Author's Nightmare: Chapter 149 (Patreon)

Solitaire POV: Day 143

Current Wealth: 212 gold 26 silver 14 copper

With Beam inside the town, and the rest of us still waiting beyond it, I didn’t really have much direct action to take. That didn’t mean I didn’t get myself busy of course, because there were always precautionary measures to take. And that wasn’t even me being a paranoid, either! The orcs could’ve gone out looking for us, and if they’d sent even a fraction of their forces we’d have been outnumbered tens to one. So I gathered up the men and started working on a decently defensive perimeter to make sure that they had as miserable a time trying that as possible if it happened.

There was a secondary purpose to this too of course, the men were feeling a bit crushed. They’d just gotten into a fight with orcs- surprisingly advanced orcs- and though none had been seriously wounded, in their eyes, we’d all failed to breach their defenses. They considered themselves to have been repelled, and the fact that it was all according to plan didn’t seem to mitigate that. Being given a bloody nose by what they saw as semi-sapient primates was hardly something to uplift morale, and it was always smart to keep a large mob of violent men busy if you didn’t want them to get angry and suddenly hang you.

So, we got busy.

While preparations went underway, I considered our enemies. Siege engines of the kinds they’d shown hadn’t been expected even on my part- though that was because my friends tended to nerf my genius by insisting I not exercise the full might of it on imagining how everyone might try to murder us- and they indicated…Something. There was a cause for everything, and even if you weren’t a smart person you’d be amazed how much you can figure out just by slowing down, and taking the time to really dissect some of the things you see. Nothing “just happens”, it all comes from somewhere. Taking that for granted is like going through life with your eyes closed. 

I actually was intelligent though, so it actually took me less than two seconds to figure out what was going on with the orcs. It was almost funny. You can wait to find that out later, it’s funner that way.

We had our camp’s basis up after a while, a small thing which was nonetheless densely packed with defenses. At home I’d tried to make a swivel turret for the gatling gun. It hadn’t really worked, but I got busy here again. The issue had been making the thing light enough to be practically mobile, and I circumvented that issue here by just cannibalising one of our carriages and assembling one on-site. By the end we had, more or less, three hundred and sixty degree coverage.

That, and the large barricades encircling us, the fact that we still had all of our rocket ammo and most of our grenades, and the handful of low-level superhumans among us, told me that we wouldn’t be at much risk of attack from the orcs. Especially because most directions, they’d be forced to charge us uphill, and thus give the gatler extra time to punch holes in them.

But with that done we soon ran out of jobs, which meant it was back to thinking time.

Helena fixed that with the men of course. The sight of soldiers with free time seemed to offend her on some deep, sub-instinctual level, and she quickly got to barking them into running laps, practicing thrusts and sparring with the blunted weapons she’d insisted on bringing. Elizabeth watched, giggling and shouting out unhelpful orders, then started swearing when Argar hauled her off her feet and started making her sprint right next to the rest.

But I just sat down and thought. 

Beam was in the town. My friend, my brother. He’d gone in because I’d told him to, and I’d yet to hear anything about him since. I hadn’t fully expected to yet, mind, sending regular letters would make his movements predictable enough that the risk of being caught would raise exponentially, but still…It needled me. An not just in the paranoid way. He was my friend, and he was there because of me. 

All I had to do was ask, and Beam did it. No hesitation, he just did it. Like he was some soldier, some champion rather than a friend. Did that say something about me, or him?

Him, I decided, because he’d have done the same with Shango, if not quicker. Who would he follow if Shango and I had a real falling out, and our differences proved too much for us to even cooperate anymore?

Yeah, that question didn’t take long for me to answer. He’d follow Shango obviously. I could be honest with myself at least, very few people would be friends with me if given a real choice in the matter and I wasn’t delusional enough to think Beam considered me the equal of his non-insane one. 

And since I was being honest with myself, I thought I might as well take a look at this plan of mine. Oh, it was very clever as usual. But it all hinged on my friend being seated right in the heat of the biggest danger in the region. Would it work? It might well do, in fact there might even be better than fifty-fifty odds of that. Would Beam survive?

Probably, if he succeeded. Maybe not if he didn’t. Beam could always bug out if things went wrong, at this point he could sprint faster than a racehorse and his ethereal armour would stop orcish arrows without a problem. But they might corner him, or get a lucky shot to one of the gaps. I didn’t think twenty times a normal person’s durability would stop the projectiles we were seeing yesterday, not if they hit the neck and clipped an artery.

I’d not even thought about it. Just decided on the best course of action, the effective course of action, and sent Beam to do it. My friend might be on his way to die, and it might be my fault.

“Something on your mind?”

It was Argar, dropping down into a seating position beside me. The redhead was, as usual, so big there was a moment of brief stunned staring to see him so close so suddenly, then I was talking.

“Just worrying about victory.”

Argar eyed me, frowning. 

“Beam?” He asked.

I considered lying, but decided I couldn’t be bothered.

“Mostly Beam.” I nodded. He sighed.

“And you already know he’s the best fighter either of us has ever seen, capable of killing orcs by the dozen if he has to, and probably dancing around their patrols by jumping from roof to roof.”

“Yep.”

“So me telling you that doesn’t actually achieve much.” He continued.

“That’s about right.” I nodded.

Argar grunted again.

“Well you’ve been told anyway. Beam will be fine, and it’s not on you if he isn’t. This needed doing, sending anyone else to something he might have failed at would just be sending them to their deaths. Besides, he was the only one who could scale the wall fast enough.”

When he put it like that, it was so very tempting to actually stop being pissed with myself. Instead I just got to my feet with a grunt.

“I’m in the mood for something to take my mind of it.” I growled. “Let’s go a few rounds.”

Argar grinned. 

Fighting Argar is an exercise in arrogance, at least when one happens to have the superhuman strength of ten adult men in a single body. He was still stronger than me, by a fair amount, but that difference wasn’t exponential anymore, and I was a lot faster. I danced around him, clipping him with jabs and smacks while he hissed. The pain wasn’t really anything significant for him, we were sparring with thick wooden swords which, if I had swung hard enough to actually hurt Argar, would have snapped in half. But it annoyed him. It annoyed him very much. 

Every now and then Argar would catch me with his own swing, and Helena had to order him to switch to big logs after the second consecutive practice-sword he snapped against my body. I was fine of course, though bruised. And the sparring continued for a good hour. 

By the time we were both done, muscles burning and bodies so exerted that I actually felt hot despite the cold around us, the sky was darkening. We took our seats around one of several fires set up in the camp.

It wasn’t more than a few minutes after the night came, though, until I was thinking about Beam again. It was all well and good to distract myself, but the simple fact remained that my friend might die at any moment. And I’d be the reason if he did. I didn’t sleep well that night.