A smug smirk split the king’s scarred face. “Ha! We both know that’s not true!” And then, remembering the gathering crowd, he added, “We, uh, would have heard the battle. And you would look worse for wear!”
Smoke drifted from the edges of Gorm’s grin. “We fought your dragon, and then we talked things out with her.”
“Talked things out? Ha ha!” Johan gestured down at the Dwarf as though inviting the rampart guards and growing crowd of onlookers to join in his ridicule. “What nonsense is this? Did you get the beast to sign a contract? Did the mountain itself serve as witness?”
“Nope.” Gorm puffed at the cigar, watching the ash burn toward the red foil circle. “Just talked to her.”
“Nonsense!” said Johan, leaning over the ramparts. “You can’t talk to dragons!”
Gorm puffed out a cloud of smoke, cleared his throat, and pulled a smooth shard of crystal from his belt pouch. “We both know that ain’t true,” he said, holding it up. The fragment caught the last of the light in the deepening gloom, reflecting a distinctive, scintillating shade of amber. “You’re familiar with the Eye of the Dragon, I’m sure.”
The crowd gasped, though Gorm doubted anyone beside himself and the king knew of the gem. Rather, he suspected they were shocked by the way Johan visibly recoiled from the sliver of the gem, like a vampire stumbling upon gauze drapes. The king caught himself and tried to hide his reaction by feigning a confident shrug, but the muttering of the crowds said the onlookers had seen the flinch.
Gorm puffed the cigar. The edge of the red foil finally curled in the flame. A thundering rumble echoed from the north. The Dwarf smiled and flicked the thrice-cursed cigar away.
“And I know you’re thinkin’ this is some game or trick, since neither you nor I thought there was ever a dragon down there. Ye been to the center of the mountain too, I know.”
“You lie! I don’t know what you speak of!” snarled the king.
“I wonder if that’s true,” said Gorm. “I wonder if ye thought there was an old weapon or mounds of treasure past that magic barrier ye couldn’t get through, or if ye knew it was just a few old statues.”
A couple of screams rang out from the crowd at the revelation, and many quick-thinking residents rushed off to find their broker or their sprite stone.
Any pretense of confidence dropped from Johan’s face. “You… you saw…”
“I did. Don’t much matter now that your staircase down to the Black Fathoms is rubble. Turns out there was a dragon on the other side after all, guardin’ them sculptures for some reason.”
“You… that’s not…” Johan shook his head slowly. “You couldn’t… I mean, there’s no drag—there’s no way you spoke with a dragon!” His eyes darted across the murmuring crowds staring at him from every corner of the plaza. “He lies!”
Gorm shrugged. “The dragon will say otherwise, once we get her NPC papers sorted. And she’ll also deny burnin’ a single village or caravan.”
“That… that doesn’t prove anything,” said Johan.
“Maybe not,” said Gorm. “That’s why we’ll bring the documents from your facility up north. Lots of interestin’ readin’ there, including orders that you—”
“This is slander!” shouted the paladin. “You betray your king! It’s… it’s treason!”
“Ah, no. Those are different.” Gorm’s voice was as cold and hard as steel. “Slander is tellin’ everyone the good folk of Bloodroot were to blame for stealin’ them Elven Marbles. Betrayal was murderin’ the hardworkin’ Orcs and Goblins there because of your greed. Treason is killin’ your own citizens in fake dragon attacks to cover up your crimes. What I’m here for is justice.”
“Bloodroot?” Johan’s face twisted up in confusion, and then split into a mad, incredulous grin. “You—you’re accosting me on behalf of the Orcs? Ha! That’s right! I forgot you had a thing for greenskins! This is all because that little Goblin you ran around with was put down!”
“It’s about so much more than that,” said Gorm. “It’s about all the peoples everywhere ye killed, directly or not. It’s about those ye put bounties on and those ye let starve in the street. It’s about a priest ye had murdered, and about Kaitha and Thane, and all the others who died on account of your treachery. It’s about all the crimes I don’t know about, the victims we’ll never find.”
The Dwarf unslung his axe from his belt and leveled it at the king. “And aye, it’s about Tib’rin, the best thrice-cursed squire a hero could ever ask for. And if his was the only blood ye had on your hands, I’d still be here.”
“And where exactly do you think you are?” Johan growled. “You stand alone in a street, making empty threats against your king!”
“Not threats. An offer to parley,” said Gorm. “I’ll take ye peacefully. We’ll choose a panel of magistrates. Ye’ll get a fair trial, and lawyers, and—”
“Who do you think you’re speaking to?” shrieked the paladin, suddenly apoplectic. “I’ll not submit to the law of commoners! I am the King of Andarun! The Champion of Tandos! The mightiest warrior Arth has ever known! An army waits at my command! This palace is a fortress, built and stocked to withstand a siege, and our vaults hold the greatest weapons on Arth!”
Gorm’s lips pulled back in an ambiguous grin that could have just as easily been a predatory snarl. “So what you’re sayin’ is, you’re a big threat sittin’ on top of a lot of wealth.”
Johan’s mouth hung slightly agape, as though his next sentence had lodged there on its way out. Realization struck the confusion from his face just as a horn trumpeted in the distance, playing the Heroes’ Guild call to arms.
Chapter 28
“The new quest declares King Johan a Force of Evil, and the Palace of Andarun his dungeon,” Duine Poldo explained. He gripped a leather armrest to steady himself, but their carriage was designed for an Orc, and he still slid across the wide seat as they careened up the streets of Andarun. “That means the Palace of Andarun is now officially a dungeon, and the treasures within it are officially loot.”
“And you believe the guild and the nobility will accept this new quest?” asked Asherzu, seated across from the Scribkin. Darak Guz’Varda and Borpo Skar’ezzod were wedged into the seats around her, framing the chieftain in a wall of pinstripe silks and green flesh.
“The Dwarven guild has already affirmed it. And as for the nobility and the judicial…” Poldo gripped the seat with both hands as the carriage made an especially wide turn. An unfortunate pedestrian screamed from somewhere outside. It took a moment for Poldo’s stomach to drop out of his throat. “Well, the key will be to get the people to want it to be true, and their desire will put pressure on institutions to make it so.”
“And with so much of the economy tied up in this fight, that shouldn’t be hard.” Feista Hrurk slid across the seat next to Poldo’s. “Everybody’s fortunes are resting on this quest.”
The Gnome nodded. “As in so many things, the government will follow where the market leads.”
Asherzu nodded. “Does the palace have so much treasure?”
“Not in the palace itself, no. There will be valuables, to be sure—a king’s ransom—but in the grand scheme of things it’s a relatively small sum.” Poldo glanced out the window and saw several more of Warg Inc.’s carriages in formation behind them. The brigade of black-clad coaches careened through the streets of Andarun like a squad of knights charging a foe, and it struck him that their mission had far greater stakes than that of a hero fighting any beast. He turned back to the Orcs. “The real treasures lie in the Great Vault of the Heroes’ Guild, below the palace. The artifacts stored there are worth more than all the gold in the Freedlands—half of which is in the vault anyway.”
Asherzu nodded, thoughtfully. “But does your vault possess the same value the hoard of the dragon was thought to?”
“It can’t possibly,” said Mrs. Hrurk. “There isn’t enough gold on Andarun to be worth what the Dragon of Wynspar was valued at.”
“But perhaps a sizable percentage, if the gods are good,” said Poldo. “Many firms have more than half of their assets directly or indirectly in a dragon’s hoard that turned out to be empty. For them, the difference between losing a sizable chunk of those holdings and losing all of those holdings could be the difference between their worst day as a business and their last day as a business. Our mission is their only chance of survival. With those stakes, they’ll act now and let the lawyers justify it later.”
“The key is to get them invested in the new quest,” said Mrs. Hrurk. “Literally.”
