Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty-Six - Employee Retention

We left the captives in the care of the squad who’d returned from securing the airships. I promoted Theodore, the harpy who spoke up, as very-temporary leader of the harpies.

Mostly, the group needed their own spokesperson while we weren’t around, and I think the sylph soldiers liked it when things operated with clear and distinct ranks. Promoting one of the ex-hostages wasn’t very nice to the hostage in question, but Theodore seemed capable, and it would make it easier for everyone involved.

Once that was set up and done, my friends and I started climbing up the tower.

The first half-dozen floors we climbed weren’t so bad. Every floor had a pair of sylph guarding the entrance, and the third floor up from the ground was where Bastion was collecting all the pirates they captured. We’d have to tell him about the cells on the first floor, it would make it easier to keep everyone in the same spot.

We eventually found Bastion and a very lightened squad near the twentieth-floor. “Princess,” he said.

“It’s just Caprica, Bastion,” Caprica said. “How are things going up here?”

“Well enough, but the need to garrison men every few levels means I've got fewer and fewer fighters in my assault group. I was right to be worried that we wouldn’t have as many troopers as needed to completely occupy this tower.”

“We have a number of floors left, don’t we?” Caprica asked. “Our squad can assist you with those, if you want.”

He nodded. “That would be welcome. How did things go on the first floor?”

“Well enough,” Caprica repeated Bastion’s own words back at him with a cheeky grin. “We’ve freed a number of prisoners and captured a few pirates. There are cells below, which we stuffed the pirates in. We might consider doing the same with any you’ve captured up here.”

“Good idea. Were you able to confirm the retrieval of every captive?”

Caprica shook her head. “It seems as if the nobles and higher-ranking officers were kept elsewhere.”

I bobbed my head in a nod. “We’re ready to help some more,” I said.

Bastion frowned, then looked up the stairs beyond him. “I think we’ll create a cordon on this floor. We can’t afford to explore every room and also leave soldiers behind to guard them all as we’ve been doing. So, a change of tactics is in order.”

“What’re ya thinking of?” Calamity asked.

“We’ll leave a number of troops on this level, creating a bottleneck, then proceed upwards at a faster pace. We haven’t encountered too much resistance past the second and third floors. I suspect that the pirates didn’t have the numbers to fully utilise a tower of this size.”

“Laid out, this tower has more room in it than most villages,” Amaryllis said.

“Indeed. A number of the floors we crossed were simply empty. I think the pirates were mostly concentrated on the first half-dozen floors, with a contingent taking up the uppermost levels and perhaps using the levels with balconies as watch stations.”

“Um,” Awen said. Everyone turned her way, and she straightened up at the sudden attention. “Maybe we should call the airships now? Ah, while we still can?”

“That’s not a bad idea. We haven’t cleared the tower yet, but it will be some time before the airships arrive,” Amaryllis said.

Caprica glanced up to Bastion who nodded, then she reached under the neck of her shirt and pulled out a small amulet. “Give me just a moment and I’ll send the communication’s officer there a missive.”

While she got to work doing that, I leaned in towards Amaryllis. “Why doesn’t everyone have one of those? It’s like your bank ring, right?”

“While that would be nice, each device like that requires an enchantment mage who has two or more classes that work in tandem, or several enchanters working very closely together. The materials that go into each ring are precious, and while a bank can afford to rent bank rings it only does so because no one else can compete to buy the frequency slots that the rings use. What Caprica has there probably has a limited range, costs ten times as much, and it’s probably something only high-ranking officers have access to. It’s also a glaring security risk,” Amaryllis explained.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a magical beacon designed to teleport small items. If it’s left open in such a way that anyone can send something along, then you risk having someone send something nefarious. Can you imagine something like that appearing under Caprica’s shirt?”

I nodded along. So, not quite like a cell phone where the worst that could happen was some spam calls. “Isn’t that a risk for the military people too?”

“It is, which means added security with every device, and you’ll want fewer of them on the market so that fewer mages can discover how they work and how to tamper with them.”

We had to cut that conversation off as Bastion and Caprica started to climb the stairs again, with the remaining sylph following. We crept up the stairs to the next floor with a lot more caution than we’d shown so far. These floors weren’t cleared at all, so there was always the possibility that we’d be ambushed.

At the next flight, Bastion raised his hand in a fist, then leaned closer to the door. “Three contacts,” he whispered. “One left, two right. I don’t suspect they know we’re coming. We break in on three.” He made a few gestures to some of the nearest sylph, then kicked the door open.

Bastion and the sylph rushed into the room, and my friends and I came in next. By the time we’d stepped in, three pirates were on the ground, groaning as the sylph pinned their arms into the small of their backs and pressed their faces into the floor.

“Wow,” I said. “That was fast.”

“Better fast than caught out,” Bastion said as he scanned the rest of the floor. “You, you, and you. Bring these three down to the second floor. Report to the squad leaders for A and B, tell them that we’ll be rotating people out for here on, then send three replacements up. Ah, and report Squad D’s findings about the prison cells as well.”

In short order, the three pirates were being lead out of the room and we poked around to find any more of them, but came up with nothing but some trash and a nice view out of the tower from one of the balconies. I hung over the edge, staring at the ground way, way below. It was impressive how high up we’d come already, but we were only a bit past the halfway mark.

So we continued up the stairs. The next two floors were clear, the one after that had a single pirate within it, who seemed so confused by our arrival that he didn’t even fuss when a sylph tied his hands together.

We continued on our way up, clearing the floors as we went until, suddenly, Bastion called us to a halt. “Two, coming down,” he said.

Everyone tensed. A fight in the stairwell would be tricky, to put it lightly. There wasn’t much room to fight in, and the steps made the footing somewhat precarious.

Calamity and Awen raised their weapons to cover the stairs. “I’ll take the one on the right,” Amaryllis muttered.

Then two harpy came walking down around the bend of the staircase. They froze and stared.

“Greetings,” Bastion said. “Please surrend--”

Both of them spun around and started to run.

The one on the right squawked as a bolt and an arrow punched him in the right leg and he went crashing down onto the steps with an anguished scream.

“Oh, not their right,” Calamity muttered.

Bastion took off after the other, wings buzzing and sword whispering out of its sheath. There was a crash above, a distressed caw, and the sounds of scuffling. I bounced after him. No way was I going to let one of my friends get hurt when I could help.

Turns out, Bastion didn’t need it. He was pinning the harpy to the ground, an elbow on one shoulder, his hand on the other and his leg in an uncomfortable looking spot between the harpy’s legs. “Please stop squirming,” he said. “Captain Bunch, some assistance.”

“Oh, yup,” I said as I jumped to it. Bastion had lengths of rope in his pack, all just long enough to tie someone’s wrists together. I grabbed the harpy’s one arm, then brought it to the small of his back while apologising profusely for any pain I might have been causing. I didn’t know that much about harpy anatomy when it came to shoulder mobility, and I didn’t want to pull a muscle or something.

“Identify yourself,” Bastion demanded.

"I - what?" He sounded dazed.

Bastion's voice sharpened. "What is your name?"

"I just work for the baron!"

"That sounds interesting," I said. "Did he send you down here?"

"Uh ... yes! I mean no! No, he didn't!"

"So, you came down here because you just felt like it?" I questioned.

"No! Not that either! I--let me go!"

The harpy struggled, completely failing to dislodge Bastion despite actually being the larger of the two.

Bastion lowered his voice to a tone I hadn't heard before: "Why. Were you. Descending. The. Stairs."

"Um, I'm just checking on the food! He ordered it an hour ago, and it hasn't arrived!" The man nodded to himself. "When he finds out, he won't be happy!"

Bastion raised an eyebrow, and I shrugged.

Seeing as our captive was face down on the floor, he saw none of that. I turned my attention back to him.

"Really?" I asked. "What will he be unhappy about? The food being late? The fact that you got captured? The sylph army overrunning the tower?"

The harpy went still. "All of that?"

“Oh. Well, that’s really unfortunate for him. He’s going to have a lot to be upset about,” I said. “Can you tell us more about him, please?”

“I, uh, don’t think that would be good for me.”

“In what sense?” I asked.

“I wanna keep my job,” he said.

“You... do know that the baron will probably be arrested today, right? He can’t keep paying you if he’s in jail.”

The harpy stared blankly at the wall for a moment. “But I have three weeks of backpay.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “That’s rough. Come on, let’s get you on your feet. I bet we can figure out a much nicer job for you. What sort of stuff did you do for the baron?”

“Me? Mostly just carried his complaints around. I’m very clean. Don’t have the skill for that, of course, but I can tidy up with the best of them, do laundry, everything you’d expect a manservant to do.”

My new pal told me a few choice things about the baron as I led him down the stairs. The baron basically lived on the topmost floor of the tower, with the noble prisoners caged next to his quarters. He had a few guards, mostly harpy, but a couple of humans too, and he really didn’t like working with the pirates, but said he had no choice about it.

The baron, from what I was hearing, wasn’t the friendliest guy around.

“Thanks for sharing,” I said to the harpy as I handed him off. “Now, try to keep a positive attitude, and maybe make some friends while you’re in your cell. Being forced to spend time with people is a lot more fun when you turn those people into friends!”

“Wait, what? I’m going to jail?” he asked as a pair of sylph took him by the arms. It looked like his pal had already been bandaged up and carried off as I walked him down.

I felt a little bad for the guy as he was dragged down the stairs.

“We need to pick up the pace,” Caprica said as I returned to the group.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“The Royal Pride reported in. They had an altercation over the Trenten Flats with the three airships, but after damaging one during a boarding attempt and giving another a bloody nose, the pirates turned tail. One of their ships is limping behind, but the other two were in better shape.” Caprica waved a long strip of paper around, likely the one with the missive she got. “They’ll be back here within the hour.”

“And the Beaver and the rest of our fleet?”

“On their way,” Caprica said. “But it might take up to half an hour before they show up, and then they’ll have to land and start boarding the rescued hostages.”

“Oh... I’m starting to see some issues with our timetable here,” I said. Hopefully, we’d manage to get everyone aboard safe and sound before the pirate lord returned. Something told me I didn’t want to have to fight him.

***