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“Not without declaring all your belongings and paying customs tax.”

“Yes, precisely without such needless delays.”

“New ruling by Mayor Goober.” the guard told me. “Everyone pays the customs tax. No exceptions, no permits, no bardic courtesy.”

I squinted my eyes. “Bring me to your sergeant, then. Let me hear this from his lips.”

“Sergeant is still out to breakfast. You sure you want to wait?”

I glanced up, the sun more than halfway to its peak. “Are such hours common for your sergeant?”

The guard’s expression flickered, then returned to bored. Not anger. Fear.

“It’s not my place to tell my sergeant what hours to keep.” he eventually said. “Now either get through customs, and pay the tax, or wait there with the ... performer.”

.....

“I will thank you to refer to me as a bard.” the dust-covered man said. “I have worked hard to earn that title.”

“I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” the guard said, “and to stop making a fuss over a few coins.”

[System scan feature not unlocked. To unlock for thirty...]

I called up my reticule, focused it on the bard.

[Nobody Special], it reported. That title must have been hard to get; it gave bonuses to social manipulation. Conman or spy, I wondered.

No, not my problem.

I sighed. I had my suspicions, but I could report them elsewhere.

“Fine.” I said, waving a hand in dismissal. “There’s little of value in my inventory as it is.”

The clerks of the customs building had other ideas. Everything they assessed was suddenly three times what it should have been.

“Fourteen silver, eight copper and three tin, please.”

I set aside the axe of iron, and the other of steel. “Keep the change.” I said.

She smirked at me. “Sir?”

“I am paying in kind.” I said. “you assessed this tool at six silver, and this one at nine. That is fifteen silver worth of goods, by your own reckoning.” I began putting the other items back into inventory.

“Guard.” she said, raising a hand. “We have another trying to pay in kind.”

“The tax is coin only, good sir.” the overweight guardsman said. “If you cannot pay, then you are free to leave right back out the gate.”

“Hey!” he said, a second later. “Did you just HISS at me?”

“You are about four words from becoming a cautionary tale like the west gate.” I warned him.

He pulled a length of axle dowel from his inventory, spattered with dried blood. “I don’t care who you are...”

[Title set.]

“WAIT!” he said, raising both hands, suddenly empty. “I’m sorry, but it’s the law.”

“Reported to you by whom?” I asked.

“By Malcolm, who says he heard it from the sergeant himself.”

“Have you seen your sergeant since Malcolm told you this?”

“I...” It is a pain, sometimes, to watch people try to think.

“Would that be a no?”

“Don’t rush me!” he snapped. “It seems that an honest answer is worth a few moments to get right.”

I exhaled, strapping my wooden shield to my left forearm. “Take your time, guardsman.”

“Don’t say that to me like it’s an insult. We’re here on what may soon be the front lines.”

Somehow, I refrained from laughing.

“Now, say you’re sorry.” he prompted me.

The door exploded inward.

“Diplomacy,” he told me, “is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you have a rock firmly in hand.”

Bards would tell you he was the first to die. The truth is that I slashed him across both of his meaty upper legs and left him screaming to turn to the others.

Leather armor is normally rating three at best, stopping only six points of damage. At Strength six... but I’ve told you these numbers before. The training difference between us was the more telling factor. A point, sometimes two, could be overcome just by thinking of what your circumstances were and adapting to them.

I had the advantage, and was short enough to duck around tables, tables which came up to my rib cage. It was like having free shield cover, if the shields were...

Fine. Go away and get some sleep. I’ll finish this section myself.

A total of six, then four archers waiting to ambush me in the street, and then, I presume, Malcolm himself. “You can’t kill me; there will be only chaos...”

It turns out I could kill him, and yes, there was quite a bit of chaos as the entire backlog of people rushed into the city, save for those stopping to do rude things to the customs personnel.

“Excuse me.” the ‘bard’ said, coming up to me. “But it seems to me that you need to flee before reinforcements arrive from the city center.”

I pointed a finger. “The bulk of them will arrive along this road, and they will be uruk rather than human. I intend to meet them openly, bearing my shield and weapon, and covered in blood.”

“But that’s suicide!” he screamed.

I sighed. “Run if you wish. I don’t know you, and I certainly don’t care about you. Larger and more important things are happening just now.”

“Well, if YOU won’t run... wait, what sort of things?”

And that is how I met George the Lucky, also known as George Harper, also known as George Luckworth. To this day, I can’t swear whether he did or did not have levels in the actual Bard class. He professed not to know of me, but oh, so many of his hobbies matched up with things I had done.

Actually, let me show those discussions as they happened.

The discussion more at hand was with Laros (Laros the Loud, you’ve heard of him, or at least heard him if you’ve spent any time in Narrow Valley).

“Oh, crap.” he said, massaging his nose with one hand. “YOU again.”

“West gate lizard man?” his corporal asked.

“Yes. Yes, this is him. Six more inches of him than I remember, but it’s still him.” To me, he said. “Are any of them alive?”

“It’s not my fault if they are.” I said. “Is criminal intent now a requirement for our city guard?”

He shrugged at me. “The good and loyal members of humanity seem to have been all drained off to die in the Centaur Wars. What’s left... We lost too many good soldiers to gain what’s left. We should just go home and burn this town to the ground behind us.”

“And while I personally have few problems with that plan, I am not going to be the one explaining to Guur, or worse Rakkal, why the gains of his war are lost without a fight of epic proportions.”

He blinked at me, and his face fell into sorrow. “Is such a fight truly coming? Did Lady Uma truly flee from Whitehill?”

“When have you known Lady Uma to flee from anything?” I asked. “And yes, the enemy is rumored to be here in numbers they should not be able to muster. I foresee more than one battle of extensive scale to happen within the month. Times will get very dark indeed, before good days return to the Empire again.”

The edges of his mouth turned slightly less downward. “I see. Move out men! We’ve a gate to secure, and an enemy not more than three days behind this rowdy mob. Garking human scum.”

“Uhm.” George said. “That was... informational... for those who speak the Uruk language.”

I sighed. “Come along, then.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the building hidden behind that building and the one next to it. To the mayoral residence and audience hall.”

“But...” he stroked one side of his face, then the other. “Will someone with my complexion be safe there? I mean, one who lives by stories... well, I’ve heard stories.”

“And some of those are doubtless true. Oh, merciful gods.”

I rushed up to the stall. “This used to be in the southern market.”

“Mutton skewers? And tiny, overcooked ones at that?” George asked.

The salesman looked nervous rather than grateful.

“Tell me you have coins, George. Four copper, at least.”

“What? That sounds like the OPPOSITE of hospitality.” he complained.

I thrust my steel axe against his belly. “Let this be my bond, then. You’ll get your money back, and back a second time, or you can keep that axe.”

“This...” he ran a thumb along the side. Not near the edge, but the actual side. “Deal, then.” He placed four coins into my hands, and soon we were walking down the road, meat skewer in one hand, empty skewer discarded into a rubbish bin behind us.

Childish? Possibly. Wasteful? Definitely. The meat was fatty, and oily, and overcooked. AND it seemed to me that the cobblestones were less harsh on my feet, and the sun just a shade less glaring, and the knife in my lower back...

“I’m sorry.” the stranger told me. “My family is starving, and there is a price on your head.”

He reached out to grapple with me. I grabbed his wrists and twisted.

“You. Are going to have a bad day.” I said.

.....