It was time to step out of the safety of the dungeon. We didn't want to, but sometimes adults had to be responsible and do things like that, otherwise the alternative was having the children do it, and Lori would kill us all if that happened.
As I vividly remembered the incident with the islandshell, we had been making preparations in the three days before Lori had finally opened the defenses. Large shields were made from planks, leather and ropes, with Tae and Lidz contributing to fuse the pieces of wood together and Shana providing the imbuement. There wasn't enough time to make a shield for everyone, and even if we did, that wasn't how they were used. According to the militiamen—and they would know—you didn't just brandish the shield in front of you like it was an impenetrable wall. That kind of passivity got you killed. Instead, several people with shields would act together to raise a mobile wall, using shield and spear to herd beasts towards the center of a formation of militia. When the beasts were impaled up to the crossguards of the spears, the shield bearers would get in close to the beast's side to keep the beast from being able to turn around and pull themselves off the spears while everyone else used their spear to keep the beast in place and stabbing it to death.
A part of me wished it was Riz giving me this expository explanation rather than Kolinh. I missed her, but did that mean I felt anything for her? Besides lust, that is. I can pretty conclusively declare that one of the things I felt for her is lust, which inexplicably seems to be mutual. But did that mean that I—
No, no, not the time to think about myself. I had lord things to do.
All that meant my sword was as useless as usual, but I belted it on in any case because I knew how to use it, and it was a sharp, pointy object that extended my reach. Still, even though I would be joining the militia and carrying a spear, everyone understood I was to stay in the middle and act as another pair of eyes instead of actually putting myself forward and trying to do anything Kolinh didn't explicitly tell me to do. I was fine with that, and made sure to tell Kolinh how deliriously happy I was about that state of affairs. I've never been in the militia, so it was only sensible I leave how to do things to him, and listen very carefully if he told me it couldn't be done.
The plan was to make sure the space in front of the dungeon's entryway was clear, then check the docks and river to see if we could send a boat downstream to get Lori. After that, we would move through the houses for anything lurking between them, and then finally move around the perimeter of the village. The interiors of the houses, the shelter, and the Um would be left for last, once we had Lori with us to keep us from having to look for trouble in confined spaces.
We were all hoping it would be unnecessary and that there were no dragonborn abominations like last time, but it was probably a futile hope.
When we finally left the wonderful, safe, strong, peaceful, secure, warm embrace of the dungeon, it was as a group of twenty, with all but Lidzuga and myself having militia experience. Most were armed with spears, but two people were carrying shovels, as well as some rope and packs full of carpentry offcuts. Lidz was armed with a length of wood that he'd appropriated to use as a staff. It should have occurred to me sooner, but the staffs used by Deadspeakers didn't need wire. After all, they could claim the full length of a wooden staff, so they don't need the metal as channels to conduct magic. Lidz's staff had been curled into a large hook at one end, like the kind beastherders were depicted with. Kolinh had advised it, as a means for pulling the injured and fallen out of danger while healing them, which… made a morbid, Lori-like sense.
It was a bristling wall of spearpoints that exited the dungeon's entryway into the overcast light while we waited for the ones that remained in the dungeon to barricade the table behind us. Once the hole in the stone barrier was secured, we slowly stepped out of the entryway, Lidz and I taking the rear. A cold, unceasing breeze was blowing around our feet and out towards the opening of the entryway, and from the way that was the only air moving, it had to be Lori's work. The two with the bags of wooden offcuts threw some at the icicles dripping down from the edge of the entryway's opening, knocking them down so we didn't have to worry about them falling on us. They shattered strangely as they hit the ground, though I couldn't quite put my finger on why…
Everyone was stepping carefully, and it was quickly apparent the caution was warranted. The layer covering the ground beyond the entryway was not actually snow, but what felt like several layers of frost that had grown on top of each other. The outer walls of the stone buildings in my sight were the same, as well as the outside walls of the entryway. There was something off about the frost. Even in the overcast, they didn't seem to reflect light properly, and it wasn't the only one who noticed. Others were eyeing the apparent frost warily. While some spots seemed solid and already packed down, most were very delicate, collapsing easily when spearbutts were pressed down into it.
The two with the shovels got to work, handing me their packs while they started using the shovels to clear ground of accumulated frost. They tore up the cold covering, and while some movements of their tool scooped up powdery frost, sometimes they picked up chunks of ice. All the ice was so cold that despite being exposed to the air, what was being shoveled up was dry, with vapor emanating from—
I frowned, then carefully knelt down, tentatively touching some of the ice on the ground. It was painfully cold to the touch after a few moments, and when I pulled back my hand, there was some frost sticking to my skin. I blew on the frost, and while some melted into water, a few endured on, not melting and being very painful. I quickly used my shirt to pull the fragment off, wincing at the feeling of the ice tearing off my skin, and watched as the fragment of ice seemed to stick to the threads of my clothes.
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"Everyone, don't touch the snow with your bare hands," I called out. "Not all of it is frozen water. Some of it seems to be solidified air, and that stuff is even colder and will stick to your skin. It's not immediately dangerous, but it will freeze the skin it's on solid if you don't get it off, so be careful." People glanced down nervously at that, and indeed, there were some chunks sticking to the sides of people's boots. One unfortunate person apparently had a piece sticking to his sole, and he was trying to scrape it off like mud. I look towards Kolinh. "It shouldn't be any problem to shovel. Just don't touch it with bare skin or drop water on it and we should be fine."
He nodded. "You all heard Lord Rian. You two, get on shovels and start clearing our way. Skinny Vov, take the wood and start checking for vistas towards the dock. The rest of you, keep a look out."
Huh. That's what the wood is for? I handed Skinny Vov—not to be confused with young Vov, Tall Vov, Bearded Vov, Handsome Vov and Quiet Vov—the bag, and he began to carefully throw the offcuts of wood at chest-level towards the stairs over the flood wall that led to the docks, checking for vistas. The distortions in space, time and gravity could be observed if you we're looking closely, but it was easier to find a vista when you saw something pass through it. Seeing things like deviations in the arching path of the passing object—for sharp turns that didn't affect's its momentum, accelerated or decelerated, or things curving upwards instead of downward in their parabolic arc—helped make it easier to find vistas.
Skinny Vov threw each piece of wood at intervals, his eyes carefully judging the object's flight and curve. Lori's darkwisp barrier was supposed to keep such vistas—and other things—from being able to reach down to ground level, but it probably didn't hurt to be cautious. Fortunately, all the wood arced as they were supposed to, meaning there weren't any twisting surprises in our path. I was intimately familiar with the dangers of maliciously designed vistas. Most people thought that vistas were limited to the boundaries of rooms. Most people were wrong. Most people also didn't stop to think what would happen to them if they stepped edgewise through a vista that was two inches wide on the outside and a pace across on the inside.
It was called edgewise for a reason.
Fortunately, the shovel-wielders started flinging the frost and solidified air towards the direction we were planning to go, and while that would have made it harder to see larger vistas, it helped find small, narrow ones that were more dangerous to walk into. Narrow vistas that were bigger on the inside would show as little cuts in the air where the spray of the shovels seemingly vanishes too quickly. Of course, this wasn't really snow underfoot, so it didn't spray nearly as well, but it covered a wider area than the wooden offcuts.
While I had confidence that Lori's measures protected us from some things… she'd been a bit unreliable over the past week, absentminded and not sticking to a proper schedule. She was a woman who loved her routine, even if she didn't really have a lot of it given the irregularity of the work she had to do, so at the very least she should have used mealtimes as cues of when to dim the lights. That fact that she didn't… well, it was concerning. That had better be a really interesting almanac. And if it was, when could I borrow it?-!
As we waited for the shovels to clear a path, everyone else started tamping down on the frost in an attempt to powder it and probably make it easier to pass by later. I'll have to tell them not to pour water on it. Honestly, I wasn't sure if it would cause the water to freeze, making the ground harder, or it would cause the solidified air to sublimate and bubble through the water, causing fog. While neither was actively dangerous to us, it would be very inconvenient.
We carefully made our way to the docks as I looked around, both to keep an eye out for dragonborn abominations and see if there was anything else we had to deal with. It was hard to make details at any distance because of the overcast and how the dragonfrost—and I'm calling it that for the sake of convenience as I'm running out of ways to differentiate between the water frost and the solidified air frost—made everything so monochromatic, but the sawmill seemed undamaged. It was just as covered as the stone buildings, but given the composition of the dragon frost, hopefully there wasn't much water damage. Actually, given the all the dragonfrost around us, I'm glad it was still overcast. If the sky had been clear, we would likely be having problems with snow blindness.
I glanced up to the sky to see how thick the cloud cover was and stared.
High, high above us, the sun was obscured by hundreds—possibly thousands, even tens of thousands—of what looked like black threads or cords stretched from horizon to horizon. They were high enough they were behind the clouds, each thread seemingly slightly thinner than the cords the ropers spun from threads, their edges fuzzy for some reason. That meant they were probably bigger around the bath houses were long, so numerous that they put our demesne in their shade. It reminded me of hair dragging across a bed, all the threads mostly parallel and aligned in the same direction, but rippling back and forth as they did so. Sunlight shone through the gaps between the threads, creating the overcast light around us instead of simply gloom. There was something about the way the threads were moving…
"Lidz," I said, not looking down, "can you still feel the dragon?"
In my peripheral vision, I saw Lidzuga look towards me. "I can, but it's still moving away from—blissful ignorance!"
Ah, he'd seen it.
"Can you point towards where you think the dragon is right now?" I asked Lidzuga, glancing down towards him.
He tore his eyes away from the sky, shaking his head as other people turned towards us in curiosity and looking up to see the sky. "The dragon is in that direction, and still moving away…" he said faintly, his eyes peaking upward again.
I looked towards where he was pointing, then moved my gaze upwards towards the threads—the tentacles—stretched out across the sky. One end was streaming from the direction Lidzuga had indicated, vanishing over the horizon. Turning in the opposite direction, I saw the tentacles also vanishing beyond sight.
Forcing myself to look down, I clapped my hands to get everyone's attention and they jerked their gazes towards me. "All right everyone, back to work," I said. "Lidzuga says the dragon is moving away and Binder Lori thinks we're safe, so unless it starts snowing unseasonably, all that up there isn't anything for us to worry about. Let's get to the river and make this all Binder Lori's problem, shall we?"
That got them moving again. Militia well knew the importance of making something someone else's problem. The shovels started moving again, clearing the way towards the dock.
And if people occasionally kept looking up, that was perfectly all right. There might be flying dragonborn abominations, after all.
Everyone was very watchful for those. Very commendable watchfulness all around!