Lost in Glory

  "It's your seventh nephew you're proposing, you, you, you very fat thing," the Hiwelthadt said weakly.

  "Yes, Thinoak has too many nephews," the Count complained.

  "Shut up, Dumbparrot," the Duke replied without much feeling.

  "We should exchange his nephews for a barrel of... of... of cavalry," the Baron said.

  "When I was young, cavalry came in sacks," the Marquis murmured sleepily.

  "May the Lord of Light bless those sacks."

  Suddenly there was some sort of commotion outside. Guards were shouting to keep out, someone shouted something about... orcs?

  "What's happening out there? We should find out," Roseduck suggested.

  "It would be highly irregular to pause the proceedings just because of some shouting outside," the Master of Ceremony replied.

  "The very fact that someone tries to disturb our proceedings means that it must be something that cannot wait," the General insisted.

  "Whatever," the Duke muttered. "Let's see. It can't be more boring than sitting here."

  "True that," the Count agreed weakly.

  "It must be really bad if we agree on something," Philigree said and laughed. But it was a sad, forced laugh.

  The Master of Ceremony got up and opened the door. "What is the meaning..."

  "Orcs! Orcs are coming! Invasion!" a man dressed in a scout's uniform shouted. "Where is the General?!"

  "I'm here. How many?!"

  The scout just breathed heavily and looked like he was going to pass out just right there.

  "Out with it, man! How many?!"

  He took a deep breath. "OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAND!" he screamed. That awoke everyone.

  "Over nine thousand?! That's impossible!" the Count shouted. The Duke tried to get up quickly and fell down with his chair. The Hiwelthadt laughed crazily.

  "What do you mean by 'over nine thousand'?!" the General demanded. "Nine thousand and one?!"

  "Well there were so many that we got scared and ran away when we counted about nine thousand of them. And there were more coming."

  "Ah. That explains it. Sort of. No need to get that dramatic, though. Well, I guess it means I'm needed to lead the army. Apologies, my lords, but I am needed elsewhere."

  "Not so fast, young man!" the Master of Ceremony protested. "You cannot leave the capital until the new Emperor is chosen! This is the law."

  "I'm all for upholding the law and all that, but you see, this invasion should take precedence I think..."

  "The law is the law is the law!" the Master of Ceremony said. "You cannot go."

  "Give him a break, man!" the Duke shouted from the floor. "It's a skunking invasion!"

  "What will you say when the orcs sweep through the Empire, get here and tear your limbs off?!" the Count demanded.

  "Then I shall die limbless, happy that even in the darkest hour I stood firm and upheld the rules given to us by our forefathers!"

  "I'd joke about this, but there is no way to make him look sillier," Philigree said.

  "Let's kill some orc!" the Baron exclaimed. "Come, Roseduck! Let us ignore this old fool and ride upon them like the hurricane rides upon small rodents!"

  "If you leave the capital, I will declare you traitors! You know I can do it!"

  "I'll declare you strangled!" the Baron roared.

  "Hit him with a chair! With a chair!" the Hiwelthadt cheered him on.

  "There is no place in these walls for such an unholy act!" The Earl positioned himself between the Baron and the Master of Ceremony.

  The perspective of Oxrabbit strangling the annoying old man was rather tempting, but Roseduck decided it would be unwise to allow that. Especially that the Earl would interfere and it could only get worse from there. A free-for-all between the High Lords was the last thing they needed right now. Especially with everyone watching. "Let's all just calm down," the General said. "No need for violence." He addressed the scout. "You! Go find the officers! Tell them to start assembling the troops!" Not that these officers were any good, but assembling the troops was something they should manage.

  "Yes, General!" the scout ran off in a hurry.

  Roseduck closed the door. "Now, let's choose the new Emperor, shall we?"

  "This is highly irregular..." the Master of Ceremony started. And all the hell broke loose.

  "You are highly irregular!" the Count shouted.

  "I'd say he's too regular!" Philigree retorted.

  "A regular crazy old fart!" the Duke agreed.

  "He's just doing his job, you unholy sack of lard!"

  "Your grandmother was a grandhamster," the Marquis said calmly to nobody in particular.

  "No time for arguing when orcs are coming!" the Baron said. It was a surprisingly sensible remark, therefore nobody acted on it.

  "Best time there is," the Hiwelthadt replied.

  "Skunk you!"

  "May the unholy carp eat out your eyes!"

  "Uncleskunker!"

  "May the Lord of Light turns your intestines into eels!"

  "Shut up!" Roseduck shouted, but without much effect. Fortunately for him, the Baron was his ally. Sort of.

  "SHUT! UP!" The powerful shout filled the room. To drive his point home, Oxrabbit pounded the table with his fist. The table broke with a loud crack. The room suddenly went silent.

  "You broke the table..." the Master of Ceremony said weakly.

  "Get over it," Roseduck quickly replied. "No more of this bickering. We need a decision and we need it now!"

  "Right! I, Duke Bartholomeus Theodoricus Angus Thinoak, High Lord of the Empire, submit the candidature of Menerrick Idontremember Hisothernames Housegoose to become the next Emperor!"

  "The candidature of Menerrick Idonrembur Hisothermus Housegoose has been submitted. Will anyone second the motion?"

  Silence was only response to the question.

  "We're not THAT desperate yet," Philigree said.

  "He's as good as any!"

  "But we don't want the fat man behind the throne. It could break when you lean on it."

  "Why you little sillytitled..."

  "I, General Eneumerius Roseduck, High Lord Commander, submit the candidature of Mevrin Dontputit Onfire Oxrabbit!"

  The room went silent again. Mevrin Oxrabbit. Nobody had even considered Mevrin Oxrabbit. Not even Baron Oxrabbit himself, mainly because he had been busy submitting candidatures of people long dead and/or ineligible for other reasons.

  "The candidature of Mevrin Donupit Onifur Oxrabbit has been submitted. Will anyone second the motion?"

  The Baron didn't hesitate. Mevrin, after all, was family. You vote for your family.

  "I, Baron Regedulf Solthyron Asrius Oxrabbit, second the motion!"

  "The motion is passed. Now let us deliberate in silence for ten minutes. After that, the voting will commence."

  Roseduck was nervous. This was his moment of truth. Would he get his awful candidate elected or not? No way to tell. He decided that should this vote fail, he was going to vote for someone else's awful candidate, whoever he might be.

  He looked at the other lords, trying to guess what they will do. He had Oxrabbit's vote for sure. Two more needed. But who? Shaggysheep? Squarewheel? Blueparrot? Blazingtree? Surely not Thinoak, but who knows? The Marquis looked as usual, which meant that level of his participation in this reality was unknown. Roseduck suspected that he knew what was happening, but it was no more than a guess. The Duke sat with his fists and teeth clenched. Definitely not happy. The Count seemed deep in thought, as was the Earl. The Hiwelthadt was smiling, no telling what he found funny this time. Roseduck himself tried to look calm. He hoped he was doing a decent job of it.

  "The vote will commence now. Everyone in favour of electing Mevrin Oxrabbit as the new Emperor, please rise your hands."

  Roseduck and Oxrabbit rose their hands at once. The Duke just sat there looking angry, no vote from him, as expected. Count Blueparrot shook his head. The Marquis lifted his hand, seemingly absentmindedly. The Earl did n
othing. The Hiwelthadt giggled. And lifted his hand too.

  "The result of the vote is: four in favour, three against. Mevrin Donupit Onifur Oxrabbit is our new Emperor, May He Live For A Thousand And Three Years!"

  ***

  They arrived at their destination in the middle of the night. Saalteinamariva got there by a carriage. There was enough place inside for Vannard too, but of course neither of them wanted to travel together. The assassin rode on horseback, only occasionally approaching the carriage to exchange a few insults. Everyone was more or less happy with the arrangement, apart from the driver. He expected to land in the middle of a assassin-sorceress conflict any second. Fortunately, nothing like that had happened. Yet. There was still the way back and he wasn't looking forward to that.

  The castle was huge and jet-black. High towers, a deep, wide moat. Fortunately, no lions in the moat. How it could have been missed was beyond understanding. But they weren't here to wonder about that. They were here to seek and destroy. With an emphasis on destroying.

  Now there was a question of how to enter. The front gate was guarded, which wasn't that much of a problem, but it would alert the residents of their arrival, which would be ill-advised. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any rear entrance of any sort.

  "Can you fly us through a window?" Vannard asked.

  "Do I look like an air mage to you?"

  "Not really."

  "So that is your answer. Although, I could explode you through a window I think."

  Vannard considered this for a moment. The idea of crashing into a castle window at high speed had some appeal. He imagined himself flying through some room, throwing knives at everything that moved. Then the more practical part of him came to voice and he imagined himself crashing into a wall at high speed. The result wasn't satisfactory.

  "I think I'll say no to that."

  "A pity."

  "I know that you'd like nothing better than to splatter me against the wall."

  "You know me too well, but never mind that. Looks like now it is time for mister awesome assassin to figure out a way to enter without alerting everyone, don't you think?"

  Vannard thought about it for a moment. "Mister awesome assassin figured out a way. Through the front gate. We will ask those nice guards to let us in."

  "Oh. I am overwhelmed by your ingenuity."

  "I'd ask you to trust me, but that obviously isn't going to happen."

  "Obviously."

  "So how about you just follow my lead? You're not afraid of those two, are you?"

  "Of course not. I'll just put them on fire when you fail."

  "If I fail, you mean?"

  "I mean what I said."

  "Very well, be this way."

  They approached the castle on foot. There was a moat in the way. The gate was a drawbridge, and it was raised. Two black-clad warriors stood guard on this side of the moat. At least they pretended they are warriors. Vannard had seen them move and they didn't seem all that warriory to him. More like peasants hired to pretend that they were warriors. The assassin was often amused by the notion of giving peasants chain mail and halberds and pretending that they were competent guards. Why these ridiculous halberds again?!

  As they slowly walked towards the guards, the sorceress contemplated the best way to lower the drawbridge, just in case Vannard's idea failed. She had a bit more confidence in him than she was willing to admit, but she was all too well aware that he was not a people person. If the goal was to kill the guards, Vannard was just the one to do that. He'd probably drown them in the moat just to satisfy his primitive sense of humour. Talking them into lowering the bridge was a completely another matter.

  "None shall pass!" one of the guards challenged them as they approached.

  "Be a good guardhalberdperson and let us in, will you? Me and my lovely companion here are to have dinner with the dark lord."

  Saalteinamariva wasn't too happy about being referred to as a lovely companion, but she decided to play along for now. What would a lovely companion do in such a situation? Smile pleasantly, probably. So she smiled. It came out as an awful rictus.

  The poor guards didn't seem to know what to make of this. Two strange people, appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the night want to see the dark lord. Strange. He didn't have visitors before. But if he was to have some, that's what they would look like, probably. They were looking very... darklordly? Somehow threatening at least. On the other hand, they were given no orders to let anyone in.

  "I'd better ask the captain," the guard replied.

  "Of course."

  "Captain! Captain!" the guard shouted, but he got no answer.

  "Communication issues?" Vannard asked with a smile.

  "Yes, well, uh," the guard replied. "The gate is quite thick, you know." He sounded a horn. After a moment the bridge started lowering. They waited patiently. As soon as the bridge was down, Vannard moved forward. Saalteinamariva followed him. The guards looked at each other. They didn't feel it would be a good idea to stop them, but also didn't want to let them go in on their own. So they followed, keeping a respectful distance.

  On the other side there were two more guards and the captain. He was easily recognisable. He had a shinier halberd and a prettier steel cap.

  "Please point us towards the dark lord," Vannard asked him nicely.

  "He's down in his dungeon, of course," he replied.

  "Thank you, good man. Keep on guarding."

  "Thanks," the captain of the guard replied instinctively, as Vannard moved past him. "Hey, wait! You can't just walk in here!"

  "We're to have dinner with your boss."

  "I know nothing about this! I must clear that with AAAAARGH!" he screamed as a small fireball exploded in his face.

  "Hey, I wanted to kill him!" the assassin complained, throwing knives at the other guards.

  "Too slow!" the sorceress replied and fried another guard. A few more emerged from the guardroom, but they were quickly dispatched.

  "That was easy," Vannard stated the obvious and proceeded to recover his knives. "So you were saying that my plan wouldn't work?"

  "It worked," Saalteinamariva admitted. "But only because of stupidity of these guards."

  "As I recently discovered, people are rather dumb," he said while using trousers of one of his victims to wipe the blood off his knife.

  "But you cannot assume they all are!" she protested. "It wouldn't have worked if they had been smart!"

  "Obviously. But they wouldn't have been guarding a gate if they were smart. They were simple peasants, and peasants aren't too bright."

  "Those two could have been unusually bright! You simply were lucky!"

  "I prefer the term 'educationally guessy'."

  "There is no such term!"

  "You're just upset that I didn't fail."

  "Yes I am!"

  "And with that established, can we go kill that dark lord person?"

  ***

  "You found the armour. Good," the Oracle said.

  "You look like you were swimming in a swamp," Gaduria pointed out. Alexander gave her a dirty look. It would be difficult for him to give her any other kind of look, because he was very dirty at the moment. Both he and the paladin were covered in mud, which was drying slowly and falling off.

  "The helmet was a nice touch, don't you think?" the Oracle asked.

  "Yes. It was rather surprising that it was hanging on a branch instead of being submerged in the swamp with the other parts." Arthaxiom didn't sound too enthusiastic about that.

  "Especially that we only found it after a few hours of diving in the mud, when we finally gave up and decided to return," Alexander added.

  "The possum nesting inside it was even more surprising," the paladin said and took off the aforementioned helmet. His face looked like he had tried to wear a helmet containing an angry possum, which was exactly what had happened. "You could have told us it was there."

  "Or at least that it wasn't in the mud," the dwarf remarked
. He was rather unhappy with his swampy experiences. "It would have spared me the pleasures of being molested by a huge swamp lizard."

  "It all helps you to become better people. Or dwarves."

  "I'd like to learn more about what that lizard did to you," Gaduria added. Alexander stuck out his tongue at her. A clod of dirt fell on it. He spat with disgust.

  "Better people? In what way?" the paladin inquired.

  "For starters, now you know to check your helmet for possums before wearing it. And now, about those toad eyes..."

  "Ah, yes, right..." Alexander seemed a bit uncomfortable with the subject.

  "I know you have them still attached to the toads. I can deal with that. Just give me the sack."

  The Oracle took the sack full of frogs and pulled out a shield from behind a rock.

  "It wasn't..." Alexander started, but the Oracle interrupted him.

  "...there before. But it is here now."

  Arthaxiom didn't care where did the shield come from. He was happy to put his hands on it. The last part of his Heroic gear. He admired it. The shield was golden, with a fish sticking out of it. A huge fish, standing on its tail, with scales gleaming red and gold. Its eyes were rubies and its head was sticking out towards the enemy.

  "The Flaming Fish of Fury!" the paladin exclaimed.

  "Swamp gas got to his head," Alexander explained. Nobody took notice of him. Gaduria joined in examining the shield. The Oracle got busy counting toads. Just for show, of course, since she had known how many they'd catch even before she sent them to the swamp.

  "Where should we go now?" Arthaxiom asked when the excitement had subsided a bit.

  "Skywards," the Oracle replied.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Go skywards and you will meet your destiny!"

  Arthaxiom pondered on this. "Alexander! We need a ladder!"

  "Would need to be a skunking long ladder."

  "Yes! That is what we need!"

  "Stop being silly!" the Oracle berated them. "It's a metaphor!"

  "A metaphor? Take cover!"

  "No, not a giant rock falling from the sky."

  "Oh. Sorry." Arthaxiom stopped covering on the round with his new shield held above his head.

  "It means that my answer wasn't straightforward. You are supposed to figure out what I really meant."