Chương 11: [1-5] Bug, Glass, Brick

Eggman didn't like it. Of course not. As soon as Hague said he wanted to hear MacCoor for himself, Gaspar made the same accusation he made during the battle: "You intend to sell the princess out." Hague kept up a perfectly casual smile.

"Just wanna hear what he says." Gaspar snarled, but that was all. And Adelheid, for all her dour complexion, trusted him implicitly. The problem was they were too far from the wall to hear anything. Hague had a plan for that. It was risky, yeah. The "safe" thing to do was stay here, hide, wait, and keep doing whatever these guys said, railroaded onto the route of restore-the-princess. Maybe that was what Sophia wanted, too. But first off, fuck that.

Hague didn't bear Adelheid any ill will, she seemed nice enough, but as long as he only got one side of the story, it was impossible for him to make his own decisions. If he decided to help her, it would be because he chose that course, not because it got forced on him. Second, his stream. He made it through the lore dump with his numbers okay. Maybe thanks to Gaspar crashing out every time Tuatoru made a snarky comment. But if he waited any longer, they'd get restless.

The issue wasn't just having a steady viewership of 500 for the next fight. If he was actually trapped in this world—and it was becoming clear he was—he'd need chat by his side for the long haul. Think about tomorrow, or the day after that, whenever he got into another battle. When his stream started he needed his fans to see he was playing "that new ROM hack" and go Hell Yeah, not Fuck No. There were regulars who'd show up to anything Hague, but only so many. He needed to turn "that new ROM hack" into an event.

That meant he needed to take some risks. Not insano mode bullshit risks, not gambles, but strategic maneuvers. This seemed like an acceptable risk-reward ratio. He exited the cathedral onto an alley a bit more active than before. The townspeople heard the news MacCoor came to parley and naturally got interested. A tide of figures ebbed toward the wall, and Hague slotted neatly into them. Nobody gave him a second glance. Why would they? He looked like anybody else.

He tugged the edges of Adelheid's cape around his shoulders. The cape was stiff and heavy with dried blood, but because it was black, the blood didn't show much even under scrutiny. And since Adelheid loved to wrap herself up in it, he already knew it completely covered his dragon print shirt as long as he held the edges exactly like this. Hague was half a foot taller than Adelheid, so the cape only reached his shins, but that was fine.

Since his webcam usually cut him off under the waist, he wore bland khaki slacks that didn't look too out of place. And unless someone really scrutinized the Nike swooshes, there was nothing eye-catching about his shoes. That left his shades. His iconic shades. With perfect stream serendipity, he got a message right before he enacted his plan: JaxThePyro: do the shades ever come off bro? They did. And once they did, he stopped being Hague the Hero and started being Joe Schmo the Generic NPC.

(Hence why he usually wore the shades.) The shades themselves he tucked into the notch of his collar. By holding the cape just right, that let the lenses peer out in front of him while remaining hidden. Before he left, he did some trial and error and confirmed that chat's view was influenced by what the shades saw. This way, they'd still have a decent look at the action. And since he wouldn't be able to see chat once the shades were off, he made sure to hype it up beforehand.

"Time for the Hague to go incognito."

"One misstep and I'm dead, gotta be full focus mode." That kinda shit. They were thrilled. Someone called him Solid Snague and now ten of them were. His plan had been to go alone, since his allies weren't so inconspicuous. But Tuatoru insisted on following and Adelheid insisted he did. She didn't think Hague would ditch them, but she was worried he'd run into trouble on his own. Maybe so. But Tuatoru made instantly clear that if Hague had been thinking of ditching Adelheid, he was all for it.

"Those Ulricans are small time," he said the moment the cathedral doors shut behind them.

"MacCoor too. Backwater tundra country on the fringe of everything. We ought to head out for Tau Nui instead. It's filthy rich and not party to the Covenant, so they've got no reason to turn a Hero away. We'd have every merchant's fleet at our disposal, and half their gold too. My family's got nearly enough men on payroll to take Ulrica themselves if they wanted. It could all be yours." Hague said nothing.

Tuatoru left his big hat behind to make him less obvious from the air, but nothing would stop the dude from standing out to anyone on the ground. The townspeople just stayed out of his way, though. Hague also kept an eye out for that hook-nosed assassin they saw earlier, but nothing.

"Of course, if your plan's to go over to MacCoor's side, that's no trouble for me either," Tuatoru continued.

"Only makes sense. He's the one with the army." Money and power. Tuatoru played things ironical and detached, but the more he talked the more obvious he got.

"Question," Hague said, mostly to change the subject.

"You keep saying Ulrica's this backwater country and your family's so great and yadda-yadda. So why the hell are you here working for the yokels?"

"The name, Hague, the name." Tuatoru leaned close and the syrupy cologne got pungent.

"You know what Tuatoru means?"

"No idea."

"It means Third. I'm the third son. I don't inherit a cent. For me it's the church or the wars and one's much more likely to get you laid." Alright. Hague had to admit that one got a smirk. Couldn't trust the guy as far as you could throw him, but he had a presence.

"I'm a second son, myself," Hague said. Before long they reached the wall. Because of the city's strange shape, it wasn't very long, only covering the lowest point of the city before its cliffs sloped up and did the rest of the defense. Maybe fifty meters across and three stories high, a watchtower on either end and a gatehouse plus gate in the middle. The small size wasn't surprising. Didn't have to do much to defend such an easily defensible location. What surprised Hague was how few soldiers he saw manning it.

Maybe there were more in the towers, but he counted less than twenty guys running up and down the stairs or patrolling the crenellations up top. It could be the city only had a small infantry group while the pegasus girls made up the bulk of the force, but he didn't see that many horses flying around either. Guess there was a good reason everyone shat their pants the moment an army showed up. Hague and Tuatoru loitered in the shadow of a stable built almost right up against the wall.

From here they could hear soldiers barking orders at each other, but not the dude they came for.

"Is MacCoor talking yet? How will we know?" Hague asked.

"You'll know," said Tuatoru.

"I've never met the man before, but he's a Two Henries alumnus and in bed with the Solophones." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"The what?"

"The Solophones, that cult we were talking about. Anyway, he has some swanky toys, I guarantee you that. Expect him to—""Oi! You there!" Hague's head snapped up. Oh fuck. Some dude was tromping toward them. Some dude who just screamed"minor boss." Your average Fire Emblem has somewhere between 20 and 40 maps, and most maps have a boss. But not every boss is a winner. Plenty are throwaway goons, good for a line when you kill them and nothing else. As you'd expect, these guys don't get the character design A-game.

The man who approached looked middle aged, Gaspar's ballpark or a bit younger. Unlike Gaspar, he had hair. A full head of it, parted precisely down the middle into two halves that fanned out and curled up like the Grinch's smile. It was the corniest haircut Hague ever saw. Meanwhile, he wore what might have been priest's vestments—they looked similar to what those guys in the Pecknaos wore—but the metal gorget around his neck and the pauldrons on his shoulders made it obvious he was geared for battle.

No sword or axe on his back, but he did have a holy book hanging from his hip like a holstered revolver. If anyone was the boss of the next fight, it was this guy. The truth was, Hague had been expecting another battle since the scene with Benedicta. It just made sense. Tuatoru was an archer, and archers were super effective versus fliers. The perfect excuse to make Hague fend off a stupid number of pegasus girls swooping down at them.

Exactly the sort of trick Sophia would pull, like how she gave Adelheid that busted Sanguinity skill and immediately forced Hague into a fight where he needed to make perfect use of it to win. Maybe that was her idea of a "fair game." So Hague, focused on the air, hadn't expected anything from the small group of foot soldiers milling about the wall. Now he realized he'd been overconfident. He tugged Adelheid's cape tighter around himself, making sure to hide his shades.

Luckily, the minor boss wasn't looking at Hague.

"You know how to use that, Tau Nuian?" His fat but firm finger pointed at the bow on Tuatoru's shoulder.

"Course I do, sir Sage," said Tuatoru, completely unruffled. Or rather, acting unruffled. Maybe the situation wasn't as dire as Hague first thought, as long as they played it cool. The minor boss—apparently a "sage," though he seemed more like a bishop—eyed Tuatoru up and down.

"What I want to know is, what's someone like you doing in this city? You're no pilgrim, that's clear enough. Mercenary?"

"I'm a soldier of for —""That's right, we're mercenaries," Hague said. The sage started, like he failed to notice Hague at all until then. Maybe it would've been better to keep his mouth shut and let Tuatoru handle things, but actually no fuck that Hague was gonna handle it.

"A traveling theater troupe hired us to protect them. We just happened to get caught up in all this." The sage went from eyeing Tuatoru to eyeing Hague.

"You got a weapon on you?"

"I'm not in the habit of showing it off unless I have to," Hague said. Hell yeah, that was cool. The eyes stayed down. On Hague's shoes.

"What in Sophia's name have you got on your feet?" Hague paused. Only for a second. Did the pegasus girls warn this guy about the Hero yet? Either way, he couldn't act suspicious.

"The latest style from Tau Nui. My companion here gave me a pair." Tuatoru was the only guy of his skin tone in this city, so it didn't seem like Tau Nuians came through often. No way a dude with minor boss hair was hip to the bleeding edge of haute couture in a whole other country. The bluff worked. The minor boss quit staring at the shoes.

"What'll they think up next? Alright, you two are with me. They keep the garrison undermanned as is and now Dooley's gone missing. I need warm bodies to stand up top and make it look like we're ready to fight."

"Actually, we should get back to the troupe—""No. Consider yourselves officially pressganged, boys. Don't worry, I'll pay you twice whatever you're making now, and that's just to look scary. Fall in line." During the conversation, three more soldiers (also priestly-looking) showed up behind the sage; others were in shouting distance. Making a scene here was not the play, so Hague motioned to Tuatoru and they followed the group toward the switchback stairs that led to the top of the wall.

They'd just have to find a chance to slip away. No problem. Not worried at all.

"Look," the sage said.

"I know you bastard mercenaries prefer not to do your job whenever possible, but you don't have to worry this time. If MacCoor actually attacks, I'll eat those fancy shoes of yours. This is all for show." They reached the first switchback landing when a soldier hailed the sage from below.

"Sage Brick, sir! Sage Brick!" If he didn't hear it twice, Hague wouldn't have believed it. Sage Brick. Of course that was his name. Right up there with Fire Emblem greats like Bug and Glass.

"What's the matter?" Sage Brick yelled down.

"We found Dooley, sir!"

"Finally. Where is he? Get that drunk Fenian over here."

"He's dead, sir."

"Dead?! How!"

"We found him a block east, sir." The soldier pointed. Pointed, conspicuously, the direction of the cathedral.

"Completely stripped of his vestments. He had this in him." The soldier held up an arrow. That hook-nosed assassin. Of course. But why pick off some random soldier? And why— Brick's eyes shot immediately to Tuatoru.

"An archer killed him?" Under Adelheid's cape, Hague balled his hand into a fist. This was turning worse than he could've ever predicted. They stood on the stairs, Brick and one soldier ahead, two soldiers behind. Surrounded.

"What are you looking at me for?" Tuatoru said.

"Get your eyes checked, sir Sage, or look closer at the fletch on that arrow. It's black. Do I look like I'd use something so drab?" He showed off his quiver. The arrows inside rattled, the fletches all gaudy green. Brick's eyes remained squinted in suspicion, but he didn't push the point. Instead he groused to the sky while a trio of pegasi swooped overhead.

"Just great! As if I don't have enough to deal with. Round up the townsfolk. One of them must've seen something." A bugle sounded high above.

"Has anyone figured out why those girls are tooting their horns yet? Always on their high horses. Okay, here's what's happening. You two." He pointed at Hague and Tuatoru.

"Until we sort this business out, you're—" Must you continue to keep me waiting? It came from above, from everywhere, the voice of god. The voice of Sophia, as if Hague's antics wore down her patience. I request to be heard. NOW, please. No, it wasn't Sophia. The voice was male. Brick grimaced.

"Belay that. Everyone to the top. Hurry!" Now would've been the perfect time to slip away, but behind them pressed two soldiers plus a few more coming up, and the stairs were too narrow to do anything but go with the flow. Hague watched the pegasi flying above and thought: It's fine. You'll think up a way out of this. Just keep your head on, dude. They reached the top and were immediately forced to fan out because the wall was so thin it was nearly impossible for two people to stand together.

Hague made sure to keep close to the stairs in case he needed a quick getaway. Tuatoru stayed beside him, while Brick corralled the other soldiers with gestures. He wanted them shoulder to shoulder to give the greatest sense of force. As they ascended the stairs, they jostled Hague enough he had to grab the parapet to steady himself.

Watching carefully, it seemed most of the soldiers were priests like Brick, equipped with no weapons except a book marked by the same radiating semicircle symbol Hague saw on the hierophant in the Pecknaos. A few carried bows, though, including the last soldier who came up and brushed his shoulder against Hague brusquely. Hague started to give him a look like come on man, but the face he saw staring back was the face of the hook-nosed assassin.

He wasn't wearing the black cloak from when they saw him skulking by the cathedral. He wore white, priestly vestments. Hague realized instantly: he killed that Dooley guy and took his clothes. Why? To get at Hague? No. His face passed Hague's without any recognition. He had no clue who Hague was. He shuffled across the line of soldiers and headed to the far end of the wall. The quiver on his back rattled with black-fletched arrows, but nobody bothered to notice them. Yet.

Whatever he intended to do, he must intend to do it quick. Hague nudged Tuatoru.

"See that guy?" Tuatoru nodded.

"What's his plan?"

"To take out Brick? Then open the gate?"

"Odd way to go about it, waiting until he's surrounded by all his men. But at least we have our culprit on hand to clear us of suspicion." Hague felt uneasy. There was something he wasn't seeing here, it screamed of a trap. He wished he could read what chat was saying. Normally he discouraged backseating, but between 500 viewers one of them must've put the pieces together already.

"Backs straight!" Brick yelled.

"Don't look like the headless chickens you are. We're here to make an impression!"

"Yes, sir!" the soldiers replied in a semblance of unison. Only about fifteen total, including Hague and Tuatoru, but due to the short length of the wall they filled it from one end to the other. Brick stood dead center, directly above the gate. He leaned over the parapet and bellowed so that his voice would carry:"Alright Lord MacCoor, we'll hear you now." Will you. That same unearthly, omnipresent voice sounded even clearer at the top of the wall than on the stairs.

Goosebumps traveled up Hague's arms, not out of fear but from the unreal sense that the sound was massaging him all over, striking him from every angle at once. He'd been focused on the hook-nosed assassin the whole time, but now his attention riveted to the front. And he saw Lord MacCoor, the guy who started this shit, for the first time.