"I thought it was time we met," said Randall.

     Baron Hawke stared in surprise and dismay at the people gathered in his sitting room. All working class rabble by the look of them, except for a butler, a maid, his wife and his two young children, sitting in wide eyed terror in chairs that had been moved into a line in the middle of the room. They each had a knife held to their throat by one of the intruders standing behind them and had their hands tied behind their backs.

     "I apologise for the rough treatment of your family," said Randall, taking a step forward, his hands held out before him placatingly. "They won't be harmed, you have my word. We just couldn't have them running off and fetching the police."

     "Take what you want," said the Baron, gesturing at the silver ornaments sitting on the shelves and alcoves of the spacious room. He stared at his family and they stared back at him, their eyes wide with fear. "I have money..."

     "All I want in a few minutes to talk to you. Then we'll all leave you in peace and you can get back to your normal lives. Is there somewhere private we can go?"

     "I have no secrets from my family, and I'm not leaving them alone with your gang of cutthroats."

     "No secrets?" asked Randall, his eyebrows rising with amusement. "They know everything? Even about Victor Monson?"

     "How do you know about..." The Baron cut himself off in sudden alarm, his eyes flying back to those of his wife. This time, though, he looked away in shame and alarm. He looked back at Randall to find the hibernator looking at him questioningly. "My office," he said, pointing back to the door he'd come in through. "If anything happens to my family..."

     "Nothing will, I swear it," Randall reassured him.

     "If anything happens to them, there's nowhere in the world you'll be able to hide from me. I will hunt you down and I swear that I will make you scream for a whole day. And tell them to take their knives away from their throats!"

     Randall gave a hand signal and the knives were withdrawn, although the labourers remained close beside the prisoners. Randall then signalled for the Baron to leave the room. The Baron gave his family one last agonised look, then left, his face pale and sweaty. Randall followed close behind, closing the door behind him as he went.

     There was a small office just down the corridor, just large enough for a desk, a chair and a row of cabinets opposite the window looking out over the neatly tended garden. Randall gestured for the Baron to sit in the chair, then closed the door behind them.

     "I assume you intend to blackmail me," said the Baron, gathering his courage and looking the hibernator right in the eye. "You want money or some kind of service from me and in return you won't reveal my connection with Victor Monson."

     "More or less," replied Randall. "I assume you know who I am. My name is Watt Fletcher." He waited to see how the other man responded to the name.

     "Never heard of you," replied the Baron.

     Randall nodded to himself. He'd suspected as much. He had quite a following in the outer circle of the city by now, but the aristocracy would only care what the working classes did if it affected them directly. In the normal course of affairs it would take Randall months or even years to reach that point, so he had to hurry things along a bit. He had to bring himself to their attention. It was a high risk strategy, but if he played his cards right with Baron Hawke the entire aristocracy would know his name by the end of the week and they would have no choice but to take him seriously.

     "I represent the honest working men of the outer districts," he told the other man. "The men who are preparing to fight and, if necessary, die to defend this city against the orcs who are even now gathering outside the walls. We think it only right and proper that people like you do your part as well. You are, what? In your thirties? You are strong and healthy and you are skilled with the spear and the bow. Even that son of yours looks old enough to..."

     "He's only thirteen!" protested the Baron. "Leave him out of this!"

     "There are thirteen years olds on the wall, preparing to do their part. That son of yours put up a pretty good fight when my men overpowered him. Why shouldn't that strength and spirit be put to good use protecting mankind against its mortal enemy? Why are you and he not on the walls with the masons, the carpenters and the oilers?"

     The Baron stared at him in astonishment. "Are you serious?" he cried. "Do you think we would be safe rubbing shoulders with the lower classes? They resent our higher station in life and would stab us in the back the first chance they got!"

     "So you let them risk their lives to protect you while you sit safe and sound in your cosy living room with your silver ornaments and your thick carpets and your butler to bring you glasses of wine." He came closer, face thrust forward towards the other man who shrank back in his chair before him. "Red wine perhaps," said Randall, "to match the red blood being shed on the walls by men who are each worth a hundred of you."

     "So you want me to fight on the walls alongside illiterate, rough handed peasants who would rather kill me than the orcs?"

     "Only if you don't want every aristocrat in the city to know that you trade with Victor Monson, the country's biggest supplier of opium. and that you are the chief supplier and distributor of opium in this city."

     The Baron laughed. "You idiot! The aristocrats are the ones who buy most of it! They'd do anything to ensure that the supply continues smoothly."

     Randall smiled. "They'd do anything, that's right, but you could hardly remain in the opium smuggling business once you were exposed. They'd have to find someone else to take over the business, and what would happen to you then? They could hardly leave you running around free, knowing everything about the smuggling network. Names, places..." He leaned in closer, making the Baron cringe back even further in his chair. "Prices. You make quite a bit of profit from the opium, don't you? Do the other Barons know how much you hike up the price?"

     "You can't prove that!"

     "Actually, I can. All sorts of people come to my meetings. Merchants, traders, businessmen. They all talk. They don't realise that they're giving away such important secrets, of course. They only speak of what they think are trivial things. The price of horse feed, the difficulties in honouring delivery contracts through the countryside when orcs are attracted to the odours of certain products. Gossip pertaining to the personal habits of certain high ranking dignitaries... A thousand little details like that. I have a certain... Talent, you might say. I can remember all those little details, put them all together and work out exactly how much the merchants are paying for each product they carry. Like opium, for example. And I keep a lot of notes. What was said by each man. It makes quite a pile of paperwork, I admit, but give it to an accountant and they can confirm that you are paying ten crowns for a dozen ounces of opium and that you are charging your customers five times as much."

     The Baron rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand while his eyes darted madly around the room as if searching for an escape route. "Supply and demand," he said. "I can charge whatever I want..."

     "And how much do you pay Badger? He claims fifty percent of your profits, right? But do you pay him fifty percent of fifty crowns, or only ten?" I've heard what Badger does to people who try to cheat him..."

     "I can't go on the wall!" wailed the Baron in terror and despair. "They'd kill me! If I took half the army with me they'd still find a way to kill me!'

     "Relax," said Randall, stepping back a couple of paces to give the man room. "I'm not asking you to. Your death wouldn't benefit me. All I want is for you to raise the matter with the Council of Barons. Propose a motion that aristocrats young and healthy enough to fight do their fair share to defend the city."

     "You're mad! Such a motion wouldn't even be seconded!"

     "You're right, but it would at least bring the matter to their attention and that's all I want for the time being. Let them know that the common people resent the fact that they don't do their fair share."

     The Baron laughed bitterly. "They already know that and they don't care."

      "I intend to make them care. Do what I ask and I promise you that your dirty little secrets will never see the light of day. All you will suffer is a little loss of dignity in the council when they shout you down, but the point will have been made. The first step will have been taken towards the day when all the people of this city, rich and poor alike, stand together to fight the threat of the orcs."

     "You're insane if you think that day will ever come," said the Baron, "but I'll do what you ask. The next meeting of the council takes place on Thursday the twelth. Will that be soon enough for you?"

     The city would be under full seige by then and both men knew it, but Randall nodded. "Good enough," he said. "Too late for this incursion but maybe not too late for the next. See that you keep your word, though, or what I know will find its way to those people best able to put the information to good use."

     "I expect you to keep your word too," the Baron replied. "Free my family and leave us in peace."

     Randall nodded. "I promised that no harm would come to them other than a little rope burn to their wrists and I keep my promise. We'll leave you to untie them."

     Randall opened the door to leave and the Baron ran ahead of him back to the sitting room. He was already pulling at the rope binding his wife's hands as Randall and his men let themselves back out onto the street.

     "He's going to have every woodentop and every soldier in the city looking for you," said Deeks as he and the others scattered, every man heading for a different gate in Harper's Wall. "You really think you can hide from them all while continuing to hold rallies with the people?"

     "I wouldn't have done this if I didn't," Randall replied.

     Deeks stared at the side of his face as they walked. "I can't decide if you're the bravest, noblest man in the city or a total madman!"

     "Let's go with brave, shall we?"

     "But how? How will you do it? The very next time you hold a meeting fhe city's entire police force will descend on you. The entire crowd will be rounded up and half of them will be hung, starting with you."

     "If we actually hold meetings," replied the hibernator. "Suppose, however, that all the people we've already recruited go around telling people about the rousing meetings they've just been to. I am a loyal supporter of the aristocrats, they'll say, but I saw a thousand people demanding that the Lords and Barons be dragged out of their mansions and hung from the street lamps if they don't do their part in the city's defence. Every man who heard these tales will wish they'd been to the meeting and will want to be at the next one. Watt Fletcher will be a faceless legend who is somehow able to be nowhere and everywhere."

     "That's brilliant!" said Deeks in wonder. "That's genius!"

     Randall smiled. "And maybe one day, when the orcs have been driven away, when we have enough people, maybe we can have a real meeting. One to which every working man in the city will attend. A meeting so large that the police won't be able to do a thing about it except watch and hear my words along with everyone else."

     "And then we march!" said Deeks, his eyes shining with anticipation. "We march on the nobles in such numbers that all the soldiers and all the police won't be able to stop us. The whole city on the march, an unstoppable force. The nobles will have to give in to our demands or be hung from their own gibbits! A masterful plan, my friend! No-one else could have thought of it!"

     Randall doubted that it would be that easy, even if that was the plan. Not that he had much of a plan. At the moment, all he could do was gather as much power as he could and hope for the best. If he turned into a revolutionary who overthrew the aristocrats and watched as they were put to death in some gruesome and public way then so be it, but he was a civilised man. If he could gain power peacefully and without bloodshed then so much the better. First, though, there were the orcs to deal with. It would be a cruel irony if the way he joined the aristocrats was as just one more mutilated corpse lying amongst theirs...