“It’s a town?”
It was a town, a shanty town admittedly but still a town, in the centre of the largest room Erika had ever seen. She’d thought the rimed room was huge but this place made it look like the storage cupboard in an underfunded university, so vast and cavernous that its distant walls were lost not in fog but in the curvature of the realm itself,
made from toppled over caravans and carts walled with taut tarpaulin and drapes with furs as rugs and mats. Fires burned in a dozen places, some tiny candleflames, others stout cooking fires and even one massive central bonfire which warmed the whole cavernous room.
The air stank of droog and staleness but that wasn't the first thing Erika noticed, what she noticed was the sky full of chains, layered chains… just like she saw in the floor of that central room… this was the base of the tower wasn't it? The chains covered the only way directly up leaving an air hole through the tower with the chains as a layer of defence.
Erika could hardly believe her eyes, she’d followed along happily and ignored the impish smile of Kara whenever she asked where they were going, now she was shown this?! It was unbelievable, even when it was just setting off, they didn’t have this many people, it was like a whole damn city! Which meant….
“There are other people trapped in here with us?”
“Yup,” said Kara remarkably blasé as she helped Erika down the steep ramp into the central hollow, “a bunch of people, a few other delvers who were probing the edge of the Fimbulwinter, a few nomads who got unlucky and a whole caravan that got lost in a snowstorm and wandered to close the tower but also, get this, there are some foreigners here!”
Erika stared at Kara for a long moment. “… you mean from one of the other continents?”
“Yes and no,” Kara grinned. “From the north… and from a different realm.”
Erika snarled. “Vracians!” She nearly spat. “It has to be, nobody’s realm walked since they invaded, when their damned praetor destroyed the Bifrost shard.”
“That’s right love.” Said Kara with a wink which neatly disarmed Erika’s temper and turned her into a blushing mess instead. “Vracians, a… legion? Maybe? Whatever they call it its more like a jarl and his huscarls, about ten of their soldiers and one of those weak talky senators that leads them in a weird dress.”
“They’re called a toga.”
Erika and Kara flinched as they noticed Sigurn, she hadn't snuck up on them or even walked behind them, instead Sigurn stood directly in their line of sight but she had just… Slipped into the background when she moved, not invisible just unnoticeable.
“How did you do that?”
“Silver rank,” Sigurn said simply which honestly did answer that. “Follow us, closely please Eri, you especially need to be careful here.”
Before Erika could ask the obvious question Sigurn had already vanished back to the front of the marching column, the loosening formation was yelled back together as they strode in lock step through the plain stone tunnels and out into the warm and lively shanty town. All around Erika could see people, new people! They had created lean-tos and yurts, tents and shrines and watch towers and what looked like a great central… reservoir? into which flowed the stream they had been following, the water channel that they had walked beside had cut down the centre of the tunnel they just left, then across the tiled floor of this cast central room before it flowed into a pool underneath the huge mass of chains, that pool had been shallow once, intentionally shallow, but now it had been expanded upwards with buttresses of wood and bone to allow it to store more water, even as Erika watched people were carrying buckets back and forth with a frantic air.
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As the expedition marched into the town cheers began to ring out from the surroundings, on top of the short walls and crude towers were lookouts and watchmen who were already pulling ropes and shifting logs, opening the great creaking door for the expedition.
“Its Silvermane’s lot! They’re back!”
“They didn’t die? I thought they went after the dregs base camp? Nobody’s ever survived that!”
“They do have a silver rank then…”
“… more of them than before?”
“Yeah definitely…. Look at them all!”
“What di…”
The hubbub of conflicting and overlapping voices drowned itself out until it became nothing more than a single torrent of pure noise, the noise of people. Erika saw some of her group crying quit tears as they walked into the warm safety of the walls and basked in the presence of people again, it may only be a shanty town but it was a town, a place of safety and civilisation inside the tower and away from the cold and the monsters, that was worth more than appearances.
“Ah… welcome welcome all of you to our little cozy home!”
Right in front of the procession a man had… appeared? He hadn't moved like Sigurn in the background just popped up nearly instantly, rushing in from an alley by the look of it. He wore floor length robes of red and yellow diagonal stripes, his beard was long and oiled and his smile was wide and warm, his eyes weren’t thought, they were like shards of ice.
“I am Ragnvald the Roamer! Captain of Commerce and Master of Mercantilism.” Erika could literally hear the capital letters, she had no idea how that worked, maybe he was a sagaborn? A real possibility for a merchant’s son. “I am so happy, so very happy, to see how many of you survived these terrible trials, I have no doubt that you have many needs now yes? We have mead and warmth aplenty for you all… however nothing in life is free as I'm sure you know? Which is why I am more than happy to buy from you any of the trifles you have, old tools or dried rations, with purest hacksilver.”
A few of the group glared at him, mostly Sigurn’s, Erika’s expedition just stared with incomprehension wondering what this weird man was talking about.
“We don’t have any stuff,” said Olaf Olafson from where he had collapsed against a wall. “We nearly died when draugr overran our wagons, we had to leave all our gear.”
A shocked murmuring exploded into being and echoed around the caverns camp, a susurration of draugr started, faces twisted in fear and hands gripped hilts as contemplative eyes turned to the rickety scrap wood gate that had just been closed behind the Silvermane expedition.
Ragnvald however, Erika wasn't sure but for a moment, she saw an expression of contempt flash across his face like lightning across a storm before it settled into a perfect mask of fear and he too began to mutter about draugr.
“We need to get more defences up, proper fortifications… with proper runes as well! We all know nothing else will stop the hungry dead.” Shouted a tall man in the crowd, fair skinned and covered in the angular tattoos of the nomads of the great clearing, he brandished a long-barbed spear in time with his words.
“We’ve only got two Gothi! They can’t create enough runes.” This man was short, fat and heavily armed but his voice had the smooth timbre of a professor.
“If we take the metal from the wagons and sharpen it, we can use it as a spiked fence? Even draugr should be slowed down by that right?” Said the tall man again.
“If the Gothi focus on the wall itself my guards can help haul extra material into the entrance tunnels,” Said Ragvald. “We must all work together against the hungry dead Bors.”
Bors, who apparently was the tall man or at least Erika thought so since he was the one who replied, snorted, and shrugged. “I didn’t even say anything yet silver scraper… but in the spirit of cooperation my kith will help you, our priests can lay the god-words onto the defences and my other kin can help move them.”
“With a folk hero like Sigurn the Shining Star here as well… we might just be fine.” Said the short man with a slightly put upon air. “I suppose I'm the one who has to tell the Vracians aren’t I? I'm the only one who you lot ever send down into their creepy camp after all.”
“You are the only one who speaks their language.” Said Ragvald, who was still eyeing up the expedition, as Erika watched him, she noticed his eyes were lingering on the bags and boxes they were carrying not their wounds or weapons which she would have expected.
“And they might have some sort of weird alchemy stuff that can help so see to it.” Said Bors authoritatively which prompted the short man, who Erika still hadn't heard the name of, to roll his eyes and throw his hands up dismissively.
Bors seemed about to reply but Ragvald cut him off with a twirl of his fur mantle and a raised finger. “I think it is important that…”
Unfortunately for Erika that was the moment that one of the crowds decided to but in, pointing at her and loudly yelling. “WAIT, IS SHE A VITKI?!”
Every eye turned towards Erika.
“Damn it all.” She muttered as the horde charged towards her.