Winds of Fate Read online

  I stood to attention. “Yes, sir!”

  “There you go.” Fitz waved a plated hand in my direction. “See what we’re turning them into?”

  Glen coughed to hide a smile.

  “And I’m sure Elina appreciates it,” answered Miurat with a voice as smooth as silk.

  “Ahem.” Fitz made a noise in his throat. “Today he’s Elina’s, tomorrow he’s ours! Here, take your junk.”

  Miurat walked over to Fitz, Glen waved to everyone and took the pair of robbers down the stairs, and Damian turned to give me a look of hate that told me I’d definitely gained an enemy that day.

  “Excellent.” Miurat was dressed in his usual clothes and perked up noticeably. “All’s well that ends well.”

  “Hey there, Hagen.” Something smashed into my shoulder and took off 5% of my health. It was Nox—I was right.

  “Hi, Nox.” My hand bounced off his iron-encased shoulder. “How is it in there? Are the devils gone?”

  I didn’t actually care about the devils; I was more interested in hearing if the dark dwarves were still there. The giant would definitely tell me if they were.

  “Yeah, they always run back into the depths after they kill everyone or push them out of the mines.” Nox laughed for some reason. “We did have to take out the cavewight, though; he was right by Fitz’s things—tough son of a gun. Look, eight of us, all nice and hefty, and it still took us five minutes to finish him off. I have no idea why he left you all alone. Fitz said that you met him near the passageway. He killed a mage?”

  “Yes,” I said, sadly thinking back to Flores’ pointless death. “Screw him.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” said the giant with a laugh. “We avenged her! And Fitz got her things, he said.”

  “Still.” I really felt bad for the young mage girl. “She got so close. It’s a shame.”

  “It happens.”

  “So, how do you two know each other?” asked Miurat, who had come over. “I thought you only knew our leadership, and it turns out you know half the clan!”

  His question—or rather how curious he was—took me aback for a second, but Nox went ahead and spilled the beans. “Hagen, Milly, and a couple of our other guys killed Sviss the other day, on extra.”

  “Really?” said Miurat, surprised. “On extra? Who had the quest?”

  “This one over here.” Nox poked me. “What a guy!”

  “That he is.” Miurat nodded and quickly asked a follow-up question. “Why didn’t you go with your people?”

  “I didn’t even have time to ask them,” I answered right away. “No sooner did I get the quest than I came across Milly Re. One thing led to another, and we decided to go together. Plus, she’s cute.”

  “That’s for sure.” Nox smacked his lips.

  “You’re telling me,” said Miurat slowly. “Anyway, sounds good. It’s always great when clans can be friends!”

  “Are you guys almost done talking?” we heard Fitz shout. “We’re leaving for the fortress. Who’s coming with us?”

  “Fitz, go ahead,” Miurat replied. “I’ll take Hagen to the city, seeing as how he has a talent for getting himself into trouble. Let me take Nox, too, just in case.”

  “What do you need him for?” asked Fitz threateningly.

  “You may have forgotten that there are plenty of bandits around here, and he’ll scare them off before they ever get close. If he doesn’t come, we’ll have to fight, and I’m not in the mood.”

  “Lazy bum,” answered Fitz with a shake of his head. “Nox, you take them wherever they want to go. Come here, Hagen.”

  I walked over to the mustachioed warrior.

  “You did good work today, young man.” He wiggled his facial hair. “And you’re going to make waves. If you want, feel free to join us; there’s always room for you.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder and unexpectedly leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Don’t believe everything Miurat says. There are a lot of stories going around about him. Okay?”

  I nodded. Fitz turned around and tramped down the stairs, his warriors climbing down noisily behind him.

  Miurat walked over, glanced at the receding figures, and checked the setting sun.

  “We need to get going, too. It’s going to get dark soon, and we have an hour or more to go. Nox, let’s roll.”

  I looked back one more time at the entrance to the mines before heading down the stairs

  Chapter Six

  In which the hero realizes that things aren’t so simple in the North.

  The sun was just clinging to life before sinking beyond the horizon as we walked down. From the stairs, we saw two portals flash. One sent Fitz and his rapid response team back to the Hounds’ castle, while Glen dragged his two unlucky marauders into the other.

  “Nox, you walk up ahead of us,” ordered Miurat. The armored giant trundled off. “If you need anything, just give us a call.”

  Nox rattled and clanged his way forward; we followed him at a distance of about ten paces.

  “Miurat,” I said to the happily whistling fellow, “can I ask you something?”

  “Go for it,” he answered. “I even have a good idea of what you’ll be asking. Your first question is about what happens to the players who died during the trip, right?”

  “Yep,” I lied.

  I was actually interested in learning about the North, caring next to nothing about the fate of my fellow travelers. What did that have to do with me? The whole thing was pretty clear, but I figured it was worth giving Miurat the satisfaction of thinking he knew what was going on in my head.

  “Before I tell you that, I should start with the reason why we went into the mines in the first place. Any guesses?”

  Appearing unsophisticated and guileless is one thing, but looking like an idiot is quite another. That could have some very negative consequences.

  “That’s not exactly rocket science,” I replied. “It was a trial by fire—not the first one I’ve seen. I mean, sure, that was the toughest I’ve been through, but the Thunderbirds like to thin the herd as well.”

  “Lots of clans put new members through something like that, though not all of them have Fitz,” admitted Miurat. “Well, none of them have Fitz, to be perfectly honest. He only takes the most promising recruits into the mines.”

  “They were promising?” My surprise was completely genuine. None of the players in our group had struck me as all that talented.

  “If they were with him in the mines, he saw something in them.” My companion grunted. “Believe me, four out of five of our newcomers wouldn’t last to the halfway point, and we had two get to the Ninth Hall. But you, my friend, were a revelation!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The way you stood up to the mental pressure you were under, especially given that none of your items give you any protection against it. How were you able to fight back against the desire to commit suicide, not to mention, get rid of it that quickly? I’m still trying to figure that out.”

  “I have no idea.” I shrugged. “Honestly, if I knew, I’d tell you.”

  Suddenly, we heard a bellow from Nox up ahead, the clash of metal, and some cries. I was about to run forward to help when Miurat grabbed my sleeve.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said lazily. “Nox is a big boy, he has a steel head and steel fists, and he’ll take out whoever’s up there, believe me. Oh, there you go—they’re already dead. Nox, my friend, what was that? Or maybe who?”

  “Oh, just a bunch of robbers. I killed them all!” roared Nox proudly.

  “Well, you shouldn’t have. Why did you have to kill them so fast?” asked Miurat. “Did they target you?”

  “No…” Nox rubbed his head under his helmet in confusion. “What’s the problem?”

  “If you were a little smarter, you’d have come over and invited Hagen to join a group,” said Miurat instructively. “Then you could have gone back, wiped them out, and given our mutual friend a little experience to boo
t. You have your fun, and he gets a little something out of it.”

  “A-ah,” replied Nox. “I didn’t think about that. Good idea!”

  Nox is inviting you to join his group. Accept?

  I accepted without a second thought—it was like entering a cheat code.

  “Where were we?” Miurat asked me.

  “You were talking about how I impressed you.” My answer was honest, though I wasn’t a big fan of the topic. I’d gotten mental protection as a bonus for the ability I got when I joined the Legion of Vitar, though I certainly wasn’t about to tell Miurat that. I trusted him less and less by the minute, though my distrust was based more on intuition than anything concrete. Nobody was supposed to know that I was in the Legion, after all.

  “Oh, right. Everyone else had something that made them stand out among the other clan newcomers, though I can’t tell you what. It’s not that I don’t want to; I don’t know any more than you do. But you’re right that the mines were a test to see who would progress further in the clan. I imagine Flores and Moris will be moving on despite the fact that they died, though the other three won’t be. The dwarf couldn’t control himself and his greed, plus, he didn’t follow orders. Fitz told him not to pick anything up, and that’s exactly what he tried to do. He’ll never be anything more than a low-level member of the clan.”

  “What about the other two?”

  “They’ll let the one that got lost try the mines again if he wants. The archer they’ll probably kick out of the clan.”

  “Really?”

  “Why not?” Miurat looked at me. “It wasn’t just that she didn’t show up. She knowingly weakened the group when we were in a tough spot, and we take that kind of thing seriously. You let the clan down, and you get a demotion, kicked out, the blacklist—the whole nine yards. We had something like that recently when a player got a secret quest and didn’t tell the clan leader or the council about it. You should’ve seen how we flogged him up one side of Fayroll and down the other.”

  Miurat squinted dreamily as he thought back to the experience.

  “He tried to hide in the Al-Karakh Jungle, almost in the Monkey Temple. Believe me, you’d think the mines were some kind of resort if you’d been in or anywhere near that god-forsaken temple. But we still found him there. And, obviously…”

  Miurat made a gesture demonstrating how they’d broken the neck of my fellow secret-quest-hider. Or maybe he was showing how they just bent him over…

  “If you have something to tell your clan, it’s always better to tell them right away and on your own initiative,” said Miurat seriously. “That’s just a piece of advice for the future. That archer is going to be kicked out now, too, though that’ll be all in her case.”

  “And good riddance,” I said in agreement. “You can’t have that!”

  We heard some sounds from up ahead again, including yelps and a guttural cry from Nox.

  “Oh, I’ll bite you right back, you little toad!”

  You unlocked Wolfman, Level 1.

  To get it, destroy 99 more Northern wolves.

  Reward:

  +4% orientation in forests

  Title: Wolfsbane

  To see similar messages, go to the Action section of the attribute window.

  “What’s up?” Miurat noticed that I froze.

  “I unlocked an action,” I answered happily. “Something about wolves.”

  “Ah, yes.” Miurat nodded. “The wolves. The third level gives you a nice bonus—not epic, but a good one. You can summon a wolf, and that action is the only possible way to do that in the game. Still, you’ll have to kill 1,000 wolves before you get there. Not everyone has that kind of time and patience.”

  I had been about to say that I could already summon a wolf, but for some reason, I stopped myself. Miurat finished, and I mentally patted myself on the back.

  “Wow!” I answered. “I’ll have to look into that—I could use a wolf.”

  We walked past the dead predators, and I collected their skins and a few fangs.

  “Nox, you don’t need anything from the bodies?” I called up to our tank.

  “Screw it,” came his laconic answer from out of the darkness.

  “So, did you get an answer to your first question?” asked Miurat.

  “Quite. And for my second, too.”

  “Excellent. But it sounds like there’s a third, am I right?” He squinted sideways at me.

  “And a fourth.”

  “Go for it,” Miurat said complacently. “But let’s say this: I’ll answer all your questions, and then you have to answer one of mine…but you have to be honest. Okay?”

  “You can ask two for all I care,” I answered cheerfully, mentally preparing for what the smart operator next to me could be getting ready to ask. It was already 1 a.m., so I knew I was in for a zinger.

  “Go ahead; fire away.” Miurat bent over to pick a weed (I had no idea how he saw it in the gathering darkness) and stuck it into his mouth.

  That darkness, incidentally, had fallen like a bag over the head as soon as the sun sank below the horizon. That type of thing happens more in the South than the North in my experience, though Fayroll had its own quirks. At least, it wasn’t the kind of dark where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face; the moonlight made sure we could at least see the hulking figure of Nox meandering ahead of us. But to see a weed on the ground…

  I really wanted to ask what it was about him that put me on my guard, but I went with a different question.

  “Miurat, tell me about the North—what I need to know, where I should go…the basics.”

  “What about reading the guide?” Miurat said with a grunt. “Ah, you’re a lazy one, all right.”

  “Well, the guide is one thing, but a pro who’s seen it all is something else,” I said, throwing in a little flattery.

  “Fine, buckle up.” And with that, Miurat dove into life in the North.

  The North, as it turned out, stood alone among the four great areas in Rattermark. While the other three were more or less similar to each other, the North offered players something different.

  In the East, West, and South, the reputation players earned with NPCs held only relative value. Sure, there were some benefits to a strong reputation, like quests and information you could pick up, but there wasn’t anything terribly important.

  “Hold on a second,” I said, stopping Miurat right there. “What about sailing down the Crisna? It’s so expensive without a good reputation!”

  “So what?” retorted Miurat. “You can always earn the money or, if worst comes to worst, walk. But here in the North, you can’t even get into any of the burgs; the guards won’t let you in. They don’t need you, so you can just take a hike. And don’t interrupt me. Listen and take notes; write it on your forehead if you don’t have anything to take notes on.”

  Just then, Nox took out three more wolves, earning himself a reproach from Miurat. “Hey, watch it up there! I don’t want Greenpeace coming after us!”

  Then he went back to his story.

  It wasn’t easy earning a reputation among the Northerners, but it was certainly possible. One way was to go with the old tried and true: do quests and master quests. The other way, however—one that was both more difficult and more time-consuming—was to enlist in the army of one of the local rixes.

  Miurat interrupted his story about the importance of a good reputation there and switched over to social structures and geopolitics.

  The far-reaching expanses of the North turned out to include a total of eight cities and one capital. The cities were called burgs, despite having their own names. The capital was the only city that went by its name: Holmstag. It enjoyed nominal authority over the burgs. The problem there was that the burg rulers, who were called rixes, didn’t care much for the central government and tended to stray further and further away from it. That, of course, included not bothering to pay their taxes.

  The könig, the high king of the North, didn’t
like that at all from his throne in Holmstag, and so, he periodically went off on short campaigns to lay siege to especially wayward burgs and threaten to slice his way through everyone inside. Things never got that far, since the rixes always took just a few days to flex their muscles before opening their gates and throwing themselves on the mercy of their conqueror.

  A little richer from some looting and having proven his might and power, the könig would return to the capital. “Remember this day, you sons of bitches, and make sure I don’t have to come back here,” he’d say.

  The rixes waited until he was gone before spitting at his receding shadow and muttering to themselves, “Oh, we’ll remember all right. We’ll remember when you’re bathing in tears of blood, you bastard aristocrat.”

  But joining forces to overthrow the könig was apparently beyond the eight rixes. They weren’t smart enough, they were all too ambitious, or their programming didn’t allow it—nobody knew the true reason.

  That was the lay of the land, but the North had water, too—saltwater.

  Its shores were bathed by the Northern Sea and the Frozen Ocean. How the sea and the ocean existed side by side without being merged into a single geographical entity, well, nobody knew that either. It’s just the way it was.

  The Northern Sea was ruled by the Sea Kings. They were a fun and somewhat crazy people dressed in shiny chainmail and horned helmets, and they had no home on dry ground. Instead, they made do with the decks of their drakkar-class ships, all of which were made out of wood and capped with the heads of dragons and serpents. The crews called themselves hirds.

  They sailed the seas, surfing the waves and leading a standard vagrant life. Sometimes, they pillaged; others, they hired themselves out to the rixes, and some claimed they even performed services for the könig on occasion.

  As they recognized no authority, the only leader they had was a jarl they selected themselves. Elections were generally spontaneous and were held for any reason under the sun. Sometimes, they were because the current jarl died; others, because he’d done something unseemly or there just wasn’t enough ale to go around.