Chapter 115

Luke stared down at the headless corpse in shock. “What even the fuck?”

A moment later, he got the ding of the kill notification, which was a whole new level of fucked-up. Had that merc been alive for a few seconds after his explosive decapitation? Just fucking how?

[You have assisted in slaying Blacktongue Human Mercenary (lvl 35). 670 XP awarded.]

Luke turned his stare from the corpse up to Zea. “Learn a new party trick?”

“Something like that. Here, catch me, I’m going to jump.”

She was twenty feet away, but she hurled herself bodily through the air in Luke’s general direction. He caught her in his arms, spun once to diffuse the momentum, and then brought his lips down to hers. “I was afraid they were going to kill you,” he said. “I shouldn’t have thought you’d be safe splitting up. I just assumed they’d all come after me. Fucking stupid.”

“Ah, well, I didn’t try too hard to get out of their way,” she said. “Let’s just say we both screwed up on this one.”

“I guess all’s well that ends well, but there’s a whole bunch of these mercs left, and they’re not breaking into smaller units to try to hunt me down anymore, sooooo… time to get out of here?”

“Did… did you find my stuff?” Zea asked.

“Your stuff,” Luke repeated. “The stuff with the worth-its-weight-in-gold hide and all your enchanting projects? That stuff?”

“That’d be the stuff, yes.”

“I did not, no.”

“Oh. Well. Fuck.”

“You want to go back to their base and look for it? I don’t think there’s anybody there right now. We could do a quick in and out.”

Luke could see greed and caution warring on her face. Without a word, he started running back towards the compound. Zea squirmed in his arms until he shifted her into a bridal carry, which earned him a glare and a resigned sigh.

They arrived two minutes later, paused for Luke to recover his knife from the throat of the merc he’d thrown it into during his initial assault, and went in through the hole he’d made when he broke through the window. “Holy shit,” she said, looking around at the damage. “What the hell did you do to this place?”

“They took you. I stopped holding back. Normal wood and stone, even steel, none of that is actually strong enough to hold me anymore.”

“That’s about what it looks like,” she said. “Okay, we’re looking for… maybe storage rooms? They had me blindfolded on the way in, so I’m not sure where exactly they took my bags. If we’re really lucky, we’ll find them intact and can get the fuck out of here.”

“I didn’t see any on the ground floor, but there might be some in the basement.”

“I guess we’ll start there. I think the stairs are that way.” Zea started walking off, only to stop and spin around when Luke stomped down on the floor and broke a hole through it. “Or that works too.”

He hopped through, caught her when she jumped in after him, and gave the room a quick once-over. A desk dominated one half of the room, with a big chair behind it, standing shelves flanking either side, and about a thousand sheets of paper bound together into makeshift books that didn’t have covers.

“No cupboards or cabinets here,” Luke said. “Probably not in the paperwork room.”

He found the door was locked, so he casually ripped it out of the frame and set it down to the side. Zea followed after him slowly, her expression thoughtful as she looked around. “Any idea where to check?”

“I didn’t really poke my head into each room looking for you,” Luke said. “There were people trying to stop me, which, you know, kind of distracting.”

“I guess we’ll just go down the hall and open each door then?”

That was exactly what they did, though most of them were locked. It seemed like there were a lot of sleeping chambers, usually with bunks, but occasionally what he guessed were officers’ quarters that only had a single bed and some furnishings. There was a huge pantry that he took a few minutes to raid, filling a conveniently located sack that had contained vegetables until he upended it onto the floor with a variety of smoked meat, some cheeses, a few glass jars with spices that Zea said were worth quite a bit, and a few other odds and ends at her direction.

Eventually they found what they were looking for. The door was reinforced with steel bars, which he ripped out of the anchoring stone work with brute strength. Luke paused, his eyes glinting and his lips widening into a grin when he got a look inside. “This is my new favorite room,” he announced.

Zea peered around the door, rolled her eyes, and said, “Sure, go nuts. Let me know if you see my backpack in there.”

To his left, a trio of wooden racks were lined up next to each other. They had every type of weapon he had a name for mounted on their pegs, and a few he didn’t. All of it was good steel, too. Though he wasn’t an expert, Luke could see the grain in the metal from across the room and it matched a lot of other high-quality steel he’d seen. He had to assume that meant it was good, not that it mattered. He had his main weapon and a side arm already.

Opposite the weapons were some supply shelves. Bags, pouches, blankets, coats, boots, and more were set up there. Luke even found some clothes in various sizes. It looked like the Blacktongue mercenaries wore some kind of uniform when they weren’t in an active combat situation. Or maybe even during, just under their armor. Either way, Luke found some in his size and pilfered four sets.

Then he shucked off his own rough and ragged farmer’s clothes and dressed himself. His boots had taken quite the beating over the last few weeks as well, so those got replaced. By the time he was done, he was dressed in all new clothes, carrying new, high-quality bags, and had even found a harness not in desperate need of repair for his weapons.

Then, at the back, finally, there they were. In three rows, displayed on mannequins, sets of dark green and black armor waited for someone to come claim them. Luke sorted through them until he found one in his size, then started dressing himself. The straps weren’t that complicated, though it would have been easier with some assistance. Zea was three doors down now, busy rifling through one of the rooms that was had been left unlocked, so he decided to give it a go himself.

It wasn’t as hard as he’d expected it to be. The worst of it was probably holding the back and front plates together while he fastened the straps on the sides, but even those were a clever mix of locking clasps and adjustable belts. In less time that he’d expected, he wore greaves, vambraces, gauntlets, a breastplate, and pauldrons.

Luke threw a cloak on over it, then flipped it back to leave one shoulder bare and allow easy access to his mace. He twisted around experimentally, trying to find the limit to his flexibility inside the armor. “Huh, not as bad as I thought,” he muttered. He supposed it made sense. The breastplate left his sides partially exposed where the adjustable leather straps connected the front and back of it together, a bit of a tradeoff, but one he was happy to make if it allowed him to make better use of his agility.

“Hey, you think you could come bust open a few of these doors for me?” Zea called out from the other room.

“Yeah, be right there,” Luke yelled back.

He went down the hallway, casually kicking each door open as he went by until he reached the room Zea was searching. Rows of cupboards, wardrobes, and cabinets all hung open, their contents ransacked and scattered across the floor. A number of empty bags had been tossed into the corner, but none of them looked like Zea’s. Based on her stomping and muttered cursing, he was guessing she was getting frustrated.

“Can’t believe how much shit they’ve got in here. Fucking hoarders, the lot of them. Never going to find—” Zea glanced up at the doorway, saw Luke standing, there, and flinched back. “Holy shit! I thought you were a merc for a second.”

“You think I can get away with keeping this set? I’ve been trying to get some good armor for what feels like forever.”

“Uh, maybe. It’s less conspicuous than templar gear that’s been marked with the Sign of the Six, at least. I think you’ve got the straps done wrong on your side though.”

“I do?” Luke looked down at them. “They look right to me.”

“No, see, you’ve got this one going over top of this one. They’re tangled. You need to thread the strap through this piece here, otherwise it’s going to work itself loose.”

“Oh. Damn. Thought I had it figured out.” Luke started tugging on the straps to adjust them. “So no luck with finding any of your stuff?”

“Not at all,” Zea said. “That’s why I wanted to break open more rooms. Was there anything small and valuable we could take with us from the armory?”

“Valuable like ‘it’s worth a lot of money?’ Not so much. It was a lot of basic necessities, which, I mean, I’m not going to complain about a free resupply, especially when so much of it is better quality than what we were using. But in terms of straight gold and silver, no, nothing.”

“Fuck. What are we going to do if my stuff isn’t here? We’ll basically be broke again. It’ll take months to save up what we need to charter passage across the ocean.”

“Let’s not give up just yet,” Luke said. “I don’t hear anybody approaching the compound, and there are plenty of places left to look.”

“Right, yeah. Come on, let’s hurry anyway.”

Luke followed her into the next room and helped her start tearing the place apart. While they worked, he asked, “What was with that exploding rope you used on that merc?”

“That’s how I escaped. I bought a new skill. Expensive as fuck. 25 AP. But it lets me put temporary enchanting runes on basically anything, with no tools. I enchanted the rope with a strangling spell and set it to detonate after so many seconds.”

“Well, that’s fucking terrifying,” he told her frankly. “I’m guessing that’s how you get away in the first place?”

“Yeah, if you’d gone another thirty feet or so, you’d have found what was left of the guy who was carrying me. I drew the runes on the back of his armor, which was tricky as fuck because he was moving, my hands were tied up, and I had to be real fucking careful about how that one blew up. Could have killed myself if I’d fucked it up.”

“Glad you didn’t,” Luke said. “It would have been a pain in the ass to have to avenge you. There’s a lot of mercs left in that group.”

They moved onto the next room, and then the next. Finally, after another ten minutes of searching, Luke held up a hand to get Zea’s attention. “Someone is approaching the compound,” he whispered. “One person from the north, and another from the west. Maybe two from the west? We’re running out of time.”

“Shit,” she swore. Moving quickly and silently, she started tossing the room. After a perfunctory search of the cabinets, she shook her head. “Might be valuable stuff in here, but not our valuable stuff. Let’s keep going.”

Luke kept quiet and followed her. If it was just the three mercs, he was confident he could win. Even if it was six, he could probably take them. His concern was that the whole unit would come in at the same time, one big group, and overwhelm him with sheer numbers.

“Aha!” Zea hissed, triumphant. She held up a familiar bag and added, “About fucking time.”

“Good, let’s get out of here now. I think we can still get away before the mercs pin us down.”

Zea flipped the flap open, peered in, and frowned. “Fuuuuuuuuck. They took the money.”

“What about the hide?”

“Still here, but that’s not liquid until we get somewhere we can sell it.”

“Better than nothing,” Luke said. “Let’s get out of here.”