Chapter 108 - Grocery

The Tower of Light had seen better days. A recent siege by an army of the Lich King had left it with gaping holes in the infrastructure. Black soot marks from fireballs and other burning projectiles were slowly being whitewashed over, but overall there was still a lot of work to do.

A group of workmen, who were busy trying to hoist a giant stone up the side of the tower, hastily moved to one side as a wizard strode by. They shuffled their feet as the tall man, who was garbed in flowing red robes, went past. 

The mage was almost by when he stopped and turned to look at the men who, as one, took off their hats and looked at the ground, in classic humble villager style. 

"Step away," the wizard commanded.

"Whu…?" the group of workers, almost to a man, or Halfling in several cases, gaped at the him.

"I said…"the magic user raised a long staff that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Step. Away."

With shrieks the workers fled. Just in time too, for the rope hoisting their rock, which was now halfway up the side of the tower, snapped. The enormous stone plummeted groundwards, and would have caused even more damage to the battered structure if the mage hadn't raised his staff and uttered several Words of Power. 

The stone slowed and landing gently on the ground. 

"Look out below!" came a belated cry from far above.

Shaking his head, the mage turned away to continue his journey, but stopped suddenly, straightening as if jabbed by something sharp from behind. 

"It can't be!" he said. "After all these years!"

With a gait unseemly for such a senior wizard, Redthorne turned and made his way back to his quarters at full speed. 

The workers watched him go, grateful to be alive, and even more grateful that the foreman hadn't seen the rock incident. 

"No one told me you had to pay to get in! What sort of lunacy is this? I am a mage of some standing, these petty taxes are surely beneath me." Urt rolled up the sleeves of his robe whilst Reginald looked on nervously. 

"You may be a big man in whatever flea infested village you've come from," the guard said, hitting the description of Mudrut on the head. "Here though, we're civilized folk." He spat off to one side. "If you're not a resident, you pay your fee, or else."

"Or else what?" Urt demanded.

"Or else I chop something off with my sword."

"I'm not afraid of you."

"Me'be not, but you should probably be afraid of boiling hot oil on the head, or some rocks on the head. We're big on things on the head." The guard nodded upwards.

Following his gesture, Urt's gaze travelled up the stone wall to the parapets, where several other guard-shaped figures stood next to a, from his underneath angle, looked like a large metal cauldron. 

"Bah." Scowling he yanked his pony around. "I'm still not afraid."

"Of course not." The guard leant on his halberd and watched as the small group retreated some way to discuss the situation.

"You never told me there was a fee!" Urt said accusingly at Reginald.

"I've never been inside Groan!" the lad retorted.

"You said you'd been here before."

"Near here." 

"Bah." Urt sat on his donkey and examined the much repaired, but still solid looking city wall. "How are we going to do this?"

"Don't look at me," said Reginald, shrugging. "I don't have enough to buy decent rags even."

"I left my savings in the shack," Horace added. "Which blew up."

"You never had any savings," Urt scowled. 

"I might have done," the head replied.

"How, exactly, would you have accumulated money?" Urt crossed his arms.

"I have friends." The zombie sniffed.

"No you don't," Urt said. "And even if you did, they wouldn't give you money. Zombies don't care about money anyway. They're all about brain eating and so forth."

"That's stereotyping that is," Horace countered. "I was probably an investment banker in life, or something."

"You mean you don't know?" asked Reginald. 

"It's our curse," Horace replied. 

"This is all very well," Urt said, interrupting the familiar conversation. "However, we need money to enter the city."

"Can't you just conjure up some?" Reginald asked.

"Of course I can," Urt replied, stung into defending his honour, as tiny as that was. "A few pebbles can easily be transformed by a powerful wizard such as myself. However, they would just revert back minutes later."

"So?" Reginald sniffed and rubbed his nose. "We get through and who cares after that? The guards aren't going to mount a city wide search for someone who bribed them are they?"

"Bribed them?" Urt raised his eyebrows. "You mean they're asking for a bribe? Not a real city fee?"

"Of course not!" Reginald made a face. "They're city guards! Corrupt as they come. Where have you been living all your life? A swamp?"

Scowling to cover his embarrassment at the accuracy of that remark, Urt waved a hand. "Find me some pebbles," he said.

~ * ~

Samantha pulled her horse up sharply, making it whinny and rear. The action of the large black beast caused the few simpletons who had remained in the street to scream and run for cover. 

Smirking, she calmed her mount and guided it over to a rail outside a decrepit store front. As she dismounted she considered the… well, village was giving it a status upgrade, but she'd go with it for now. 

Shabby was one word to describe the place. Backwater. Backwater of a backwater. Leaving the horse to fend for itself, she wandered over to the shop, which turned out to be a grocers. Stacks of vegetables were piled in containers outside the door, and she idly wondered where the owner managed to find fresh produce in the middle of nowhere. 

Wandering into the store, she approached the scrawny old shopkeeper, who stood quaking behind the counter, twisting his leather apron tightly in his hands. 

"M… miss?" he quavered, as she stepped close. 

His nervousness could have been because he was just like that around attractive women, a category in to which Sam definitely fell. Alternatively it could be because she'd taken out a long dagger and was idly digging it into his top of his counter. 

"I'm looking for a young man," she said.

"I'm sure you won't have any problems there," he croaked. The apron was twisted another turn.

"A specific young man," she added. 

"W… we all have our needs."

"This one was probably different in some fashion."

"Different miss?"

"Yes."

There was a pause. Sam watched as the man plucked up courage to ask. The small tortures were sometimes the cruellest. Well, perhaps not. Plucking out a man's eyeball, for example, was definitely harsher than this, but she took her pŀėȧsurės where she could.

"D… different how miss?" 

There it was. 

"Let me ask you a question." Samantha leaned forward suddenly, causing the old man to jerk wildly. 

"M… m… miss?"

"How many strangers have passed through here recently? I mean in the last, I don't know, week?"

The man looked up and mumbled to himself. 

"Well?" she demanded.

"Just counting miss."

Samantha waited for another moment, and was about to dig her knife into something other than the counter when he responded.

"Two."

"Two?"

"Y… yes miss. Fairly certain it was two."

"Fairly certain?"

"Well miss, two that I know of. Maybe three, but I think one fellah was the same one. The same person I mean. He looked different, and my eyesight's not the same, but someone told me…"

"Where did he go?" Samantha interrupted the flow before it could become a flood.

"Which one?"

Taking a deep breath before she replied, she spoke again. "Both of them."

"The first fellah or the second? Or the woman? Eeek!"

Samantha's knife stopped halfway to the shopkeeper's throat. "What woman?"

"I… I… I… only caught a quick look miss, my eyes you know, they're not what they were, and old Parson says…"

"I don't care what Parsnip says!" snarled Sam, resisting the urge to gut the man where he stood only with some difficulty. "Who was the woman and where did she go?"

"I thought you were looking for a man?"

"Both!"

"So which one?"

"What?"

"Which man?"

"I thought you said there was only one man?" 

"Well, I thought there was only one, he was dressed different… AWK!"

Breathing hard, Samantha held the man's collar in one hand whilst her knife hovered a fraction away from the shopkeeper's eyeball.

"Tell. Me. Where. They. All. Went." 

"Groan."

"Groan? The town? North of here?"

"I… don't hold with forn parts miss," the man managed to croak. 

"It's probably a good job," Samantha said, releasing his collar and unconsciously wiping her hand on her leg. "You'd likely have your throat cut within a day."

"The Warden may know."

"The Warden?" Samantha's head flipped up suddenly. "He guards this excrement of a community?"

"I do," another, far stronger, and yet strangely light voice intruded.

Sparks flew off the dagger as the Warden knocked the thrown knife to one side with his sword. 

"Naughty," he said, waving a finger. 

"Just testing." Samantha smiled and palmed another.

"Put it away, or I'll be forced to take you over my knee."

"You'd like that wouldn't you?" Sam said, as she allowed the weapon to slide back into its sheath.

"Not as much as some."

"Hello Bruce." 

"Hello Samantha. Long time no see. What brings you to this backwoods?"

"Y… you know each other?" The shopkeep, all but forgotten in the exchange, piped up.

"A long time ago," Samantha said.

"She's my sister," the Warden replied.