Debauchery Foothold
Chapter 7
-VB-
Alan
Nasru-Ean
1440
I saved up another 20 points with the Company after raiding and ruining the Greysheep’s armies and villages for a full month. I should be happy. With 20 points, I could get another Template or upgrade one of my existing ones. Ah, actually, I couldn’t; I already upgraded all of my existing Templates. So I could get another waifu up to Tier 5, another Template, or just spend it on whatever.
But instead of feeling happy, I was overwhelmingly frustrated by what was being asked of me.
“What do you mean my mercenaries are to garrison the fort?” I snapped at the elven commander in front of me. I hadn’t even stepped inside the city walls before this was being asked of me! And it wasn’t the Good Captain Mahrn but some other elf who was acting a lot more arrogant and petty than any other elf I’ve met so far, looking down on me and my men like they were scum!
“Almost all of the garrison has been called upon by our king to take part in the glorious campaign in the west to reclaim the lands lost by his forefathers! It is your duty -.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“-what?” the elf glared at me.
“I am contracted with the marquess,” I stated out slowly. “Not the kingdom. You have no right to command me in any capacity.”
“And you are in her fiefdom! So you must defend it at all times!”
“Oi, dipshit,” I snapped angrily and allowed my mana to burst out. To those who weren’t used to feeling it, it would feel like a pissed off heavy, weighted blanket had fallen on top of them. “Keep pushing and you’ll regret it.”
The elf - a man a little too chubby, not part of the warband that went to fight the Greysheep, and flexing authority he doesn’t have - glared at me.
But he did the smart thing. He left the base compound without saying another word.
“Is that wise, commander?”
I glanced over to Atu.
Atu had grown.
Like ever since he began to truly take in the Template’s power and make it his own, he’d begun to grow. Where he used to be up to my lower chest before he got it, he now stood at my neck height with a lot more muscle mass to show for it. Among the half-goblins, he was the tallest of them all with more martial prowess and physical abilities than almost anyone else in the fort city.
And once he used his demonic power, only I could stop him.
“Yes,” I replied. “People like him are desperate and won’t do the real work themselves. They will get others to do the work for them and take the credit. On top of that, if I allow him to dictate orders to us, then it will set a precedent that he can use to give more orders.”
“I see. Is that how mercenaries work?”
I snorted. “Mercenaries work on coin, contract, and power. Nothing more and nothing less.”
“And what does the contract say?”
“We only help the city if it is attacked. We don’t have a garrison contract, so you don’t have to worry about doing patrols.”
He relaxed. “Thank Surael.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Surael, eh? Are you converting to Sur-Arukanas?” I asked with a smile.
He looked surprised by my question. “No, I just -. It’s just a phrase, right?”
“I guess?” I replied. It’s been months for me since I dropped into Bulwar, but I still didn’t know half of the phrases and customs used by the humans, never mind the elves, mostly because I spent most of that time either training my troops or killing goblins, not trying to understand cultural references and idioms of a people I won’t be seeing after a year or two.
… Maybe I should, considering that a few elves and their human subjects looked like they were very tempted by what I offered. I doubted those terms would be good enough to follow me into the Serpentsreach mountains, though.
“So now what, commander?” he asked me. “It will be some time until the marquess can call us back to battle.”
This was the truth.
Unlike in games and romanticized history, mercenaries often had set terms, duration, and engagement rules for their service. And a smart employer would demand this as well, or else the mercenary might raid their employer’s villages in the name of “collecting supplies.” If I remembered, then Battletech had the best representation of mercenaries as far as my fictional consumption went. A mercenary company worked for a set period of time for a specific purpose with rules about who could order who, who could do what, and what constituted a good code of conduct.
Which was part of the reason why I told off that dumb fuck elf.
If I broke the terms of my contract because I let some noble tell me what to do when he wasn’t in my chain of command, then the marquess could cite that as reason for breach of contract and stop paying me. Would it be dumb of her to do so? Yes, but she would gain an upper hand in future negotiations by citing my “history of contract breach” to pay me less for the same job.
I wasn’t about to let that happen. Even the smallest of chips in the proverbial armor would lead to rot - whether that came as a result of habit or outside exertion - and that would lead to more problems down the line.
My terms of service was simple and straightforward: fight the Greysheep goblins in intervals of one month on and one month off, travel not included and defend the city if any goblin forces attack it. Garrisoning the city was not part of my mercenary company’s job.
Be firm (not violent, cruel, or rough) at the start, just like how you should be with children, too. Spoil them, and you ruin them for life. Being authoritative was different from being authoritarian.
And only when bitchass elves start being pissy do I need to get authoritarian. Preferably with a city-wide Blizzard.
Which I could do now.
“Well, now we go back and resupply,” I replied. “In the meantime, we watch out for whatever the nobles think they can do.”
Deciding to not enter the city, we walked away from the city to our mercenary company’s compound.
-VB-
Yor
Nasru-Ean
1440
“I want us to be c-c-closer!” she blurted it out during dinner. And she just had to stutter like that. Wonderful! She should just -.
And she stopped that train of thought because she saw him pulling something out from under the table. Her eyes went down and -.
They widened.
Because in her boyfriend’s hands was a pair of nails like her combat nails. They were plain but well forged.
Alan smiled. “Well, I want to be closer, too. So I got you a gift,” he said as he fully pulled the combat nails out and set them down on the table.
Yor looked down at them. “Ah -?” she uttered out in surprise.
Because she could feel something from them.
“The nails themselves are nothing special,” he said even as he looked a little awkward about saying so. “But I added enchantments to them.”
“Enchantments?” she repeated hesitantly not because she didn’t appreciate the gift but because magic was still something she wasn’t used to, despite the fact that her boyfriend was a magician.
“So you know how I knew about you when I ‘bought’ you?” he asked.
Bought was a strong word for how and what led her to being here. She was supposedly a clone of her real self, and despite the fact that he did pay to have her here, there was nothing preventing her from leaving. She wasn’t a property but a person.
“Yes?”
“I know the same way that when you fight, you fight with a lot of strength and speed. But you aren’t exactly tough. But I didn’t know a weapon enchantment that would make you tougher, so I did the next best thing. I made it so that whenever you strike at someone and make them bleed, there is a chance that you heal from that.”
Her eyes widened.
“Oh.”
She didn’t know what to say.
Actually, she knew exactly what she felt. She felt gratitude. She was also happy that he cared enough about her to think of a gift for her the moment he returned from the campaign.
“Thank you,” she smiled. “Really. Thank you.”
He smiled, too. “So,” he said quickly after. “How have you been? You told me just earlier that you were working on learning the local speech. How is that going?”
“I learned how to say ‘bad noble’ in Bahari!”
He snorted into the water cup he was drinking from.
-VB-
Alan
Nasru-Ean
1440
The longer we stayed here, the more it became apparent that there were two faction, and that was made apparent even more a month after my return to the fortress-city.
The first faction was led by the marquess and those close to her. They liked how I operated: not needing a lot of instructions, did a shit ton of work, and cost not as much as the work done should demand. Many people in this faction weren’t even nobles or soldiers but regular folks who knew how many goblins I regularly killed.
The second faction were the clergy and the nobles. They were mostly Sun Elves and a few humans. The nobles disliked the fact that I dismissed their supposed authority, which they never had. The clergy didn’t like me because the magic I used was not part of their “known” repertoire of magic. That and the fact that I had rebuffed their attempt at proselytizing without even realizing? Like they were taking me brushing off one of their acolytes as if it was some sort of a full on political opposition. That and the fact that I employed a lot of “obviously evil” creatures, even if I didn’t have a single goblin in my retinue, only half-goblins. This faction was also more closely tied to the king than the marquess for one reason or another, and were, essentially, pushing back against my prior public protest of his actions.
And apparently, my refusal to garrison the city had made the second faction even more wroth with me than before. Shops and buildings affiliated or owned by the nobles and clergy refused to allow my people access. If that was all, then I would have ignored it. But depending on which guards were on shift, they would go with the whims of the nobles.
Like now.
Yor and I had intended on having another lunch date in one of the restaurants in the city. However, when we walked up to enter through the gates, the gate guards stopped and told us that we couldn’t enter. Not today.
“Because you guys are mercenaries,” the gate guard in front of me shrugged apologetically. “You guys come and go but I have to stay and live here. If I don’t do what they say, then my life is going to get more uncomfortable. I risk being kicked out, too, and with the war going on…”
“I get it,” I grunted. I was done at this point. “But you know that you’ll get shit from your superiors from this, right?”
The guard let out a resigned sigh. “Yeah, but the most my superiors - not the sergeant immediately above me but the
I felt for him.
“Let’s go back, Yor,” I said as I turned around. “Seems like our lunch date will just have to be elsewhere.”
After giving the guard a glance, Yor quickly followed after me.
“Is the situation really that bad?” she asked me.
“No,” I replied as I extended an arm to her, and she wrapped her arms around mine. “This is just the nobles dicking around. They can’t throw much weight around, but that doesn’t mean they won’t, even when there is an actual war going on and they should be focusing on that.”
“Ah. So rich people being rich people,” she sighed.
I blinked in surprise. “Yes, exactly. How did you get it so fast?”
“Fiance,” she hummed with narrowed eyes. “Did you forget who I used to work for? If you know me truly, then you should know that.”
It took me a moment before I figured it out.
The Garden.
It was the underground semi-endorsed assassination organization that rooted out traitors in Ostania and had been for hundreds of years prior to Yor’s induction into the organization. They took direct requests from Ostania’s actual intelligence service, after all.
“Right. Taking care of problematic rich people and traitors alike was probably something you did a lot of.”
“Exactly.”
I sighed. “Well, that’s not going to be possible here. Aside from the Garden not being a thing, I would rather go and contact the marquess instead.”
“And what is that going to accomplish?” she asked me with a hum. I glanced at her and realized she had been more upset by the refusal at the gate than I had realized.
“For one, this is an obvious breach of contract and not just once but the latest in a multiple. So I’m going to go and tell her that the contract is now broken, and since it was her side that broke the contract, she will have to cough up the rest of the promised fee.”
“And after that?”
“After that? We’re heading into those mountains,” I said while gesturing to the Serpentsreach that dominated the northern skies.”
“... Into those mountaintops?”
“No,” I shook my head. “We’re heading into the caves.”
It was time that I finally started my actual mission: finding mithril.