We took off the rags, and I bundled the blankets up and tied them to various body parts. Now, when we put the rags on, the bundled blankets beneath them made it look as if we had grotesque deformities and hunchbacks.
“There’s one last thing I need to do,” I said, “one finishing touch to complete the illusion.”
I drew on the Death energy beneath the ground, pulling the stench of putrid, rotting flesh from the decaying corpses and imbuing the rags we wore with it. Now, the rags smelled utterly vile, and we could convincingly come across as diseased, revolting beggars.
“Ugh, this stink could make a maggot gag!” Yumo-Rezu gasped, on the verge of retching. “It won’t stick to us when we take these horrible rags off, will it?”
“The Death magic is bound to the rags,” I said. “Once we toss them aside, the stink will stay with them, and we’ll smell as fresh as roses, trust me. Now that we look the part, it’s time to act the part—and here, as crazy as it might seem, subtlety is our enemy. Contrary to what common sense might tell you, sometimes the best way to be inconspicuous is to actually draw attention to yourself.”
“Are you sure about that?” Friya raised an eyebrow. “I’m confident that we can fight our way out of whatever trouble we might get ourselves into, but you said yourself that stealth rather than brute force should be our priority for this mission.”
“Friya, I was an assassin long before I was a necromancer or a god, and I was a damn good one too. One of the best in Prand. Trust me when I say I know what I’m doing. Let’s go join the crowd of beggars out there by the gates.”
Both women seemed quite uncertain about doing this, but they nonetheless obeyed. Short of charging in with our weapons drawn and magical powers blazing, there wasn’t any other way into the city.
“Give yourselves a good limp and hobble when you walk,” I said as we emerged from the cover of the bushes and stepped onto the dirt road “You ever seen a beggar with a healthy stride?”
I set an example for them to follow by putting on a pronounced limp, stepping heavily with my right foot while dragging the left behind it, as if I was lame. I took a few hobbling steps like this, then looked over my shoulder to see how the women were doing. Both of them had put on convincing limps.
“That’s good,” I said. “Keep it consistent though. Don’t switch legs or change to a different kind of limp. You’d be surprised how easily even average people pick up something like that. Memorize the limp you’re using now, because you’re going to have to use it consistently until we’re deep inside Luminescent Spires.”
“I think I’ve got mine down,” Friya said, hobbling along quite convincingly.
“Me too.” Yumo-Rezu put on a staggering, lurching limp.
“Talk to yourselves too,” I said. “Not a loud jabbering, but a good constant stream of muttering. Feel free to throw in a good few coughing fits. The sort of pox-cough that sounds as if you’re about to hack up an entire lung.”
Soon, we were all limping and staggering along, muttering to ourselves and breaking out into horrendous fits of coughing. The women were doing an even better job than I could have hoped for, but the real test was still to come. We reached the back of the crowd of beggars and penniless peasants, and I stopped the two of them and whispered some more advice to them.
“Remember, seasoned, street-hardened beggars are neither quiet, polite nor civil. Shove people out of your way, grab and fight for anything that looks like even a scrap of food, and feel free to scream insults at people and spit at them. Again, follow my lead here.”
I turned around and began shoving through the crowd. The magical stench of our rags made even the dirtiest beggars’ noses wrinkle with disgust, and I didn’t have to do too much pushing or shoving for people to move out of the way and let us move toward the front of the crowd. When I’d reached the first few ranks of beggars, who were tightly pressed in a reeking mass against the guards’ fence of spears, I decided it was time to ramp things up.
Tensions were already running high. Since this was Saint Suncred’s Moon, and the poor had evidently been starved for at least a week, the crowd of beggars was like a tinder pile, just waiting for the right spark to set them ablaze and trigger a riot.
“Let us in, you goat fuckin’ bastards!” I roared at the guards, adding a hoarse rasp to my voice and putting on a perfect crude commoner’s accent. “We ain’t had nothin’ to eat for a bleedin’ week. By the Lord of fuckin’ Light, it’s fuckin’ Saint Suncred’s Moon! If you pricks don’t let us in, there’ll be hell to pay, there will!”
“Shut your trap you foul-smelling piece of shit, or we’ll skewer you on a spear and roast you for your filthy friends to eat!” the head guard yelled.
“You can skewer me, but you can’t stab all of us, ya troll cock!” I yelled back hoarsely. “There’s a lot more of us than there are of them. Isn’t that fuckin’ right, everyone?!”
A good number of beggars and peasants yelled out their agreement. Inside the shadows of my reeking hood, I grinned. I could taste a riot brewing.
“You’d better shut your mouth, you scum, or I’ll have your corpse hanging in a crow’s cage at the crossroads before the end of today!” the head guard yelled back. “Guards, seize that rancid fellow!”
“I’d rather die on the end of a spear
