Officers prowled behind the lines on the backs of lanklatts. Rather than the matte black armor of the common soldiers. The moss green lights around the courtyard illuminated their mirror shone armor and made them beam like beacons in the dim gloom of the Under Tunnels. This was the first time I’d seen a lanklatt in the city and the first time I’d seen an animal not attached to a carriage or wagon while in the city proper.

  Gunilla, who maintained a causal pace as she walked next to the racing wagons of the convoy – the spiress’ carriage having long outpaced the rest of the wagon train. Issued commands in her native language and the drivers whipped at their animals in a fury. Desperate to eke out any last vestige of untapped strength.

  The goblins, even as they organized, were ready for the charge, and those in place on the front lines planted their shields into the earth. Shoulders braced against metal for the impact of the charge. Those behind them scrambled to get into place and the officers further back shouted orders and menaced over them with raised lances and sabers.

  With a sound like a metallic tree being felled, a small wall shot up in front of the first wagon in the convoy. Gunilla barked another order, but it was too late for the [Wagon Driver] to do anything. With agile ease, the centipede creatures scurried over the wall. Their flexible bodies and myriad legs provided them with extreme mobility. The wagon they pulled, however, had no such advantage.

  The front wheels collided with the wall and stopped dead. The back of the wagon shot into the air and sent what remained of the injured, mainly the elite and those with enough merit to be at the front, tumbling towards the now vacated driver’s seat. The laborer who’d previously occupied that spot now flew towards the waiting spear points of the goblins. While the wagon may have stopped, the centipedes did not and continued to pull with the same amount of speed they had before their wagon ran into the wall.

  I don’t know if the plan was ill-thought out by the [Clerics] or a spur-of-the-moment decision. Either way, the result was the same. Whatever they thought would happen to the wagon did not, and the regular infantry had to deal with the mistakes of their superiors. The fully loaded wagon flipped over the wall and catapulted people, crates, barrels, and other supplies. The barrels and crates hurtled into the ranks of the shield wall like a miniature trebuchet while the bodies of the aranae scattered before and amidst the goblins. I saw half a dozen go down underneath the supplies and another two crushed under the weight of the aranae warriors.

  I doubted many of those hit died, however, I had no doubt they felt the impact. Especially when the centipedes continued to pull the flipped wagon through their ranks. Dragging the poor souls caught before them with it.

  The now discovered wall was easy to avoid for the rest of the people in the convoy. Though some centipedes had to scurry over as their drivers desperately yanked on their reins for them to turn faster. As we passed the wall on the last wagon, I watched the officers fall into more disarray than their troops. Each fought with one another for control over the situation rather than command.

  It was the proof I needed to confirm something I’d suspected at the beginning of the siege when a portion of the goblin army was allowed to throw themselves at a makeshift fortification. Nobody truly had command over the goblins. The few officers who commanded their troops got a couple of squads organized enough to cling to the sides of our wagons as we passed, but the goblins who did so proved no challenge to either knock off or kill.

  The last of the goblins who hung to our wagon, a thick-necked hoblite, was easy to dislodge with a couple of hammer swings to his fingers. The delicate metal of their gauntlets deformed under the blows, and the goblin cried out in pain as he let go and dropped to the cold stone road.

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  My eyes tracked him briefly as he fell and rolled to a stop. But eventually moved back to the scrambling goblin formation in time to watch an officer charge and spear a centipede, still causing chaos in their ranks, through the heart with her lance and into the head of the centipede beside it.

  Once the wagon picked up speed again, we raced from the central courtyard and into the Eastern side of the city where more of the spires replaced the domed, oval-shaped homes of the goblins. As we progressed, the spires we passed got more spaced out and the tapestries that decorated their facades gained more color until each was a riot of dyed silk depicting all kinds of stories.

  The road we travelled was almost a straight shot from the central courtyard and I could see when the eight officers gave up trying to corral their panicking troops and instead organized into small squads to chase us down themselves.

  I wasn’t alone in the groan that escaped me at the sight, and it was all I could manage to block the occasional arrow with my shield. Portions of which were so damaged in the retreat that they couldn’t do anything but block a glancing blow without the risk of breaking.

  Luckily, the goblins weren’t making more than a token effort to attack any longer. Between volleys or passes on the lanklatts, I could track their eyes beneath their helmets as they darted to the various spires that surrounded us. Back in the tunnels, these men and women launched themselves at us with almost suicidal abandon, getting stuck into the defenders to slow us down for even a second.

  Now, however, each barely made more than a passing thrust or slash before they moved on and did the same down the convoy. Their lack of effort made sense when, after a turn, the lanklatts and their riders simply stopped. They watched for a moment longer, their mounts restless to continue the hunt, and waited for all the wagons to pass by. They remained a moment longer before something passed between all eight officers and in unison they whirled about on their lanklatts and loped back towards where they came from. I couldn’t say why they left, maybe to reorganize, maybe to head back to First Oracle controlled land.

  “Their leaving? W-why?” Nora asked, her voice wavering with exhaustion.

  “Just hold on a little longer, then you guys can rest.” Maggie said soothingly. “They’re pulling back because they’ve won. The girl’s army is crushed, along with at least half her support staff. Plus, they’ve made the defeat a public spectacle by chasing her through town like this. That’s why she raced ahead of the convoy earlier. She was trying to put some distance between herself and this embarrassment.”

  Ellen spat at that. Saliva added to a small pool of blood next to one of the wounded warriors. The rest of the aranae in the wagon, those who spoke the Trade Tongue at least, looked like they wanted to be angry but were too tired to manifest more than scowls. The rest of the ride back was eerily quiet for us, the only noise the subdued chatter of the people in the wagons and the sound of stone wheels on a stone road.

  Every once in a while, I’d see someone poke their head out of a window or the front door of a spire, only to scowl at the wagon train and disappear back into their home. The only other people who shared the road with us were the occasional laborer team, along with whatever tools and animals they needed to complete their tasks.

  Blearily I looked up from the stone of the wagon bed to the sight of the spiress’ home spire. I recognized it not because I was intimately familiar with any of the many tapestries that decorated the exterior but because off to the side in an alleyway the spiress’ luxurious carriage was being taken care of and cleaned by a team of twenty laborers.

  As the five of us slowly got out of the carriage, each of us required the help of at least one other to get down. We stood, unsure of what to do now. We still had a couple of hours left on the contract, but we were so deep in the aranae ruled sector of the city that all of us doubted the goblins would march their army in for a siege. Maggie, however, had no hesitation about what needed to be done.

  “Relax here for a bit. Wait till I get back to follow any orders from anyone. Including the girl. Got it?”

  Maggie was barely a minute in the tower before she slipped out of the massive black doors again, a soft smile on her lips and the promise of sleep in her words.

  The four of us followed her, ducklings after their mother, to a room on the ground floor of the spire. It was a lavish space filled with cushions and silks. However, it was also clearly designed to house a single person. A bed large enough to comfortably fit an orc or three uncomfortable humans rested against the room’s back wall. Curule chairs and couches flanked the small space in front of the bed. And a quick check of the only other door in the room revealed a small bathroom. When I turned back from my investigation, it was to the sight of the rest of my party eyeing the bed and each other like a pack of starved dogs.

  All of us wanted the comfort of the bed, and the cold logic of the Black Hand behind me. I knew that if someone pushed for it, we’d come to actual blows. Rather than end our contract and our first campaign on a sour note, I stepped towards the couch.

  “You three take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  I didn’t pay attention to their responses and instead lowered myself onto the couch with deliberate care. Flakes of dried blood peeled themselves from my armor to flit onto the silk as I bent over. By the time my helmetless head hit the bare silk upholstery, I’d torn off my armor and was already asleep.