Author's Nightmare: Chapter 150 (Patreon)

Beam POV: Day 143

Current Wealth: 212 gold 26 silver 14 copper

Lady Adannaya had a disquieting way of talking as if she were giving orders that, for reasons unknown to all but her, she already knew for a fact would be obeyed. I figured she was an Akanite, one of Shango’s contributions to the lore. West-African inspired from some distant lands, and they had their shit together a bit much more than the regions we were currently stuck in. Lucky me. 

“You will tell me your intentions and plans for Swanhen.” She said, sharpness in her voice just a hair beyond schoolteacher, and a whisper shy of angry general. 

Faced with that, I couldn’t really think of anything better to do than just obey. 

“I’m here to help.” I told her. “Swanhen, its people. Whoever I can. I’m here to liberate the town from the orcs and help people regain some semblance of peace into their lives.” It sounded pretty good, said aloud. The sort of thing an actual hero might say, but Adannaya did not seem impressed. 

“And did you consider the effects of your interference?” She pressed. “That you might inspire further cruelty from the orcs, which, in your absence, will be taken out on the people you claim to be here for?”

I had, actually. Solitaire had mentioned it, and I’d come to picture it myself. Something about living in Redacle taught you how bad people think. Maybe it was the constant exposure to bad people. 

“Yes.” I replied, meeting her eye, not blinking. “But I’m not going to be held accountable for other people’s cruelty, if the only way I can help is by causing more harm in the short-term I’ll do it. It’ll be worth it if people end up freed after the fact.”

Adannaya looked at me long and hard, then nodded.

“Good.” She said at last. “I am glad to see you are not a fool, who failed to consider such things, or a coward who would be daunted into inaction by them. I believe we can work together.”

It was a bit jarring to see her leap from conversational threads like that, and more jarring still to find out I’d, apparently, been sitting through a test this whole time. I tried to keep up anyway. 

“What do you know of the orcs?” I asked, she was answeing almost before I’d finished speaking.

“They are organised, uncommonly so, and their technology is of almost human-grade. They number perhaps six thousand, or as low as four, and seem to be taking efforts to obfuscate their true count. I would imagine they are closer to the lower end based off of this. Their leader is Guraganar the Machinator. Have you heard of him?”

I had not, and saw no point in hiding my ignorance.

“He is one of the deadlier amongst their kind,” She explained. “And, at least is believed, to be the reason for their unusual technological potence. Here in Swanhen, he leads the orcs. Do you know how orcs select their leaders?”

I considered it. “Strength.” I shrugged. “Charisma, also.”

“Charisma.” She echoed. “That is what it comes down to in the end, they are emotional creatures, and unlike us have little control over their instincts. Orcs will invariably follow whichever among them seems most impressive, with little thought to their particular suitability for the role of leader. Which means that their impression of which orcs would be best to follow after a leader are inherently subjective and variable.”

I nodded along, seeing the logic now.

“You want to assassinate Guraganar.” I noted. “And hope that his death will cause their cohesion here to collapse.”

“I do.” Adannaya confirmed. “And thus far, I have been met with a single major obstacle. He is seven feet tall, as strong as twenty men, and blocked the last assassin’s sword with a forearm before proceeding to remove their head with strength alone. The wound left in his flesh was shallow enough to heal in a week. He was not wearing his armour.”

Ah. Yeah, now I saw how it was. Sneaking one assassin into one room was easy enough, but Adannaya’s issue was that unless she found a particularly tough one, she’d need to sneak in a dozen, or a score. 

And I, as it happened, was a particularly tough one. 

“So you want me to assassinate Guraganar.” I smiled, to hide my nerves. “That’s an awful lot of risk being taken on my part.”

She held my gaze, as if it were perfectly natural to ask a man to risk his life.

“You said you wanted to help.” She shrugged. “Here is your opportunity to do so. Unless you have a better way to damage the orcs on a grander scale? They really are numerous, and so far you’ve killed…A hundredth of them? Less? I don’t suppose you plan on remaining undetected and prolifically violent for months to whittle away their numbers, and hoping all the while that they do not become more active in hunting you down?”

It was like talking to Shango, worse than Solitaire in some ways. Everything I said was just ammunition she used, everything she said gave me something new to be uncertain about. Always twisting my own mind up in knots until I wasn’t even sure what I was doing. It was eerie. We really were meeting a lot of bizarrely clever people in this world, and not all of them, I realised, would be allies. Our luck wouldn’t hold against people who saw all the angles like my brothers did. It wouldn’t hold at all. 

“You’re really sure that killing Guraganar will cause that much damage to the orcs’ organisation?” I asked, not actually that sceptical, but wanting to see how she’d go about defending the idea.

“Much of what galvanises these orcs,” She began, impatiently- almost irritably- “Is the image Guraganar has cultivated around himself. He presents as some genius revolutionary, a being of impossible, even miraculous insight. He seems to deliberately leave it ambiguous, where possible, how much of his work is produced by knowledge of physical matter, and how much from some arcane or even demonic power. That sort of weight of reputation is not something which will be easily replaced once removed from the forces.”

Put like that, it made a fair amount of sense. There was really only one small issue.

“How exactly do you expect me to close in and kill this orc when, presumably, he’s surrounded by a lot of others, all of which are better equipped than most of their kind and stronger than almost all of ours?”

It wasn’t that I wasn’t willing, it’s just that I didn’t want to die horribly, for no reason and achieving nothing. Fortunately Adannaya seemed to have a solution for this just as she had all others. It was delivered, of course, without the slightest smile.

“There’s a woman he sees.” She told me. “A human woman. A traveller, I believe, unfortunate enough to get caught up in this affair, then more unfortunate still in catching the orcs’ eye. Guraganar is rather regular about visiting her, and you will find him doing so tonight.”

Not the most pleasant scene to be waiting at, but then assassination wasn’t the most pleasant job to be waiting for either. I’d done worse, anyway, since coming to this world. And helped a whole lot worse still. You didn’t come through Redacle with clean hands. At least not if they were still attached to you. 

“Alright.” I said at last, steeling myself like I always did. This wasn’t about me, it was about my brothers. What they had planned- what we were going to do. The people we could help if we’d just stop grovelling around powerless and scared. The world we’d built to be so shitty, and now had the chance to save. “I’ll do it.”

It really wasn’t that hard to get into the building, even without being seen. You’d be amazed how infrequently people look up. People who aren’t Solitaire, that is, who was ever vigilant for keeping himself safe from ambush by the Fog Men. I don’t know what that means, but I do know climbing. I got myself up onto the building’s roof and in through its top windows in moments.

The longest pause had been in preparation. I’d asked for a bow and arrow first, and stashed that away on myself before hiding. The woman whose rooms I was in didn’t even know I was there, and shortly after we were no longer alone. Guraganar entered with footsteps so heavy I heard the floorboards creak even from my hiding spot, and he was loud about getting down to business. I waited, though. 

He was alone, but he was still powerful. I wanted him as distracted as possible before I made my move. One second, another. Then I came out. As long as I was willing to wait, with what was about to happen to that woman, and as little as I could afford to risk. But my error became clear as I exited.

Guraganar was not, in fact, alone. And he wasn’t busy. He was staring at me straight ahead, with four others right next to him. Each one was taller than me, all of them were almost a meter wide at the shoulder, and all of them were covered in metal. They didn’t look happy to see me.