EV B2 Chapter 19:

  I was right.

  A little less than three hours later, the castle was completely under our control. The fighting was not very difficult; it was mostly just that I or any of my teammates couldn’t be in every spot. The five of us split up and did our best to help with the most difficult pockets of resistance. And whenever we came across them, we crushed them, mostly without using magic or skills. Although, every once in a while, I did something flashy.

  The Raiders didn’t seem to mind, but only Astrid really knew magic, so that was a bit of a moot point.

  When we had finally pacified the castle, the Raiders went about and began to loot. This was something that none of us participated in. So I quickly found them, and we gathered up in the center of the keep, decently far away from everyone else.

  “Based on my previous experience, taking the castle shouldn’t quite be enough,” I said.

  Thing One or Thing Two, though, shook their hooded head. “No. This should be fine. The report says after you take the castle, the 20% mark should be met.”

  Astrid cleared her throat and raised her hand slightly but didn’t wait for anyone to acknowledge her before she spoke. “Well, we took a castle last time before, and it wasn’t at the 20% mark. It was just the two of us,” she said, gesturing to me.

  I tapped my chin. “Technically, that was just a monastery,” I said, “and it wasn’t nearly as difficult as this castle should have been. Though the difficulty levels are a bit all out of whack here. Still, I think to be safe, we should continue on for as long as we can.”

  Jorg was staying out of it, just listening intently.

  One of the things shook their head in vehement disagreement. “No, we don’t need to do more than we have already done. This should be enough. If we leave now, we can get about on everything else.”

  “And what if it’s not enough?” Astrid asked in a challenging voice.

  Jorg and I simply looked back and forth as the two of them argued. The result of the disagreement came down to this: Astrid wanted to be extra certain that we had hit that 20% mark. Thing One and Thing Two, though, weren’t as confident as they appeared that we hit the mark, but rather, this was what they had paid for, and pushing past this point wasn’t in their contract.

  “Okay,” I said, stepping in as they were clearly getting nowhere. “I think we can all agree that we would like to continue past this point. But the issue of cost comes up.” I looked around, and all four of the others nodded.

  “At this point, we have fulfilled your Loki obligation to you,” I said, addressing the Things, and they nodded.

  One of them spoke up in its gravelly, disguised voice. “Yes, and we will not be willing to pay any more than we already have.”

  I looked over at Jorg, who shrugged. Clearly, either he was willing to pay more or had other arrangements.

  “Well,” I said, “I think that we can agree that the deal with Loki is done here. That doesn’t mean we can’t make a deal between ourselves.”

  Everyone seemed to be on board. “Honestly, I don’t think it’ll take much longer, and I don’t need much in order to continue on,” I said, and luckily, Astrid didn’t give away the fact that we hadn’t—we had already not completed that we really wanted to continue on.

  Haggling ensued, and we eventually settled on a few coins from the others. If I was willing to carry them on, carry everyone, it seemed to be significantly more agreeable than whatever Loki had charged them. I really didn’t want anything, but I also didn’t want to do it for free. Not necessarily because I was opposed to doing it for free, but I figured that would set a bad precedent. Even if I was undercharging them, it was always better to charge them than to get nothing for it at all.

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  I suppose that they didn’t really know that I wasn’t getting paid for this. Rather, this was my payment to Loki, and they said. Based on how averse to increasing the deal with Loki they were, I might have lost out on a good amount of value I could have extracted for Loki for doing this, but, well, I guess I was happy at the time, knowing that I could have asked for more. Stings a little bit, but in the end, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

  We broke up, and the rest went around making sure that the looting of the castle was done and we could return. We could continue on with our quest.

  Before I was about to go anywhere, Jorg came up next to me and cleared his throat. I looked over and nodded in greeting. We sat there quietly for a moment or two before Jorg finally spoke.

  “I’m not going to beat around the bush here. It’s good to see you and that you made it out of the Lesser Hall, of course, but I was going to ask—would you be open to taking other jobs? I know you and Loki have your thing, but beyond that?” he asked.

  I chewed on my lip a little bit as I thought. “Maybe,” I said eventually. “It would depend on the job, of course. And it’d depend on how much you’d pay, of course.”

  Jorg nodded. “Well, I can’t tell you much about it now, but if you can get me a way of contacting you a little while after we finish this, I might have something that you would enjoy doing, and we can talk about it more then.”

  I shrugged. “Sure. I’ll at least hear you out,” I assured him.

  I wasn’t really sure what he could give me that I couldn’t earn for myself, but better equipment or something like—or coin—might always be something I was looking for.

  We soon rounded up the remaining Raiders of the three boats. Each had about twenty-five in them when we came here. Now, though, on the return, they were significantly lighter in crew. Not that a ton had died, but taking a castle was dangerous work, and we were considering leaving one boat behind. But the Raiders figured they could do it as the sea seemed rather calm.

  The voyage was mainly peaceful. Only a few disagreements appeared on the ship as we sailed. I enjoyed it almost as much as the trips out to our raiding targets. However, everyone else seemed to enjoy it significantly more than they had enjoyed the trip out here. Thing One and Thing Two mostly kept to themselves, but Jorg talked with Astrid and me whenever he felt like it. For the most part, though, it was relaxing.

  And soon, we were sailing up the fjord towards the little sleepy town we had left not that long ago. Looking at it, I was surprised it hadn’t been burned down or wasn’t currently under attack by some other set of raiders from which we needed to defend it. That would have been an obvious next step in whatever game Baldur was playing with us, but I didn’t guess that it wouldn’t be so simple.

  When we landed the boats on shore, we weren’t met with a welcoming return but rather a line of armed guards who looked at us suspiciously.

  I was one of the first to hop off the boats, but I kept my distance and my hands away from my weapons. As the other Raiders disembarked, one of the captains of the ships strode forward.

  A richly dressed man I hadn’t seen either time that I was defending this town or helping them clean up strode out from behind the men to meet the leader.

  The leader gave a slight nod and clasped his fist to his chest in salute. “Earl Haakon. When we come back from the Western raids with much spoils and loot—”

  The Earl didn’t speak for several moments. He looked over at us and the man.

  “When I came here,” he said, his voice slow and low, a certain commanding presence about him, but at the same time, a level of condescension in his voice that I did not appreciate. “I was surprised to see that none of the warriors here were ready to give me tribute.”

  “Well,” the leader said, beginning to look slightly nervous, “we were just raided and, well, we managed to fight them off. Not without casualties, but we captured their three boats,” he said, gesturing, “and we took them off to go raiding west of here.”

  “West?” the Earl said, some surprise creeping into his voice. “Well, it’s better than raiding my villages to the east. But I did not give permission, nor did I give anyone the authority to send raids to foreign countries.”

  “But—” the captain began to argue.

  The Earl raised his hand, cutting him off. “Because of this, I think I’m owed tribute.”

  Many of the men behind us bristled at that statement. Though we maybe outnumbered the men at the Earl’s back, we were tired. Of course, with Astrid and I on their team, we wouldn’t lose, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be painful fighting, with lots of casualties.

  I honestly didn’t care to fight over whatever loot it was, but I could see maybe the goal of the challenge was to stand up for what was right. It didn’t really make much sense to me, as we had essentially just stolen all this by killing its previous owners, but—

  When he pointed at me, Astrid, and the other three of us, asking who we were. When he was told that we were strangers, he demanded Astrid as part of that tribute. Suddenly, the conversation immediately became relevant.