Chapter 17: Watchtower Report

My plan was a little risky, and I was sure Shave could figure out what I was going to do if he tried hard enough. I was pretty sure I’d get in trouble if the Commander found out, too, so I had to hope I had the right read on Shave. I couldn’t let him report me.

The first step was to change my chores. At the moment, I was stuck helping out around camp, but if I wanted any of this to work, I needed an excuse to be out for most of the day.

That led me to the first step of my plan: bribes. The out-of-camp jobs were the ideal chores, so I had to give something in return in order to get myself on those.

The next morning, I walked to the ‘chore board.’ It was a list of daily tasks that we had to complete. For the most part, there wasn’t much fighting to do, so we had plenty of non-combat-related tasks to complete. At the moment, my tasks were in the General Camp Labour category. I had plenty of jobs to complete around the camp, between transporting wood and food, helping Hild, sharpening weapons, hauling water, and more.

The better tasks were the supply chain assistance tasks. We couldn’t leave our regular wagon shipments unguarded, so, just like the mission our squad had gone on, there were regular escort missions.

I couldn’t take those ones, because they actually required me to be close to the wagon, and all the supplies were going the wrong way—they always went deeper into Gate, and there was no freedom on the way back, not like our last escort mission. I needed something that let me go off and hunt through the labyrinths.

The mission I wanted—the most desirable missions—were the Watchtower Report missions. The senior Dupes always got those assigned to them because they were easy, and you could always return back to camp every night.

You just had to check the rune-beacons leading up to the watchtowers, then when you reached the watchtowers on our side of the Thelea River, you would wait a little longer. There were a few maintenance tasks at the watchtowers, of course, and you had to make sure the watchmen were still in good condition and being vigilant. Then you could return.

The senior Dupes were all lazy bastards, but hey, the tasks were assigned by seniority. Still, if I could get on one of those missions, I could take a quick detour into the Bane-lands.

So I checked the chore board, and when I identified the squad of Dupes assigned to Watchtower Report, I set off. They would leave early in the morning, and I had to be fast if I wanted to catch them before they left.

I raced to the easternmost edge of the camp until I found a squad of Dupes setting out. Of all of us, they had the best armour. Most of them wore a combination of scale mail and chainmail, steel pauldrons and helmets, and all six of them carried axes as their preferred weapons.

I was surprised to see them carrying shields on their backs, because it seemed to me like a long walk, and I didn’t want to be burdened by a shield every single day. But they would’ve had much higher attributes than me, and they could take it with ease. That, and the heavy armour they wore.

I called out, “Singe! Bob!” Those were the two names of the Dupes I remembered from the chore board. When it came to Bob, I was pretty sure it wasn’t short for Robert. Maybe it was actually BOB, like Baby on Board, but then I saw the squad. He was the one with his hair in a bob-cut.

The squad halted and turned back to look at me. I quickly ran up to them and said, “Sorry! Sorry, but would you be willing to swap chores?”

They all looked at me with blank expressions, unamused and unconvinced. Then one of them laughed, and all six of them broke into laughter.

It was exactly the response I’d been expecting. I kept a straight face and said, “I’m willing to negotiate. See, I’ve got three extra copper sceats and one silver sceat this month, and they could be yours.”

The five Dupes looked unconvinced. At first, I wanted to lowball them to see what would happen, but it almost certainly wasn’t going to work.

“We’ve all earned permanent increases to our pay,” one of the Dupes said. I didn’t know his name—I didn’t know any of them by name, and certainly not who Singe or Bob were. “For one month, that’s nothing to us.”

“What about Presences?” I asked.

“You want to give us Presences?” a different Dupe asked.

“You wouldn’t say no to more Presences, would you? A little free power, you don’t have to work for it,” I negotiated. “What do you say to two small Presences each? You let me and my squad take the Watchtower Report for this month, and I’ll get them to each of you.”

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“Twelve presences total? You think you can get those? How?”

I gave a quick grin. “I have my ways.”

“And what do we get if you don’t deliver? You’ll have us on general labour for a month, and we’ll get nothing out of it.”

I winced. “There are plenty of people in this camp who want me dead.” I had to be vague, and I couldn’t reveal the extent that I knew about Scar’s scheme, just in case any of these guys were in on it. “I’m sure you guys know who they are. Anyway, if I don’t deliver, it’ll be easy enough to take your revenge on me. To help them kill me.” I paused. “But if it does work, think about it. You’ll get Presences. You can claim you went hunting or something, and then you can give yourself a nice rush of power. Maybe you’re close to gaining another point. Wouldn’t it be nice to gain another point? And on top of all that, you’ll look good. Charitable. You gave the Atoning a nice mission.” I stopped myself there, because even I could hear that I was starting to ramble.

“You think we want to look charitable?” the first Dupe asked.

“Why wouldn’t you?” I tilted my head, then paused for a moment. “Oh, I mean, I guess it could look bad for you guys if people thought you were being too nice to the soulstealer, yeah. So there’s always an excuse that you wanted to mess with the new guy. Make him trek back and forth out to the front every day, wearing heavy chainmail and such. You’ve got options, that’s what I’m saying.”

“We want the extra pay and three Presences each,” said a Dupe with an orange painted pauldron. It had a sigil of a raven on it, but with a few extra markings, as if the raven itself was burning. I had no idea if that was considered disrespectful or sacrilegious or anything—to deface the sigils of Gate—but I was pretty sure that also meant this Dupe was Singe.