A Soldier's Life - 279 - Show Me The Money (final edit 6-17-25)

Chapter 279: Show Me The Money

When I returned from washing my armor and rinsing my clothes—again, the children were gone, and my companions were standing around the seven heads across the ground. Maveith looked up at me, his voice full of concern. “There were seven of them.”

I moved in close to the group, so we couldn’t be easily overheard. I assumed the townsfolk were focused on the children at the moment, and my night vision told me no one was hiding nearby. I slowly counted aloud coyly. “Yes, seven. The big one there, I think, was an alpha, and he was kidnapping and infecting women to start a pack,” I said dismissively. My companions were still stunned that I had fought seven werewolves alone. I should have only brought back the alpha’s head.

I produced the three essences to distract them. Benito’s eyes caught the glint of the spheres in the light of the glowstone. “They had essences on them! You got really lucky!” Benito said with admiration.

“No, I used a collector on them,” I replied casually. This bit of information would come up sooner or later, and now seemed like a good time. Maveith and Raelia already knew about the collector from the Shimmering Labyrinth.

Mateo asked with his eyes on the essence, “Where did you get a collector? Did Castille give it to you?”

“No, it belonged to Durandus. But don’t talk about it in public. Collectors are even more valuable outside of the Empire,” I informed him, and eyed my companions to make sure they understood. The shock on Mateo’s face was priceless.

“Hey, I think Flavius was looking for that collector,” Benito broke in the silence.

Blaze was more thoughtful, “You had it since Macha? Suppose it makes sense since your space is larger than Castile assumed. Was that where the extra food in the Caelorian Library came from?”

I almost wished for the quiet, reserved Blaze, over this introspective Blaze. I admitted it, “Yes.”

Mateo laughed, “Lirkin and Adrian told us all to shut up and be grateful we had it.” I hadn’t realized the men had talked about the miraculous appearance of food in the library. I had been exhausted using the kettle on specters and hadn’t paid much attention to anything else going on. I should have known the men would have been wise to food suddenly appearing, as meals were something everyone had fixated on.

“I prefer not to talk about our time in Caelora,” I said sorrowfully. We had lost a lot of friends and suffered. I snatched back my hand from Baldo, who had lunged for essences.

Raelia yelled at him, “Baldo. No!” She looked at me with shame, “Sorry. I purchased him a minor essence of constitution two months ago. He really enjoyed it.”

“Griffins can consume essence?” Mateo asked in a shocked tone.

Raelia pursed her lips and lectured the group in a tone I knew well from the labyrinth. “Any creature besides the unliving, to my knowledge, can. Constitution essences are prized for mounts as they can slightly lengthen their lives and make them viable mounts for longer. For Baldo, that essence should make him airworthy for me for about four decades, and he should live almost fifty years.”

Out of Baldo’s reach, I handed Benito the empathy essence, Blaze the dexterity essence, and Mateo the strength essence. “What is this for? We didn’t do anything.” Mateo said, holding up his dark purple sphere with the glowstone behind it.

I hesitated for a breath in my reply. Was I being like Castile and trying to buy the loyalty of companions? Maybe. Their gains would be so small they wouldn’t matter—but still, they had chosen to support Maveith and I.

“You are part of the adventuring team. An equal split of the bounty we find.” I said that now, but Castile always kept most of the mental essences for herself and probably all the magic ones as well. She was generous, not stupid.

Benito had already popped his empathy essence in his mouth. Mateo and Blaze followed shortly after. Baldo let out a sorrowful crooning that he got nothing. I tossed him a cube of bear meat to quiet him. “Did you all practice this afternoon?” I asked, and suddenly, no one made eye contact with me.

Raelia, grinning, spoke for the group. “We went for long walks in the woods.” She quickly added, “Not far from the town. Maveith and I tried to teach the others how to move quietly. Mateo is a lost cause, but Blaze and Benito did well enough.” The truth was clear: they were venturing out in hopes of finding me, but I had traveled far from town. If they had come with me, one or more might have been injured or infected.

Someone was coming, and Raelia let us know who it was with her superior night sight. “Rolf is coming from the merchant’s inn. That is where they brought the afflicted.”

We waited as the dwarf merchant walked purposely toward us. His thick beard hid his expression in the shadows of the night. He barked happily, “Well, you stirred things up a bit. They will be leaving to bring the children to a healing mage in the city in an hour. Sadly, one looks too far gone. The good people collected a reward for you.” Rolf fished out a small but heavy-looking pouch. “North of seven gold in small coins if my eyes worked properly when they were filling the bowl.”

“Tell them they can keep it,” I said, waving off the reward. Benito started coughing, and Rolf’s eyes showed shock. “I found some coins in the werewolf camp. Plenty of compensation. They will need that gold to pay for a cure.” From my Hound lessons, I knew it took a powerful healer to eliminate the lycanthropy from the blood.

“The Healer’s Guild won’t charge for a lycanthropy purge,” Rolf said. Seeing I was not going to take it, he lowered the bag to his side, Benito’s eyes following it. “Plan to collect a bounty on those?” He indicated the werewolf heads.

“There is a bounty?” I asked, intrigued. It had been on my mind, but mostly, I wanted to demonstrate that the threat had been eliminated.

Raelia shook her head, disappointed in me. Her body language reminded me of our time in the dungeon when she lorded her superior knowledge over me. At least now, she wore a smirk. “The Adventurer’s Guild has bounties on all dangerous creatures. You need to bring proof. I thought that was why you brought the heads.”

“How much?” Benito asked for me, his eyes still following the sack as it disappeared into Rolf’s pocket.

“It differs by the kingdom since they are the ones who ultimately pay the bounty. In Bartiradia, a werewolf was a large gold. I don’t know if an alpha was more. In Esenhem? I don’t know. I just joined the Adventurers’ Guild recently.” Raelia explained purposefully.

“They are Eryk’s kills. It is his gold,” Blaze stated, like it was decided by all of them.

“Well, tie them tight in a bag. I don’t want the wagons stinking. There is a branch of the Adventurers Guild in Kaelsilo. We will be there in two days.” Rolf looked back at me. “You sure?” He confirmed about the town’s reward, and I nodded. He sighed like he disagreed with me. “I will explain it to them then. Don’t want it seeming like you are spitting at the generosity.”

“Tell them to prepare a sendoff feast to show their gratitude,” I told him before he retreated. He walked away, muttering something about stupid mercenaries. The others were in conversation, speculating how much the bounty for the heads would be, and I followed Rolf to get a few hours’ sleep in the guard rooms adjacent to the merchant’s inn.

In the morning, there was a feast for the ages—at least for this modest town. There was more food than we could ever hope to eat, but Benito and Mateo tried. We invited the other guards to share, and it was not lost on me that Rolf let us leave a few hours late. Apparently, most of Benito’s bets were with the other guards as silver was exchanged at breakfast. We even got a rousing send-off from the elven villagers. It was nice to be appreciated.

Even in the waterproof sleeping roll, the heads baked in the sun and began to stink during the day. We tied the bag to the back of the last wagon, and no one guarded the rear. At night, we buried it in sand to mask the smell.

A day later I was presenting the heads to a Guild clerk while the others tended the horses. She was wearing a mask as she pulled the maggot-infested heads from the bag with a practiced hand. She was not squeamish as she examined each nasty monstrous head. “Where did your team encounter the werewolf pack,” she asked, trying not to breathe in after she finished.

“About twenty-two miles southwest of Esanor. The werewolves had three open-faced log shelters. I found two infected children, and they are being brought to Nirimporti to be healed,” I replied helpfully.

“Was there a posting for their rescue?” She asked as she signaled for a lean elf in an apron to approach. “Burn these, please.” She muttered to herself, loud enough for me to hear, “My job would be much easier if all adventurers could be trusted to always tell the truth.”

“No, there was no posting. We arrived in the afternoon, the child was taken before dawn, and the local Ranger went to get help.” I replied.

“No reward then. Pity. It couldn’t have been easy to handle so many, even though these females were probably small. It’s been seven or eight years since we had werewolves in the region, never a good omen.” She pulled out a sheet and began to write out what I assumed was a voucher. I was never good at reading upside-down. She asked for my medallion number and the others. Even though they had not assisted, I gave her everyone’s registration number.

Completed, she turned the sheet around for me to confirm what she had written. It was a relatively simple bureaucracy as things went. It listed the location and details of the kills. I didn’t see the amount of the bounty anywhere on the sheet. “Was there no bounty for the werewolves?”

“I don’t have the gold here to pay out. This will be filed in Artiria,” she indicated the report she had created. “It will take a week or two to get there; I will hold a copy in case it doesn’t. Then, at any large Guild Hall in the world, you can use a message to confirm it with Artiria and pay yourself or anyone in your group the bounty. The gold actually comes from the Esenhem coffers and not the guild.”

“And how much is that bounty?” I asked, not thinking it was large due to her nonchalance. I also did not have a great relationship with the Guildmaster Jhaartael.

“Alphas are a scourge. One hundred gold for him. The lessers, ten gold each. But I am being generous since they were a pack. Normally, it is five gold for a recently infected.” She might have been smiling under her mask, but I couldn’t see it. “That leaves you 144 gold.” Seeing my confusion, she explained. “Ten percent to the Guild, ninety percent to you.” She spent fifteen minutes stamping out a bronze voucher for me with the amount owed and the corresponding number on the report she filed. “Don’t fret, once it is approved in the Artiria Guild, payment will be quick.” With this snail paced bureaucracy, I doubted it would be quick.

Maybe I should be angry about a ten percent tax, but it was much more egregious back on Earth here taxes ate half my income. “Is there a bounty book?” I asked before leaving.

“I have an older copy here. It is updated annually by the kingdoms where the Guild is allowed to operate. Mostly, it is utilized to generate job postings for subjugations of threats.” She retrieved a book from the shelf and handed it to me. It was basically an indexed system for just Esenhem bounties. She helped me by turning to the werewolf index. As she had said, the alpha was listed at 100 gold, but there were other add-ons listed. For instance, one additional gold for each person the creature had killed or one silver for each livestock.

As she mentioned, a lesser werewolf was five gold, but if they were in a pack of four or more, each bounty was raised to ten each. As I was engrossed in the details, she said, “Most bounties are pretty standard kingdom to kingdom. When a monster crisis arises, we mostly use these books to create a job posting in the Adventurer Halls. The kingdom coffers will cover the reward.” I nodded, thinking it was a semi-efficient reward system.

I paged to the earth drake to see what the bounty might have been. It was based on the size of the drake and a few other factors. By the size of the one I had killed, it was just 30 gold. Seeing where I was looking, the clerk explained. “Some dangerous creatures that have a lot of harvestable materials are listed for less than you would expect. An earth drake this size could be harvested by a skilled skinner, generating one to two hundred gold. Most kingdoms account for that when rewarding kills.”

After I paged through the entire book, I thanked the clerk and went to find my companions at the merchant’s barn in town. They had all finished with the horses and were joking around while Baldo hunted rats in the loft. I showed them the bronze voucher: “It was one hundred forty-four gold. That is twenty-four gold each, but the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly. Maybe in two or three weeks.” Blaze looked about to speak. “I don’t want to hear it. Equal split on the bounty.” There was probably a similar amount in the dirty chest I had found. I would hold those for company funds.

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful. We ended up traveling with two other merchant caravans from the Elven city of Pevora to the orc city of Khoura. Rolf grumbled as he paid our wages, 44 silver, to each of us with a 26 silver bonus. Shocked at his generosity, I asked him why.

Grumpily, he told me. “Word spread of your deeds in Esanor. I did better than an average run. But there might have been some misunderstanding that is I who sent you to rescue the child. I didn’t correct that assumption.” He chuckled wryly, and I joined him. “If you have given up your foolish notion of going deeper into the Caliphate, I would be willing to pay you ten silver a day and your companions five. Your group is certainly more competent than most the Guild sends to me. I would even pay for the griffon’s nourishment.”

I looked at my companions nearby. Benito was looking around in awe at all the orcs. His purse was heavy with silver that needed to be spent. Blaze was holding the reins of all the horses, waiting on me. It looked like Raelia was having second thoughts about bringing Baldo along because of all the attention he was getting from passing orcs. Maveith was grinding his teeth as four goliaths carried a carriage further down the street. Mateo—Mateo was eyeing an orc brothel down the street. At least by the women loitering outside, I assumed that is what it was.

“No. We have a plan in mind. May Fortuna bless you with large profits.” I shook wrists with the dwarf and joined my companions on our walk to Khoura’s Adventurer Hall.

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