by Akella,G.
"And Gorm didn't mind having demons who hadn't sworn fealty to him living on his land?"
"The satrap was friends with our dar's grandfather, and nobody doubted the Callehzians' loyalty. You're not from around here, so I don't expect you to know this. Not that it matters, for tomorrow there won't be anyone left of the Callehzian half-legion," the demon gave a bitter smile. "And here you are talking of loyalty..."
"Forgive me, Schen, I really am ignorant of these things," I said. "Thank you for sharing your story, and I insist on paying for our meal. Who knows—maybe you'll still be standing after tomorrow?" I laid three gold coins on the bar, turned and headed back to my clanmates. Having moved two tables together in the corner of the mess hall, they were waiting for their commander to start eating.
"What's the plan, dar?" Iam asked the question that was on everyone's minds as soon as I pushed my plate away.
The conversation around the table died down at once. Under the stares of fourteen pairs of eyes, I took a sip of dark ale that tasted almost like Porter, lit up and sat back on the bench.
"I haven't decided yet, but we still have some time. It all depends on the arrangements we make with the local commander. Ah, speak of the devil."
A tall fair-haired tifling stood in the doorway. Hardly older than my soldiers by the look of him, the demon wore a hard shell of interwoven steel plates sewn to a durable base layer of thick chamois leather. Two legionnaires in cuirasses and cloaks of black and gold followed him in, then stopped on either side of the door. The tifling looked our way, and his gaze almost stumbled over Salta, sitting to my left. The young man blushed ever so visibly, and something blinked in his eyes that reverberated somewhere deep inside me as a pang of... jealousy. But his bemusement didn't last long.
"I'm James dar Elnar, Farot's garrison commander," he said, enunciating every word. "A word with you, dar?" the tifling nodded at the innkeeper without waiting for my word of consent. "Is there a room available, Schen?"
"Right here," the innkeeper opened a wooden door on the right side of the bar, and we followed him inside. The innkeeper disappeared and returned momentarily with a full tray—a full bottle alongside two silver shot glasses, and small plates with sliced veggies and meat. Laying the tray down on a nearby table, Schen gave a silent nod and left the hall, shutting the door behind him. The tifling began pacing around the room anxiously, then sat down on one of the two available chairs and motioned for me to take the second.
"Have a seat. Who are you?"
"Is that really important right now?" I gave him a hard look. "Are you ready to listen to a story that may take all day?"
"I heard that you belong to one of the light races, though you'd hardly say that looking at you. Then again, the absence of a tail and horns doesn't mean much," the young demon brushed his hand over the bone protuberances jutting out of his head. "I also heard that you were sent here by the Lightning God, who was worshipped by my father and his father before him. I too was ordained into his service, though the shrine where it happened was lost to the undead when they overran La-Kharte. Along with the priest. My father, however..." the young tifling's eyes flashed with a suppressed pain. "He remembered how the ritual went. Finally, I know that over the past month your party of simple farmers has wiped out more undead in the kingdom than my century has killed in a year. And now you turn up here in Farot, just as we're preparing to meet our deaths, like some kind of knight in shining armor riding Hart himself... Who are you, dar?! And what are you doing in our gods-forsaken land?"
"Well, at least the formalities are out of the way," I chuckled, pouring my shot glass full of whatever spirit was in the bottle. I took a sip—the drink tasted a bit like cognac—then took a long drag on my pipe and settled back in my seat. The chair's upholstery was surprisingly soft and pleasant. "What if I told you that I'm here by sheer accident? And that it wasn't Ingvar who sent me? Would you even believe me? The truth is that I need to get to the Derelict Temple in Gilthor. I have business with the locals there."
"Gilthor is quarantined because of the plague! The province's residents are slowly dying."
"The plague?" I nearly choked on the smoke.
"Aye, a homing pigeon brought the news the other day. Satrap Rumpel's men made a sally into the temple, and contracted the illness. Not that it matters now!" the tifling upended his glass, puckered his face and looked up at me. "What do you intend to do, Krian? Why didn't you leave for Xantarra with everyone else? I may not have all the answers, but I know for a fact that your staying here won't change anything for us."
"Why didn't you leave?"
"Nearly five hundred peasants with families, children... Do you think that sixty seven soldiers, myself included, is a price worth paying for their lives? For immortalizing Callehzian warriors in the minds and hearts of the civilians they rescued? We've already lived the lives the gods had allotted us. When Gorm receives our missive tomorrow, he will move out his troops to cover the refugees and smash the monsters pursuing them. All we need to do is hold out till evening. As for you, dar, you should keep going to Xantarra. This isn't your fight—you've already done a great deal for this satrapy. Gorm is expecting you, so go and meet him. We will manage here on our own..."
Now this was unexpected! For an NPC to be in a situation this dire and not offer a quest to defend the stronghold against the onslaught of the undead... But then, I could hardly regard him as an NPC—sitting before me was a young demon, driven by valor and fortitude, who also appeared to have taken a liking to my head archeress. Wait! I scolded myself. Could that be it? The tifling knew that if I stayed in Farot, she would stay as well, essentially signing her death warrant. Or perhaps he didn't want to share the glory of a heroic death with anyone else... I marveled for a moment how utterly insane either theory sounded in relation to what was supposed to be a computer program.
"Wait a second, James." Shoving the tray aside, I unfolded a map on the table, and put my finger east of the fort. "Is the army coming from this direction?"
"Yes," tifling nodded.
"Then what makes you think they won't bypass Farot altogether?"
"Because they're taking this road right here," Elnar pointed at an area on the map. "All the nearby villages have been either wiped out or evacuated to the city. We're the only ones left. And the undead host won't be enough for the Xantarra garrison. I don't know who's in command of those beasts from Suonu, but clearly he's not an idiot."
In the books I had read, the heroes that somehow landed in the Middle Ages oftentimes displayed remarkable aptitude for military command. As a rule, before traveling back in time they were either military history buffs who knew all the historical battles; or they brought along a computer the hard drive of which was filled not with typical content like games, pirated movies and so on, but with literature essential to their survival; or... Or they were simply lucky to have leadership in their blood, even if they were a bum, a wino or a retired engineer in their past life. I never cared much for history, I didn't have a computer with me—aside from the one in my private room, and it wasn't especially useful in this situation. And I very much doubted my inborn martial prowess, considering I could barely make sense of a simple map. Sure, I could tell a mountain from a river, but... A river! Why the hell not?! It had worked once, it could work again.
"James, that bridge... If we burn it or break it, then we can—"
"Won't work," the tifling shook his head. "There's a ford not a quarter mile upstream, and fords can't be burned or broken. Don't insult me, Krian. Did you think I didn't consider it?"
"How wide is the ford?"
"Fifteen-twenty yards," crossing his arms over his chest, Elnar cast a bored look up at the ceiling and continued, his tone that of a tired schoolteacher explaining a common truth to a slacking student. "Attacking them at the ford won't work. The water may weaken their position a bit, but the distance from the nearest cover to the bank is fifty yards at best. Their mages and archers—and there are about two hundred of th
em—will make pin-cushions out of us the moment we leave cover. Those troops are the lightest, so they'll be in the front during the crossing. The soil is too hard and rocky to dig a big enough ditch on the bank, and I have no ballistas or catapults at my disposal," the tifling spread his arms, accentuating his defenseless position. "No cavalry either. Technically, we do have plenty of horses stabled, but riding a horse and executing a mounted attack are two very different things. My father had a century of getare, but they all perished by Xantarra. There's no hope. You should go, dar. Let's finish up this bottle, and then you'll go."
I sat there in silence for a while. I boasted one indisputable advantage over all the other regular Joes turned generals: in the battles of this world, math determined everything. Our presumptive enemy would attack at any rate, and would pick the shortest, most accessible approach for the attack. Since the patch many NPCs had grown remarkably similar to real people, that was true. For instance, I wouldn't expect them to whack away mindlessly at a tank in full plate with squishy mages and archers standing nearby dealing a lion's share of the damage. However, the patch notes only mentioned NPCs, and not common mobs. From everything that I had observed, there was no reason to fear that the undead would behave inconsistently from whatever behavioral scripts they had been programmed with. And that meant not all was lost. Not just yet.
"The thing is, Elnar," I took a long drag, and exhaled the smoke slowly. "I know how to rout the undead army."
"So what do we have to do? Summon our god?" the feigned apathy was gone from the tifling's face. He leaned forward in his chair, locking eyes with me. Tension hung thick in the air.
"You and your people must join my clan."
After several seconds of silence, Elnar fell back in his chair and burst into laughter.
"You're a funny one, dar," he said, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand. "I would consider your proposal an insult if I didn't know you weren't from around here."
"What's so insulting about my proposal?"
"The scion of an ancient bloodline with elder demons for ancestors, serving under a kinless vagabond? Not on your life, dar! I can't even see your lineage. It's as if you don't exist."
"And if you ask me, you're simply a coward," laying the smoking pipe on the table, I crossed my arms and fell back in my chair, my whole demeanor radiating disdain.
In one fluid motion Elnar was on his feet. The tip of his sword, which he'd whipped out with a swoosh, was pointing right at my throat no more than four inches away.
"What did you say?" the tifling's voice was breaking with fury. His tail was lashing the ground around him, and his narrowed eyes were slits of molten steel.
The reaction wasn't entirely unexpected, so I hadn't even flinched. I knew that I was never really in danger—this fellow's alignment was too lawful good to kill me over an insult. Were he to challenge me to a duel, I would kill him without any trouble, even with his 100,000 HP. Why provoke him, then? Simply put, I didn't see any other choice. Maybe some psychology expert could have done without it, but I didn't possess those kinds of skills.
"I said," I syllabicated, completely ignoring the blade at my throat, "that you are a coward. You hide behind some lofty goal, but what you really want is to die in this bloody wooden box, along with all these people who've trusted you with their lives—all to escape your problems in one fell swoop. Have you bothered asking them if they'd rather live or die? What will you tell your father and your father's father when you meet them in the Flame? That you left behind an heir? That you defended your ancestral castle? Or will you tell them that when you had such a chance, you turned it down because of pridefulness?"
The demon was silent for a time, and then the fury in his face turned sour.
"Oh, what do you know, light one..." James spat through clenched teeth, sheathing his sword in a sudden movement. He snatched the bottle off the table and took several big swigs.
"I know that tomorrow we will rout the undead host. And then we'll go and retake La-Kharte, or whatever that castle of yours is called."
"Krian, either you're sick in the head or..." the tifling sniffed his sleeve in lieu of a proper chaser, placed the bottle back on the table, and shook his head dejectedly. "There are almost two thousand monsters in that castle! All the troops in Xantarra couldn't retake the castle. And you intend to do it with a hundred?"
"Listen, James, what do you have to lose? Who's going to find out that you swore an oath to me if we all die here tomorrow? You don't believe me when I say we can trounce this army with a hundred fighters, but when we do, will you doubt me that we can dislodge a few thousand walking corpses out of that castle? Besides, joining my clan isn't an oath of fealty. You can't leave on your own, sure, but I don't intend to keep you in the clan against your will. Once we retake your castle and clear out the Derelict Temple, you can take your people and join a dancing troupe for all I care. Well?" I gave him a hard stare. "What say you?"
"Swear it," he said after a short pause. "Swear that we would set out for La-Kharte right away."
"I'll need to drop by Xantarra for a few days to take care of some unfinished business. But from there we'll head straight to your Callehzia."
"All right," the tifling gave a kind of estranged nod.
"What am I supposed to say?"
"Here," Elnar laid a short curved dagger on the table. "While the blood is flowing, repeat what you just said, and swear it by the name of your god."
If only you knew how many gods I've brushed shoulders with, I chuckled to myself. I probably shouldn't invoke Hart's name in this situation, and I had never personally met Setara. Picking up the dagger, I slashed at my wrist and simply spoke of my immediate plans in the ensuing silence. Nothing happened when I uttered the warrior god's name—no crashing thunder or bolts of lightning. But my vow seemed to satisfy Elnar just fine.
You've accessed the quest: Defending Farot.
Quest type: unique.
Destroy the army of Magroom the Reaper, then report your victory to Gorm, the Satrap of Xantarra.
Reward: experience, increased reputation with the Craedia Princedom, increased reputation with Satrap Gorm, increased reputation with Dar Elnar, one bonus talent point.
You've accessed the quest: Cleansing Callehzia.
Quest type: unique.
Clear the La-Kharte Castle of its undead invaders and repel the assault on the castle that will follow.
Reward: experience, increased reputation with the Craedia Princedom, increased reputation with Dar Elnar, an eight piece rare quality armor set of your choosing, unknown.
James dar Elnar requests to join the Steel Wolves clan...
It worked! It actually worked!!! I didn't doubt for a second that all of Elnar's fighters would join the clan as well, which meant we were now eighty two men strong, i.e. strong enough to roll up to the Derelict Temple and have a proper heart-to-heart with its denizens. But first things first: I had an undead assault to repel and a castle to liberate in a neighboring satrapy. And though the prognosis did appear grim on the face of it, a rough battle plan was already forming in my head. A wise man once said that all battle plans are good before the actual battle begins, but I wasn't going to sweat it. As always, I had little choice in the matter anyway, and I wasn't going to just let some reaper stiff eat my lunch. Mmm, lunch, I thought to my self. As soon as I make it out and find Max and Alyona, I'm taking them to a pub, ordering a feast of burgers, fries and ice cream floats, and we're not coming out for at least a week!
"I feel... strange," Elnar shifted his shoulders. "My whole body feels unusually light."
"Don't worry, that's normal," I nodded to him. "Now listen, this is what we're going to do..."
Chapter 5
A thick fog descended upon the river at nightfall, blanketing the woods and the riverbank, the whitish haze tangling in willow branches and obscuring the water line. Come sunrise, the morning wind shredded the creamy blanket and banished its scraps over the river, w
ith the rising sun finishing off the remains.
Alcene, yet another river flowing into Ithele, was about a hundred yards wide at the ford. The river bed at the crossing was even and firm, and the water went no higher than my waist at the deepest spots. Last night, when most of the century was sound asleep after having their talents tinkered with by yours truly, I left Iam and Aritor in Farot to forge eleven additional sets of armor for the new clanmates' horses, and took the rest of my people to the ford. We crossed the river back and forth several times, testing the current. Though it was fairly strong, the horses didn't seem at all bothered by it. As for Gloom, he looked like the happiest boar on the planet, causing Reece to hypothesize that a couple of elven beavers must've made an appearance at some obscure branch of his family tree.
Elnar had been right—the ford spanned no more than twenty feet at its widest, meaning it could fit a row of ten riders at best. On either side of it the bed of the river fell precipitously and became sludgy, so we installed roughly thirty markers to frame the crossing. As for the bridge downstream, it burned in twenty minutes flat. It was a pity to destroy the honest work of others, but we had no choice. This nightmare would end eventually, and the peasants would rebuild.
For three hours now my mounted century was waiting for the host approaching from Suonu, hidden behind a wall of shrubbery some fifty yards from the Alcene crossing. It was really an unnecessary precaution since the undead wouldn't notice us till we appeared in their aggro radius anyway, yet it still bought me peace of mind. The horses were calm, and the demons—still shaken by their newly acquired abilities and sensing a glimmer of hope—were conversing quietly behind me.