Chapter 15

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! We’re fucked! We’re so fucked! How the fuck are they here!? What the fuck is this timing!? Oh gods they know we’re here. They’ll know we’re close because we just fucking talked with the old man. Oh dear fucking gods they already know where we’re going. They gonna chop our fucking heads off and stick them on pikes. Fucking pikes man! They’ll parade our heads around saying this is what happens to dirty deserters.”

“Calm the fuck down Isaac! Think! We need to think right now. All the time we spent talking about this exact situation happening while coming here wasn’t for nothing. Calm down and talk to me, what do we need to do right now, what do we need to do next, and what do we need to be worried about.”

Wraine and I are still hurrying down the tunnel but the tunnel’s end looks like a tiny spot of light from where we are right now and it looks like we’re not leaving this tunnel for a while. Taking a deep breath in and slowly letting it out, the panic and fear that overwhelmed my thoughts just moments prior is still there, but at least I can think now. “Okay, okay, okay. I’m calm, I’m calm, I’m thinking. Okay, what do we know so far? A noble and some levies that were ambushed near Vilnau just arrived in town. No matter how much I don’t want them to be Aldore and his levies, it’s definitely them. The street vendor told us it was a noble which can only be three people: Lord Aldore himself or his two subordinates, Sir Serra and the other guy. Do you remember his name?”

“I think it was Wilmar or something. You’re talking about the one who looked like a rat right?”

“Yeah, Sir Wilmar the Ratface. The problem is, the street vendor only mentioned one noble which could mean something for us but we can’t assume the best right now. We just have to think of the worst possibilities and go forward with that line of thinking. We have to assume all three of them survived and the ledgers with our descriptions in them survived as well. Now, we have to think like Aldore would to get an idea of what he’ll do next. We have to imagine that we ourselves are Aldore, what’s going through our heads right now? Let’s start with what we know about him even if we were only together for a few days.”

“Alright, from what I can remember, Aldore was a prick. He was always complaining and throwing a tantrum and the only person who could rein him back in was Sir Serra. Even though Aldore was the one who came to Vilnau to recruit for his levies, he seemed to hate the place. He was always complaining about how shit Vilnau was, how shit the weather was, and even how shit the whole peninsula was. That’s pretty much all I got from him.”

“Right, those are the same things I got from him as well. However, if we combine all that with the information we got this morning from Ingwulf and even that street vendor from just now, we can make a clearer picture for ourselves. Both Ingwulf and the street vendor told us a noble came through here over a month ago recruiting levies. With all that information, that should mean Aldore is a noble from the main continent right? If we think Aldore’s a noble from the main continent, that would explain why he hated the peninsula, why he wasn’t used to the weather, and why he looked down on Vilnau. With all those things in mind, you’re Aldore right now. You’re here, probably against your wishes, recruiting levies and you’ve just survived an unexpected ambush. You managed to pick up some levies on the way and you arrived in Mountain’s Toil early this morning. What’s the first thing on your mind?”

“Let’s see. I hate this place, I hate the weather, I hate these rundown towns, I hate this whole peninsula. I wasn’t expecting Ribierian troops here and I nearly lost my life in their ambush. I’m still alive and I need to get somewhere safe, somewhere like Mountain’s Toil. If I had to travel south towards the town for weeks, I’m not going to enjoy it. It’s going to be rough since I likely lost all my supplies in the ambush and my attendants can’t take care of me normally like I’m used to. After weeks, nearly a month, of harsh traveling, I finally manage to make it to Mountain’s Toil. I’m tired, I’m dirty, I haven’t had a good night’s rest in a month, and I’ve had to survive on the things we managed to scavenge from our lost supplies or the things we foraged while coming south. I want to rest. I want to clean myself up, I want the best food this town has to offer, and I want to drink to relieve all the stress and tension I’ve built up the past month. Okay, his first priorities getting here won’t be us. His priorities are going to be himself right?”

“Exactly. Deserters aren’t going to be the first thing that comes to his mind. I think the first thing he’ll do is clean up, get good food, and get well rested. Which is great news for us and we should be fine getting out of this tunnel and even leaving the town on the other side. I didn’t need to lose my composure like I did before but hearing the people we really didn’t want to see arriving in town broke me. We should actually have a good amount of time because the next thing he’ll do is contact somebody to let them know about the ambush. The only real problem I can see is the people we talked with back in town somehow associating us with the levies. Fuck, we talked with a lot of people and told them a lot of things we shouldn’t have.”

“Well, if by we, you mean you, then yes, we said a lot of things we shouldn’t have.”

“Fuck off. You were there for most of it. Alright, what did we tell everyone? Stanley knows we’re from Misanth, he knows both of your names, and he knows we’re headed to Midriver. I don’t think I told him my name.”

“Yeah, Stanley’s smart too. But he shouldn’t get involved until Aldore actively starts looking for deserters and who knows when that’ll be. Kapri and Jenne know our names and that we’re headed to Midriver and that might be all we told them even though we spent a whole day with them. We learned from our mistakes with Stanley. Who else?”

“Shit, I talked with Ingwulf earlier and I made up a fake story about a fake brother trying to find out if Aldore and his men were already here or not. I didn’t say anything revealing but it might indirectly connect us with the army and any connection to the army we make, directly or indirectly, hurts us. Although giving him information about the ambush led to him helping us by waiving the guild’s registration fees.”

“Yeah, that was a good tradeoff I think. We were bound to get found out anyways. What now? Where are we heading to after we get out of this long ass fucking tunnel?” When we first got into the tunnel, we ran as quickly as we could for 20 minutes before exhausting ourselves and now we’re walking at a brisk pace. Even after all of that, we still can’t see the end of this tunnel. It is absolutely massive and I don’t blame him for being frustrated with how long it is.

“We should be fine for a while but that doesn’t mean we’ll be fine forever. Once we reach the end of this tunnel and get into the town on the other side, we need to leave and head towards Lahrein.”

“Lahrein? Shouldn’t we be heading straight for Midriver? Why Lahrein?”

“I think Lahrein’s our best choice for one reason: money. Stanley, Kapri, and Jenne all know we’re headed to Midriver but that doesn’t really matter because all of them told us Midriver’s such a shithole that it has essentially escaped the kingdom’s laws. On one hand, that’s good for us because it’ll help protect us from the eventual pursuers we’ll have, if any, but on the other, once we’re inside the city, we’ll have to rely on ourselves and to put it bluntly, we don’t amount to much. I can hold off a goblin by myself easily enough but you’ve never even swung your sword yet. If we go there right now with only what we have, that city will swallow us whole. The one thing that we need the most right now is money. Like Kapri told us, inns might not be the safest place in the city, but they’re good enough to help us find our footing. I’m also not putting all my hopes on finding your uncle. I don’t know how many people are living in that city but this town already has more people than you can count, a city will only be worse. To even be able to use the inns as a starting point, we’ll need money for the beds every night. The only person who knows about Lahrein is Ylvise and for him to find out we’re deserters and that we’re headed to Lahrein, a lot of things have to happen first which should give us enough time to get there, finish our quest, and get our reward. Lahrein’s definitely dangerous for us and we could get caught but I think Midriver overall is more dangerous without the money to protect ourselves.”

“Alright, Lahrein it is then. Then we go to Midriver afterwards?”

“Yeah, it actually works out for us pretty well since Lahrein’s sort of on the way to Midriver. I’m hoping there’s another town or city before we get to Midriver too where we can hand in the quest paper for the coins. It’s probably safer than getting the coins in Midriver.”

Once Wraine and I worked through our panicked thoughts, we concluded, or perhaps we deluded ourselves into believing we’re safe for the time being. Having said all that, the both of us stopped talking to save our energy for the massive tunnel ahead of us. We’ve been walking for at least an hour now and we still can’t see the tunnel’s end. The tiny spot of light we saw when we first entered this tunnel has grown considerably since then but we still have quite a while before we’ll reach the exit. Looking ahead, we see two wagons being pulled by horses slowly trotting towards us. Looking around, I can see a pathway on the other side of the pillars that should be meant for people walking through the tunnel. Pulling Wraine to the side, we keep walking and the wagons soon pass us by. What an ingenious design for this tunnel. The pillars on both sides of the main road help keep the tunnel from collapsing and they also help separate pedestrians from the wagons to keep them safe. I guess Oswald really was a genius.

Even though he was a genius, he wasn’t very considerate of pedestrians. In total, it took us two full hours to cross the Basteb tunnel and by that point, Wraine and I were exhausted. The mad dash we had to do at the beginning didn’t help at all and having to carry our weapons in our hands thoroughly drained our strength. Before we’re even given the time to catch our breaths, town guards ahead of us standing behind what looks like a wooden fence gate shout, “Drop your weapons and identify yourselves! Fail to comply within ten seconds and your corpses will be covered in arrows!” It’s just one thing after another, huh?