Author's Note: The game that is D&D lacks the attribute "owned by Eaglejarl."

After some long thought, I still had no idea why the Deorsi would be behaving the way they were, so I tabled the issue.

"Ok, I don't think we have enough information to figure out what they are searching for or why. Back to the original question: how do we bring their whole army to battle somewhere outside of our cities? It needs to be the entire army; we need to get all of them in one shot or they'll just start resurrecting everyone we kill. And it really needs to be well away from the cities. I'm thinking of something that does a lot of collateral damage; we definitely don't want to use it where there's anything breakable around. For instance, castles."

Every member of the Landguard got the same look on their face; half "oh gods, what now?" and half "eaten alive with curiosity." After a long moment, they set those feelings aside and addressed the question.

Silence reigned for a long moment, then Thomas spoke up. "Battlefield strategy isn't really our strong point, Jake. The Landguard haven't had to fight a full scale battle in centuries; all of our potential opponents are terrified of us. We do bodyguard work, border patrol, disaster relief, policing, and monster slaying." He paused, frowning slightly in thought, then continued. "That said, if this were a monster hunt the way to do it would be to either bait the creature to the killing ground with something it wanted, or drive it there with something it feared. For most monsters the obvious answers are food for the first, fire for the second. I'm not sure what the equivalents would be for the Deorsi, though. We don't have anything to make them run, so that's out. As to bait...we could put some or all of the army out there. But they wouldn't need to send their entire army for that; they could envelop and destroy it with only part of their forces. Whatever we bait them with, it would have to be something that they needed to bring their entire force to bear on...something either really dangerous, or something really large, like another army of about their size."

"Where they're camped now is fairly out of the way," Ethan pointed out, his tone clipped. "They are enveloping the town of Tor Hadrath, with their main body camped three or four miles away from what I can tell on the map. There aren't any other settlements for fifteen miles in any direction. We can't get troops there in any real numbers, but their main body is several miles away; it would be easy to attack them there. And if you need to have some people on the ground there, we could teleport a handful in."

I nodded, slowly. "How many people in Tor Hadrath?"

They all looked at each other to see if anyone else knew the answer. Finally Thomas answered. "Maybe fifty thousand? Something like that, anyway." He sounded unsure, which just painted worse and worse pictures of hundreds of thousands going down to die if I wiped out the Deorsi army.

I paled a little. "Is there any way we can evacuate them?"

Thomas looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Not reasonably, no. Like we said, the Deorsi have put in an envelopment, with the main body of their troops held back a few miles. The only reason they haven't captured the place yet is because of the truce that Albrecht gave us. The minute the timer runs out, they'll teleport their people behind the walls and own the place within hours. Why?"

"Well, if we set off—" my brain threw up giant flashing red lights and AWOOGAH! sirens as I suddenly realized what the Landguard would say if I told them the plan. Smoothly, I redirected my sentence. "—to fight the Deorsi there, the town might suffer."

Now it wasn't just Thomas giving me the hairy eyeball, it was the entire group. All except for Franklin who kept looking back and forth between me and Thomas, clearly unsure about where his loyalties should lie.

Fortunately, Allison's voice snarked out of the fireplace and distracted us all before Thomas and friends could start ripping apart my pitiful prevarication. "Useless, the pack of you. Utterly pathetic. Big bad soldier boys, can't even figure out how to get attacked right."

All eyes turned to her. "Ahem. Soldier boys?" asked Olivia, the only female Landguard to survive the Deorsi teleportation attack. She had just a trace of an accent that stretched the 'o's out and put the emphasis on odd silly bobbles; I kept trying to figure out what it reminded me of, and it was driving me crazy that I couldn't.

"Heh. Fine, point for you. Boys and girls, you're still all useless."

I grinned, sensing that she had something for us to demonstrate just how useless we all were and how brilliant she was. "And you are not useless, O self-styled Brightly Shining Mistress of the Annoying?"

"Well, duh."

I waited a beat, knowing she was going to make me ask but hoping not to have to. Finally I gave up with a sigh. "And what might that be, O Annoying One? Congratulations on living up to your title, by the way."

She laughed. "Find whatever they're looking for, use that as bait. Duh." The fireplace echoed with the sound of a loud Bronx cheer.

Seriously, how the heck did she do that with no tongue and no lips?

"Ah, of course," I shot back, my tone as dry as dust. "Why didn't I think of that? All we have to do is deduce the unknown goal of their search, which they might not actually be conducting, from essentially no evidence and with no real understanding of their motivations. Ridiculously simple, I bow to your superior wisdom for coming up with it."

"Actually, it's a pretty good idea," said the motley-clad man in the seat next to me. I yelped and jumped up, turning to face him. None of the Landguard moved. In fact, a quick glance showed that they were utterly still, trapped in a freeze frame moment. Allison was equally motionless, with a shower of sparks stuck in mid-pop. I paled and backed away towards the door.

"Oh, do calm down and have a seat. I'm hardly about to attack you," said the woman sitting in the chair where the man had just been.

I stayed where I was, still poised to take off. I wasn't actually afraid of who- or whatever this was, but a significant degree of caution seemed called for around anything that could suddenly appear in the middle of my magically shielded bedroom in the middle of my heavily defended castle while putting my highly lethal bodyguard into a literal time out. Yeah, not so much with the reassuring.

With no perceptible change the thing in the chair looked like a five foot tall anthropomorphic otter in Robin Hood tights, jerkin, and feathered hat. "Would you please sit down, for the love of licorice?!" the thing grumped at me.

Slowly I took my seat; it didn't seem likely that it was going to attack and, if it did, it seemed less likely that I could escape. "And you are...?" I asked warily.

The two foot duck hopped up and bowed elegantly, one wing crossed over its red sash. "Jogan the Jocular, at your service!" The giant fern swayed for a moment, one frond tapping on what would have been a chin in a person. "Well, not actually at your service. More like offering a deal for services. And collecting on a deal. And not always Jogan either. Hm. Maybe Wilgam the Wily? Ooh, or Karash the Kindly? I always loved that name. Those people had a great sense of humor. Oh, wait, I know! How about Loki?" A man-shaped bonfire blazed in the chair, but the chair was not affected. "I think that's my name—well, one of them—back where you're from. Or maybe you know me as Coyote?" Suddenly the chair held a tall, muscular man with red-brown skin and the head of a canid. "Sorry, it's been a while since I was in your neighborhood; I don't remember which of my names were best known."

I was sitting next to a god.

No, seriously. I Was Sitting. Next To. A. God. An actual, real life god, straight out of myths and legends. Could my life get any weirder?

And, of course, just to add to the fun, it was a well-known-for-being-unreliable, bargain-twisting, rules-lawyering trickster god with a penchant for playing mean tricks. Oh yeah, this was gonna go great.

"Hey, I resemble that remark!" scolded the miniature turtle crawling across the seat of the chair. It pushed itself up on its back legs, shaking its forelimbs at me and tsk-tsking.

"You read minds too. Joy. This just keeps getting better. Ok, what can I do for you?" I grumbled.

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