to him.

“Collateral Damage, out of Houk,” said Sergeant Redsna. He read more of the information his spell was pulling from Mazik’s tattoo. “All right, everything is verified. Let me scan the rest of you.”

Once the sergeant had checked all of them, he sat back down. Mazik leaned forward, his elbows on the sergeant’s desk. “So, what’s the situation?”

Sergeant Redsna settled back into his accustomed position, back straight, hands clasped on his desk, expression blank. “Unfortunately, I can’t answer your previous question. I’m not at liberty to divulge where the orck camp is located. We’ve already lost half of our standing forces fighting on their turf, and we can’t afford to lose any more.”

There was silence as the trio absorbed this. “I feel like you need to go into more detail after just casually mentioning that you’ve lost half your people,” said Mazik.

Sergeant Redsna smiled humorlessly. “Earlier today, we assaulted the orcks at their camp. In their first attack, no more than forty orcks were present, and less on the second day—signs that those were all the warriors they had, we thought. So we sent one hundred and fifty people to root them out.”

“And they had more,” guessed Gavi.

Sergeant Redsna nodded. “At least double what we expected, probably more. The entire company was defeated. Less than twenty made it back alive. We no longer have the strength to be proactive. The crown is sending reinforcements, but our army is stretched thin, so it will be several days before they arrive. Until then, we’re restricting operations to defense only.”

“Great. We’re excellent at defending cities. Done it plenty of times,” Mazik lied.

“How long exactly until reinforcements get here?” asked Gavi.

“Three days, at best,” said Sergeant Redsna.

“Yikes.” Mazik made a face. “Well, where are they attacking? I know we saw some damage to the north wall on the way in.”

“That was from last night,” said Sergeant Redsna. “Most damaging was the first night, when they appeared shortly after sundown and knocked a hole in the western wall. By the time we repelled them, they had destroyed two entire neighborhoods and damaged several others, including the mansions of several of our leaders, and one of our finest museums. Last night we were more successful, though they still disrupted an area of town that includes much of our economic base.”

“So you went out to fix the problem today, and got your asses handed to you,” said Mazik. “That explains all the activity out front.”

Sergeant Redsna grimaced, but said nothing.

“Any idea what brought them this far south?” asked Gavi. “Or how they did it without being seen? I’ve never heard of orcks traveling anywhere without trying to destroy everything along the way.”

“No idea. That kind of speculation is above my pay grade.”

“So, a bunch of orcks are trying to destroy your city, you’ve got less than half the defenders you had yesterday, and they’re probably going to bring their A-game tonight,” Mazik summarized. “And you want us to help. Stand on the walls, that kind of thing?”

“We’re going to be keeping a reactionary force near the center of town—likely right outside this building, in fact—which we’ll use to quickly reinforce wherever the orcks attack,” said Sergeant Redsna. “Chances are you would be there.”

Mazik waved at his friends. “Huddle up.”

There were a couple of minutes of whispered conversation. Raedren shrugged. Gavi asked several questions, then frowned. Finally, after much talking from Mazik, she gave a reluctant nod.

“Despite the remarkable lack of information you’ve provided, it sounds like you could use some help. What would you say to a few more defenders?” asked Mazik. “For the right price, of course.”

“Of course. Payment for this job is—”

Mazik flicked a piece of paper across the desk, and then leaned back in his stiff-backed, government-issue chair as if he were a mafia gangster who had just told the sergeant he knew where his children played. “That’s what we’re charging.”

The sergeant looked at the slip. He looked at Mazik. He looked at the slip again. “I’m not at liberty to negotiate. You’ll have to talk to our bookkeepers about that.”

Mazik suspected that was bullshit, and that the sergeant just didn’t
want
to negotiate—but he let it slide. “Bookkeepers, gotcha. Where and when would we need to meet?”

“If you come to an agreement on the price, bring the chit they’ll give you and meet me in front of this building no later than nightfall. I suggest you stay nearby at all times—we’ll ring the raid bell if there’s an attack, and once that happens, we’ll be looking to move out immediately. If you’re late, you may forfeit some or all of your pay.”

“Which means I’m not in charge of making sure we get there on time.” Mazik turned to his friends. “Volunteers?”