Team

The Heroes of Fannen-Dar, Chapter 21

Rivka ran up to the last spot where she had seen those pathetic low-lifes. She would call them traitors, but she knew they weren't exactly on her side. She knew that when you forced someone to do your dirty work with no promise of reward, they'd find any opportunity to escape. If the only thing keeping them in line was a threat, then she had to follow through on that threat, which she couldn't do if those other idiots got in her way!

She saw one of them now, Broos Bellinger, swinging his head around like a tomato caught in a windstorm. She marched up to him, pushing aside an elderly man who dared to step in front of her with an empty mug. When Broos saw her, he pointed a beefy finger her way. Before he could say anything, Rivka was by his side. To anyone looking on, it would appear she had just grabbed his ear, perhaps a scorned wife chewing out her cheating husband. Broos and her were the only ones who knew there was a hidden blade pressed against the base of his skull.

"Listen, you foul dog-ended piece of slime," she hissed at him. He looked into her eyes like a grumpy child. It used to be that he would have been quivering beneath her, but now he was merely annoyed. They both knew that she couldn't kill him, what with their agreements with King Dom. Neither wanted the wrath of the King to come down on them. Still, she wanted to make him feel as miserable as possible. "I had a good thing going with those Bedlam fools, but now you and that daft dwarf have gone and ruined it!"

Broos slowly grabbed her wrist and removed it from his neck. "How was I supposed to know you had claimed them? When I got to them, they didn't mention anything. As far as I knew, they were working exclusively for me!"

"They played us all!" Rivka snapped. She was then interrupted by a throaty roar. They turned around to see Tasgall, the dwarf leader of the Axe of Justice, in a bow-legged stance a few feet away from them.

"I knew I'd find you two at the bottom of this! Scoundrels!" he bellowed. "It's high time I punished you for your crimes!"

"You can't do that here," Rivka said calmly. "You know that the town guard considers you just as much a criminal as they do us. Well, at least Broos. They don't know about me." Tasgall gibbered in rage, causing Rivka to roll her eyes. "You really don't know the meaning of subtlety, do you?"

Tasgall held back the next string of expletives he was about to issue, then crossed his arms. "I had that group of ruffians working for me, on the side of good! And then you corrupted them into betraying me! And now you've helped them escape! I'm going to find them, and kill them for being unfaithful traitors! So...take that!"

"Idiot, we want them punished too!" Broos said. Tasgall just wrinkled his nose in confusion.

Rivka sighed. "They had agreed to work for all three of us, without any of our knowledge. And now they've escaped without any sort of punishment."

"Well, if you're going to follow them," Tasgall said, "I'll let you go this time. But I'm not going to try and chase them down that way!"

Rivka held up a finger. "Hold on. Did you see which way they went?"

Tasgall looked blankly at her for a second, then broke out with a nasty grin under his beard. "Ohoho, you didn't see, did you?"

"Tell us or you'll regret it."

He shrugged with a chuckle. "Fine, like I said, chase them if you want. They headed right down the Well of Luck." He then grunted, his attempt at a sarcastic laugh. "I bet they worship her too. No good, namby-pamby goddess. Not like Justice!"

"I don't care about your religion, dwarf," Broos said. He sauntered off towards the well, and Tasgall followed at a short distance. Rivka was already there, sitting casually on the side of the well. Broos ignored her and peered over the edge, one hand gripping the leg which held up the roof, in case Rivka decided to try and push him in. He withdrew his head, a sour frown on his face. "Nothing there now, but it's damp and unpleasant down there."

"They'll have to come out eventually!" Tasgall said, grinning and gripping the handle of his waraxe that hung from his side. Rivka, however, shook her head.

"The well draws water from an underground river," she said. "There are tunnels beneath Fannen-Dar, carved by that river, that they could follow. They might be anywhere."

Broos slammed his fist on the wooden leg, causing the whole roof to shudder. "Dammit! I wanted to bust their faces in."

"They'll be back, I'm sure of it," Rivka said. She stared up at the clouds drifting lazily overhead. "Nobody from Fannen-Dar ever leaves Fannen-Dar."

"And nobody from anywhere else ever stays, so they say," Broos said. "Yeah, yeah, we've all heard that one. They could go into hiding though. With a town this big, we'd never find them. Plus..." He lowered his voice and quickly looked over his shoulder at the crowd before turning back to the well. He spoke so only Rivka could hear him. "They have some sort of protection from Dominaurus."

"What?!" Rivka said.

"What? What?!" Tasgall said, sprinting up after pretending he hadn't been trying to listen in. "What did he say?!"

"Did you know this before you tried to use them?" Rivka said, ignoring the dwarf.

Broos shrugged. "Yeah, but I wasn't going to let him find out."

"Idiot, he finds everything out."

"King Dom?!" Tasgall shouted. Rivka and Broos both held their fingers up to their lips and shushed him.

"If he really had claimed them, we don't want him finding out we tried to take them out from underneath his nose," Rivka hissed. "Even you know not to cross Dominaurus." Tasgall nodded solemnly.

Broos then chuckled. "It's kind of ironic. We three haven't spent this long together without trying to kill each other in years, yet we can still agree we hate King Dom."

"Who said I'm not trying to kill you?" Rivka said with a smile. Broos's fell away into a stoic stare, but Rivka just laughed. "Yes, it does make me miss the days when we used to work together. Before Tasgall got all righteous and you got all...big-headed."

Tasgall grunted again. "I needed to atone for my sins, daft woman." He sighed. "But I still do find myself wishing you would see the light and join me once more."

"I merely saw the kind of coin I could make from dealing in bloodroot, and you thought that was somehow 'narrow-minded,'" Broos said. "Then you tried to sabotage my operations left and right! You're the one too big-headed to see why I hate you now."

"Aww, you don't hate me," Rivka said, pushing Broos a little. "You hate how good I am." She looked back and forth between the two men. "You know, this gives me an idea. We all want King Dom off our backs, right?"

Broos and Tasgall nodded slowly.

"And we all want some revenge on Bedlam, right?"

Broos and Tasgall nodded rapidly.

"Then I have a little proposition. We stop interfering with each others' plans. For now!" she added when she saw Tasgall open his mouth. "We can go back to bickering like children later (well, you two are the children, I'm the exasperated babysitter in this simile). But until then, when Bedlam resurfaces, we inform each other and team up to find a...solution...that works for all three of us. And if my guesses aren't too far off, they should resurface in a matter of days."

"What makes you say that?" Broos asked.

Rivka laughed, a high, shrill laugh that reminded the others of a socialite playing nice while she secretly played politics. Broos hoped she wasn't also playing him. Rivka said, "It's my opinion that they weren't trying to get the best of us, but that they were just too stupid to end up in a better situation. Anyone that dumb won't be able to lay low for long."

"Team up?" Tasgall said, rubbing his hairy chin. "I don't like it. Sounds sinful."

"Think of it as us agreeing with you slightly more than we did before," Rivka said.

Tasgall's face lit up. "In that case, I like it!"

"Excellent." Rivka stood up. "It's settled then. With all of our resources pooled together, Kind Dom and his gang will find it much more difficult to pull our strings.” She began to stroll away from the well. “Fannen-Dar finally has it's own Thieves Guild."

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