Chapter 1: Orders

Alarik thought he had only a few minutes before the heat would fuse him to his helmet and his sword would melt in its scabbard. This could very well be it; this was how he’d leave this world, unceremonious and frankly, terribly undignified. Not traversing the waters of the river Hein, not landing battle-ready on the coast of Khorsul, not in the scant few fights he’d won, nor the many he’d lost. He’d die right here, waiting for a superior to bother to let him into his shaded tent while the oppressive sun gradually turned his body to ash. Considering his title now, it seemed a more fitting end than he could have hoped for. Roasting like a pig on a spit. Honour and glory in the Vanderik Empire, he thought.

No. No, it couldn’t be. He wasn’t to die by toppling over and sizzling in the heat, as surely there must be something - something - that would make the wait tolerable. The rations tent was tantalisingly near. Their camp was close enough to a stretch of the river, so surely they would have some boiled water to quench his thirst. All he had to do was leave his bench outside the officer’s tent but for a moment, race to find water, drink it down, race back, and…

No. The allure was outweighed by the punishments, and ultimately Alarik sat, half waiting, half melting. The consequences of not bein;g ready when Colonel Willamar beckoned were far more dire than the simple need for water. It was the difference between a slow, painful death and a slow, painful death paired with a demotion in rank. Starting off on the wrong foot with the colonel would just be piling on as it was. He already felt this meeting may not be for a new assignment but rather a more formal dressing down from his last one.

Dressed to raid a castle while waiting on a log in blistering heat for a superior to humiliate you. Honour and glory in the Vanderik Empire.

At long last, someone came out of the tent. A young man, fumbling with a scroll, struggling to pull back one end before it rolled up the other side. He’d felt he’d been here before, hearing an assistant read his name before being told he was travelling to Khorsul. In a brief moment of delirium, he thought he saw the neck of the man tilt suddenly at an angle, a thin red line drawing from one side to the other. That was the fate of the last fellow in this one’s role. He closed his eyes for a moment and the young man’s head was once again on straight.

“I’m the only one around here, son,” Alarik struggled out from a dry mouth as the page had yet to address him. He gritted his teeth, frustration mounting. The man looked at him for a moment, squinting into the sun, and looked back at his scroll as he struggled to find the name for the next meeting with the Colonel. Alarik held up his hands in a gesture meaning to look around him. “I’m the only one on this log, in this blasted sun, waiting. I believe I’m up next.”

“A moment,” the young man mumbled. “It’s my job to make sure.”

Struggle to read a name. Abandon all reason. Honour and glory in the Vanderik Empire.

“Ah,” the man said at last. “Captain Alarik, the Colonel requests your-” Coated in sweat, Alarik pushed past him, unwilling and unable to wait another moment.

He would have hoped to address the Colonel in a situation where he was not covered head-to-toe in his own juices, but he’d long learned to accept that circumstances are what they are, and that his just tended to be terrible more often than not.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light, or lack thereof. When they did, the scene in front of him was strangely disappointing. He had been used to the grandeur of empire, all bronze and gold, statues and monuments. Here he was, addressing a colonel, a rank that felt now to be an impossible aspiration, and all that stood before him was a simple desk with an overweight man who looked no better equipped for the blazing heat than he was.

Alarik mustered the strength for a quick salute and waited for Willamar to address him. The colonel was preoccupied with a map that stretched across his desk, filled with miniature, metallic figurines. Boats lined the southern coast, the boundary between Khorsul and the empire, while a scattering of forts and tiny soldiers dotted the northeastern reaches near the mountains. Their camp would be even further past the latter, far from the capital that lay well in the south. They were fully in the outer reaches. The colonel extended a chubby finger to push a few of the soldiers to different regions, playing with toys and changing fates.

Willamar’s hand stopped moving and the lives and deaths of the men they represented stopped changing with it. It was Alarik’s turn to see which tiny piece he was going to represent. The fat colonel shifted uncomfortably in his chair and finally acknowledged Alarik’s presence. He was an older man, not even close to adhering to his own rules on dress code and appearance. His stubble hadn’t been trimmed back and his hair was matted in parts, sticking up in others. He didn’t wear any of his military garb, likely putting it aside due to the heat.

“Captain Alarik,” he said at last, leaning back. He thumbed through a number of scrolls and papers he kept on his desk. “Veteran of the Khorsul raids. One of the men of the first landings, as well. You’ve seen plenty of adventure in your time. Must have been a glorious campaign.”

Alarik wanted to snap. He desperately, desperately wanted to throw the words back at the colonel, telling him how the times in Khorsul were a bloody and brutal march, living in ditches and eating scraps, not some romantic adventure. Instead, smartly, Alarik looked at the colonel’s hands and realised the reason for the stunningly poor assessment of the raids. Not a callous or scar on them. The colonel had spent more time wielding a pen than a sword, and here he was dictating his fate in military matters he clearly knew nothing about. Alarik gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir,” was his response.

“And, through those adventures, you’ve met your fair share of failures.” Colonel Willamar leaned forward, tenting his fingers. Alarik didn’t so much as blink at the accusation. Military men. They can put up with a lot. “Under your watch, a great number of soldiers have died. Good men. Brave soldiers.”

“They were,” was all Alarik could respond without bubbling over. The man had not even offered him a seat. The colonel took a long drink of water. Alarik wasn’t sure if Willamar was smart enough to recognize the insult he was giving just by not offering a clearly thirsty man a reprieve. Images flashed back to his men dying of thirst in the desert, hampered in their retreat from Khorsul’s unforgiving desert by constant skirmishes. Dying men giving their last breaths waiting for help from an empire that thought them expendable. Honour and glory in the Vanderik Empire.

“Fortunately for you,” Willamar began after finishing his drink, “I’ve granted you an opportunity to redeem your reputation. You’ve been chosen to lead an expeditionary force into the rainforest north of here. The Vanderik Empire wishes to trade with the Rukara more freely, and it would be far easier to pass through rather than circumvent the rainforest on the river as we have been. You’re to find the swiftest pass through and test if it would be safe enough for regular merchant travel.” He folded up his scrolls, a gesture signifying there was little more to speak of.

Alarik mulled over the new mission. The fates seemed to have spared him a death in the desert in exchange for a death in the rainforest. He had heard the rumours of the many thousands of ways to die in that blasted place, like it was a race to see if the animals, diseases, or the mysterious people that inhabited the place would get you first. He wanted to scream in the face of the colonel, deny his task, tell him no reputation or foolish ploy would be worth his life. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Excellent.” Colonel Willamar shifted a piece on the map from a camp to the rainforest. Alarik quietly wondered if his visage was scratched on the little wooden man that represented him. “My page will see to it that you'll meet your force for this mission. It’s simple enough, anyway. Go north, get through the rainforest, return. Good luck, Major-” He cleared his throat. “Good luck, Captain Alarik.” Willamar gestured to the man who he waited on earlier, still fumbling with scrolls, albeit new ones this time. Alarik followed him out.

“Alright,” the page said under his breath, “let’s see here… we’ve got-”

“Your job is to follow orders, yes?” Alarik said, looking sternly in the face of the young man.

“Well… yes, I suppose-”

“I need water. Immediately.” The man just looked at him. “Wherever you get it for the colonel, you’re going to get it for me. Understand?” The page nodded this time, and seeing the desperation in the eyes of the major-turned-captain, he went quickly to fetch it for him. Alarik returned to his seat in the sun, only to find a man was already seated there. He sat next to him. Alarik didn’t wish to have a conversation, but the man started anyway. The long day grew longer still.

“Have the fates rolled your dice yet?” the man asked. He was impeccably dressed, stylish and confident, carrying the demeanour of one that more often than not received the attention he so clearly sought. How he kept his hair as coiffed as it was in this heat was a mystery to Alarik, but one he had no interest in solving. The captain had been balding steadily for years, anyway. “Have they given you your mission?” the man asked more clearly when Alarik didn’t answer.

“Yeah,” Alarik offered.

“And to what lovely land will you be travelling? I have a feeling I’d have heard of it.”

“The rainforest. North of here.”

The man’s expression sank. While it was deeply foreboding for his expedition, Alarik was glad to at least wipe the smirk from his face. “Well, I’d introduce myself, but now I’m not so sure we’ll be seeing each other again. I’ve been to some foul places, but that place… There are some regions where you've heard too many stories. Don’t envy you, friend.”

“And what stories might those be?” Alarik asked, growing bored, giving passing glances around the camp for the page.

The man leaned forward, hands out wide and a grin even wider. A storyteller, apparently. “It’s a deathtrap! Animals that can rip a man in two! An evil, malicious group of crazed locals that kill any who dare enter! Everything in there is meant to get you. Even the plants!”

“The plants.”

“Yes! Eat the wrong one, and…” he mimed choking. With his dignified appearance, the whole act looked absurd.

The captain shrugged. “I’ve seen my fair share of torments.”

The man’s eyebrows raised, and he leaned in. “Oh, have you? A tired old veteran, are we? Seen the world, and all the bad in it? Fought the evils of all the realms and lived to tell the tale? Well! Where have you travelled?”

Alarik answered with a sneer. “It’s not travel when you’re in a war. You make it sound like it’s a fun romp in the meadow.”

The man held up his hands in apology. The captain noticed just how many rings and jewelled bracelets the man wore, like a man playing dress-up as a noble and leaning into it well beyond parody. “Didn’t mean to offend, didn’t mean to offend,” he said. “I’m just a traveller myself, and perhaps the words of the military don’t quite find their way into my vernacular. I beg your pardon, friend. Truly! But please, indulge me - what places have you fought in, then?”

With another look for the page, Alarik decided he might as well indulge. It was the only interesting part of his life, anyway. “I fought in the deserts of Khorsul in the last war. It was bloody. Brutal fighting. They have a tenacity I’ve never seen before. They engaged us on the river, where we landed, and for every inch of ground we took. We sent many there in the name of our empire, and returned with only a handful. The rest lie unburied in the desert. The survivors placed the blame on me. They said it was the leadership that failed them. That if I had guided them better, their mates would be alive.”

The man stared. He ran a hand through his perfectly manicured hair. “Well,” he said after a moment. “Well. On hearing that, I do have good news. Great news, even!” Alarik didn’t flinch. He knew the man would continue even without his prompting. He simply had to wait. “If you’re heading into the rainforest, you won’t have to worry about any survivors.”

Alarik snorted, the fatalism bringing out a reluctant smirk of his own. “Captain Alarik,” he said, offering his hand, which the man took in his. The man was about to return the introduction when the page interrupted.

“Ah!” he said, passing Alarik a mug of water which he gulped down voraciously. “I see you’ve met Cendric the Navigator. He’s to be accompanying you on your expedition.”

The captain laughed out loud, deep and strong now that his thirst was quenched. He slapped Cendric on the back, knocking loose a few perfectly placed strands of hair. The poor navigator went pale as a sheet, not even the beating sun able to colour his complexion.