180 Homecoming (1/2)

We didn't stay for the after-party as fairy parties usually involved dancing — lots of dancing, the kind that made your toes bloody afterward. Plus, neither Aura, Luca nor I were really in the mood for revelries.

Aura and I were bummed over the implications of the past few days. Luca was bummed because he missed it. Priorities, right?

I mean, he should at least have been pissed that someone stole his face, but no, he was more pissed that he didn't get to see it first-hand.

So, we skedaddled out of Shärleden as quickly as we could while stealing Aura away from her duties as Princess Aurana too which was a bonus in her opinion. Especially since Chris Pint was ceaseless in his attempts to flirt with her.

Besides, there were a lot of preparations to be made before the Foolhardies and I could make our transfer to Great General Garm's western army official. That meant a homecoming back to the home base for some planning and a little bit of R&R.

The trip back to Hoodwink Tower from the capital took roughly a week of night travel. We cut this down to half by having all four-hundred members of the unit travel during the day too. It was a harder march than usual but time was of the essence and no one was complaining as everyone was eager to see home for a few days.

Ty and I spent our days in school during the peak of Spring while regaling Arah of tales of our adventure in the Fayne.

Having Ty around really did make a difference. In fact, my nightly visits to the Fayne had gotten a lot more fun when I got to share them with him. Because of this fact, more than once, I was nearly tempted to invite Arah to join us, but that would be the height of foolishness.

Sure, Ty and I were enjoying ourselves with things like fairy revelries but we've had more than a few close shaves these past six months.

And thinking about that last campaign made me remember Dawn, the Dawn Breaker, Knight of the Sunspire Dominion. I wondered if I would see her again in the war. I hoped not. I didn't want to have to fight her.

\”Stop spacing, Dean,\” Arah chided. \”All I can do to help is cram Mudgardian military tactics into your brain so I'd appreciate it if you paid attention.\”

Oh, yeah, after we told her of my new role as a tactician for the western army, Arah had made it her mission to instruct me on hundreds of military strategies from all over the world, past, present, and future. And I swear, those four days in Mudgard were akin to torture by information overload.

That fourth night, we finally arrived at Hoodwink Tower.

The tower had changed over the last six months. The dwarves Varda had hired to complete renovations of the broken battlements and tower wall had done a brilliant job restoring it. Not to mention the many new additions we'd added to it as part of my attempts at what was essentially SimCity.

The first thing you'd notice was the wide dirt road that skirted its way into the main gate of the circular fifteen-foot stone wall surrounding the tower itself.

We'd expanded the wall so the interior would be much wider than before. In fact, the space was double the size now. This was done to accommodate the unit's barracks, stables, and the merchant shops that had started businesses in Hoodwink.

Speaking of merchants, in the last six months, several had proven to be reliable partners for the Foolhardies and for Hoodwink Tower in general. Chief among them was Shanks who doubled as a mercenary tank for my own fire team.

Shanks' was a good enough manager that he could be gone for weeks at a time and his shop would operate just fine. He had reliable people under him. But I sometimes thought that he just enjoyed hanging out with us, the last people who got to know his big brother, although I wasn't entirely sure if trolls could be sentimental like that.

While Shanks' general merchandise store sold everything from flower-scented bath soaps to black powder grenades, his armory continued to present a popular option for members of the Foolhardies who didn't appreciate the brass-grade scale-mail we provided them. Particularly, guys like Qwipps who liked to stand out.

Once, I heard him boasting to Barda that the padded hauberk he'd bought from Shanks' armory was, in his words, \”As light as a sprite's wings and as warm as a pixie's bottom.\”

Besides Shanks' shops, there were other specialized stores too that had made their homes inside Hoodwink Tower's interior grounds.

The fiery-haired yellow-skinned hobgoblin, Kal Duenne, was a weapon-smith renowned in the Westmarch. He'd set up shop around the same time Shanks did, and now rivaled Shanks' for the top monthly earnings among the merchants.

I actually bought Luca's new broadsword from Kal, and he'd made it extra special with mechanisms that would have made my fight with fake Luca much harder if the hashashin had known about them.

It wasn't just me either. A lot of my subordinates went to Kal to buy new weapons or for repairing their favorites.

Edo, in particular, tended to come by pretty often to have the shadowblade of his glaive re-sharpened. Guys from Ashley's squad often dropped by Kal's to get their shields repaired too.