Dame Livia needed to know the situation, so it was no surprise that she sent out expeditions to gather intelligence. The northern expedition sought a secure way out of the Western Front, but this southern one had some of the squad mumbling questions. Of course, as the mission leader, Colay Viltoryevich knew it was important to learn about the undead menace that faced the depleted legion. He'd wanted to take the fight to the main crossings on the river, but this was the better plan, and he knew it.
Unfortunately, the mud flats to the south had proved a far worse hazard than any of them could have anticipated. Even now, Rain scouted ahead to find a clear path of solid ground while Colay and the squad worked to pull the most unfortunate free of the pits that had acted like muddy quicksand.
Paulus and his daughter Camila had struggled and sunk now to the point of being evenly in danger, belly deep in the mud and screaming.
"It's burnin' me! Get me out of this trash! What are we doing down here?" Paulus howled as Colay and Emerald worked to try to get the poor older man out.
"Get your act together, squad!" Colay called out, trying to instill discipline, but it seems it was not meant to be. The defeat at Ettenmark fields, the retreat, and now this hellacious assignment had all of them broken and wanting to turn back around to camp.
Even quiet Emerald spoke up in her excited yet somehow also calming tone. "We have to get them out of there - come on now."
The glory of the Shattered Lions Squad felt like something so distant in the past as this quagmire seemed as though it would suck them in whole. Soren and Tora tried to form a human chain out to get the two stranded squad members. Straining for Camila, Soren found himself starting to sink in a bit as well.
"Back! Pull me back!" Soren called out in panic. The squad yanked him free before he could reach out to Paulus.
Colay finally found a log that didn't fall apart in his hands, and with some deft knot work from Emerald, he threw the lead out toward Camila first. "Come on girl, grab on and let's get out of here."
After nearly an hour of sweat, mud and filthy sticking to all involved, the two were pulled from the mud. Tomon Machivillis used his big barrelled pistol to wipe the thicker chunks of mud from Paulus’s legs, but Paulus suddenly cried out in pain. Emerald ran over, assessing the area as well as the boils on his leg. Camilla’s howls of pain soon joined in chorus with Paulus.
"Get away from those pits!" Emerald shouted, concentrating on attempting to treat the legs of both soldiers.
Rainn, returning from forging a path ahead, motioned the soldiers of the legion forward. "There is something in those pits more than mud." she huffed as she helped carry Paulus forward.
Rainn had done her job. She'd found a way of safety and well marked it with her supplies. The Shattered Lions and the specialists they supported on this mission snuck their way through what was obviously abandoned enemy territory. The sentries of Aldermark's armies were gone, each of their posts empty and silent. As the sun set and the summer heat started to settle, the group also settled in for the evening in a secure and hidden camp prepared by the legion's veteran scout.
Colay watched the hordes of undead roam nearby, quietly wishing he was vanquishing them all. The newest member of the squad, Tora Malichiv, approached with a small bowl of stew, handing it to the heavily armed squad leader. Tora’s eyes briefly lingered on Colay’s great hammer leaning in the corner, looking like it supported the whole structure.
"The Luionis' legs look pretty bad.” Tora said quietly. “Emerald says there is nothing her tonics can do." She frowned as she sat next to him.
"Thanks for the food." he nodded to her as he started to quietly eat a spoonful of the field stew. Noticing the look of concern in her eyes, Colay reached over and rubbed her shoulder reassuringly.
"We're going to make it to Skydagger Keep, you know. The Cinder King can't be everywhere."
Tora frowned and looked into Colay's eyes. "I just.. I don't know if I'll make it to see that. But if we don't make it, nobody will be safe, not in any of the Eastern Kingdoms."
Colay swallowed some of the warming broth. "While I'm here, you have nothing to worry about." he growled at her with a grin.
Tora chuckled. "You've, ah, got some carrots in your teeth." she pointed and he dug it out. Tora sighed and leaned into him. "Thank you." she murmured as she sank in against him. Colay placed one of his massive arms around her, the stew forgotten. The pair drifted into sleep, unnoticed by Rainn and Tomon as they took shifts watching the undead amble by.
/////////
Hours of travel the next day were interrupted by long breaks waiting for the undead hordes to shamble by and time to treat Paulus and Camilla for their strange boils. Then, finally, a strange sight that perhaps made the trip worth it.
All the enemy sentries were gathered in one place in a small gully, facing the west in perfect line formation, none of them moving or budging. Rainn skulked awkwardly through the bushes, so used to the trees and brambles of the great forests of Panyar. A twig snapped beneath her feet and a small woodland critter dashed away. Rainn was suddenly aware of an unnerving tingle as every soldier in the lines turned their head to look in her direction.
Her breath caught in her throat. She slowly backed away, keeping the densest of foliage between her and the lines of soldiers. Swallowing her panic, Rainn returned to the squad.
"All the sentries are right over that hill,” Rainn gestured to the west, where a copse of trees stands talls, “but something isn't right. They’re just frozen. They aren't acting like... people." She shivered, waiting for Colay’s response.
"Do we attack?" Soren asked, itching for some action.
As much as Colay wanted to, his shoulders slumped. Then, he stomped his foot with determination. “Negative, we were sent to monitor this, not to engage.” He paused. "We’ll head toward whatever caught their attention."
Reluctantly, Coley led the squad away, circumventing the bewitched sentries and continuing toward the west.
Any one of the patrol could have pointed at the concentration of storms in the sky to the west. It was the obvious point to go if they'd learn anything useful out of this trip.
It didn't make any sense. It looked like nature but it couldn't be. The dark skies swirled into almost a single point and lightning struck in such a tight area, perhaps only a couple hundred meters across, over and over again. The group didn't have to get close as they found a vantage point and watched through a spyglass.
In Karlsburg, they’d found a single strange witch in the ruins. This time, there were at least a dozen of them, all chanting in a semi-circle tucked in next to a ridge. Large smoldering tree trunks shot up into the sky, leafless, with few branches remaining on them. Bolts of lightning shot through the trees and dissipated into the ground, but not before striking through the charred bodies of the undead that appeared to be birthed in this very spot.
Colay, ever vigilant, grasped his great hammer by the handle and prepared to command the attack.
Emerald, sensing his eagerness, placed a hand on his shoulder. "An information gathering trip... right?" she asked softly.
His grip loosened. "Of course."
For hours, the squad watched these monsters breeding their burned undead, taking note of the ritual and of what they could hear and see.
The display was nothing short of horrific. Spires looking like jagged pained trees stood high around hte sight. Dead bodies dangled from the branches of these pillars. As the chanting would come to a crescendo, storm clouds gathered and pulled into a dark swirling mass. Just at the moment of the chanting receding, the voices were drowned out by thunder from jagged bolts of lightning that shot down and illuminated the branches and set the bodies on fire.
Finally, Colay was satisfied and felt that his urge for conflict could be held off no longer. He moved the squad out as he led them back north and east, in the direction of the Legion's camp.
It was near twilight when the squad once again approached the mud flats. As before, they sought to follow the trail that Rainn had laid out for the group to avoid the worst of the quick mud, a phenomenon of these muddy flats. She returned from her vanguard position to the squad and motioned for them all to drop.
As it turned out, the path was no longer clear. The path Rainn had marked out was so solid that they weren't the only ones to take advantage. As they knelt in the tall grass, Rainn reported what she had seen. It was only a short hike to where they could all see it. There, crossing the safely marked ground, was a hideous gaggle of zombified, stitched undead. The legion had come to calling these slow shambling things Rotters, based on the nast stench of decay and slow corruption of the flesh on them. Pushing them along using prods and whips were a small group of gangly humanoids in white masks with long, beak-like noses. At the front of the column, leading the way towards the camps in the Western Front, was a towering monstrosity. It looked like a bloated corpse – no, ten bloated corpses – all stitched together, with blubber, parts of faces, and far too many stubby arms stretched out from its center of mass.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Emerald watched the careful formation as it moved through the narrow path around the mud pits. The masked humanoids seemed to herd the less mindful undead back in formation. Emerald broke into an anxious sweat at the thought of more innocent people joining their undead numbers.
"We can't let them through.” she whispered. “If they reach the old ramparts, all those refugees... they’ll be just like them by the following night."
Colay silently unbound his great hammer from its sheath on his back.
"Sweeter words were never said. Looks like it's time for me to do what I do best." Motioning with his free hand, Coley indicated the group should take their well-known positions for battle..
Rainn split off as was tradition; she preferred to attack from a hidden position. The others advanced as a unit, with Colay at the head and Emerald, as medic, remaining concealed behind them.
At a nod from Colay, the squad leveled their muskets while he prepared his great hammer and stretched out his legs. The squad waited for the signal.
From wherever she’d concealed herself, Rainn notched a black arrow. She dug about for some of the local reeds, strong and useful as a replacement for rope. She took some of the black powder she had on hand, wrapped it in an old cloth and tied it off, setting it to explode on contact. That detonation would surely mark the way for the squad’s attack.
Leveling her bow, Rainn took aim at a crow-masked humanoid lumbering forth between two others. " ‘bye." she hissed cheerfully as she let fly. The arrow sung through the air and hit its target, exploding with unexpected force. As the crow died, Colay let out a thunderous roar.
The squad started to fire its volleys at the remaining crows. They free fired as Colay started to fast walk, then hike, then jog, and then started to run towards the enemy.
From the back of the pack, Emerald closely watched the attack - and suddenly noticed a weak spot in their ranks. She scurried over to Tomon Machivillis, one of the rookies in the Shattered Lions, and placed her hand on his shoulder as she began to speak. Tomon screamed at her touch, flipping around with his loaded black powder pistol and firing off a shot that went just wide of her head. Emerald flopped back on her ass and blinked, having seen her life flash before her eyes. Stunned, Tomon realized that he had damn near killed the medic. Tomon had always had a bit of a love affair with his weapon and an itchy trigger finger, just so fortunate that this time he exercised restraint.
Alone, Colay fully charged into the enemy, heroically and almost certainly foolishly – hhis preferred method of attack. Fortunately, Rainn and the Shattered Lions had done their job. The remaining rotters had turned and nearly all had shambled into the mud pits, slowly sinking to their doom.
Colay found himself face-to-face, or rather face-to-faces, with the stitched horror, more than twice his height. It swung an unidentifiable appendage at him that seemed made of many arms all fused together. Colay ducked and roared as he barreled into the beast. Even for its size, he'd expected his speed to topple it over as he hit low.
The horror didn't even budge. It let out a guttural laugh that sounded like an animal’s interpretation of human speech. Colay realized that the sound was pure reflex; it didn't have enough of a mind to find humor. As the thing balled up its fists, preparing to strike Colay down, Colay made his move. He spun around with that hammer, using his body as a counterweight to the thick head of the fine weapon.
Metal hit flesh like the sound of a drunk face planting in a bowl of bubbling hot gruel. Colay lost his grip on the hammer as the thing reared back. Apparently, he’d hit some sort of weak spot in the construction of this beast
The rest of the team could see Colay now, standing there under this horror, unarmed. They all started to run in his direction to render aid as reinforcements.
Covered in the creature's bile, Colay grinned at his approaching squad. "Too slow." he grunted.
Again, the horror again swung at Colay. Still too far from the fight, the squad watched as the two danced together in combat, but they soon lost sight of Colay. Everyone heard a large thump and then, a moment of hesitation later, the beast came tumbling down with Colay holding the handle of his hammer, riding the stomach of the beast as it collapsed.
Colay yanked out the hammer and swung it in a wide arc over his head before smashing it into the beast's largest head, rendering it still.
With nothing more than a few bumps and bruises from the fight, the squad cleaned up, gathered their supplies and prepared to return to the legions camp. Just as they relaced their boots, a terrified older voice rang out. Emerald watched curiously as some nearby brush trembled and then dislodged a finely dressed man in long robes, covered in grime.
"Legion? You must be from the Legion,” he stammered, his voice tinged with fear. “Please, let me come with you. I could render services?”
"I'm sure the Marshal could find a use for you," Colay said, his hair still matted from the slime.
Emerald nodded, looking him up and down appraisingly. "Alchemist, right? You can always help with my tinctures. I'm sure we can secure you a spot on the wagons."
And with that, the alchemist joined the Legion and made his way along behind the others back to the safety of the camp.
**
When the Shattered Lions returned and brought their wounded to the medical tent, it was clear that the reconnaissance mission had run into trouble. The Ghost Owls had been called into service again, and their empty spots had been filled by a couple of Legionnaires from the Star Vipers squad. The two rookies that had joined their ranks had been killed during an ambush by deserters that had ones been part of Karlsburg’s regular army.
Paulus and his daughter, Camila had survived the journey and the rest of the squad left them and returned to their bivouac site. A couple of camp attendants looked to their injuries and tried to perform treatments, but they were ill prepared to do what was needed.
Emerald came to the medical tent as soon as she’d done a once over of the other squad members and those that had performed the mission to the north. “What’s the situation with the sores on their legs?” She asked as she came to test the boils with some of her homeland remedies. Paulus and Camila’s legs both looked terrible. Paulus in particular looked as if he would be ill just from seeing his leg. The boils had grown and festered.
The camp attendant dabbed sweat from Camila’s forehead and fed her some water. “We did what we could, but these are not burns or any normal injury we’ve seen before. I know not what to do but monitor them.”
Emerald nodded, “We’ll have them rest here in this tent under observation. Keep checking on them while I look into what can be done about this sort of corruption.”
**
“The rooks didn’t make it.” Elaina shook her head as she nursed her own minor injury. She’d been second in command of the operation to find the escape route.
Marshal Kupta nodded grimly, “This is the cost of war. Those that learn to survive will thrive. Unfortunately, it is the news among us that often don’t make it.”
Elaina nods.
Marshal Kupta looked around, “Where is Officer Adrimirovich? I wanted to see how he is holding up? I know this was his first command.”
Elaina set down her bloody rag and picked up an oily one to work on cleaning the metal barrel of her sniper rifle. “He’s walking the perimeter. I think he wanted to reflect.”
Marshal Kupta nodded, “Understood. Get some rest.” He put a reassuring hand on Elaina’s shoulder and then he headed for the command tent to report the day’s losses.
**
The tension in the command post were high. After Marshal Kupta reported the losses and there was no sight of the Legion’s banner making it across the river, there seemed little good news. The mud from the constant mist and rain caked everything and the simple wooden planks that made a basic floor for this important command post had started to sink into the mire. The redoubts had started to melt away and the makeshift fortifications had followed that path, sinking into the ground more each hour.
The local army commander had sealed off the strongest fort to outsiders and nobody could get inside without a fight. With the loss of so many and still more members of the Legion, morale sunk into the mud with everything else.
Livia looked over it all and knew that there was no choice. When a commander was faced with a series of bad choices, the only one left was to set a new stage.
Kupta, Gita, McKellum, and Lorekeeper Graf Farian Zardani had so much to attend to, Livia had to make the next choices with little consultation, knowing that at this stage, her orders would suffice. She cleared her throat loud enough that everyone in the sinking structure stopped and looked her way.
Kupta looked up from where he shifted pieces around contemplating squad assignments.
Gita read closely over reports on enemy intelligence but stopped at the commander’s call.
McKellum sat back and rubbed the bridge of his nose, taking a needed break from counting up supplies on the logs.
And Lorekeeper Graf Farian Zardani pulls off his glasses and set a quill down, having been in the middle of writing a eulogy for the two lost soldiers and for those that had held the banner and presumably been lost.
Livia could see that all attention was rapt on her. “We are moving out. This place is getting further surrounded every hour and we can’t hold it considering the weather.” She saw that all of them agreed but that the command staff was even lost as to a strategic objective. “I’ve been contemplating our situation for hours, hells, days. With our dwindling numbers and the regular army disbanding and fleeing, we need a place that can hold out for an extended siege and give us the advantage. There is only one place that I can think of. Skydagger Keep. It has advantages in terrain, supply, and position.”
There was quiet muttering amongst the staff, but she decided to continue. “I know it's far and I know the enemy is right on our heels. We’ll have to do what we can to change that. It's the only hope that we have in the long run. In the short, our only option is heroism.”
**
The order had gone out across the camp in rapid succession. No one cared to delay. Any place had to be better than this pit of mud. Soldier’s boots had begun to rot and the wagons had started to sink as the rains continued to pour down like it was summoned by the Cinder King himself.
The Quartermaster was arranging the wagon train and the loading of Black shot into a secured wagon when he heard a commotion. The squad that was on guard duty yelled out from behind the failing wooden gate at the entrance to the camp. The Quartermaster headed over to see what the ruckus was. Had the armies of the Broken arrived? The sight was somewhat less harrowing. A fat man stood at the gate with a group of about twenty refugees.
He stepped up and put a hand on the shoulder of the squad leader. “Aye, I’ve got it from here laddie.” He looked sternly at the big and loud ring leader of the refugees. “You’re distracting our men when we’re trying to do a lot of hard work. Now, what is it yer here for?”
The man’s jowls moved so much with each jerk of his head as it was obvious what they were here for and that he shouldn’t have to repeat himself. “You’re packing up and abandoning all the people here. We want to come with you.”
Quartermaster McKellum looked over into the face of the squad leader on duty. His face was haggard and tired. He very well hadn’t slept since the big battle, the big catastrophe. He turned and looked at the withering and exhausted labor force that prepared the wagons and dug them out of the mud. He rubbed a hand through his thick salt and pepper beard and turned to face the big man.
“We could use some assistance with packing the supplies and working a few jobs. You could earn your keep.” He smiled and showed his gritty teeth through his gangly facial hair.
The leader of the refugees grunted and shook his head, his jowls shaking almost on their own. “We are tired and we barely survived fleeing our now burning homes and you expect us to labor for you? After you lost the battle and our homes?”
The Quartermaster nodded, “Aye. We’re without homes as well. No freeloaders in this camp.”
A young lad stepped forward, one with cropped shaggy hair. But then, as she spoke, it was clear to the squad and McKellum that she was a young lady, strong of character and body. “I’ll fight. I want them to pay. My family will work to earn their spot.”
Her parents stepped forward holding only a couple of baskets with some of their remaining possessions. McKellum looked to the squad on guard duty and they all gave her a look up and down. A general sense of approval of her spirited and willing nature gave McKellum a sense of ease. “Aye lass, we’ll see about that. You have spirit and that will take you far. I accept. We’ll see what the Marshal has to say.”
The gates were opened and the refugees slipped in and immediately got to work, even the big man that had refused before, moving slow but with intention.