The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) (16 page)

I suddenly remembered the tragedy of Devlet Giray's taking of Moscow in 1571. A hundred and twenty thousand warriors he led into battle against six thousand Russians. Talk about "one man against an army"! They had burned Moscow to the ground—the stone Kremlin being the only structure left standing. It had taken the townspeople two months to remove all the dead bodies from the streets. After that, the city had to be not just rebuilt but repopulated, bringing in new dwellers from everywhere they could find them. A hundred thousand dead, plus another hundred and fifty thousand driven into slavery. Never before had Slavic girls cost so little in the Crimean slave markets of Feodosia, Evpatoria and Bakhchysarai. The following year, the Crimean troops returned... Russia! Many an invader had trampled your chest with their jackboots, breaking your ribs and making you cough up blood.

I clenched my teeth, looking over the freshly-minted slave owners. History repeats itself, eh? Did they ever learn? Did they really need a good whack in the teeth to get the message? Very well, then it was time to teach them a thing or two.

"Listen up! You have raised your hand to the people of our cluster. You've stripped them of their freedom and used them as slaves. I don't need a court of justice to prove you guilty. I am your judge and your prosecutor. Considering this is your first time, your punishment will be mild. If I catch you again, don't expect me to be so lenient. I might cement you in a concrete slab and bury you a hundred feet below the ground for some future archeologist to find."

Somehow I didn't think I'd managed to impress them. Someone curled up his lip in response to my empty threats; an even more arrogant one spat at my feet. Oh well. We'll see.

"The clan will be punished by confiscating the castle. You will be exchanged for your slaves on a one to one basis."

"How about our stuff?" a perfectly bald warrior interrupted me in a calm quiet voice without looking at me.

"It will be destroyed with the castle graveyard."

Ah, you didn't like it, did you? The prisoners grumbled, exchanging unhappy glances and clenching their teeth. How I understood them. A level-200 warrior's gear could cost the equivalent of a class A car and was by far harder to come by. Ah, dammit. The decision was right and fair, of course, and it allowed us to considerably reduce a hostile clan's fighting power. But financial considerations made me go against all logic.

"You don't like it, do you? Very well, I can offer you an alternative. You'll be allowed to go back to your graves to retrieve your stuff in exchange for surrendering both your left and right hand weapons. Don't try to cheat: my warriors have absolute memory and will be able to recognize your swords, shields, staffs and bows as well as any attempts to switch them. All non-combat classes, including crafters and administrators, will be allowed access to their graves for a compensation calculated at a player's level multiplied by five hundred with the minimum set at fifty thousand. You have one hour to make up your mind."

Our negotiations were interrupted by the crashing sound behind my back. I turned round. Oksana was pounding the wall with a heavy hammer, her dusty face streaked with tears, putting all her desperation into her effort. Without waiting for their orders, several raiders rushed to help her. Soon part of the fresh stonework collapsed, and so did the first bricked-in prisoner. It was a young boy, unarmed and in cheap armor, his hands and feet bound tight together with the thickest wire I'd ever seen—you'd need some special blacksmithing tools to untangle it. Scumbags.

I turned back to the prisoners. Something must have changed in my face as they flinched, shrinking back.

"Now I'd appreciate you giving me half a chance to take back my previous offer," I hissed, glaring at their hateful faces. "I'm dying to get one over on Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China and his ten thousand-strong Terracotta Army. And to build it, I won't need a million workers toiling for forty years. All I need is some concrete and enough stubborn enemies to dunk into it, then enjoy the resulting statuary."

Oh. Could it be that history did repeat itself? Wonder if the past had already had its own Immortal Ones that had to be preserved in a similar way?

I swung round, not listening to a torrent of abuse directed at me, and headed for the cloud of dust by the wall that emitted the clanking sound of steel against rock.

"But us, how about us?" I heard the discord of a few reluctant voices. "What's gonna happen to us?"

Dammit! I swung round and headed for the rat hole which was the name the raiders had given to the enclosure where we kept the turncoats. I peered into their anxious faces. Months and sometimes years in perma mode had left their mark. These were cartoon avatars no more: you could see a person's dominating traits bleeding through the mask—cunning shifty eyes, the wet stare of an eager bedwarmer, a restlessly sniffling sharp nose, fidgety fingers—each person with his or her own story. Not much but enough for a good judge of character to keep him in work for a lifetime.

Not all of them were conscientious collaborators; some were simply too weak to resist. Even that wasn't quite true: anyone would break down when tortured. There
are
no silent heroes; there are bad torturers. Whoever doubts it can ask a friend to draw a large file across his teeth a couple of times, then multiply his sensations by eternity while the sadistic jailers turn him into a toothless old man. It was lucky that AlterWorld blocked all sensations above the pain threshold, but still...

I didn't have time to separate the wheat from the chaff, meting out punishment and pardon. With a sigh, I waved my hand, "You're free now. Go pick up your stuff and collect your ten gold traveling expenses from the treasurer. That should be enough for a week if you spend it frugally. Then just go. If you don't feel like meeting up with your ex employers, a portal to the Russian cluster will open in twenty minutes."

They spoke all at once, discussing my proposition, while Bianca elbowed her way through to me. "I need to get home too!" she announced, proudly raising her head.

I turned to Widowmaker. "Poland? Is it really in our cluster?"

He shook his head. "Nope. AlterWorld is divided into clusters by language groups. The fewer people speak your language, the smaller the initial cluster. All the new European states were given privileged treatment. All their dominions are clustered together like grapes on a vine so that the Frontier's lands are literally shredded in places. The Poles have a rather modest oasis about twenty miles in diameter with about a dozen settlements of various sizes and importance."

"And if, alternatively, a quarter of the world speaks your language? Like English or Spanish—or Chinese, for that matter?"

Widowmaker shrugged. "The more the merrier. It's a numbers game. English speakers have a cluster with a radius—not a diameter!—about eight hundred miles. Dozens of cities, including capital ones, hundreds of unique locations and dungeons. You don't want me to explain to you the game developers' priorities. Nominally, the AI offers equal opportunities and objective treatment to all groups but I have a funny feeling that this treatment is slightly calibrated in favor of the English-speaking community. A couple of extra mobs per square mile, a hit or two fewer and a slightly heftier reward. Before you know it, the virtual cowboys might be one up on everybody else."

His soliloquy was interrupted by a fuming Bianca. "I thought I asked you a question!"

Widowmaker didn't even wait for my reaction. The answer was too obvious. "Sorry lady, this isn't a quiz show. So if you're so desperate to speak the language of the great Andrzej Sapkowski once again, you'd be better off checking your grave, then waiting for the portal to take you to the land of drunk balalaika-playing bears. Then all you need to do is walk north for about four hundred miles."

The nearby mercs grinned; some guffawed. Bianca made a face, shook her gorgeous mane of hair and swung round, heading for the castle graveyard. As she walked past, she hissed a very cinematic phrase you usually hear at the end of a movie episode,

"I'll remember that!"

Yeah, yeah. Good guys saying
I'll be back
, bad guys saying
You'll pay me for that!
I'd always wondered why with these words good guys normally smiled inanely instead of finishing off their enemy there and then, seeing as he'd shown his true colors. Then in the next episode the hero would be honestly surprised when a sniper's bullet had missed him or a cop visited him with the bad news that the hero's entire family had just died in a car accident.

This wasn't Hollywood, though. "Freeze!" I barked.

She startled and cast a harassed glance at me. Those months and years in slavery had taken their toll. The proud Polish girl was broken...

"Don't you know where to stop, you stupid girl? Are you trying our patience or something? We're only letting all collaborators go without punishment because we have absolutely no time to look into their situations. Some may have soiled their names with treason while others may have just stumbled. But you, lady, we know a thing or two about you. You volunteered as an informer; you slept with your employers; you grassed your fellow workers up; you didn't join their escape attempt. And now you're grinning at us, openly declaring yourself our enemy? Well, you said it."

I nodded to one of the mercs guarding the turncoats. "Take her outside. No compensation, no right to pick up her stuff. Let her go back to her employers. I don't need to be stabbed in the back."

The merc took Bianca, numb with indignation, by the elbow and escorted her to the gates, giving all the other warriors a reason for intense envy as the girl had immediately come to her senses, struggling and spewing expletives. Her attempts to break free caused the merc to fight back to his apparent satisfaction as he tried to restrain her barely-clad statuesque body.

I watched them leave, then crouched in the shade. I'd finally decided to engage the Vets in my dealings with the slaves. I only had one head, after all, one that offered me no experience in exposing all the moles and planted spies. Besides, I simply had no time to question a few hundred people personally, checking everybody's backgrounds. Not to mention my inability to process this volume of data. It was already good I'd managed to lay my hands on the juiciest bits like the maps, for instance. I knew of course that the Vets wouldn't do it for nothing: they'd milk the slaves for everything they were worth and more than likely would keep the best of them. Still, it was better the Vets hired them than they went somewhere else. I also hoped for certain virtual freebies like an improved relationship and a certain dose of gratitude for my granting them access to fresh human resources. The Vets needed them really badly as their current forces were spread thinly over their four castles.

So all expansionist plans went on the back burner, replaced by projects of economic and social development, all brushed and dusted and long awaiting their turn. This wasn't good or bad—this was predictable, a classic development spiral where a warrior emperor was succeeded by a wise manager king whose job it was to integrate newly conquered lands into the empire's economic structure.

As I pondered over my letter to the Vets, the dwarves had formed two lines past me: going one way loaded (they weren't called mules for nothing) and coming back empty-handed. Widowmaker waited nearby. Suddenly he broke into their frenetic movement, pulling out a dwarf loaded with a massive armchair with cabriole legs. Don't ask me how it had ended up in Asia. Widowmaker nodded at me, then stuck his thumbs behind his belt and froze again, busy monitoring a dozen raid channels.

I made myself comfortable in the chair, shaking my head at an inventory tag the fastidious dwarves had already fitted it with. Then I continued my exercise in diplomacy. I described the current situation and the gist of my offer, outlining its potential prospects and my own interests. Finally, I attached the preliminary list of displaced persons and the contacts of Sergeant Major Zaruba as the one responsible for their accommodation.

That seemed to be it. I clicked
Send
—and received an answer immediately. How was it possible?

I opened the message. I'd been wrong. Apparently, one of the castle defenders had sussed out the raid leader's name and reported it up the line. These were the Shui Fong clan representatives making contact with us.

Chapter Ten

F
rom coded gaming correspondence sent through the private message forwarding company AlterName via a chain of one-time sender accounts.

To an unknown recipient within the Olders clan.

Father,

Thanks a lot for getting me out of this high-security ranch. I didn't at all enjoy the prospect of staying there for another twenty years. Admittedly, your British friends aren't a bunch of laughs. They're just so buttoned up and so preoccupied with their global responsibilities, you can't imagine. I can't even start to describe those two so-called bodyguards who annoy the hell out of me. But I promise you now, as I did when we last met, that I will endure it all with dignity, as long as you stick to your part of the deal and give me the Bday present I asked you for. You remember that idiot who fucked up my brilliant business? Well, I want his head on a silver platter, garnished by the scalps of all his loved ones.

Yours,

Tavor

To an unknown recipient in Castle City of the English-language cluster.

My son,

It pleases me no end that you seem to be growing up. Time to get serious. Even though the business succession and inheritance problems don't worry me any more, I deem my family and clan reputation all the more important. Our absolute personal immortality forbids us from leaving any public insults unpunished. If we do, we risk losing people's respect and their ability to consider us as partners.

It wouldn't be so hard for us to find your arch enemy's pressure points. Don't forget that we used to handle all of his texting, bank transactions and Internet services—which gives us perfect access to them. Our initial research has come up with three female figures we could target in order to hurt our client the most.

This is your revenge. I'm not going to interfere. Please find attached the experts' contacts as well as letters of recommendation. No amount of money or fame could force them to work with an outsider. Talking about money, I've topped up your City bank account. You shouldn't experience any financial concerns for a while.

* * *

"To the leader of an unidentified raid group from Prince Cao Cao, the deputy leader of the Shui Fong clan: We demand you reveal your alliance identity and reasons for the unmotivated assault."

Aha. The tiger had run away at a safe distance and cast a cautious sideways glance at his enemy. And it entirely depended on us who he was going to see there.

"This is the Russian cluster's combined services squad tasked with the liberation of your slaves. Our intelligence sends us reports of your use of slave labor. We demand their immediate liberation with a one-time portal to their native lands."

"You idiot
laowai
! These losers are being used by anyone who bothers to go and get them. We want you to clear the Shui Fong 7 castle premises ASAP. Take your men out, stay put and just wait for our representative to discuss the amount of compensation for the losses suffered by the clan. And call off your mangy cat!"

The latter was said rather nervously, spoiling the effect from the warrior's arrogant speech as he must have realized that the clan had been challenged by some visiting raiders and not the local toughs. In confirmation of his words, my PK counter floated into view. Several kill messages rustled open.

Congratulations! You've received achievement: Executioner

You've destroyed 50 enemies within 24 hours!

Bonus: An executioner is but a tool in the hands of justice that guides his hand. Now your faction relationships will remain unchanged regardless of the race and alliance of a killed player.

Congratulations! Achievement upgrade: Elite Executioner

You've made the TOP 100 of the first AlterWorld players ever to receive the title. Current ranking: 076. Fame: +500!

Bonus: Regardless of the race or alliance of the killed player, your faction relationships will improve.

Congratulations! You've received achievement: Unmercenary.

Your unselfishness is unprecedented! You have caused 100 enemies to drop an item without once succumbing to greed by picking up any blood-stained loot.

Bonus: Your inventory is now protected from greedy hands, too. No one will be able to remove as much as a copper ring from your body.

Congratulations! Achievement upgrade: The Holy Unmercenary.

You've made the TOP 100 of the first AlterWorld players ever to receive the title. Current ranking: 001. Fame:+1000!

Bonus: a holy man doesn't need to contemplate earthly matters. The Universe will take care of his needs. Now all items dropped by your enemies will move into your bag automatically.

I kept reading, taking in the lines of text as my inner greedy pig spread his front legs wider and wider trying to describe the size of the freebie we'd just managed to lay our hands on. In the meantime, the abandoned Shui Fong messenger kept raging in the chat.

I minimized the windows without closing them: I wanted to have another look at them later to get a better idea of what had just happened. "Enough," I put an end to his litany. "The kitty has his own accounts to settle. He'll kill until he considers himself done. You should be happy we only borrowed this young kitten from the Small Pride. Had we brought the entire pack, we wouldn't have even needed to storm your castle. The cats would have trampled it to the ground."

I just hoped my fantasies sounded believable. It was impossible for them to verify the whole story, anyway. As for the panther, he had to be now busy making quick work of the reluctant gangsters. So I went on applying pressure,

"We've taken over the castle. As a disciplinary measure, it will be destroyed. All the slaves have been liberated. Seventy-three of your clan members have been taken prisoners. They are forever banished from the sight of the divine Macaria but they can be exchanged for Russian-speaking slaves on a one-to-one basis. You have an hour and a half. These are our final and indisputable conditions."

Unwilling to listen to the flow of threats and curses that followed, I switched off the voice channel leaving the chat session active. Still, the Prince was too wound up to leave it alone. Now he was threatening us with all the weight and authority of his Chinese cluster's TOP 50 clan. I just ground my teeth, fed up with all of today's haughty faces and commandeering voices.

I switched back to the chat and decided to tighten the screws. "Now I'd ask you to shut up and listen. You still don't know who are you talking to, that's why you chose the wrong approach from the start. If you think that your dignity doesn't matter when you speak to a nonentity like myself, you're deeply mistaken. As far as I'm concerned, you've lost face. I'm not interested in you as a negotiator any more. I'm doubling the ransom and will continue to increase it every twenty-four hours or at every instance of your administration's incorrect behavior. Over and out."

I closed the channel and blacklisted it. They'd have to find another negotiator, not quite as arrogant. No, I absolutely couldn't allow them to apply pressure on us, taking the domineering stance of a respectable clan dealing with some white trash. Our strategy was entirely different. This was Justice paying evil-doers a visit. We had to work on our reputation so that later it started working for us.

Seeing that I'd finally shaken my head, coming back out of the trance, Widowmaker ran over to me. "Sir, the prisoners have come to a consensus. They agree to surrender their weapons in exchange for an access to their inventories."

I detected a note of respect in his voice: the First Priest had done it again, squeezing two more cupfuls of water out of his dry washing.

I nodded, satisfied. "So they should. Better to sacrifice a little but keep the bulk of their gear. Had they dug their heels in, they'd have created problems for their own clan that would have had to urgently re-equip fifty elite warriors; not even mentioning that their own positions would have been compromised. I'm pretty sure each of them has an impatient rival drooling over their place within the clan. It could be some kind of trick, of course—I wouldn't put it past them; alternatively, they could be waiting for us to make a mistake. You know what? I want you to treble security and provide a team of five to accompany them to the graveyard one prisoner at a time, with orders to restrain him at the first attempt to put on an item. Once disarmed, bring them here and put them back face down, hands tied behind their backs. I can't see any other option."

They start getting their act together. Soon a team of five mercs, as alert and suspicious as a customs hound, escorted the first hunched figure to the nearby graveyard. Time ticked by. Other raiders must have sensed my anxiety as they hastened their step, doubling to wherever they were heading. We must have looked funny from above: a disturbed ant hill may be a cliché, but it described the situation really well.

The group paused as the prisoner looked for his tombstone, then hurried to pick up his stuff under the guards' paranoid stares. Finally, the first patient was shepherded to my feet. Literally to my feet, as by then I'd already made myself comfortable in the chair once again. It rested on a platform built with silver ingots that the dwarves had fetched from the amulet ingredient storage. What else did you expect? My self-proclaimed status imposed certain obligations on me.
Image is our everything
, whoever said that. It wasn't for nothing Chinese emperors grew three-feet long nails to show their superiority and the absence of the need for any physical work—I don't think they could as much as wipe their backside, could they? Apparently, this torture was worth it if it instilled sufficient awe in their subjects.

A thin line of bodyguards separated me from the approaching warrior. Glaring around him, he slowly bared his twin swords glinting with moon silver. Apparently coming to the conclusion that he couldn't do anything more valiant than die like a pig in a slaughterhouse, he dropped all ideas of a kamikaze attack and switched to plan B.

He curved his lips arrogantly, striking a pompous pose. His eyes glazed over, focusing on the game interface as he activated item destruction. With a pop, the air filled with a colorful metal mist as the degrading fragments of the noble twin swords descended onto the rough cobblestones.

Widowmaker started in indignation. I motioned him to stop, waiting for the performance to end. Indeed, the warrior reached into his bag with a demonstratively slow gesture, trying not to alert the guards and not to appear afraid. He scooped out a handful of glittering jewelry and hurled it onto the steps of my throne.

"Never have our clan warriors brought dishonor onto themselves by lowering their weapons before their enemy. May it never happen, ever!"

He crossed his arms on his chest, freezing statue-like, tactfully omitting any mention of the replacement jewelry he'd just offered.

Widowmaker forwarded me his analyst's promptly generated report. According to the Kravchenko catalog, the price of his rings alone was on a par with the cost of the twin Moonlight Swords, and as for the set of fancy bracelets and the platinum earring, those weren't even listed. Little wonder; every cluster had its share of local ethnic items that didn't exist outside of their dominion.

I suppressed a smile of joy by pulling a grim and unhappy face. Smacking my lips, I shook my head in irritation. "I appreciate the brave deed of the noble warrior by accepting his fair exchange."

Happy now, my friend? Sufficiently flattered and proud of yourself? There's plenty of wool for your ears where this came from, as long as your teammates repeat your noble but stupid gesture. This way I could kill two birds—by receiving even more loot than initially expected but also by considerably weakening the hostile clan. I'd estimated the losses in their group's elite gear to be about 20%. I could read his teammates like an open book: they were impressed by his valiant deed, impatient to repeat his gesture. A ballad about the greedy laowai and the noble Shui Fong warriors was already brewing in their delirious minds. Very well, friends. Time to stand and deliver.

I signaled with my fingers, restarting the human conveyor belt. Two more teams of five mercs each were added to speed up the process. Now every thirty seconds a new portion of top gear was flung at my feet. One of the warriors attempted to cheat, tossing a handful of cheap costume jewelry into the generous heap of items—only to be publicly rebuked and have the error of his ways explained to him. I don't think that their ethics disapproved of cheating when it involved gullible enemies, but apparently no one wanted to end up in the ballad as the greedy little piggy. The donations kept pouring in even bigger and fatter than before—and considerably more generous.

When there were only a few prisoners remaining—just some petty clan officials—a sudden crashing sound behind my back made me jump. The already-relaxed guards grabbed their weapons.

I swung round just in time to see the wall of a distant shed disintegrate in a semicircle of dust and debris, revealing an enormous battle golem with the fragile tiny shape of a golem driver on his neck.

The monstrous creature, a work of genius that married mechanics and magic, was armed with two steel multi-thonged scourges that squirmed in its hands of their own accord, reaching and destroying everything within ten paces of it. Every few seconds, a double-action crossbow fired from his monstrous shoulder with terrifying precision.