Chapter 126: 7.11 – The Gates of Tarin-Tiran

Robin was looking at one of the scout lieutenants. The hobgoblin, tall and rangy with a scar across his nose, was glaring at the disguised bard with obvious impatience.

‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘what are you doing? All scouts should be reporting in right now.’

Robin could see several scouts funnelling toward the large command tent. Rather than risk saying something wrong, he just nodded and headed toward the gathering of scouts. He’d be among a lot of other faces there, and he was likely to pick up some useful intelligence, so he judged it worth the risk.

Certainly it was easier than trying to make a break for it.

Blending in wasn’t really Robin’s strong suit, but he was also a shapeshifter so he made it work. Those shadeling instincts were coming in handy. And the [Lesser Mindreading] wouldn’t hurt.

Robin used the cover of movement to cast the spell again, further depleting his store of stored magical energies. It was unlikely it would last the whole meeting, but a gathering of scouts this large meant there had to be higher ups present. He might get lucky and sneak a few useful thoughts away from them.

Useful to have up in case he faced any unexpected challenges settling in, too.

All told there were a few dozen scouts assembled when he joined the assembled hobgoblins. Enough to mix in and lose himself, so long as he didn’t draw too much attention. Murmured conversation ebbed and flowed around him, maybe half of the assembled scouts speaking while the other half stood in stony silence.

Interesting mix.

Silence fell like an executioner’s axe the next moment, though, as the scoutmaster stepped into the tent. Robin had ferreted out all of the leadership as a first priority when he first infiltrated the camp, so he knew precisely who he was looking at.

The scoutmaster was an old blade, honed thin over many winters of hunting, but holding an edge all the sharper for it. His golden eyes cut through the room, sharp and seeking Robin forced himself to relax as they played over him.

‘Pathetic.’ The scoutmaster spat. ‘Not a one of you sharp enough to spot what is killing our patrols. Three! Three patrols have been lost, all without a trace! And none of you have brought me anything more than rumours! Some kind of beast sent up by the dungeon? That’s really the best you have?’

Robin swayed, nearly bowled over by the flares of fear and anxiety all around him. The scoutmaster clearly held his position through fear and an iron fist (yay, something new and different for the followers of Urkhan). There were small sparks of curiosity and jealousy as well. Several nearby scouts wanted to know who had managed to find even that much of a hint.

This was not a heathy work environment.

‘It’s becoming a problem,’ the scoutmaster said. ‘Keep it up and we’ll have the mages pushing to try divinations again.’

There was a flash of resentment and anger at that. This time it was accompanied by mutterings throughout the tent. The phrases ‘keep the dogs leashed!’, ‘bloody menaces!,’ and ‘fucking finger-wagglers!’

Robin rifled through the nearby thoughts, clutching at every fragment of information he could. It seemed like the mages were both generally feared and looked down upon. The collars they wore were seen of as leashes and the general mood of the assembled was that they (the collars) were a good, reassuring thing.

So mages were sort of second class individuals in the hjuncta. Interesting. And the collars somehow leashed their powers or allowed the command structure to control them? It was hard to follow from all the fragments, but there was enough to get a general picture.

Now how could he use it to get some more mages to fall into their traps? He wanted Ruprecht to have a chance to disassemble the thing even more now. It might be twice as useful as they had originally thought.

‘It will not be allowed to happen!’ The scoutmaster’s voice whipped out like a lash and snapped all attention back to him. ‘You’re all going to go out, following the paths of the missing patrols, and you are going to scour this ruin of a city until you find a clue as to what happened. I don’t care if it’s a beast from the depths of the dungeon, a spectre from some ancient war, or a bloody turncoat murdering scum! You will find it out and you will do so before the mages gather any more support for the idea of letting them off their leashes enough to try divining again.’

Ruprecht was going to need to up the defences around their main camp. With this many scout scouring the city in a dedicated search, the likelihood of one of them finding the party’s trail and following it back to Ruprecht just jumped. High.

There were more orders. More complaints. Robin managed to pick up that there was some sort of expedition happening, parties descending deeper into the city. That was what everyone assumed had roused the dungeon. Bit of luck, that. Something that reinforced the idea of the beast that Robin had been sowing.

Unfortunately his spell gave out before he could probe anyone very deeply on the matter of this expedition. The scoutmaster didn’t give many details, as presumably everyone here already knew as much as they needed to. It seemed like it was important to the commander of this war camp, and there was a mix of hope and resentment amongst the scouts. Hope that there might be riches in it for everyone, and resentment that it was clearly making their lives more difficult.

Robin’s eyes searched the interior of the tent whenever he could. Were there useful maps in here somewhere? There almost had to be, even if most of the scouts knew the nearby area by heart. Commanders like planning their battles, and this place didn’t strike him as one that would employ illusionists to conjure battle maps for strategy meetings.

Their loss.

‘I’m sorry, am I boring you?’

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Robin froze, suddenly very aware of the attention focused on him from those nearby and, even worse, the attention of the scoutmaster on him.

‘No sir,’ he said immediately, adrenaline driving an ice pick into his neck.

The eyes on him made his skin crawl. This place was big, but not so big that he could get away indefinitely being a face no one truly recognised. Sure, he looked familiar to most, because Robin had carefully sculpted bland, forgettable features, but that didn’t mean sustained attention wouldn’t unmask him as someone that didn’t belong here.

‘Then what is so fascinating that you’re looking at it rather than listening to me? Hmm?’

Robin’s eyes flashed to the tent canvas of the wall in the direction he’d been looking. He couldn’t say anything about the chests he’d been eyeing, or the table with its pile of parchment. The setting sun (could you even call it that, int his world?) painted the walls of hte pavilion with shadows from outside.

Shadows. Outsider and outsiders. Robin’s mind flashed over what he’d heard so far today, the cracks he’d seen in the hobgoblin society.

‘Someone’s out there, moving. Sir.’ Robin jerked his chin in the appropriate direction, even as he willed a shadow to suddenly stand and move rapidly away with [Visual Phantasm].

A shadow that bore the rather distinctive shape of a figure in robes with a collar. He even put a shadow wand in the figure’s hand. Might as well make it obvious.

The room erupted in murmurs as several others spotted it before it winked out of sight.

‘Spies!’ the scoutmaster hissed, eyes narrowing and, thankfully, no longer on Robin. ‘Well spotted.’

Orders were barked out and a set of five scouts slipped out of the command tent to investigate. They’d not find anything, but that didn’t really matter. The scoutmaster’s attention was firmly elsewhere now.

More instructions were quickly relayed with hand signals. It looked like he had no intention of taking nay more risks. Robin bit his lip. He now had no idea what was being said, at all. If only he still had his [Lesser Mindreading] up! But there was no way to recast the spell now. Now in a tent full of scouts, with the tell-tale hand gestures and magic words so likely to stand out.

He needed more levels and more metamagical knowledge, and fast!

Luck was on his side, however. Nothing more was said and the gathering was swiftly dismissed. Robin was able to file out with the others who all quickly peeled off and headed in different directions to accomplish their missions.

Robin found an out-of-the-way nook and swiftly changed faces. He’d just drawn far too much attention to himself, and he didn’t want to be around if the scoutmaster decided his moment of insight warranted further responsibility.

That was just the sort of good-luck/bad-luck proposition he was likely to encounter. Even more so now that he’d been touched by wild magic.

The ding! of accumulating experience was nice, though. That shadeling bonus for solving problems via deception was quite the sweet deal.

Did barbarians get bonus experience for solving problems with their fists, or rogues for solving problems by stealing things? Not something he could really ask. And even then, he had bigger fish to fry.

There were going to be several patrols on their way to locations near the party’s camp. and likely a few that might even follow them back to it. He needed to warn everyone!

Maybe even lead an extra patrol back, give Ruprecht a bit more to work with in the energy department.

Though speaking of, hadn’t he said that absorbing new materials also helped with that? And there were certainly several items here in the camp that would be unusual. If they were different enough.

Well, extra supplies were always welcome, if not. And it would be doing some small service in terms of weakening the enemy. Maybe he could even sow some discord, get the hobgoblins quarrelling amongst themselves and blaming one another.

No. No time for something as elaborate as that. He’d just make his way through the camp toward the exit he needed, swipe whatever he could that wasn’t nailed down along the way, and hightail it back to camp.

There was a chance that company was coming and he wanted to make sure that a proper welcome was waiting for whomever—or whatever—arrived.    

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