The village chief dismissed him and turned to Wak’wakgoro and Nishka. “Have you ever heard anything that suggests bull-kin are talented with bows?”
“They must have hunters of their own. But there ain’t many people as good as Nishka the Scalesplitter, ma’am,” Wak’wakgoro replied, choosing his words carefully.
“He he. You can rest easy on that score.” And wouldn’t you know it, Nishka just had to take the opportunity to brag.
I was increasingly afraid the village chief was actually going to go for this. Did she have some kinda secret weapon?
“Hmm…” the village chief murmured. “How can we do this…”
Finally, she looked back up at me.
I gulped, a thick knot in my throat. I was filled with trepidation, wondering what on earth she might suggest. My wife trembled beside me. Sneaking a sideways glance at her, I saw she was looking at me anxiously.
On Cassandra’s other side, Elpaco stared quietly into space, his face unreadable. His mouth was slightly open and his animal ears twitched subtly, as if they were moving on their own.
“Shooter!” the village chief said.
“Y-yes?”
“If you were on your own, how many bull-kin would you be able to handle in a fight?”
“B-by myself? That’s hard to say. With ordinary humans, if I caught them by surprise and didn’t make any mistakes, I could subdue three or four. Any more than that, and all I’d be able to do is buy time with my staff.”
“I see. There’s a reason you’re the village’s best warrior!”
Yeah, your best part-time warrior, I thought to myself.
The village chief gave a curt nod and pushed herself up from her armchair. “I’ve made my decision.”
“S-so then, are we to attack? Despite what Shooter and the others have said?” Gimul put up a feeble argument, his face uncharacteristically pale for such a mountain of a man. Gimul did have a bit of an Oedipal complex, after all. He was probably terrified that something might happen to his stepmother. Plus, since our heart-to-heart in Bulka, he had started toadying up to me.
Or, wait, was he trying to take my side?
I was stuck in my moment of genuine shock when the village chief chuckled and looked me in the eye once again.
“Make no mistake. We fight.”
“You can’t be serious—that would be a lost cause…”
“The king himself has granted us this land in Apegut Forest. We will not yield this territory to anyone. I inherited this duty from my husband, and I will do everything in my power to protect it until I pass it on to you, Gimul.”
“But Shooter just told us we have no chance of victory in battle.”
“Do you think so little of us, son? We need not shed blood to win a battle. Diplomacy, properly deployed, is its own form of warfare.” The village chief grinned cheerfully and smacked Gimul on his muscular back. “We’ll head for the lake as soon as day breaks. We’ll take the bull-kin by the horns and bring them to the negotiating table!”
Now it made sense: I’d read in a book once that warfare was nothing more than a tool for negotiation. Now I finally understood what that meant. I smiled—this was an approach I could admire, a strategy I could support—but it seemed that Wak’wakgoro and Nishka didn’t quite understand what was going on. Meanwhile, my wife looked as uncomfortable as ever, and meanwhile again, Elpaco’s expression was implacably neutral. They wouldn’t object, not when they actually got it.
“I have walked many battlefields as a warrior,” said the village chief, “and I see nothing to fear here, but we must be prepared in case the worst should happen. Therefore, I want you, Shooter, to stand at my side throughout the negotiations and protect me, even if it costs you your life.”
“M-me? All right.”
“If things go well, I will reward you with the greatest prize I can give.”
At the village chief’s command, I instinctively prostrated myself before her out of habit. “As you wish, madam.”
How did she do that? Ah, the devotion that sweet Alexandricia could draw out with her dignity!
Sure, when the wyvern attacked the village, Alexandricia had come rushing out of her manor wearing armor, sword belted at her waist. But I don’t think I could ever forget how our bold knight lost her nerve and piddled down her leg at the sight of the wyvern. The sight of the commander-in-chief cowering like that sure painted an…interesting picture of her.
The memory of this adult woman pissing her pants almost brought a grin to my face, but Gimul must’ve caught something in my eyes. He gave me a sharp look.
At the same time, his eyes begged me to keep his stepmother safe.
Bah. As if I couldn’t! I’d taken self-defense classes! Granted, that was a while ago and I only learned how to fight off pervy attackers going for me, but this seemed like basically the same thing. I mean, spinning random part-time experience into actual useful stuff was basically my brand at this point, so…what was the worst that could happen?
And what was this “greatest prize” thing that sweet Alexandricia was talking about?
So anyway, there I was, completely naked. Insert record scratch—you’re probably wondering how I got here after I went and bought all those clothes in town. Yoi personally got me a pair of pants for Chrissake. The fates toy with me, clearly.
In less than an hour, I would get my chance to more thoroughly process how this had come to pass. There wasn’t much time to think about it now, though. Now, your hero, the bare-ass barbarian, was holding a wooden stick with a piece of white cloth tied around it, and that was the only piece of cloth in his vicinity.
They’d made this improvised white flag from my dearly beloved g-string. I know. Bite back your tears—ol’ Shooter’s going to get through this, but it gets worse.
See, the village chief had ordered me to walk out naked as a sign that we would not resist.
I gaped at her request, nakedly devastated, hard up for any counterargument. My tattered dignity dangled behind me in the wind.
I glanced over my shoulder—there stood the village chief decked out in her knight apparel, Gimul dressed for battle, with Nishka, with my wife, with all the adventurers and hunters we could scrape together arrayed in ranks as a show of force.
We stood outside the large cave on the lakeside in the western part of Apegut Forest. Several bull-kin stood across the clearing from us.
They got to be fully dressed! And those clothes looked nicer than anything I owned, anything Cassandra had ever seen, and probably anything the village chief ever wore.
This suuuuuuuuuucked.
The minotaurs were pointing at me, in all my brazen nudity, talking amongst themselves and readying their weapons.
“Wait! I’m unarmed! We’ve come to parlay with your clan!” I shouted as loudly as I could manage. Not only was I unarmed, I was totally unclothed. I would be completely exposed if they attacked.
Sure, they were minotaurs, but they couldn’t be bull-headed about negotiations, too…right?