The voices of his new friends rose in protest around him, but it was as clear as clear could be. Their adventuring days were over. Grim felt more sad than angry.
‘Please don’t,’ he said to Dog, as his brother unclipped his mace from his belt. ‘Killing the official isn’t going to change anything.’
‘It will make me feel better,’ Dog responded, but he returned his weapon to his belt nonetheless.
There was talk of appeals and legal challenges. Assata said she would organise a protest event. But Grim wasn’t in the mood for all that.
‘Come on,’ he said to them. ‘Let’s get to the bar. I’d rather celebrate our successes than talk of this anymore.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ said Raya. ‘I’ll get the first round in.’
Grim couldn’t lie about in bed any longer. His brothers were still inebriated from the night before. But he had to do something.
They left their room at The Bollocks. Og remained asleep. Dog woke up, hungover, and muttered a string of abuse at him. But at least he was roused enough to open doors and such, allowing Grim to leave the inn.
There weren’t many places in Mer Khazer to go. After a while, Grim decided to go the house of Mr Agassi, the lawyer who had won their original case against the Bureau of Dungeoneering. He was entitled to a share of their treasure, and Grim thought they might as well take it to him now.
It was early morning and the ghoul was home, still in his dressing gown. Fortunately for the ogre, Mr Agassi was fixing his breakfast.
‘There’s plenty to go around,’ he said, returning to his kitchen, as Grim settled down onto the floor of the front room. The ghoul soon returned with steaming hot mugs of a meaty broth and a mouth-watering selection of hot meat.
‘Fresh off the slab,’ the ghoul announced as he placed the meat on the floor next to them.
The tempting smells woke Og up and Grim’s two brothers got stuck into breakfast, shoving handfuls of meat and fat and gristle into Grim’s mouth for him when their own were too full. When they were finally gorged, it was time to speak.
‘Dog, could you give Mr Agassi his fees?’
The ghoul took the bag of money, giving it a little shake.
‘You did well!’
‘Less than I thought we might get.’
‘Income from dungeon crawling has been in decline for some time now. It looks like you did better than most crews.’
‘The Bureau has banned ogres from membership.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said the ghoul. ‘For one, there are too many adventurers these days, and not enough monster-filled dungeons. You might say the industry has become a victim of its own success. And that’s not really an environment where people will be welcoming to newcomers. Secondly, of course, you’re fighting against millennia of discrimination and hatred from humans. Not an easy thing to overcome. You might want to think yourselves lucky you were ever admitted in the first place. Where you go from here, it’s hard for me to advise. I’ve made a place for myself in human society by making my services valuable enough for clients to ignore what I am. When it comes to disputes of law, all people really want to do is win. They hire the best. Maybe you could do something similar.’
‘Who says we even want to make it in human society?’ Og demanded. ‘Especially if they treat us like this. We were perfectly happy back in our cavern, weren’t we?’
‘For once, I agree with Og,’ said Dog. ‘Why does everyone want to act like humans anyway? It’s time to get back home, I say.’
‘If you both remember,’ Grim said, ‘we came here to find out why the humans keep attacking the dungeons, even when there’s little left to take. In my opinion, we have and we haven’t. We know that adventuring is fun and popular, even when there’s not so many monsters and treasure as there used to be. But the people are still scared of monsters, especially orcs. The Bureau keeps the dungeons open even when they’re beaten into the ground. And villages like Urlay are still getting raided by orcs, even though we haven’t found a single orc band strong enough to do it. There’s still something yet to solve.’
‘Who gives a crap?’ Dog demanded. ‘We’re an ogre. We’re not meant to solve mysteries. We’re not meant to hang out with wizards and elves and dwarves. We’re meant to eat them. This has to stop, Grim.’
‘So what? We shrug our shoulders and go back to our cavern?’ Grim demanded. ‘Wait until all the orcs and goblins are killed? All the trolls are dead? And then a party of heroes comes to our home and kills us? How stupid is that?’
‘Let them try and kill us,’ Dog said. ‘I’ll crush their heads in.’
Grim sighed. Dog didn’t want to see it. There was no point in arguing.
‘You’ll have to work it out for yourselves,’ said Mr Agassi, with some sympathy.
‘Let’s at least go back to the Bureau and pick up that bag from Magical Items,’ said Grim.
‘Alright, Grim,’ said Og. ‘It’s your legs that are doing the walking. Thanks for breakfast, Mr Agassi.’
Mr Agassi waved them off as they left his little terraced street.
Grim returned to the Bureau building, even though it had never been his favourite place. There was someone else on duty at the Magical Items desk, but they agreed to hand back the items once they verified Og-Grim-Dog’s identity.
First, the bag was returned, then the clerk reappeared with a tray full of the items they had deposited yesterday. There was a note with it. ‘Nothing dangerous,’ the clerk said, reading from it. ‘There is a Ring of Curse-Breaking. We’ve put it in an envelope for you. You’ll probably want to pass that on to your wizard. Otherwise, everything else is magic-free.’
‘Of course,’ said Grim. Og and Dog began bundling the items back into the bag.
‘Hey, Og,’ said Dog. ‘What is that sword Grim found in the village doing here? You didn’t think that was magical, did you?’
Dog took the weapon in his hand. It had the distinctive broad-headed blade loved by orcs, with the delicately crafted red hilt.
‘Eh? I didn’t put it in there.’ Og patted at his belt, then withdrew the sword. ‘See? That’s a different one.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Grim. A strange thought was struggling to the surface. ‘They’re identical. Are you sure this sword was in the bag?’ he asked the clerk.
‘Positive. You’re the only group who made a deposit yesterday.’
‘So whose is it?’ Grim asked.
‘Well,’ said Og, ‘presumably someone found it in one of the dungeons.’
‘I think I would have noticed if someone found the exact same weapon in one of the dungeons,’ said Grim. ‘And I think they would have done too, since we walked into The Crushed Grapes brandishing it for all to see. There’s something very odd about this.’
Grim’s brothers eyed the two identical weapons.
‘I feel like you’re right,’ Og admitted eventually. ‘But what does it mean?’
‘What if,’ said Grim, his words running at the same pace as his thoughts, ‘orcs never attacked that village in Urlay? What if someone else did? And what if the person or persons behind that attack was someone from our party?’