Chapter 4: No Way Out

  Frelka groaned as he threw his book to the side. “I am so tired of all this sitting around und waiting! I want to go fight! Frelka is made for action, not inaction!”

  It had been two weeks since Beep left, and in that time, neither Frelka nor Shryke had seen even a glimpse of the small Hive. They often theorized about what it was Beep was doing, but their discussions always ended the same: they hoped Beep was still alive!

  “What, you tired of reading that brewing manual again?” Shryke asked, her tone mocking. “Why don’t you read one of the multitudes of other books we got? We’ve got books on building furniture, assembling appliances and workstations, crafting just about any materials you can think of. We even have a bunch of cookbooks you could read. Or why not actually test that knowledge you’ve gained on brewing and actually try and make something?”

  Frelka threw up his hands in frustration. “I did, ja. I tried to make some simple grog. I even made da distillery und da barrels to store the grog in, but it takes too much wheatstraw! By da time I finished making my first batch, I was barely making any Cats! Und that’s with grog selling at a premium out here. If I’m going to do any brewing, it’ll have to be after we secure a small farm of some kind.”

  Shryke laughed and held up her hands in submission. “Okay, okay, that’s fair. Well, why don’t you go whack that dummy on the roof some? I made all of those training stations; it’d be a real shame for them to just sit there going unused.”

  “Frelka ‘vhacks’ on da dummy every day. Und da other ‘stations’ are not to my liking…” he trailed off at the end. Even if he had no interest in the other training stations she had set up, he still felt guilty about not utilizing her hard work.

  “‘Not to your liking’?” Shryke asked, looking back up from her book and placing it down on the desk in front of her.

  “Ja,” Frelka admitted. “Frelka is no sneak thief. I do not care about sneaking, stealing, or killing someone quietly from behind. This is not da way Frelka does things.”

  “But you will practice your lockpicking?” Shryke asked, accusingly.

  “Ja, Frelka vill practice his lockpicking,” Frelka defended. “Lockpicking und escape practice are not just for doing sneaky things, they are also for getting us out of legitimate situations: like escaping Fogman captivity.”

  “And sneaking up and killing a Fogman from behind before he can alert the other fourteen Fogmen he’s travelling with isn’t a ‘sneaky thing,’ it’s survival,” Shryke retorted. Picking up her book and shaking her head she muttered, “You men and your damned pride.”

  “You call it ‘pride,’” Frelka said, “I call it ‘honor.’”

  “Yeah, well I can show you a lot of ‘honorable’ graves,” Shryke said, her eyes not leaving her book.

  Frelka felt a surge of anger. “Well, maybe I’ll just go and fight with the guards at the gate. That will be me doing something.”

  Shryke looked up from her desk, fire flashing in her eyes. “You do that and you’re dead! You know as well as I do that you’re useless in a fight right now. But you know what, sure! Go ahead and go get yourself killed. Just don’t expect me to get myself killed right alongside you!”

  “Well, may–”

  “Why don’t you go to the bar and spend some time with Stitch and the others?” Shryke interrupted. “Might do you some good to get out of the house instead of sulking here and bothering me with pointless shit.”

  Frelka bristled. “Fine! I’ll go und see what Stitch has been doing. Perhaps he will have some fighting for me to help with.”

  Shryke grunted and Frelka got up, still being careful with his healing leg, and limped towards the door. As it slammed behind him, Frelka stood and looked out over Mongrel in the evening lights. But even its crisp air couldn’t clear the pressure in his chest.

  He shook his head and started walking. On his way to the bar, Frelka stopped by the weapons shop next door where he had bought Falling Sun. He needed to blow off some steam before he sat down with Stitch or he wouldn’t enjoy his food at all, and looking at some weapons would do just that. As he walked in, Scratch, the Scorchlander who owned the place, perked up.

  “Ahh, Frelka. How have you been my large friend?” he asked, spreading his arms as he came around the counter to embrace him. “I see you’ve been taking could care of Falling Sun. Are you already here to replace it? I’m afraid I can’t say I have anything of higher quality for you.”

  “Not at all,” Frelka said, waving the suggestion away like a fly. “No, I was just thinking about the Hive companion I had with me that day.”

  “The one that beeped whenever he knocked over my collection of Nodachi blades?” Scratch asked with a reminiscent smile.

  “Ja, that von,” Frelka responded, laughing at poor Beep’s mishap. “You see, he was recently injured und lost his leg. He is away at the moment, but I thought that maybe I could buy him a new weapon as a form of apology und v?lkommen for when he returns, ja?”

  Scratch gave Frelka a reassuring smile. “I think that’s a wonderful idea. What would you like to see?”

  Frelka had thought a little on his way over. “What type of ranged weapons do you have? Maybe if I can keep him and his fragile body a bit further from da action, he will be better?”

  Scratch nodded and said, “Well, the only ranged weapon I have is this here Springbat. Now, it fires heavy bolts, so the thing hits like a Shek.” He paused and looked apologetically at Frelka. “The only problem is, this is a Masterwork crossbow. You don’t get better than this when it comes to quality.”

  Frelka frowned. “How much is it?”

  Scratch’s apologetic smile turned to an apologetic face as he squinched his eyes and squeaked out, “Thirteen thousand Cats?”

  Frelka’s jaw dropped. Almost as much as their house! No matter how many times he saw prices like this, they still hit him in the gut like a punch he never saw coming.

  “Thirteen thousand?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” Scratch answered. “But,” he added, perking up, “this baby will last you for the rest of your adventurin’ career. This is the type of weapon you pass on to your great, great grandchildren. This is the type of weapon that they write tales about. You give this to your friend, and so long as he gets the reload time down, he shouldn’t have to worry about fighting anyone ever again, they’ll die before they even make it to him.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “And hey, if you buy it, I’ll throw in a dozen bundles of heavy bolts for you, on the house!”

  Frelka’s initial hesitation was slowly transforming into reluctant desire. Masterwork was the best quality out there. And a crossbow would keep Beep out of harm’s way. And if they could save Beep from losing more limbs, well not only would that be better for Beep, but it’d actually be cheaper in the long run.

  “Sold,” Frelka declared.

  ~~

  As he walked into the bar, his new, shiny crossbow wrapped neatly in his pack, he scanned the bar and easily found the group of orange-robed outlaws sitting at their usual table. He ordered his dinner at the bar before walking over and sitting down with Mongrel’s newest citizens.

  Over the past couple of weeks, the group had lost another member, leaving the weary refugees down to a mere group of four. As he sat and greeted everyone at the table, a thought occurred to Frelka.

  “Stitch,” he said, “you said when we first met that you fled the Holy Nation to avoid Rebirth. But you didn’t say where you were headed. Surely you did not to come here, ja?”

  “Well,” Stitch began, a flicker of pain at the memory of his wife and old life briefly flashing across his face before the mask reemerged, “truth be told, we weren’t really sure. You’re right in that we weren’t planning on endin’ up here, but Mongrel and the damned Fogmen are still better than being worked in the stone mines of Rebirth all day every day; kept on the verge of starvation until you just keel over and die under the watchful eye of Okran.”

  Frelka had heard some about Rebirth during his childhood, but the village his father had settled in was admittedly little more than just a Frelka’s Tavern in the middle of nowhere; an oasis in the desert, not even worthy of being marked on a map. And it was closer to the United Cities side than the Holy Nation, so most of their customers were the Samurais of the United Cities as opposed to the Paladins and Holy Servants of the Holy Nation. Even still, he had heard of Rebirth: the slave labor mining pit where they sent prisoners–mostly Shek, Hive, and “corrupted” men–to toil until they died to “purify their soul” so that they may be reborn as human.

  Mongrel was a city surrounded on all sides by savage, human-eating Hivers, but Stitch was right, it was still better than Rebirth. At least inside Mongrel, everyone was free. Free to live, exist, and worship as they pleased.

  “So, you were just heading North?” Frelka asked.

  “Well, not exactly,” Stitch answered. “Truth is, the missus and I was headed to The Hub. Only problem was that by the time we ended up at the gates, the entire city was destroyed save for a bar and a tower.”

  Frelka’s eyes widened. “The Hub is gone? What happened?”

  Stitch nodded. “‘Fraid so. Not sure what happened. Maybe it got raided one too many times by the Shek. Maybe bandits sacked it now that there are no Paladins to defend it. Maybe everyone just gave up and ran away. Can’t say for sure. In the end though, doesn’t change the fact that the place is a ruin now. Sure, you could probably rebuild one of the destroyed homes, but without any form of guard to defend the city, you’d just be paintin’ a target on yer back. As it is, the place is little more than a brief stop on your way to somewhere else.”

  Stitch took a bite of his meatwrap and sipped some of his water. He let out a breath as he finished drinking. “Anyway,” he continued with a stretch as he and Frelka got up and moved over to two of the sitting pillows that lined the wall, “The Hub had been a place for those of us that still believe in Okran, but don’t necessarily believe in what the Holy Nation has done with him to gather. Now that it was destroyed, Jenine and I chose to take our chances heading north to find the Flotsam Ninjas.”

  “Who are they?” Frelka asked.

  Stitch shrugged. “Not too sure. From what I’ve heard, they’re a bunch of servants of Narko who are hell bent on spreading darkness to every corner of the world…at least, according to our dear Holy Lord Phoenix, voice of Okran himself.

  “Truth is, they’re likely just a bunch of people like Jenine and I who got fed up with the way the Holy Nation does things. Unlike those that moved to The Border Zone and The Hub though, they’re fighting back. Jenine and I just wanted peace, but we figured it was better than being kidnapped by bandits or trying to ‘prove our worthiness’ to the Shek. So, north we headed…into the damned fog…and to her death…” he paused before finishing, “…and my own.”

  His voice was barely above a whisper, but Frelka heard and knew what he meant. Stitch had survived the fog, but he died there too. Any day he’d had since his wife’s passing was just that of a ghost trapped.

  Frelka placed his hand on Stitch’s shoulder and shook him reassuringly. “I wish there was something I could do for you.”

  His thoughts returned to that night in the fog. The blood-soaked bones and bits of clothes. The smell of decay and blood that filled the air. The way the ground squished just a little bit more around the poles than it did anywhere else.

  He thought of the attack and their failure…his failure to save his team or avenge Stitch’s wife. He thought of how Stitch and his ragtag team saved them. How two of them paid the price for their survival. He thought of how it had been almost two months and the only Fog Prince they had eliminated from the area was the one Beep had led back to the gates.

  Frelka put his hands in his head and groaned. “How are we ever going to eradicate the Fogmen if we can’t even find their princes?”

  Stitch choked on his drink and began coughing. Frelka quickly began patting the man’s back and as the coughing subsided, Stitch said, “What’d you say? ‘Eradicate the Fogmen’? Did I hear that right?”

  Frelka nodded. “Ja, ve are going to kill these Fog Princes und end the Fogmen Scourge once and for all!”

  Stitch scoffed and then laughed. After a minute, his laughing died down and he said, “Okran’s nipples, you’re serious!”

  “Of course I am,” Frelka said.

  “You,” Stitch stifled another laugh. “You do know that’s impossible, right? Like actually impossible. Those things spawn faster than we can kill ‘em. Even without a Queen. Even if you take out a nest, another one pops up too fast. You’d never be able to clear this fog with just the three of you. Hells, the best you could hope for is just containment, but even then, you’d need outposts and fighters posted all throughout the Foglands. Even that likely wouldn’t be enough, they’d probably just be overwhelmed in the night and killed.”

  “No,” Frelka accidentally shouted. “No,” he continued, his voice a little calmer, “that can’t be true. There has to be a way, ja? Ve just need more fighters!”

  Stitch gazed into his cup for a moment. “Only hope you’d have of actually wiping those evil insects off this moon would be if you orchestrated a Holy Crusade into the Foglands. But even the Holy Phoenix King himself isn’t foolish enough to attempt that.

  “No,” he said, looking up from his drink and around at the bar around him, “we’re stuck here. Always will be. The Fogman Scourge will continue long after everyone in Mongrel is dead and gone. This is their land, we’re the ones living in it.”

  Frelka’s heart sank. Impossible? he thought. That can’t be. He wanted to give the people of Mongrel a night of silence. He wanted to give them nights of silence. He wanted to eradicate this terrible plague from Kenshi. He had been so sure that that was what his journey was supposed to be…or at least where it was supposed to start.

  He clenched his fists, but the words wouldn’t come. He wanted to argue, to swear that he would prove Stitch wrong. But deep down, he felt it. The weight of the truth Stitch spoke. The futility of it all. The Foglands were endless, their horrors beyond counting.

  Suddenly, Frelka didn’t have the energy for conversation. He said his goodbyes to Stitch and the crew and headed home.

  As he walked in, he noticed Shryke was already fast asleep next to the fire. He looked over to Beep’s sleeping roll: still empty.

  “Where are you Beep?” he muttered to himself. Frelka wasn’t usually one to need cheering up, but he certainly could have used Beep’s infectious optimism right about now.

  He moved over to his roll and lied down. As he closed his eyes to go to sleep, the distant screams reminded him that he would fail at the first task he set for himself on his journey to being worthy of his name. He turned over in his bedroll, pressing his hands against his ears, but the screams still reached him. Every night. Always. Mongrel would never be silent. And neither would his failure.