The Shop, continued
Dec. 14th, 2008 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencer I was hunched forward over the keyboard, directing the spy this way and that, trying to get him away from the soldiers. Thank God there were no bowmen among them, or he would be dead already. Slowly, oh so slowly, he drew away from them, and I didn't breathe out till he was staggering through the castle gates, his mission accomplished.
The weaponmaster's face appeared on the screen. "This information will be very useful, sire. With this, and the use of all five of these weapons, I can disable the citadel's defences for a short time. Your troops and siege machines must be ready!"
My troops and siege machines were going to be knackered and decimated from a long fight with the reds, is what they were going to be. Iron was starting to be in short supply already--Liliana's abortive sortie hadn't helped, to be honest, though I would never tell her that--and it was going to be a damned close-run thing, as old Wellington would say. In the meantime, the settlement had run out of food, which meant I had to go around upgrading all the supply buildings that would allow me to, the problem being that if a butcher or a baker was on strike for lack of food I couldn't send him an assistant to help him make more. There were no nearby villages I could hit up for the odd sausage or loaf of bread either. No food in the settlement...no food in the shop tomorrow.
I declared three days of festival in a row, which had the effect of increasing morale and also efficiency, to the effect that a couple of bakers and a fishmonger went back to work. With that to build on, I was able to increase food production to a point where everyone had enough, and there was a tidy surplus for us. Great. Now I could get back to worrying about the other things.
It was too much to hope that the red army would venture too near the citadel. I could get them to chase me in that direction, but I would get blasted long before they did, at which point they'd simply break off. They only had one strategy, and that was "CHAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!"
So. Time to finish the rebuilding of the army and deal with our crimson-hued friend. At least it would be a reasonably fair fight.
It was about now that I noticed a large red army and six catapults trundling towards my settlement. Ah well, so much for the element of surprise. I sent all my bowmen on to my walls and sent the swordsmen out with orders to capture those catapults.
The battle took me all the rest of the day, and by the end I didn't even have half a squad left. But then, neither did the enemy, and I'd managed to get four of their catapults and bring them inside the walls. Even better, it seemed that red had not yet mastered the use of the crystal, at least not for catapults. I might have an easier time of it tomorrow than I had thought. Of course, I still had the Fortress of Solitude to crack open after that.
I was walking down the escalator, heading for the car park and my bike, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and I glanced over and recognised Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula. He had his hair bound back rather than loose over his face, and it was hardly a shock at all to recognise his features, or to see the little swooshes on his trainers. He hadn't seen me, as far as I could tell; he was walking towards the street exit. On an impulse, I went in the same direction.
Outside, in the unconditioned air, Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula moved a lot more slowly, and with frequent pauses for breath and once to cough, long and hackingly. It was a familiar cough--about one in three adults had it to some extent--but Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula's was an extreme case. I was betting that when he took his hand away from his mouth there was blood on it. I wondered what colour it was.
Being in this world was obviously doing him no good at all. I couldn't imagine what would be enough incentive to persuade someone from his world to come here in the first place. Nikes? Mobile phones? Cheeseburgers?
Anyway, his discomfort was a useful distraction from questions like who was following him and just how inept were they at staying out of sight, so I wasn't going to argue. The sky was already darkening towards evening. I followed him across two busy streets and down an alley which gave, unexpectedly, on a piece of waste ground. It was surrounded on all sides by derelict office buildings, too unsafe to be worth refurbishing or to let out. Nobody bought their own office space any more; it was too much of a gamble that the company would still be in existence when the first payment on the mortgage fell due. I stayed in the shadows of a crumbling loading bay and watched as Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula trotted out into the middle of the rubbish-strewn wasteland and whistled softly.
At once four or five shadows about the same general shape as him emerged from concealment among the garbage and gathered around him. There was some sort of confabulation, and a great deal of coughing, and then they set to work moving the old rotting cardboard boxes and lumps of wood and metal. They might have been uncovering something, but by now it was so dark I couldn't make it out at that distance. Zoltan-hound-of Dracula paced around the area looking at whatever it was they were showing him, and then they covered it up again and all started walking straight towards me. I just had time to duck down behind a drum of something smelly and watch them trooping past. I couldn't immediately place them, but I recognised the way they walked.
When I was sure they'd gone, I went out to the middle of the plot and poked around a bit, but it was almost full dark by now and I only had to catch my shins on sharp things four of five times before I decided enough was enough and went back to the mall to get my bike.
Was that where the stock came through? It hardly seemed likely. Donkey carts trotting through the city to the mall would attract some attention any time of the day or night. It had to have some other significance.
I rode home, thinking about it. What use would they have for a plot of land in this world? It would kill them. We had nothing they could use, at least that I knew of. What could they do with an abandoned smidge of waste ground?
They could build an outpost on it.
By their logic, that would make the entire territory theirs. Depending how big a territory is in the real world, possibly the entire country.
It wouldn't work, of course (and how do you know that? sneered the voice in my head), but it was very likely people would get hurt trying. Swords and bows would be useless against rubber bullets and tear gas.
But a crystal weapon wouldn't.
I was so upset by this thought that I sailed right past my own door and nearly got badly lost in the darkened streets. Street lights were only on for an hour after sunset these days, to save power. If they built an outpost and a crystal weapon, they could hold this town to ransom. All this time, under cover of running the shop, Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula had been scoping us out, casing the joint, laying his plans for a full-scale invasion. Now, at last, the technology was almost within his grasp. If I gained him access to the citadel, with its fabulous store of machinery, there would be no limit to what he could do. I imagined similar plots of waste ground in London, Washington, St Petersburg, Beijing, Delhi--
I opened my front door, and tripped over something in the dark. I fell forward on to the stairs, the bike fell sideways on top of me, and whatever it was I had fallen over was digging into my already-abused shins quite painfully. At last I got myself sorted out, picked up the parcel or whatever it was and climbed the stairs to my hovel.
There, in the light of my forty-watt-equivalent energy-saving bulb, I unwrapped the brown paper around the mysterious object.
It was a sword. The blade was shining steel with a serious edge on it, the hilt and quillons wood wrapped in bronze wire.
The message was clear.
If I wanted to stop Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula carrying out his plans, whatever they were, I was going to have to kill him.
The weaponmaster's face appeared on the screen. "This information will be very useful, sire. With this, and the use of all five of these weapons, I can disable the citadel's defences for a short time. Your troops and siege machines must be ready!"
My troops and siege machines were going to be knackered and decimated from a long fight with the reds, is what they were going to be. Iron was starting to be in short supply already--Liliana's abortive sortie hadn't helped, to be honest, though I would never tell her that--and it was going to be a damned close-run thing, as old Wellington would say. In the meantime, the settlement had run out of food, which meant I had to go around upgrading all the supply buildings that would allow me to, the problem being that if a butcher or a baker was on strike for lack of food I couldn't send him an assistant to help him make more. There were no nearby villages I could hit up for the odd sausage or loaf of bread either. No food in the settlement...no food in the shop tomorrow.
I declared three days of festival in a row, which had the effect of increasing morale and also efficiency, to the effect that a couple of bakers and a fishmonger went back to work. With that to build on, I was able to increase food production to a point where everyone had enough, and there was a tidy surplus for us. Great. Now I could get back to worrying about the other things.
It was too much to hope that the red army would venture too near the citadel. I could get them to chase me in that direction, but I would get blasted long before they did, at which point they'd simply break off. They only had one strategy, and that was "CHAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!"
So. Time to finish the rebuilding of the army and deal with our crimson-hued friend. At least it would be a reasonably fair fight.
It was about now that I noticed a large red army and six catapults trundling towards my settlement. Ah well, so much for the element of surprise. I sent all my bowmen on to my walls and sent the swordsmen out with orders to capture those catapults.
The battle took me all the rest of the day, and by the end I didn't even have half a squad left. But then, neither did the enemy, and I'd managed to get four of their catapults and bring them inside the walls. Even better, it seemed that red had not yet mastered the use of the crystal, at least not for catapults. I might have an easier time of it tomorrow than I had thought. Of course, I still had the Fortress of Solitude to crack open after that.
I was walking down the escalator, heading for the car park and my bike, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and I glanced over and recognised Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula. He had his hair bound back rather than loose over his face, and it was hardly a shock at all to recognise his features, or to see the little swooshes on his trainers. He hadn't seen me, as far as I could tell; he was walking towards the street exit. On an impulse, I went in the same direction.
Outside, in the unconditioned air, Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula moved a lot more slowly, and with frequent pauses for breath and once to cough, long and hackingly. It was a familiar cough--about one in three adults had it to some extent--but Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula's was an extreme case. I was betting that when he took his hand away from his mouth there was blood on it. I wondered what colour it was.
Being in this world was obviously doing him no good at all. I couldn't imagine what would be enough incentive to persuade someone from his world to come here in the first place. Nikes? Mobile phones? Cheeseburgers?
Anyway, his discomfort was a useful distraction from questions like who was following him and just how inept were they at staying out of sight, so I wasn't going to argue. The sky was already darkening towards evening. I followed him across two busy streets and down an alley which gave, unexpectedly, on a piece of waste ground. It was surrounded on all sides by derelict office buildings, too unsafe to be worth refurbishing or to let out. Nobody bought their own office space any more; it was too much of a gamble that the company would still be in existence when the first payment on the mortgage fell due. I stayed in the shadows of a crumbling loading bay and watched as Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula trotted out into the middle of the rubbish-strewn wasteland and whistled softly.
At once four or five shadows about the same general shape as him emerged from concealment among the garbage and gathered around him. There was some sort of confabulation, and a great deal of coughing, and then they set to work moving the old rotting cardboard boxes and lumps of wood and metal. They might have been uncovering something, but by now it was so dark I couldn't make it out at that distance. Zoltan-hound-of Dracula paced around the area looking at whatever it was they were showing him, and then they covered it up again and all started walking straight towards me. I just had time to duck down behind a drum of something smelly and watch them trooping past. I couldn't immediately place them, but I recognised the way they walked.
When I was sure they'd gone, I went out to the middle of the plot and poked around a bit, but it was almost full dark by now and I only had to catch my shins on sharp things four of five times before I decided enough was enough and went back to the mall to get my bike.
Was that where the stock came through? It hardly seemed likely. Donkey carts trotting through the city to the mall would attract some attention any time of the day or night. It had to have some other significance.
I rode home, thinking about it. What use would they have for a plot of land in this world? It would kill them. We had nothing they could use, at least that I knew of. What could they do with an abandoned smidge of waste ground?
They could build an outpost on it.
By their logic, that would make the entire territory theirs. Depending how big a territory is in the real world, possibly the entire country.
It wouldn't work, of course (and how do you know that? sneered the voice in my head), but it was very likely people would get hurt trying. Swords and bows would be useless against rubber bullets and tear gas.
But a crystal weapon wouldn't.
I was so upset by this thought that I sailed right past my own door and nearly got badly lost in the darkened streets. Street lights were only on for an hour after sunset these days, to save power. If they built an outpost and a crystal weapon, they could hold this town to ransom. All this time, under cover of running the shop, Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula had been scoping us out, casing the joint, laying his plans for a full-scale invasion. Now, at last, the technology was almost within his grasp. If I gained him access to the citadel, with its fabulous store of machinery, there would be no limit to what he could do. I imagined similar plots of waste ground in London, Washington, St Petersburg, Beijing, Delhi--
I opened my front door, and tripped over something in the dark. I fell forward on to the stairs, the bike fell sideways on top of me, and whatever it was I had fallen over was digging into my already-abused shins quite painfully. At last I got myself sorted out, picked up the parcel or whatever it was and climbed the stairs to my hovel.
There, in the light of my forty-watt-equivalent energy-saving bulb, I unwrapped the brown paper around the mysterious object.
It was a sword. The blade was shining steel with a serious edge on it, the hilt and quillons wood wrapped in bronze wire.
The message was clear.
If I wanted to stop Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula carrying out his plans, whatever they were, I was going to have to kill him.