"You, clerk person!" he said as he approached the clerk's table. "I want to speak with the lord."
The clerk didn't even look at the visitor. Maybe if he had, he would have decided that it was in his best interest to help him. Or maybe not. "Do you have an appointment?" he asked. Meanwhile the guards got up in an attempt to look a bit more guardly.
"I do not," Vannard replied truthfully.
"So you cannot speak with the lord. Go away," the clerk said, put away the piece of paper he had been working on, and started scribbling something on a new one.
At this point Vannard decided that peaceful, non-violent approach was unsuccessful and switched to a different one. One he had a lot more experience with. "I do not have an appointment, but I have several daggers," he said pleasantly.
After hearing such statement most people would at least look at the person issuing the threat. Not the clerk. He was quite insistent on not caring about the visitor. "Guards. Throw him out."
"You. Get out," one of the guards said without much feeling. They were there mostly for show, very rarely needing to use actual violence. A big man with a halberd, wearing a chain mail, a steel cap and all that, was usually a good deterrent without a need to do anything.
Vannard only smiled at the guards. That weirded them out a bit, because people usually don't smile at guards who are telling them to get out. Well, one time there was this wandering masochist who had made it quite awkward for these particular guards. Especially when a few minutes later he returned, asking for more. They weren't looking forward to repeating the experience.
The guards weren't quite sure how to handle someone who apparently wasn't intimidated at all. The one who had spoken before waved his halberd at Vannard in a threatening manner. That wasn't his best idea ever. An eye-blink later he was lying on the floor and the world was spinning around his head. It took him a moment to realise that this nice gentleman in black had just wrested the halberd from his grasp, spun it around and hit him on the head with the shaft.
The other guard didn't fare much better. Although he had a moment longer to prepare, he didn't anticipate a vicious upward strike aimed at his crotch. His steel codpiece absorbed some of the blow's power, but not nearly enough, and thus he also ended up on the floor, writhing in pain. The halberd's shaft broke.
Vannard thought that killing the defenceless guards, however enjoyable, could make the lord reluctant to cooperate, so he decided against it. On the other hand, removing them from the vicinity was advisable, because allowing surprise attacks from behind would be really unprofessional. "Out of the window," he commanded.
The guards knew better than to argue. They half-walked, half-crawled towards a large window, opened it and jumped. Vannard expected some pained screams when they hit the ground, yet instead there was only a soft, mushy sound. He looked out of the window to investigate. "Ah. Dunghill. How convenient," he said, half to himself, half to the clerk. Now it was time to ask to speak with the lord once more. He expected that this small demonstration would cause the little wretch to realise the error of his ways, but apparently it was not the case.
"More guards!" he shouted, this time a bit more lively, with some silly glimmer of hope that they would do any better than the first two. Vannard waited patiently.
Two more guards entered through the door. They were armed just like their unfortunate counterparts and didn't seem very combative as well. They saw a black-clad person holding half a halberd and some blood on the floor. Also, their fellow guards were nowhere to be seen. That made them hesitate.
"Your friends left through the window," Vannard explained pleasantly. "You can follow them willingly or I will be forced to use excessive violence."
"Kill him! Kill him!" the clerk cried, but these guards weren't that dumb. Someone who had just thrown two armed guardsmen out of a window had to be taken seriously.
"We... will leave?" one of them said, looking at his companion for confirmation.
"Uh... it's quite high, you know," the other one replied, unconvinced.
"Do not worry, there is a dunghill below," Vannard reassured him. "Meeting with it will be smelly, but relatively painless. On the other hand..."
"Right. Right. So... we go," the guard said and both of them walked towards the window.
"Turn back! Turn back and fight, you cowards! Mice! Gerbils!" the clerk screamed, but it did little to persuade the guards. They jumped, and Vannard turned to the clerk.
"And now..."
"What is going on here?!" Another man burst through the door. "Who are you?!"
Vannard immediately guessed that this had to be the lord himself. The first clue was wealthy-looking clothing, and the second one was asking 'What is going on here?' when he could clearly see that guards who should have been there weren't there anymore, and that their absence might have something to do with an unknown man in black holding a broken halberd. At least he had enough brains to be wielding a sword when asking that, not that it would do him any good if he decided to use it.
"Greetings, you must be the lord of this place. I came from the capital to speak with you, but this silly person ordered the guards to attack me, so I had to defenestrate them," Vannard explained.
Lord Seagull pondered that for a moment. "I understand you had to defend yourself, but did you really need to cut off their... things?!" He seemed a bit shocked.
It took Vannard a moment to understand what was the lord's objection. "Ah. You're thinking about castration. I performed a defenestration, which is a sophisticated name for throwing a person out of a window."
"Oh. Well. Not that bad then," the lord decided.
"Indeed."
"So, if you bothered to come here all the way from the capital and threw all my guards out of the window on the way, I should probably speak with you?" lord Seagull asked.
"I would appreciate that, yes," Vannard replied. "But first..." He dropped his impromptu weapon, turned to the impudent clerk, grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and lifted him up with one hand. He squirmed and dangled his legs in desperation, but to no avail.
"Could you please not damage him too much? It is hard to find a decent clerk around here, you know," lord Seagull requested. "He often is nasty to people, but he's the only one in this wretched town who can read and write."
"Oh, I'll only defenestrate him too. There is a nice dunghill below, so he should be fine, although a bit smelly," Vannard explained, as he went to the window and threw the clerk out. The unfortunate man screamed during his flight. Then he screamed some more, obviously in pain.
"You said he'd be fine!" the lord complained.
Vannard looked out of the window to see what had happened. "I didn't anticipate one of the halberds being left in the dung, sticking up," he explained. "Your clerk impaled his buttock on it. I find this most amusing."
Lord Seagull joined Vannard at the window and they both laughed as the screaming clerk was being dislodged from the halberd by dung-covered guards.
Nothing bonds two men better than laughing at others' misfortune. Well, it is not entirely true, but in Vannard's case any sort of bonding was a success. Unfortunately, that didn't amount to much, because lord Seagull didn't know much about the paladin. Like every good lord, he didn't really care what was happening in his lands, unless it was really important, and sometimes not even then. A wandering armoured madman certainly didn't register as something important, a passing curiosity at best. Therefore, the assassin decided to talk with some less important people who might have paid more attention. He was surprised to notice that his visit to the lord's castle had some interesting after-effects.
"Ah, ye must be that nice lad who jabbed da clerk in da arse!" the elderly stable master said. "And 'twas right 'bout time someone did it, aye, mayhaps not exactly like that, but he deserved it, aye, pompous fool, ye know what I mean?"
"Yes, I do," Vannard replied. Not that he really understood, but apparently this man approved of his defenestration technique. Definitely not a bad sign.
"Aye, so, ye asked bout that paladin lad, eh? He was here, aye. Was a few nails short of a hammer. Wanted a horsey. For free, imagine that! Of course, I told him to have some fun with a rusty spear, if ye know what I mean. Wretch says he's on a qvest. A holy qvest, imagine that, m'lord! Lad looks like a cow sat on his face, and he's on a holy qvest! So he goes right to the nastiest horsey around, and says 'tis destined to be his glorious steed! And pats it on da neck! Lad has speed, I give him that. If he didn't jump back, he'd lose half his face, aye. So he says horsey's a demon, and me its cursed servant, and we are doomed. Dooooooomed he said, aye. And perish in unspeakable torment, imagine that, m'lord. So he left, hitting his head on the doorway on the way out. Called it work of a demon carpenter, aye, m'lord."
"So, you're that guy who threw Imponderabilius out of the window. Good job!" The blacksmith was another person who was happy about the clerk's misfortune. "He thinks he's all important cause he's the only one around that can read and write. Nice to see him return to the dunghill he crawled out from. The halberd was a nice touch too, and a deserved one! He was always a pain in the butt for anyone who had business with the lord. Now he has a pain in the butt of his own, and serves him well, I say! But I ramble on a bit. Yes, that armoured man was here. Wanted a sword. Didn't want to pay for it. Told me some gibberish about how that sword would help him bring freedom to the land and some other crap. I could've thrown him out, you know, but he ermined me off a bit. So I gave him a sword that my apprentice had made during his training. Not a good sword, not at all. In fact, I wouldn't have sold this crap to anyone, but since he wanted one for free, well, why not? You get what you pay for. That thing probably broke the very first time he used it. If he had a chance, that is, cause that armour of his wasn't too good either. Rust got it quite a bit."
"Right." Vannard decided not to mention that the paladin with this crappy sword and rusty armour apparently slaughtered a villageful of goblins. Unless he found some better ones on the way. The assassin didn't care much. It wasn't his job to figure this out. He was only gathering information. And his mission wasn't over yet.
***
General Roseduck was slowly running out of time. The High Lords of the Empire one by one were arriving at the capital. Roseduck was well aware of that. He had eyes everywhere. Not that he needed them for High Lord spotting, anyone missing a High Lord's entourage would have to be blind and deaf. And have no sense of smell.
The succession talks were going to start soon. The process wasn't simple. The new Emperor would have to be no older than twenty, of noble birth, and as closely related as possible to the previous one. That limited the number of candidates somewhat. Fortunately, there were no silly rules about birthmarks shaped like broken bananas or stuff like that. Getting four out of seven High Lords to agree on a candidate should prove pretty difficult regardless.
This ridiculous system was a few hundred years old, when Emperor Cygnerius the Third had decided to create some sort of codex of law. He very imaginatively named it 'Codex'. It was a novel idea. Before the Codex there was no written law. The unwritten law was that everyone could do whatever they wanted to as long as it didn't upset anyone of higher station. And if two people of similar stance were in a disagreement, they resorted to traditional conflict resolution methods, such as direct violence, blackmail, assassination, bribery, or calling upon someone more important for help.
The Codex didn't change all that one bit. It nicely phrased all that instead. Unfortunately there were only so many words one could use to describe a pretty straightforward system, therefore some irrelevant laws were added just to make the Codex bigger and more important-looking. The problem was that some of these got relevant much later and proved to be absolutely nonsensical. Just like this one. At the time nobody cared what had been written in the 'in case of the Emperor dying without a direct descendant' article simply because the current Emperor had seven sons, most of whom already had had sons of their own. So nobody had thought through consequences of that article, which in this case involved a need for some people to make an important decision together. People, who usually disagreed on principle. Making two High Lords agree with each other was hard. Four, almost impossible.
Roseduck, as the High Lord Commander, was the holder of the only non-inherited High Lord title. The rest of them was passed down from the father to the eldest son. Or to some other son, sometimes. Or a cousin. Or to someone completely different in some cases, when the Emperor had decided it was time to give some other family the privilege of having a High Lord. Other old, rich and important family, of course. All High Lords were descendants of old, rich and utterly decadent noble houses. Quite a bit inbred, too. A proud and troublesome group and sometimes a bit stupid. Quite often quite a bit stupid. Eneumerius hoped that they would be quarrelsome as usual. He was even pretty sure that they would. He was also pretty sure that in the end they surely would decide on someone, if only to stop having to talk to each other. He needed a better plan, and fast.
Roseduck was heading towards the Imperial Library. It was just an ordinary library, but since it was on the Imperial Castle grounds, it was Imperial by inheritance. For the same reason the old man who was running it was the Imperial Librarian.
"Eneumerius, nice to see you again! More reading about battles, eh?" Roseduck sighed. The librarian couldn't wrap his old mind around the fact that the little boy who used to borrow books about battle strategies and tactics became a High Lord and all that. Well, at least he stopped calling him 'Merry'. That had been most annoying.
"Not this time. I need books about Heroes."
"Reading about battles when little, reading about heroes when older? Most people go the other way, heh, heh..."
"Say 'heh' once more and I'll kill you," the General threatened.
"Oh no, you wouldn't do that!"
"I wouldn't," he admitted. "But I could ask someone to do it for me."
"You wouldn't do that too... but I don't think I want to risk that."
"Good man."
They entered the library.
"So, what kind of heroes you want?"
"I'm not sure. I think I'm more interested in those that might have been real, as opposed to ones entirely made up."
"Harmonicas, harpies, hedges, hedgehogs, heroes! Here they are! Let's see... Jack and the Brain Stick?"
"Please summarise."
"A small village boy Jack finds a magical growing stick attached to an old wooden doll. He throws away the doll and takes the stick home. Little does he know that the stick grows very fast when its owner gets embarrassed. So when a small village girl Jill tells Jack he's kinda cute, the stick suddenly grows so much that it stabs right through his skull and in the brain, killing him outright."
"Fascinating. What's heroic about this?"
"I don't know really. I'll better move it to another section."
"What section? Retarded stories?"
"Comparative religion I think. What's next... Fierylocks and the three trolls. A red-haired princess called Fierylocks gets lost in the woods. Not wanting to spend the night outside, she hides in a nearby cave. Unfortunately, the cave is a home to a family of trolls. Fierylocks hides behind three stalactites, but has to leave when the baby troll goes there to use them as toothpicks. Then she hides behind three stalagmites, but has to leave when daddy troll goes there to take a leak. Then she hides behind three stalagnates, but mommy troll went there to berate those. Fierylocks doesn't have any other place to hide, so the trolls find her. It irritates her quite a bit, therefore she drags them out of the cave and beats the living daycarp out of them until dawn, when they turn into mirrors. And not a good kind of mirrors, cause the princess looks a bit fat in them, so she drags all three of them up a cliff and pushes them off."
"I think I'll take this one."
"Thought you might."
"Next please? Some knights or paladins maybe?"
"There are many stories about the Knights of the Square Table. There were thirteen of then,
and they always argued about who had to sit on the side of the table where there were four places."
"How quaint. They all were Heroes?"
"Well, up to a point. Let's just say that there was Sir Edric the Dragonbane and there was Sir Eric the Dragonsnack."
"Ah. Well, I'd take something about them. With focus on the more successful ones."
"Of course. Next, we have..."
So they went through the shelves. Finally, the General had a stack of books, amongst them such classics as 'Jimu and the Armageddon's Bride' or 'Big Bald Barbarian and His Handy Heroic Hamster'. He had a lot to read. He liked reading, but he wasn't looking forward to this particular lecture session. There was that nagging feeling at the back of his head, a feeling that soon he will want to stab his own brain with a stick. He sighed heavily. Some things simply had to be done.
He somewhat regretted that he didn't have enough time to read some interesting, but most likely unrelated titles. 'The Art of Albatross Selling' would have to wait, as well as 'Two Men in Black Clothes and Black Binoculars Riding Black Horses in the Middle of the Night'. Too bad. He had always been focused solely on books about real battles and now he realised how many gems he was missing.
There was also the whole subsection called 'Village Boy Saves the World'. Pretty self-explanatory. For example, there was "Village Boy Fights His Armoured Zombie Father and Saves the World". Details varied. Sometimes the boy was a girl. Sometimes only a kingdom was saved. Sometimes an entire universe, whatever that meant. Usually the title promised some ridiculousness on the way. Way too fat-fetched to bother with right now, but the General promised himself to read at least one of those some time in the future. If he survives.
***
They were travelling through a particularly unremarkable forest. It had trees, it had bushes, it had birds... Not interesting for a Hero. On the other hand, very interesting for a dwarf. Maybe not for every dwarf, because most would prefer more rocks and less leaves, but certainly for this particular dwarf.
There was a nice path going through the middle of the forest. After all, one can't expect a Hero to hack his way through the thicket all day, every day. Arthaxiom was walking on the path, as any halfway sensible Hero would. It was the obvious choice. Alexander in turn did just about everything else. He ran forward or he lagged behind, he jumped around, he walked on his hands, he climbed trees, he poked random bushes with his trident, he slung rocks at the paladin...