"Companions? Really? Wow, my luck is just terrible." A dejected Barroco muttered, furrowing the caterpillars he has for eyebrows.
"Barroco, we have two options. Now listen because you are going to like neither."
The contacts had their shipment stolen by the Loranisburg police, who themselves got caught by the Companions. Then those bastards sold it to Barroco.
"I'm listening." He responded.
"Option one, we abandon these hooligans to their own devices. Let the Companions dig your lunarfritz out of the river. If the Companions were willing to save the police from drowning, they would probably be willing to hold them as hostages. The crown will ransom them back, quickly and cheaply, since Companions don't like having strangers in their midst. Once we go back home, we can use the royal police to grant us an audience with the Loranisburg Companions. I imagine that they would be amicable if we paid well. We are a charity case. Your medicines saved their families after all." I reasoned.
"I promised Florence that I would have synthesized it by her soiree. What about option two?" Barroco readied his rifle with visibly shaking hands. His wallet should be empty too.
Pondering in silence for a while, I realized option two was decidedly suicidal. Our antiquated weaponry would be useless against the industrial might of the Courageous Companions. Granted, we had the element of surprise. We still had to dig our wagon out of the river afterward. Companions never forgave a blood debt.
"Alright, Barroco, follow my lead and do not say a single word." I buried our weapons in the mud. Companions don't fire first. Even the simplest grunt would understand that murdering innocents would have him publicly tortured. I remember a story where the Nulmar Companions lashed a grunt in the town square to near death after accidentally shooting bystanders.
I stood up, dragged him along, and confidently strolled towards the small village. Somewhere in my defunct memory, I had learned the army officer's gait, one of a bored aristocrat simultaneously lost in his delusions of grandeur and the serenity of the natural world.
When I approached where the first sentry could see me, I yelled. "Greetings, dear friend! 'Till death am I courageous!"
A portly young man with glazed eyes and a shotgun responded, " 'Till death shall I be yours! What regiment are you?"
What a critical moment! I had no idea which units operated around here. I yelled back, "None of them. I'm with the Armed Companions."
Barroco stared at me bewilderedly. I even scared myself with the significance of my bluff. The Armed Companions were the leaders of the entire syndicate. Legends say that each member of the Armed Companions held a unique magical artifact that makes them unbeatable in combat.
"Belenatum's Graces! It's truly an honor to meet you, sir! What's your code name?"
The code names of the Armed Companions had to be unique. It also had to be an occupation that they held in their previous life.
"The names Duelist."
The commotion attracted a deluge of rubbernecking companions. Finally, a boss showed up.
"Forgive his and my rudeness, your Excellency, but from which echelon are you? And who's your commanding officer?" The even portlier boss bowed. He was a pale man with a double chin, a stubbed nose, and a few curly wisps of hair.
The echelon was the easy question. Armed Companions were divided based on their country. All I had to do was pick the right nation. As for the commanding officer, I was at the top of the hierarchy, so I couldn't just make someone up. It had to be someone infamous. Messenger sounded perfect until I remembered he was dead. Buccaneer was a piece of shit with whom I didn't want to be associated.
Of course, Duelist, the enigmatic mercenary, had been missing for a long time. Who would his leader be?
"I am Duelist of the Nulmar Companions, and I was sent here by Graverobber." I smiled, shaking the older man's hand. Beads of cold sweat raced down the wizened gangster's face. At the mere mention of that name, I now commanded the respect of every person in the audience.
At once, the boss said, "You may ask anything of me, and please do. But tell me, what does Graverobber want from poor old Gotti Simmons?"
This gangster has a surname; he could not have been lowborn. What kind of world is this where everyone is a lawless hooligan?
"As you all know, Graverobber grew up in the Leyforette district of Loranisburg. As such, he holds a special fondness for the plight of Loranisburg's poor. To lower the medicines' prices for the hospitals, he secretly sends a shipment of lunarfritz from Cascadia once a year. Is this a betrayal? That is debatable. Are you going to report this to anyone? Certainly not! His shipment this month was late. I came to investigate before he decides to, personally." At the end of my rather long deception, my audience had become paralyzed with fear.
The Graverobber was the enforcer of the Courageous Companions' laws, like a Lonely Crone for hardened adults. Disobey his tenets, and he would come for you in the night without exception.
Gotti waved his arms, and some men raced down the slopes to untie the policemen, who just went along. The companions then dressed the coppers in their fine clothes since the police uniforms had been torn, soaked, and muddied beyond repair.
I studied the situation once more. The events that transpired here were obvious enough. Gotti heard an unsanctioned shipment of lunarfritz was arriving and so set up an ambush. When he did surprise the coppers, the horses panicked and fell off the bridge because it had been raining. Somewhere in the water, the horses undid their harnesses and either swam away or drowned. After the carriage became trapped by boulders, Gotti ordered his men to rescue the coppers. No unnecessary deaths, after all. Now the river held lunarfritz shipments worth chests of gold.
The only question left was, where were the contacts? Alas, who knows.
"Alright, Mr. Simmons, listen here. Have your best swimmer tie a rope around the wagon. Then tie the other end to your troop transport truck and press on the gas. It should dislodge the wagon." I commanded.
"Now, downriver where the water is calmer, I want you to find the village's sturdiest fishing net and suspend it across the river, like a dam. When the truck dislodges the wagon, sever the rope, or the current will pull everything away. The net will naturally pick it up downriver, and when the river has calmed, we can load the lunarfritz on the truck and let me drive away with it."
***
"Belenatum's glowing buttocks! That was amazing!" exclaimed a Barroco that has not calmed down ever since our escape. He sat in the shotgun seat of the troop transport truck. The vehicle was otherwise empty save for five morose police officers and four wooden barrels of lunarfritz. "What were you going to do if they asked you for your magical artifact?"
"I would have just shown them this" I eased one hand off the steering wheel and showed him the pocket watch that Barroco's uncle had gotten me. "If you see here, there are timer dials. And when you press this button, it resets to a random amount of time. Even internally, I don't think anyone knew much about Duelist, so I think it would have worked."
What kind of lie would I have made? Would the watch countdown to someone's demise or to the next time they see a lover?
"We were so lucky," said Barroco, finally relaxing, "It's a miracle that those companions didn't know.
"Didn't know what?"
"That Graverobber died four years ago."