"Servant of Empire" - Ch 13

Nix looked genuinely startled, while Sered simply looked irritated.

“We’ve just ordered drinks.” Nix said.

“Un-order them.” The guard replied.

“We’d better go along,” Sered said. “I figured something like this would happen.”

I stood and when I saw the frightened glance of the guard, I smiled with all my teeth and drew up my hood to cover my head. I fluffed out my cape to pull my tail out of sight, tucking it against my legs.

“I don’t burn in the sun or anything, if you’re wondering,” I said in a non-committal tone. I grabbed my rucksack and slung it over one shoulder.

We offered no resistance, and filed slowly out. The barmaid was just walking a tray of beers to us as we reached the door, and I detoured to grab two mugs from it before going out. I slurped the top off of them to help keep from spilling while I walked with my pack over my shoulder.

Rendo saw my quick move, and darted over to take a pair as well, leaving a few coins on the tray of the puzzled girl. “We’ll bring these back later,” he said as he grabbed a pair of cups as well.

Sered looked at me disapprovingly. “We’re going to see the magistrate after a particularly bloody fight.”

I took one of the mugs and downed it in a few seconds. Tried to speak around the belch that formed. “You don’t think I’m goiEEERP!” Failed.

“You don’t think I’m going to do that stone-cold sober, do you?” I set the clay cup on the table as I walked out the door. “We just faced down a dragon with a pack of spiders. I need this.”

The nice thing about small towns is that everything is generally pretty close to everything else. The magistrate’s council-house was only a few minutes away. We weren’t entirely glum while we walked, but the shakes had passed and we discussed the meaning of the attack as we went. Upon arriving at the council-house, an additional group of guards met us at the entrance and joined our escort.

The Magistrate was in a large room with a wide wooden table. A very decidedly average-looking man, he wore clothes that would mark him as being in possession of money, and a well-trimmed beard and moustache framing his narrow face hinted at a regular trim. He had his own two guards at the rear of the room, and he was speaking fitfully with a man on one side of him and a woman on the other. As we entered, all three looked up.

“There you are,” the woman said with not a small amount of reproach.

The Magistrate put a hand on her arm. “Please come in, sit.”

I kept my hood up, and settled into the chair furthest from the officials. The others filed in and picked seats to their own design. Sered ended up closest to the head of the table.

The Magistrate glanced among us. “Can I have water brought in? And where is your larger companion?”

“He was a fatality in our prior expedition.” Sered said.

The man seated to the Magistrate’s left spoke up. “Enough with the pleasantries. These people brought that drake down on us!” His face was squinched up, eyes beady through tight cheeks, gray hair flung wildly about. The overall effect was rather rodent-like, though his clothes looked mildly expensive.

“Of course they didn’t,” the Magistrate replied sternly.

“We fought it off, in point of fact, at cost of one of our own.” Nix said.

The woman watched all this impassively. Her jaw was wide, brown eyes flicking between us. A small bit of premature grey littered her hair, which was kept tied back tightly. Her clothes displayed a wealth at least equal to that of the Magistrate, but did so in a more subtle fashion.

“We are most grateful for your contribution to the defense of our town.” The Magistrate said, looking straight at the man. “Aren’t we, Gerard?”

The man glared at him but said nothing. The woman tilted her head at us, and I took a few swallows off of my remaining cup.

“There are four of you.” She said. “You started with five. If you lost one, there should be four. You lost one on your prior expedition, you lost one today. That would make three. Who is this fourth?”

Observant. Crap. I stood up and gave a small courtly bow. “I am a new addition to the roster, madame. Azrael of the house Ashemdion, at your service.” I kept my hood up.

“May we see your face?” She asked.

I looked to the others. Sered nodded, and Rendo gave me an “okay” gesture while drinking a bit of his own beer.

I pulled back the hood slowly. The woman’s eyes widened slightly, while the Magistrate looked more surprised. Their eyes traced the curvature of my horns. Gerard, the rodenty-looking man, stood as though someone had kicked him in the ass.

“You bring a Shadrim here? How dare you! You’ll bring a curse down on us, the dragon probably came for this one!” He slapped his hand on the table to punctuate his sentences.

“Gerard, sit down.” The Magistrate said it quietly, but the force in his voice was definite.

Gerard steamily sat himself back down. “He should be hung on the walls,” he muttered.

“And in my land, we’d…” I was stopped by Nix’s hand on my shoulder. She shook her head. I wasn’t in my land. I gave Gerard a threatening smile and pulled my hood back up before lowering myself into the chair.

“Please forgive Gerard his…” The Magistrate began.

“Emotional state,” the woman finished. I realized her voice was a bit deeper than I had expected.

“Emotional state?!? Batilda, these people have been a hazard since they came here! They are…”

“My guests, and Batilda is right. You are getting ahead of yourself, Gerard, and you speak out of place.” The Magistrate raised his voice a little towards the end of his statement, and Gerard quieted once again.

He went on. “I should make some introductions,” he nodded to the man. “This is Gerard Sandarson, he owns the Greenfield Farm just West of town, and represents the farming community. This,” he nodded to the woman, “Is Batilda Moorecroft, who is the elected representative of the business council.”

He looked over to me. “I am Magistrate Marten von Kurz, Baron of Adelhome and the surrounding land. You and I have not met.”

I nodded to him in recognition.

“We wanted to get the details of today’s attack from you.”

“Weren’t the guards there able to…” Rendo began.

“We want your side as well,” he glanced meaningfully at Gerard. “Seeing as some have conflicting interpretations of the event.”

I understood now. I wondered if Sered got it. He seemed the default go-to man for our interests here. Figured I’d let him roll and pitch in if it seemed necessary.

“We were in the Steaming Green, arranging rooms when the first hint of trouble came,” Sered began. “As soon as we heard something happening, we went outside to help.”

“Which is when you killed the three guardsmen and six of our citizens?” Gerard interjected.

For some reason, this really set me off. I felt rage rising up, and I slammed my fist on the wooden table. “Keep quiet until you are called on. We saved you. One of us died to save you.” I found myself standing, with one hand on the hilt of my weapon. This time, Nix didn’t need to pull me back, I settled myself.

“Apologies, Magistrate,” I said as I sat back down. “I have no standing to call order in your halls.”

He nodded. I looked back to Gerard, who had almost fallen from his chair. His face had gone white, and he was clutching at what I thought might be a dagger beneath his overcoat.

As I pulled my clenched fist off the table and back into my lap, I noticed that the seams of my right glove were darkened, almost charred. I winced. How the hell did I do that? As if to emphasize my confusion, a wisp of smoke curled up from under my glove. I pretended not to notice. In a room full of wizards and warriors, hopefully this would pass.

But Batilda noticed. She eyed the hand with an eyebrow raised before returning her attention to the conversation.

“Please continue,” the Magistrate said to Sered, but his eyes never left me. “Gerard, if you interrupt again, you will be excused.”

Sered looked back to him. “The dragon released several enormous spiders, which had been riding along on its sides, then settled onto the wall. We variously engaged the spiders, and our companion Wynter delayed the dragon with the guards’ assistance. It killed him, but not before he was able to shoot it in the eye with a crossbow. This seemed to dissuade the beast, and it departed shortly after.”

Nix leaned forward. “We believe the attack to be linked to the trolls who attacked here some months past. The spiders were…malformed, if you can call it that. They looked to have had some parts…molded maybe? By trolls. And they were growing back where we struck them. It took fire to kill them permanently.”

The man nodded. Batilda sat still, and I could see Gerard’s hands were shaking from our little exchange. I don’t think he even heard what Nix had said.

“Why are the trolls so interested in Adelhome?” The Magistrate scratched his chin. “We are not the kind of settlement that can be easily overrun, and we have little in the way of natural resources – we are largely a farming community.”

The attackers were not naturally given to organization. They had a leader. I was missing something here. The attacks were new. The town was not.

The town was not. In fact, it was rather old. And it had, once upon a time, been a highway between our world and Faerie. It was real estate, it had to be. And first rule in real estate – location, location, location.

Sered and Nix were talking animatedly about something.

“Location.” I blurted. I felt all eyes swivel to me. “This is about location,” I continued.

“Adelhome was once a trading hub with Ráth Ros, yes?” I asked.

“Yes, but that was over a century ago,” Batilda answered me before either of the other two could open their mouths. “Faerie shifted, and we lost the road.”

“But you still have the way into Faerie, it’s sitting out there in the forest.” I pointed off in the general direction of the trees I’d seen. The Magistrate gestured in a different direction.

“Wherever,” I said. “Marten, the gate …may I call you Marten?”

He nodded stiffly.

“Trolls are creatures of the fey. The shift in their lands must have brought some change that has them hunting here, or feeling that they own the area. Territoriality has kicked in. These trolls have a king, and a king of trolls must remain in charge by force, not diplomacy. So either they’re attacking you to ‘protect’ their lands, or they’re doing it to expand them.”

There was a lull in the conversation. I didn’t break it – doing so would be showing a lack of confidence. Instead, I waited.

“What about the dragon?” Marten finally asked.

“That has to be some deal they made with it,” I said. “Or it is driving the whole thing. We don’t know.”

“How do you intend to find out?”

Rendo, having been silent the whole time, set one of his cups back on the table. “We weren’t really sure yet. Are you proposing a job for us?” Leave it to him to think of that angle, it hadn’t even occurred to me.

“We do have that option available to us. As your company is registered here, we do have the option to hire you.”

“You can’t seriously be considering hiring them? They brought this whole thing upon us!” Gerard spluttered.

Marten looked over at him. “The trolls attacked us months ago. These people didn’t bring that upon us. They have confirmed what Batilda said about the spiders, that the two are related somehow. These people aren’t the problem. I am proposing to have them find a solution. Is that sufficiently clear?”

“But, but I…”

“Need to set aside your personal involvement here. You need to bury your cousin, Gerard. Stop looking for someone to blame within these city walls.”

Aha, that’s why this guy seemed so pissed with us.

“We ask for no reward for this morning’s action,” Sered said.

“But we will consider an offer of employment,” Nix raised her hand to append to Sered’s statement.

Marten looked over to Batilda, who nodded back to him. Gerard didn’t respond, instead sitting back in his chair with his arms folded, sulking.

“We then offer you a contract of employment, and as Magistrate I wish to exercise my right to preempt other claims on your time that are not actively engaged.”

“Well, that changed the tone of this discussion quite a bit. I thought we were trying to avoid going to prison here,” I muttered to Rendo.

“Probably a wise concern.” He whispered back.

“How much are we talking?” Rendo spoke louder.

“We offer three thousand Scepters to the survivors, if you will find the source of these attacks and halt them. We can offer you twenty percent up front, and the rest payable after you deliver us the head of this troll king, or one year passes with no troll attacks on the township.”

I leaned over to Rendo. “Scepter is this thick gold one, right?”

He nodded.

Gerald was making a particularly sour face.

Sered opened his mouth to speak – I assume to agree – when I quickly sat up and rapped on the table. “Wait,” I said. “I have a counter-proposal. In general we agree, yes?” I looked over to Sered, who looked at me impassively.

“Okay, good. I have a question. As Magistrate, you have jurisdiction over how wide an area?”

“Two days’ travel on horseback in all directions.” Marten looked at me impassively as he answered.

I nodded. “I recognize that some persons feel our presence here is…less than desirable, yes?” I looked directly at Gerald, who returned my gaze. I assumed that to mean yes.

“Then in addition to the mentioned payment, we wish a grant of land. Specifically, the top of the plateau and the road leading up it, to the ruined castle grounds up there. We will make the best of that as our home, removing us from the township proper while still leaving us within easy reach for your needs, and leaving us within your jurisdiction per the registration documents you refer to.”

Sered’s eyebrows went up, and he nodded slowly. Nix covered a grin with her hand. Rendo just grunted in an affirmative and whispered “Oooh, yeah, good idea.”

Gerald, meanwhile, leaned very forward and nodded eagerly. “I agree with the Shadrim’s plan. They will keep it free from bandits and they will be ou…able to operate safely from the Varlstadt ruins.”

“Varlstadt? That’s what it’s called?” I asked.

“When it was still inhabited, yes,” Batilda replied coolly.

I stood quietly.

“Gerald makes good sense,” Marten pondered.

“On occasion,” Batilda back-handedly agreed. She ignored the farmer’s glare.

“Then it’s done. Varlstadt will be yours on completion of the task set forward. You may begin residency when you wish, the final papers will be drawn up if and when we officially award it to you.” Marten grinned thinly. “I’m glad we could come to an arrangement.”

Gerard remained poised forward, like a vulture. “Now, when do you leave?”

“We are not sure yet of our destination,” Sered said.

“And we have to take care of our fallen. And our advance.” Rendo added.

“I might be able to help with your destination,” Marten said.

“Oh?” Rendo sat up straighter.

“We have the town records here, and there are entries describing several caves along the way between here and the transition into the Fey lands. I remember reading that one of those is known to connect with the Deep lands. I will look through them and see if I can find the entry again. I’ll send for you when I do.”

We returned to the Green, where we had a late lunch and continued to discuss our options. We decided if we were going to be going into the Deeps, certain stocks would need to be acquired, as well as pack animals. We drew up a list which I volunteered to drop off at the Gibbens store when I returned to my room at Madame Madeline’s home.

My greatest concern was that we had no one among us with any experience in the Deeps. Rendo was the closest, but the holes that halflings lived in were nothing like the cave expanses we were going to embark into. Were we to encounter Deep elves, our surface-dweller status would surely cause us trouble.

With Nix, I drew up a few posters to advertise our need for a guide or navigator to accompany us on this journey. The Green being the largest Inn in town, it was a natural stopping-point for caravan masters, guards, and the like, so it seemed the likeliest location to find someone with some level of experience in underground travel. Without firsthand experience of even traveling a Deep highway, we were going to be at a severe – and possibly fatal – disadvantage almost immediately.

As soon as we had a direction from the town Magistrate, we’d be ready to go.

Into the dark.

(All content here, outside of those elements attributed otherwise, is copyright (2025-) Thomas Theobald. With the exception of AI training, personal use with attribution is granted.)