After another half-hour of planning, I left the student leaders’ meeting. Buddy was outside the frat house with some rope in his mouth.

  It was a little hard to make out what he was saying, due to the rope, but I think he said “Gharol, get on. I need help gathering firewood.”

  I wanted to stay and spy on the camp, and the preparations for the assault were in full swing. But as I hesitated the giant wolf leaned in toward me and growled softly in my ear, “Agent Gharol, get on now. We need to go make our report.”

  Stunned at the revelation of the spy-wolf, I quickly climbed on. He trotted off toward the trees, the rope still in his mouth, as if he were really interested in collecting firewood. He sped up once we were out of sight, heading deeper into the forest.

  “So you are the other agent assigned to watch the students! I never would have suspected you,” I told the wolf when we were away from the camp.

  He dropped the rope and said, “Did you really think a giant wolf would follow a Cat-Sith? We’ve been at war with them for hundreds of years.”

  After another five minutes of running through the woods, the giant wolf slowed to a walk. “Well, we are really earning our gold coin today, aren't we?”

  “Wait, you are getting paid for this?” I asked, as stunned by that revelation as I had been the previous one.

  “Yes, of course. So much danger. Oh, you were recruited by the king, weren't you? Talk to the queen about the pay. The secret agents are more her thing, and she handles most of the logistics. Oh, and there she is now!”

  I looked around, and saw no queen. The only animate thing I saw was an eagle, high in the branches above.

  “Ah, right,” I said as the eagle dived toward the ground. Just before it landed, it transformed into our elven queen, who stood there in front of me looking all royal, even if her hair was a complete mess.

  “Agent Gharol, I understand you've been with the leaders of our little rebellion over the last couple of days. I need a report,” said the queen.

  I quickly went through the plans of Lothar and the student leaders, including their demands and how they were going to neutralize the zombies and get through the door.

  “Very well done, Agent Gharol,” said the queen. “Agent Buddy, I want you to transport Agent Gharol to Komtogk’s Tower, in exactly one hour from now.”

  “But why wait an hour, Your Highness? Doesn’t the College Board need to prepare now?”

  “Yes they do. But if you go now, they might realize the problem with their zombies and fix it. And then we’ll have a real battle on our hands,” explained our wise queen.

  “Okay, right. I think I understand,” I replied.

  “So, in one hour, you two head to the tower,” said the queen. “You report to them what you told me. Don’t mention the hour of delay, or that I was even here. We’ve told them that the royal family arranged for two spies to gather intelligence on the students, because we want to support the university administration. Got it?”

  “Got it!” both Agent Buddy and I said. Then the wolf went to have a nice nap before the trip to the administration’s tower.

  - - - -

  An hour and twenty minutes later we arrived at Komtogk’s Tower and were let in by the guards. We could hear the students massing and beginning to advance on the tower, but they were still on the other side of campus, at least a thousand yards away.

  We climbed the steps to the top of the tower. Buddy made me dismount and climb the last three flights of steps myself, claiming that he was tired and I was heavy, which I completely am not.

  Emmyth, the elven woman who was the Dean of the College of Healing, opened the door at the top of the steps to let us into the room at the top of the tower where the entire College Board waited.

  There was Chancellor Alu’iza Komtogk, of course. She was the head of the entire university, and a powerful orc sorceress herself, said to be strong enough to rival Cradel or even Jend. She’d ruled the orcs of the Black Rocks as Lothar’s vassal, before joining Jend and leading the university. She was over ninety years old, but still showed barely a wrinkle, and could probably outrun most orcs half her age.

  Next to her was Duke Cradel, Dean of the Cradel College of Magic, the largest and richest of the four colleges of the university. Cradel was a human wizard of about fifty years of age, with dark hair and very pale skin.

  On the other side of the room, watching the approaching student army, stood the co-deans of the College of Engineering. These were Engineer Rukael Redbane, a stout old dwarf with a gray beard, and Engineer Ciarxai Clufs, a male goblin in his mid-thirties.

  Watching with them was Dean Lagor of the College of Writing and History and Other Things. She was a tall, well-muscled orc in her early forties. She had served as a front-line infantry officer in the battle against the humans, and was famous as an orc you did not want to cross swords with. She was taking notes in a small bound book as the student army began to come into sight.

  There were only two professors there, both young and from the Cradel College of Magic. The rest seem to have decided that fighting students would lead to bad teaching ratings, or hadn’t reached campus yet.

  “Emmyth said you spies would have a report. But while we thank the queen for her help, we are really quite busy now,” said Chancellor Komtogk to me as I entered. “We are about to watch the student uprising get put down.”

  “Indeed. We are hopeful the students will be sensible and flee when they see my zombie horde coming at them. We don’t want to lose too many sources of tuition,” added Cradel. “You can come watch with us.”

  “But the zombies aren’t going to work!” I yelled at the administration.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Of course they will work,” replied Cradel.

  “Please explain,” said Komtogk, walking towards me.

  “The zombies were built by the necromancy students! Those students are advancing right now, and will take control of their zombies!” I yelled to all in the room.

  “Cradel, is this true?” asked Komtogk.

  Cradel paused, thinking.

  “Perhaps the students did do some work on the zombies, perhaps assisting me a bit. And now that I think about it, yes, they may, perhaps, be able to take some control over the zombies,” replied Cradel.

  “Oh shit,” said the goblin dean, Clufs, coming quickly to an understanding of what was about to happen.

  “But don’t worry, we still have the impenetrable door. The zombies can’t get through it, and their wizards can’t blast it,” said Engineer Redbane.

  “They have a trebuchet,” I said.

  “Yes, yes,” said Redbane. “It was mostly students on our research team for the trebuchet. Great students on that team. But for the door, hmmm, let me run some calculations.”

  Redbane and Clufs sat down at the table for a minute.

  “Oh shit,” said Clufs again, as he and Redbane got up from the table.

  “The trebuchet can destroy the impenetrable door?” asked Komtogk.

  “Aye, it can,” replied the dwarf engineer. “It might take two hits though.”

  Outside, in the main quad, I could see the student army advancing on the tower, which was guarded by the zombie horde.

  “Get in touch with your inner orc! Charge!” I could hear one of the student leaders shouting, as their army began closing in on the zombies.

  The student infantry formations were grouped to protect their three necromancers. As soon as the zombies were within fifty yards of the necromancers that had created them, they slowed down, then turned around, protecting the students instead of attacking them. Within minutes the zombies were entirely on the side of the students. The few zombies that the students didn’t control were torn to shreds.

  The students began to wheel the trebuchets into position. I noticed that they kept the trebuchets, and most of their forces, well outside of Cradel’s hundred yard firebolt range.

  “What about the traps? This tower is full of lethal traps!” said Komtogk.

  “The students told me they already knew about the traps, and can get around them easily,” I explained to our chancellor.

  “Oh, shit,” said Komtogk.

  The entire tower shook as the first projectile launched by the trebuchet impacted the door at the base of the tower. It sounded like a direct hit. We could hear the students cheering across the quad.

  Komtogk, Cradel, Emmyth, and the two professors moved to the window, opened it, and prepared to cast.

  The second trebuchet launched, and we could hear the projectile's impact and the splinters of the main door at the base of the tower as it burst open.

  The students charged, with their zombies in front of them. Emmyth worked to control the roots of the grass and bushes in the quad, grasping at some of the students' legs, while Komtogk, Cradel and the professors rained down fire on the first rank of advancing zombies.

  But there were too many zombies, and the students themselves raised strong magic shields. The administration only managed to reduce about two dozen zombies to ash before we could hear them on the stairs, climbing the tower.

  Within a minute, there was banging at the door to the room itself. Ivory inlay flaked off the door as the zombies pounded and pushed. I could hear Bula behind the door giving orders.

  The administration positioned themselves around the door, ready to strike when the zombies and student’s broke in. Buddy and I hid toward the back of the room, under the table.

  The door soon broke, and zombies came flooding in, followed by the ogre magi student B’lugo. Behind B’lugo walked Viggo, Bula, and Otor, forming an honor guard in front of their ghost-cat leader.

  The administration blasted the lead zombies, and Dean Lagor beheaded three of them, but there were just too many zombies, along with the students behind them shooting paralyzing magic-rays. The fight lasted only two minutes before the zombies had Lagor and Komtogk held. Redbane looked paralyzed. Emmyth had changed into a bird and fled out the window. Cradel and the others had their arms up in surrender.

  In the confusion, I had managed to crawl out the door, and was then on the stairs next to the advancing students, as if I’d been with them from the start. Buddy was still under the table, but nobody seemed to notice him.

  The ghost-cat came prancing into the room, his officers in a semi-circle behind him.

  “So we meet again, Komtogk and Cradel. And greetings to whomever the rest of you are. I am Lothar. These two used to work for me,” said the ghost cat, his tail swishing side-to-side.

  “But I don’t anymore!” yelled Cradel, as he moved his hand quickly, tracing out an arcane rune in the air. A bright white light ray sprang from the rune, striking the ghost-cat. The ghost faded away, to be seen no more.

  We all looked at where the ghost-cat had been, stunned at his quick departure.

  “There, he is gone!” said Cradel. “You see students, banishing ghosts is easy if you apply the principals of necromancy. So your leader is gone. This is over. If all you students depart peacefully and quickly, then we will only fine you twenty gold per person, and you will just a suspension of..”

  “Shut up, Cradel,” said Viggo. “This isn’t about the ghost-cat. We still have all our forces, and you have lost. Here are our demands.”

  With that he walked to Komtogk and held out the scroll with their demands. Bula commanded the zombie to free her, and she took the scroll and began to read it.

  “This is ridiculous! There is no way we can…” she began.

  “Oh, yes you can,” replied Spegat. “There will be no tuition, we get A-plus-a-bit on our transcript for defeating the humans, and we should even let the graduate assistants have a guild.”

  “But there is no way!” Komtogk again protested.

  "No tuition!" yelled B’lugo

  Viggo signaled out the window to a student in the quad, and a trebuchet launched a large stone that passed within three yards of the tower.

  “We didn't have to miss. The trebuchet is the superior siege weapon,” said Viggo, not even glancing at the large stone as it went flying past.

  “We can perhaps compromise on certain things. A ten percent scholarship might be possible,” said Komtogk, as Viggo again signaled out the window.

  Both trebuchets hit their next target, the site where the work crews had begun construction on the building for the new Komtogk Institute of Evil Studies.

  “No, not the KIES building!” cried out the chancellor. “Don’t hurt my buildings!”

  - - - -

  And that is the story of how the invention of the trebuchet led to lower fees for tuition .

  The students and the administration worked out a deal. The graduate assistants got their guild, and assurances that they’d never be threatened with incineration again. All the students who had fought in the battle against the humans had an “A-plus-a-bit” recorded on the transcript as the grade. And tuition was lowered to twenty gold tails per year.

  The government and royal family stepped in to help the university, matching with another forty gold tails per year per student. Further costs, including the costs of more buildings, were covered by the endowments, Cradel and Komtogk’s personal fortunes, and donations from the prosperous merchant class of the kingdom.

  It was still awkward for Viggo at the university, though. Eventually he and a goblin engineering student named Dret left and founded their own trebuchet manufacturing company, which grew into a large weapons supplier to the kingdom.

  I had a long career, both as a healer, and as an agent I often served with Buddy, who went on to become a famous writer, with books based on his days as a secret agent. He scratched out many classics, including The Wolf with the Golden Claw, Moonhowler, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

  Buddy also took the story of the ghost-cat led student protests, and turned it into the musical, Dr. Meow. It had a reasonable run in Lagar’s Haven’s largest theater and still gets revived every couple of years. I always go to see who is playing me on stage.

  And should you be in Lagar’s Haven, they say that on nights of the full moon, a ghostly black cat with white paws still appears in that tavern known as The Inappropriate Unicorn. The cat naps in front of the fire, but, if you bring him a tea, he might tell you stories from the old times, or help tutor you in your spellcasting homework.

  The End.