Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “So it does,” Aldwin agreed, a complicated array of emotions playing across the retired knight’s face, the most recognizable of them being tired resignation. But those emotions only lasted for a handful of seconds before they were buried under a stoic expression, the pragmatic military side to the man taking over as he looked towards Sierra. “How long do we have before they arrive?”

  “A couple days at least,” she replied in a somewhat confident tone. “Though how much longer depends on how quickly they want to move and if we can find a way to delay them. When we found the horde, they were roughly a half-day or so away from where Shadow’s Fall used to be, which they could reach tonight if they keep the same pace. But from there, they’ll need to cross all the rivers that are between them and farther south, which will slow them down quite a bit no matter what they do.”

  “Especially if they want to use the opportunity to stock up on water and forage as best they can for extra food,” the scout added as an afterthought. “They won’t have much opportunity for that the farther south they go now that we’ve burnt the forests and chased all the animals away.”

  “So possibly as early as Friday afternoon sometime,” Aldwin said as we all did the mental math with the distances and delays involved. “But depending on how quickly they march during the day, they may not be keen on risking an engagement immediately. At least not without a chance to rest.”

  “Not unless they send part of their forces to reinforce Valor’s Point ahead of them,” I said, a thought then coming to my mind and causing me to turn towards Garr. “What can you tell us about Zhul? Specifically with regards to his tactics and leadership. Should we be worried about a surprise attack or something unexpected from him?”

  “Hm, on principle I would say yes, because not to do so risks inviting defeat, but in this situation, I am not certain,” Garr replied hesitantly as he mulled over the question. “As an orc, Zhul is…brash, vicious, and direct, ruling through pure strength rather than subterfuge. If given the option, I would think he would seek to overpower you and beat you into submission, rather than winning through a clever maneuver. Yet that does not mean he isn’t cunning or intelligent either, else Krol would have not entrusted him with Khudazal.”

  The gronn paused for a second to consider his thoughts.

  “Unless forced otherwise, it is my thought that Zhul would look to play to his strengths, lest he look weak to the other tribes by relying on tricks or misdirection to win the day. Especially after the damage we have wrought during our raid. If he has felt the need to join the horde, it is because he is looking to do what he can to restore his status among the other tribes.”

  “I would agree to that line of thinking as well,” Aldwin added, nodding at Garr as he spoke. “There have been many a time during the war when we’ve seen warlords do reckless things or ignore clear opportunities so that they could prove themselves to the tribes following them. If this Zhul has found his position weakened, then it is likely that he would look to do the same.”

  “If it helps your thinking and to know Zhul’s mind better, you might also look to speak to Arcturus,” Garr suggested. “I know that he fought against him before—or at least his tribe in the earlier days of our war. I am certain that he would have some further insight to share that I do not possess.”

  “That’s good to know,” I replied, making a mental note for either me or someone else to do just that once he returned to Aldford, the gronn having been all too eager to join Freya and the others in skirmishing with the orcs. “At any rate, as much as having Zhul joining the horde makes it harder for us, there is also a slight silver lining here. It means that he’s left Khudazal to attack us directly, giving us a chance to do what we couldn’t do during our raid and kill him.”

  “Perhaps,” Garr agreed despite shaking his head from side to side. “But such a thing might be easier said than done. As one of the leaders of the heralds, Zhul would be only surpassed by Krol and a few other of his lieutenants in strength. I would not expect him to be beaten easily in combat.”

  “Nor do I,” I replied, already trying to imagine how we would deal with both the warlord and the siegebreaker at the same time, let alone the orc horde and corrupted constructs and spirits accompanying them. “But at the same time, this is the hand that we’ve been dealt, so it’s up to us to find a way to do it. Leaving the orcs leaderless would go a long way for us.”

  “You’re not wrong there, Lyr,” Constantine said as I finished speaking. “But I think we’ve forgotten about someone else here, and that’s Sthera. If Zhul’s come looking for us, what is she up to? She might have gone to do the same against Senzin, Aryana, and the others in the fens.”

  “Shit, that’s a good point,” I replied, having temporarily forgotten about the arakissi necromancer, my head swiveling back towards Garr. “I don’t suppose you would be able to give us any insight into that? Would she react the same as Zhul would?”

  “Now that I am afraid I do not know in the slightest,” the gronn replied apologetically. “During my enslavement, any word about Sthera was hard to come by, for she was much the opposite of Zhul, preferring to rarely be seen or heard of. So much so, that I could not even tell you with certainty if she was even at Khudazal during your raid.”

  “I see,” I said, frowning at the news. “And while we’re on that topic, we haven’t heard from Senzin yet as he promised either.”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Garr replied with a shake of his head. “Though there could be any reason for that delay. From what he and his companions have told me in the past, their situation in the fens was rather tenuous to begin with, and they may have been forced to change their plans after fleeing Khudazal.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed outwardly, though internally I couldn’t help but be a little concerned now that I’d thought of it. I’d made sure to reach out to Trivium and the other adventurers both in reality and by the in-game personal messaging, but I hadn’t received replies on either front. Granted, it had only been little more than two days since we parted ways at the orc city, but the fact that they hadn’t even checked in made me wonder what had happened. “I suppose we’ll just need to wait and see if they reach out to us when they can. Beyond that, we have our hands full with our own problems.”

  “That we certainly do,” Aldwin agreed, his expression softening somewhat as he continued. “Though from what you’ve told me of the other allies that you’ve encountered, as well as Aryana, I would put my faith in believing that they are doing the best they can with whatever the gods have dealt them. And while I can’t speak for the others, I know that whatever being or creature that dares to cross Aryana’s path with malice in its heart won’t live long to regret it.”

  “After meeting her myself, I’d have to agree with that too,” I replied, smiling at the bann and the way he spoke of the woman, once again wondering just what their relationship between each other had been.

  After we’d returned from Khudazal, I’d made a point to pass on Aryana’s message to Aldwin once things had quieted down, instantly seeing surprise and worry appearing on the man’s face the second I mentioned her. From what I’d been able to infer through the brief conversation that had followed afterward, they’d known one another practically their entire lives once arriving in Eberia and had worked closely together on occasion while serving in the military. Unfortunately, though, once the war ended, the pair had fallen out of touch, especially once Aldwin had accepted his voluntary exile away from Eberia.

  Hopefully, they’re all safe enough and were just caught up in something unexpected, I thought as I pushed that train of thought to the side and forced myself to focus on the more tangible problems that demanded my attention here.

  “In any case,” I said as I glanced between everyone in the room, my eyes eventually landing on Kilgore, “we now have two days to get ourselves as ready as possible before the orcs arrive, which means if we weren’t in a rush already to make sure we were ready for them, we certainly are
now. That means we’re going to need to iron out our plans quickly going forward or we’re going to run out of time.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Constantine grunted, his head turning towards Sierra. “But speaking of time, do you think we have any chance of delaying their horde like we did before? If we could buy ourselves an extra day or even half of one, it would only help us.”

  “I’m sure it would,” the woman replied with a shake of her head. “But honestly, though? I don’t know. We’re in a bit of a hard place having lost Valor’s Point, and we’d have to send a fairly large group to have a chance of slowing down the main horde.”

  “Which, in turn, would leave us exposed here should the orcs at the base choose to press their advantage,” Aldwin said as we all recognized the problem with that plan. “Not to mention risk their capture, should the orcs and Dread Crew try something clever.”

  “And also cost us a lot of manpower that we could use around the town too,” I added, thinking of all the various tasks that we could use them for around Aldford instead.

  “Pretty much,” Sierra said while nodding at the both of us. “I think, if anything, we might be better off focusing on the orcs at Valor’s Point. They’re a much more reasonable number for us to manage. Especially if we can get more help from the new adventurers to round out our numbers.”

  “Well, I can help there already,” Kilgore said. “I just came back from checking in on the coming wave of people and brought back about thirty or so adventurers with me that were itching to move faster. There were more of them getting ready to break away from the larger group and make their way behind us, too. I think we could have as many as a hundred more trickling in over the course of the day if not more.”

  “Now that would definitely give us more options to play with,” Sierra replied, her eyes widening at the number. “A lot more. Are they decently geared by chance?”

  “Mostly,” the scout said, a small grimace crossing his face at the question. “But there’s a pretty wide range of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. Some of them are completely decked out as good as we are, if not better in some respects, while others are clearly struggling. It was actually something I was hoping to mention to you, Lyrian. We might have to be a little generous with outfitting some of them so they can actually compete when the orcs come.”

  “Which I am more than happy to do,” I said, having expected that to be the case, especially when it came to the arcane-edged weaponry needed to bypass the corrupted constructs’ resistances. “Better for us to make sure that everyone has what they need, rather than have it sit unused. At the very least, the orcs won’t be able to steal it for loot if things really end up going sideways.

  “That being said,” I continued before anyone else could reply, figuring that this was an opportune time to ask the other question I had on my mind, “do you know how many adventurers we’re looking at to come and help us?”

  “Roughly,” Kilgore replied. “Berwyn is doing what he can today to get a proper headcount, but at the very least, we’re going to be looking at somewhere between six to seven hundred adventurers, total. And of all of those, we’re expecting that there’ll be about five hundred of them strong enough to fight with us.”

  “Given our experiences over the last few months, I’d never thought I’d be anything less than terrified to hear of that many adventurers coming to our town,” Aldwin mused as we all absorbed those figures. “Yet now I find myself wishing that there were even more.”

  “Depending on how things go around Coldscar, there very well might be in the weeks to come,” I replied, agreeing wholeheartedly with the knight. “But given our situation now, five hundred extra bodies are going to make a world of difference, especially once we add in our own people to the mix. That should give us a fighting force of about six hundred and fifty adventurers, give or take.”

  “Which by my math, puts the odds at a little over five to one if we’re counting just the orcs,” Constantine said. “Depending how many constructs and spirits they have that’ll only skew further in their favor.”

  “Perhaps, or perhaps not,” Garr said, his attention shifting over towards Donovan who had been sitting quietly all this time, looking a little unsure of exactly why he had pulled into the meeting. “Your mages and my people have been working on a few instruments and ideas that we believe would give us an edge come battle. Such as the ward you saw me working on earlier, Lyrian. It is one that my people have devised over the course of our war and will hinder any corrupted spirit that comes into range of it, making it much easier to slay.”

  “That would definitely be useful,” I replied, recalling all too well our desperate battle in the gardens and how close we’d come to being overwhelmed, as well as our original encounter with them during the first battle of Valor’s Point.

  “I have no doubt that it will be,” the gronn assured. “But that is only the beginning of what I hope my people and I can contribute to your defense. We have plans for totems that are capable of mending wounds of all who are within reach and another that thickens the available mana in the air for spellcasters to better work their magic. There is even the possibility that we would be able to draw on the magic of the ley line through the tree to both protect the town as well as fuel spells to ravage the orcs.”

  “Wait, you think you can do what?” I asked, the gronn’s last sentence sticking out in particular to my ear and causing me to turn towards Donovan. “Why didn’t I hear anything about this earlier? I didn’t even know that you were all working on something like that.”

  “Um, well, because it might not work out just yet,” he replied, speaking up for the first time since the meeting started. “We’re still trying to figure it out exactly right now and didn’t want to say anything until we knew better. But, apparently, Garr and his other companions were able to…uh, speak to the tree?”

  “Commune,” Garr corrected as he turned his head to look back at me. “We were curious to learn how closely the tree resembles those of the forest and discover more of its nature, especially given its unique state of being connected directly to the ley line.”

  “Uh, all right, then,” I replied with a blink, unsure of what to exactly make of that. “And what did you find out?”

  “A fair deal,” Garr said. “The tree is still young, despite its colossal size, but is maturing incredibly rapidly thanks to the magic that it is drawing on. If given enough time, I can scarcely imagine what it will become, especially if nurtured properly. That aside, however, it seems that there is a vast reservoir of power within the tree, waiting to be called on if we can determine just how to exactly.”

  “We think that what they’re sensing might be the matrix that you and Halcyon created when you cast the ritual that bound the tree to the ley line,” Donovan went on to clarify as the gronn finished speaking. “We believe we could potentially use that as a sort of…tap for lack of a better word to channel mana from. In fact, that was the reason why we were trying to reactivate that security servitor that you saw this morning. We think that it might help us be able to bridge the connection. Somehow. Maybe. We’re not sure yet.”

  “Well, that would be great,” I said, making full note of all the qualifiers that Donovan had attached to his explanation. “With the tree attached to the ley line, we’d have practically unlimited mana to call upon.”

  “Which is one of the problems that we are having with actually making use of the tap,” Donovan explained. “We haven’t been able to determine what the matrix’s original purpose was in the ritual spell, nor how it was changed after being bound in the tree. So we’re hesitant to simply just draw on it blindly without knowing what we’re doing. If we aren’t careful, then we could potentially call on the entirety of the ley line to fuel a spell at once, which would, in turn, shatter it and trigger a violent mana surge unlike anything I could imagine.”

  “Yeah, I think I can suddenly see the need for caution there,” I said with a wince, seeing similar expressions pa
ss across everyone’s face save for Garr who looked completely unperturbed. “Unless, of course, you have a way of turning that mana surge towards the orcs?”

  “If only,” Donovan replied wistfully. “But I’m afraid such things tend to be rather catastrophic directly around the caster. And, erm, in this case, possibly the entire tree itself.”

  “Which, since it’s directly in the middle of Aldford, makes that an extra bad thing,” Constantine chimed in, eliciting sympathetic grunts and agreements from everyone in the room.

  “That it certainly does,” the mage agreed as he turned to look back towards me. “I’m more than happy to keep you informed as our research progresses, but I am afraid I cannot say if it will be successful at all just yet.”

  “Please do,” I replied, already making a second mental note to follow up with Halcyon when I had the chance. “Something tells me that we’re going to need every single advantage that we can find if we’re going to have a hope of beating the orcs.”

  “I’m afraid that you might be right there, Lyrian,” Aldwin said, his tone reserved and cautious as he spoke. “And I won’t lie to any of you and say that I don’t have some doubts about our odds here, especially in light of this construct that has been spotted and all the strange magic that the orcs have recently discovered. These orcs, or at least a portion of them, are not the same kind that I spent my life fighting—and that makes me particularly anxious as to what other surprises they may have in store for us.”

  “I think that goes for all of us,” Sierra admitted as a series of nods and echoes of agreement went around the room.

  “That does,” I agreed, my attention turning over towards Constantine and Kilgore. “But if we’re looking to possibly add to the list of surprises that we might be able to call on, I do have one idea that might be worth exploring. But fair warning though, if we go through with it, there is a chance it could backfire on us spectacularly.”