Chapter 05
It didn't take long for him to confirm what Nazim had told him, that this spot wasn't quite the base of the mountain.
From what he could tell, there was still at least a good quarter of the mountain left before he'd reach the bottom.
He made his way down, passing through outcrops that made him feel like he was moving through the corridor of a canyon, when further along he encountered something Nazim had mentioned earlier: a fortress.
It was, if what he'd been told was right, erected to handle beasts coming down from the mountain.
At first he considered ignoring it, but curiosity got the better of him and he decided to check it out.
He hadn't expected to find people or anything of value, since he'd been told the place had been abandoned for some time, two centuries, to be exact.
So it came as a genuine surprise when, as he approached, he saw smoke wafting from atop one of the fortress towers, suggesting someone was inside.
Excited, he made his way through the fortress gate, which stood wide open, leading him into an empty courtyard. "Someone? Is there someone here?" he called out.
No one answered, though the call echoed through the place.
Someone clearly heard it, though, someone hiding behind a rampart along the top of the wall.
Noticing him staring up at her, the person gave up trying to hide, something ominous in hand that made him grateful for his reflexes as he immediately dove for cover behind a wooden crate.
"Who are you?!" the person shouted.
"Can't really answer that one, lady," he said, his revolver already cocked and ready, the whole motion feeling like pure reflex.
He'd already suspected he knew his way around guns from how naturally he'd handled the ones Nazim showed him, but now he was certain of it.
Getting back to the moment at hand, he added, "I'm just a guy passing by," to the woman drawing her bow at him.
"Bullshit! You think I'm going to buy that? That you just somehow stumbled onto this place?"
"I was hoping you would, because it happens to be the truth."
"Lies!"
"You think you can spot my lies? Think again.
Because everything I said was true, just like the fact that right now, while you're aiming that bow at me, I've got something that hits a lot harder than a stick with feathers.
So let's drop the dramatics, random weirdo.
I'd rather not turn you into a pincushion, or vice versa. "
She stayed silent, which prompted him to press further. "That's fine with you, right? I don't shoot you, you don't shoot me. Do I have your word? Because you have mine."
Silence again. "Oi—"
"You have my word," the voice finally replied.
After a second's hesitation, he holstered his weapon and stepped out from behind the crate, only to find she was still hiding.
"Come on, you gave me your word," he complained, though he had to admit this was already an improvement over her drawing on him.
She emerged a dozen seconds later, bow still in hand, though at least the arrow was no longer nocked.
"Hey," he said, taking in her appearance. The person who'd been about to put an arrow through him was a tall, long-haired, tan-skinned brunette, somewhere in her early twenties by the look of her.
Ignoring his attempt to smooth things over with a reasonable opening line, she asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I was making my way down, from up there," he said, pointing back toward where he'd come from, "to the city down there."
"Lies!" she barked, drawing her bow again.
"What the—"
"Don't move!"
"Alright, I won't move. But why? What part of what I said makes you think I'm lying?"
"You expect me to believe you came from Widowmaker's Ridge? I might look young, but I'm not born yesterday."
"Well, whatever you think won't change the fact that it's true.
I came from up there. Not sure how to prove it, but if this helps," he said, reaching for his gun and making sure to move as unthreateningly as possible before firing a shot into the air.
A waste of a bullet, sure, but worth it to preserve a life.
"I got this off someone living up there.
Not sure if you know him, but there's a shop up there, run by a guy named Nazim. He's a—"
Halfway through his sentence, she dropped her cover and rushed at him.
He braced himself, assuming she meant to finish him off with her bare hands, but she stopped a few meters short, her eyes darting between him and the gun in his hand, apprehension written all over her face.
"Nazim?! The shopkeeper?! You met him up the mountain? "
"Erm, yeah."
"Nazim?" she repeated, as if to confirm. "A red-scaled creature in a robe?"
"Yeah, that name and description sound a lot like the kobold I met up—"
"Lead me to him."
The words sounded a lot like an order, though to be fair, it felt a lot gentler than being held at arrow point. Still, it was a huge ask considering how the conversation had started.
"You lied to me?" she suddenly said, half question, half accusation.
"Whoa, way to jump to conclusions. I didn't lie. But come on, you don't actually expect me to climb all the way back up for some rude stranger, do you?"
You'd have to be really pretty to get him to do a favor like that for someone he'd just met, and sure, she was pretty, more noticeably so now that she stood this close, but the encounter so far had lowered just how much effort he was willing to spend on a pretty face.
She seemed to take the point, since she didn't push on that front, offering instead, "I'll pay you.
" She reached for the ornamental necklace around her neck, made of what looked like several carved pieces of jade.
He wasn't an expert, but he could easily imagine it being worth quite a lot.
Would it be as valuable as the gems in his pocket?
Part of him doubted it, but it was valuable nonetheless.
Just not valuable enough to make him nod along right away.
Seeing his hesitation, she pressed. "Is this not enough for you?"
"Kind of," he admitted. "It was an easy hour coming down, on a steep path. Heading back is a guaranteed three-hour climb. You'll understand I'm not exactly eager."
"I'll make it worth your while."
The words reminded him of a plot from one of the magazines tucked among his stored ammunition, and so, like the fat, sweaty bastard in that particular chapter, he asked, "How?"
And much like the girl in that magazine, she offered something that made him feel a lot like that bastard from the story. In any case, less than half a dozen minutes later, after she'd packed her things, mostly arrows and provisions, he was leading her back up the mountain.
For a while on the ascent he tried to make small talk, but she wouldn't entertain it, despite her earlier offer, which might have led anyone to believe she'd buried the hatchet.
That hatchet, at least, he was relieved to see, wasn't aimed at him but at something she seemed wary of finding along the ridges.
"If it reassures you, I haven't run into a single one of them on my way down from Nazim's shop." She shot him a look that made him clarify, "You're on the lookout for monsters, aren't you? Like I said, I didn't stumble across a single one coming down here, so you can relax."
She nodded at that, at least.
Encouraged, he continued, "Was that why you were camped out in the fortress? Monsters?"
He'd figured the only reason she'd be in the region at all was to reach Nazim.
He could hardly imagine anything else out here worth the trip besides the kobold's shop.
Sure, there was the fortress, and given how alert she'd been the moment they started climbing, he guessed she'd taken refuge there because of the monster the kobold had mentioned, the one roaming the stretch between the dungeon and the fortress.
"You must want something pretty badly to come all this way to his workshop. What are you planning to barter, if you don't mind me asking? Alright, I'll take that silence as a—Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think you've told me your name yet."
After a moment of him staring at her, waiting for an actual answer, she finally gave one. "Chaska. My name is Chaska."
"Chaska," he echoed. "That's a cute-sounding name. Does it mean something in particular?"
She stayed quiet long enough that he began to think she wouldn't answer, until she did. "It means 'bright star,' or 'the one with curly hair.'"
"Oh, that sounds fitting." The compliment, genuine both in sound and meaning, earned him only a "Hmph" in response, which made him a little sad. A few meters later, though, she turned to ask him a question of her own.
"You?"
"Me?" He felt stupid for not catching on right away. "You mean my name?"
She nodded.
"I'm—oh, we made it," he said, pointing ahead as they reached the ridge where the hill hid the kobold's shop at its base. "It's just up ahead," he declared confidently. But as they approached the hill, they found something thoroughly absurd: the workshop was gone.
It was an outrageous sight. Where the shop had stood, there wasn't a single trace that the kobold's workshop had ever been there at all. "It was there," he insisted, turning to reassure her, only to find her already gripping her bow tight.
"You lied to me, didn't you?" she said immediately. "You didn't come from the top. You didn't stumble onto his shop. You planned to drag me all the way out here from the start, didn't you?!"
"Eh?"
"You were trying to deceive me?! To kill me out here?!"
"Of course not! Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's tone it do—"
She drew her bow again, her eyes flaring with genuine bloodlust. The sudden aggression triggered an instinctive, unthinking reaction in him.
Before she could loose the arrow, his finger was already on the trigger of his Vanguard, front sight, barrel, and rear sight all lined up perfectly with her head.
All it would have taken was a squeeze to ruin what he, in that moment, felt was far too pretty a face to ruin.
So instead of firing, he grabbed the arrow she'd actually dared to loose at him, then closed the distance between them.
She tried to draw and fire another, but before she could pull the string back far enough to give it any real momentum, his right hand closed around her drawing hand, the bow, and the arrow, ruining the latter two.
She tried to resist, reaching for a knife at her side, but his left hand swung down against her shoulder, dropping her to her knee with a yelp, and he brought the butt of his revolver down across her face, knocking her unconscious.
Staring down at her limp body, he couldn't help but question the calm with which he'd just moved. He knew, the same way you know you could crush a small ant if you wanted to, that he could have shot her just as easily, not just on a technical aspect, but on an emotional aspect as well.
“What kind of wild, bonkers past did I live to turn out this deliciously ruthless?” he mused, giving her limp form a casual, toe-poke glance.
“I mean, I felt way too comfortable doing that.
But hey, you were an absolute goblin, so at least I'm a bespoke menace instead of a generic menace to women in society, I think" he told himself, wondering what to do with her next.