‘But you see,’ said the middle head calmly, ‘we are telling you our story. The motives of the other actors cannot always be known with certainty by us. If you are asking me to speculate why the Dark Lord didn’t require a monstrous deed of us, it was perhaps because he already knew us to be a monster. Does one ask a dwarf whether they can wield an axe, or a recorder whether they can write?’
The Recorder held up his hands. ‘Very well. It is as you say. The motives of the Dark Lord may never be known for sure. No offence intended. Please, continue.’
Pengshui
Og-Grim-Dog, his friends and a few members of the Resistance, stood in the half-light of dawn.
The mighty walls of Pengshui loomed before them. They looked impregnable. But looks, it turned out, could be deceiving.
‘We have a way in,’ Assata declared.
‘How?’ asked Grim.
Assata nodded to the man next to her. Referred to as Little El, he was a local leader in the Resistance. He was short and muscular, with swirling, ink black symbols on his meaty forearms.
He gestured ahead, to an inconspicuous looking group of farm buildings. ‘There’s a tunnel that goes under the walls.’
Gurin looked suspicious. ‘Built by who, and why?’
‘It’s used to smuggle goods into the city,’ said Little El.
‘Controlled by a bunch of criminals, then.’
‘It ain’t a crime to deny taxes to this vicious, murderous regime,’ Little El retorted.
The other members of the Resistance reacted as well, staring at the dwarf with animosity. Assata looked worried.
We could do without a fight right now, Grim said to himself.
Gurin shrugged. ‘Assume I don’t care about your politics. Is it safe?’
Little El studied Gurin for a while, saying nothing, before he relented.
‘The Resistance helped build it. We get to use it. We can get you in and back out via the tunnel with no questions asked.’
‘Alright. Let’s do it then.’
‘We’re getting you in,’ Little El added. ‘But don’t expect us to help with the rest of it. That’s your job.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Simba spoke up. ‘We can handle the extraction.’
Little El looked at the dark elf, then at Gurin and Og-Grim-Dog. He nodded. ‘Very well. We need to get you in now, before the city fully wakes.’
If the tunnel was a little cramped for a human, it was barely navigable for an ogre. It wasn’t that Og-Grim-Dog had a fear of enclosed spaces. It was simply that their physical dimensions didn’t match up to the size of the shaft they had to squeeze through. Arms, legs and back got scraped as they crawled and slithered their way along. Grim lost count of the number of times he had to tell Dog to keep his voice down, as his brother voiced his discomfort and frustration with shouts and protracted swearing. But in the end, somehow, they found themselves clambering out into a brick-walled and earthen-floored storeroom. Wooden barrels were stacked at one end, most likely rolled through the tunnel to avoid the imperial tariffs.
Grim leaned against a wall, pulling in lungfuls of air as sweat trickled down his body.
‘It’s best if you stay in here today,’ Little El advised them. ‘When the sun goes down, we can take you out and show you the palace.’
None of them considered arguing. It had been another long night of travelling, and the tunnel had just about finished them off. They needed sleep—needed their wits about them, if they were going to infiltrate the imperial palace and get out alive.
Og-Grim-Dog awoke to the smell of food. The Resistance had provided dinner: mountains of rice, with fish and meat and vegetables stirred in.
‘Don’t eat too much,’ Assata warned them as they began to tuck in. ‘We need you alert, not half asleep from a full stomach.’
Dog barked with laughter at what he assumed was a joke.
Fed and rested, Grim felt much better about the task waiting for them tonight. It had taken them months to get to this point, and soon it would be all over, one way or another. He could feel the adrenaline building, the grip of anticipation in his gut. But Little El told them they had to wait a while longer.
‘The day is waning,’ he told them. ‘But I’ll not risk moving you ’til it’s full dark.’
They waited. There was not much to discuss or plan until they saw the palace for themselves. They checked their weapons one last time. Assata had her sword, and Gurin his axe. Simba had two swords, that both ended in a wicked looking curve. Og had his pike and Dog his mace. Grim, of course, had no weapons, since he had no hands. Strange. He’d had his whole life to get used to it. But even now, watching the others sharpening their blades with a whetstone, he still wished that he was doing the same.
At last, it was time to move out. Little El was their only guide.
‘We want to keep our numbers down,’ he explained, as they exited the brick building onto a large yard that held a number of similar units. ‘We’re conspicuous enough as it is,’ he added, shooting a glance at Og-Grim-Dog.
‘Rather unnecessary,’ Dog muttered.
‘We’re in the industrial sector,’ Little El told them as he led them out of the yard and onto what had to be a main street. It was wide and well maintained, surfaced with stone. ‘The palace is some way off.’
‘You have Discount Dungeon Supplies in Kuthenia?’ Og asked him, indicating a branch of the store on the opposite side of the road. The signage proclaimed it as a superstore, and indeed, it was the largest shop Grim had ever seen.
‘A new addition to the capital,’ Little El revealed. ‘Rumour is that they are now the main supplier to the Imperial Army.’
It was the middle of the night and barely a light could be seen in the city. Sometimes they heard voices, but the streets seemed empty. If street thugs did peer at them from the shadows as they passed, they elected to let them go on their way and wait for a softer target. They walked by people’s homes and through squares. Canals crisscrossed the city, creating straight lines wherever they went and requiring their party to cross the many bridges that spanned them. They made their way from the edge of Pengshui into its heart, where, finally, they came upon the Imperial Palace.
It wasn’t what Grim had been expecting. He had envisaged it tall and grand, like Fell Towers. Instead, this was long, wide and grand. The palace was a complex of buildings enclosed within a rectangular walled area. There were enough lights inside the palace for him to make out the peaked roofs of several buildings beyond the walls, but none were especially tall. The wall stretched out in a straight line before them, disappearing into darkness. In front of it, Grim could just make out the shimmer of water.
‘How do we cross the canal?’ he asked.
‘There are many crossing points into the palace,’ Little El replied. ‘Come, I will show you the one to use.’
He took them off to the left, staying parallel with the palace wall. They moved warily now, aware that there would likely be guards on the walls, even though they couldn’t see any sign of them.
Little El stopped them opposite a bridge. It crossed the canal and led to a gate in the wall.