The Walking Fortress in Allworld was almost complete.
It wasn’t as tall as the Walking Fortress over in the Underworld, nor was it as bulky. That wasn’t to say that it was small. The base of the tower occupied an area as large as the Stone Hearth Burg garrison. And it just went up from there.
Following his directions, the lesser servants had constructed a simple series of circular rooms, all stacked on top of each other. Living quarters and ancillary rooms, for the most part. It fit the definition of a tower far better than the structure in the Underworld did. There were a few small platforms that jutted out. Arkk planned to equip them with siege equipment. Catapults, mostly.
He hoped to get enough spellcasters to man siege ritual circles—combined with charged glowstones from the Underworld—but having manual, mundane backups seemed wise to him.
With a sigh, Arkk turned away from the shadowy tower and looked over the landscape. Winter was almost at an end. Already, the temperature was heating up. It didn’t snow much in the Cursed Forest, fitting with its cursed nature, but even outside, the snow had melted off. Villages were prepping the land for spring crops, travel was becoming more possible for the layperson and refugee alike, and reinforcements from Evestani were storming across the Duchy, headed for Elmshadow.
It was somewhat upsetting that only now did he have this Walking Fortress. Perhaps it wouldn’t mean much against Evestani, who traversed the winter with their golden magic as if it didn’t exist, but mobile housing for an entire army sounded like the perfect way to move through the cold. It was still a mobile fortification that afforded him all the powers he had in Fortress Al-Mir while on the move. The magically reinforced stone, which turned somewhat shadowy after being constructed thanks to the [HEART] of the tower, should be able to shrug off most siege attacks without even needing additional magical barriers.
He wasn’t sure if it would shrug off the golden rays that the avatar could fire. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be sure until one of those rays hit the tower.
“And… you say this building will… move.”
“Walk, yes,” Arkk said, motioning toward the thick legs that stuck out around the base of the tower. With the bulk of the tower resting on the ground, the bend in the legs reached up to the fifth floor. A little under a quarter of the way up the tower.
Hawkwood ran a gloved hand through thinning gray hair. His hair hadn’t been quite so thin or quite so gray at the start of Winter. Nor had his face sported the deep lines of stress and the sunken look around his eyes. Nor had his hand been so stiff and… injured. Arkk had hoped to relieve some of the pressure from the man’s back—along with an introduction to Hale and her expertise with the Flesh Weaving spell—but seeing the way Hawkwood was looking at the tower, Arkk wondered if he had only added more stress into the man’s life.
“It won’t be fast,” Arkk said, wondering if that was a reassuring statement. “But when each step carries it across the length of a cornfield, it can make good time.”
“How… Just how?”
“Magic,” Arkk said with a shrug.
Hawkwood let out a withering laugh. “Magic, he says. I’m no arcanist nor am I a theologian, but I’ve never heard of magic like this before.”
Rather than give a straighter answer, Arkk gestured around the building. “The walls are magically reinforced and it should even be able to grow its own food, enough to support at least three thousand. Filling it to that capacity will be… cramped, but it is possible. I can enlarge it later as well. Those same skull defenses that we used at Elmshadow will be around each leg, which should prevent anyone we don’t want from even getting near the thing let alone assailing it…”
“I… I don’t…” Hawkwood ran his hand through his hair again. Then settled on tugging at his beard. “When you said you had something to help turn the tides, I… I don’t know what I expected. Not this.”
“Oh, it isn’t the only thing.”
“Dear Light. There’s more?”
“Not like this,” Arkk said with a small chuckle. “We’ve been working on ways of casting large-scale rituals without ritualists. My spellcasters have uncovered a trove of old magic which, while most of it isn’t as practical as I would have liked, still has enough to cause a few surprises in any conflict. I’ve been collecting as many groups of deserters from the Grand Guard as possible. And… Well, you remember that dragonoid that Inquisitrix Astra was after?”
Hawkwood closed his eyes. “I can guess what you’re going to say but I’m still not quite ready for it.”
“Yeah, she’s working for me now.”
“Light. The gorgon, I could understand. Offer them food and safety. They’re pretty simple. But a dragonoid? I didn’t know they ever talked with people long enough to be offered food. How did you manage that?”
“Funny story,” Arkk said. It was his turn to sheepishly rub the back of his head. “I didn’t know it at the time but she was coming here to help me out in the first place. It has to do with all the magic I’ve been learning.”
Hawkwood shook his head from side to side, clearly trying to shake off his exasperation. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I can see why so many people are… nervous about you.”
“That is a way to put it.”
“Who would have thought that a farmboy, in over his head with a handful of orcs begrudgingly working for him would turn out like this.”
“Not me, that’s for sure,” Arkk said, then leaned in conspiratorially despite the lack of any eavesdroppers in the area. “If I’m being honest, I still feel in over my head about as much as I did that day you found me in Cliff.”
“Cliff…” Hawkwood’s bewildered expression turned sour. “Have you heard the news?”
Arkk nodded slowly. There was only one bit of news out of Cliff that anyone would be talking about for a while. “The Duke is dead. Not sure how I feel about that,” he said, honestly. “On one hand, maybe the Duchy won’t be after my head anymore. On the other hand, the Duke’s replacement offered amnesty to anyone who deserted the army due to disagreements with the Duke’s choice of friends.
“More than a handful of those deserters I mentioned hiring have… expressed interest in returning to the Grand Guard. I’m not going to try to stop them but it is a bit irritating.”
“Bah. The ones who aren’t returning are likely the wiser of the group. Nobody takes kindly to deserters, good reason or not, amnesty or not. I’m not all that thrilled to hear that you’ve hired them.”
Arkk shrugged. “I needed men.”
“There are men and then there are men,” Hawkwood said.
“Question, though, since I’m fairly ignorant of larger political matters. Can this replacement of the Duke offer amnesty?”
“She has no legitimacy. People listened to and respected the Duke because the King gave him the title. That gave him the authority and command of armies needed to enforce that respect. This so-called Lady Katja has no such authority. As far as I can tell from Neil’s reports, she has managed to gather a sizable foundation of support within Cliff, but that support doesn’t extend much beyond the walls of the city.
“Until and unless the King grants her a title—which isn’t likely as I doubt the King will be all that enamored with those who kill his noblemen, regardless of their reasons—she won’t have any true authority.”
Arkk opened his mouth, only to have his comment stalled by a raised hand from Hawkwood.
“However,” Hawkwood continued. “The situation in the Duchy is… chaotic. Some, like those you mentioned under your command, will be interested in working for this Lady Katja solely because she offers them the ability to continue living in their home. Others will still see the threat of Evestani and join together for a better chance at fending them off. Villagers and those outside the military will likely be pleased with the change in leadership once they hear of the cut to taxes.
“How the situation plays out will likely revolve around how the regiments of the Grand Guard at the southern border react to the news. They could easily step back and allow the King’s army entry to the Duchy or they could maintain their postings for the usurper. If Lady Katja is wise, she will be doing everything in her power to convince the border regiments to come to her, further stalling the King’s army while she consolidates power.
“Ultimately, the King will likely send word to the army to force their way in. Maybe this Lady Katja will have used that stalling time to muster the resources necessary to fend him off. Maybe they roll through faster than Evestani and take her head.” Hawkwood let out a long sigh, casting his gaze back upon the tall tower. “Your presence, especially once this Walking Fortress manages to take its first step, throws an awful kink in the rope as well. I can’t even begin to predict how anyone will react to it.”
Arkk took in his words for a long moment, simply staring up at the tower as he did so. “Well, I can tell you how I’ll react. I’m very much interested in not being tried for treason or heresy or anything else that would result in… an unpleasant outcome.”
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Hawkwood nodded his head. “If Lady Katja is at all intelligent, she will be making overtures to get you on her side as soon as you unveil this tower. This is… I mean, an army spotting this approach over the horizon is going to lose all its morale even if it doesn’t do anything. It represents a power that will frighten many.”
Hawkwood paused a moment as a conflicted look crossed his face. Like he had something more to say but wasn’t sure if he should say it. Eventually, he decided to speak. “There is one other thing. I have received a letter via Swiftwing that asks, if I am still loyal to the Kingdom, to meet with Prince Cedric on the Vaales border of the Duchy. The King is sending his son to… investigate matters.”
Blinking twice, Arkk tried to think. He really did. While Duke Woldair was a known name even in small villages like Langleey and he had heard the King’s name in passing, Arkk wasn’t sure that he could name a single prince. Or princess, for that matter. Did the King have daughters? He didn’t know.
There was the Principality of Vaales to the east of the Duchy and the Principality of Lockloch to the southeast. Presumably, both were run by a prince. Which ones or what their names were just wasn’t something that most villagers in the Duchy cared about.
“Is that… bad?”
“The Prince shut down a rebellion in Vaales, orchestrated by the local count of the land, through overwhelming force. I don’t know much about it other than it happened, nor what his exact plans are in coming here, but…” Hawkwood drew in a deep breath. “No matter what, we’re all going to have some heavy choices ahead of us. This isn’t for a few weeks, however, so we have some breathing room to think.”
Arkk didn’t move outwardly. Inwardly, he wondered exactly what kind of choices Hawkwood intended to make. There was something in Hawkwood’s tone. In his words. Arkk wasn’t sure that he would like the answer if he asked where Hawkwood stood on matters.
“For now,” Arkk said, “until we reach the point of those choices, I could use a drink. And you haven’t even seen the fortress proper yet.”
Hawkwood immediately cast his gaze around, looking confused.
He had arrived in Smilesville Burg to the north of the cursed forest earlier in the day along with a small retinue. Most of whom were still back at the burg. Arkk joined them there before riding in along with Hawkwood and two of his direct adjutants. They were waiting some distance back, Hawkwood having been the only one to approach the tower.
“Not here,” Arkk said with a small laugh. “We’ll be using teleportation circles to reach it. Your men are welcome to join or to rest in the tower. Though the tower is somewhat… lacking in amenities, the crew I have stationed here will be happy to accommodate guests.”
“Arkk,” Hawkwood said, tone flat. “We’ve been camping through the winter in tents and sleeping on hard ground in our armor most nights. I’m sure whatever you’ve got will be a luxury.”
Arkk blinked, feeling foolish all of a sudden. Although he had helped out at various points during the war, he hadn’t been on the campaign trail. He hadn’t roughed it out in the wilderness with nothing but watery stew and hardtack rations.
“Sorry.”
Hawkwood just shook his head, clapping a hand on Arkk’s shoulder before heading back to talk with his adjutants. Arkk, deciding to follow his lead, pulled Dakka straight to the entrance of the Walking Fortress. The land on the surface was still unclaimed, meaning he couldn’t drop her off directly in front of him. Even if he could, it was probably best not to startle the newcomers too much by having her appear right in their midst.
As Dakka hurried over from the tower, Arkk looked around. If a war was to be fought here, claiming the territory so that he might use it to instantly move himself and his forces around the battlefield would be an undeniable advantage. It would be obvious, however, turning most of the land into glowstone-encrusted tiles. He could build on top of that to disguise it, but whatever he built probably wouldn’t be enough to hide the complete transformation of the Cursed Forest.
Then again, he was fairly certain that anyone who cared already knew where he was positioned. Perhaps his fiction that Fortress Al-Mir had moved following the inquisitor’s invasion had worked for a time but he doubted it did now.
He would give the order later for the lesser servants to begin claiming the land.
After giving directions for Dakka to show their guests around the tower, Arkk and Hawkwood descended into the false fortress and made their way toward the ritual circle room at the back. Normally, none of the eight ritual circles went anywhere important. They were intended to be decoys. But today, Arkk had altered one to take them into the fortress proper.
What followed was a fairly standard tour of the fortress. Fortress Al-Mir had become unwieldy large and sprawling in the time since the war had begun. Mostly to make room for all the refugees and the necessary food supply for them, but also because Arkk felt it would be wise to have as much of the Cursed Forest’s underground as possible under his control.
He didn’t bother touring most of those areas, just touching on them in passing as they moved around the more important locales in the fortress. The canteens, the library, the training rooms, the forge, the alchemy lab, and so on and so forth… Arkk skipped over the portal room and the prison, feeling no desire to further shock the poor man with the former or to explain what the unmoving carcass of the Protector was in the latter.
Arkk ended the tour in Fortress Al-Mir’s larger meeting room. The one with a detailed map of the entire duchy hanging across one entire wall. It had been updated recently by a particularly artistic refugee working in conjunction with the scrying team to get what Arkk believed to be the most accurate map of the land that existed.
It was covered in dozens of little metal pins that had been dipped in a variety of colored paint to denote various points of interest, enemy force concentrations, logistical routes, and anything else that might come in handy for this war. Hawkwood spent several minutes just staring at it and then several minutes more asking about each of the pins. He pointed out a few notes of his own, items he knew about that Arkk was missing.
Arkk made notes to confirm that the information was still accurate. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Hawkwood, it was just that the war had effectively been on hold for a little over a month now.
“I must say,” Hawkwood said, swirling a small glass of ruby-colored alcohol. “This is all… impressive. Hard to believe if I wasn’t seeing it for myself.”
“When you have a crystal ball capable of scrying, gathering information is surprisingly simple. There are some holes—Evestani likes to obscure what they’re doing with a sort of fog.”
“I meant everything,” Hawkwood said, waving his glass around. “The crowded halls and training rooms, the manufacture of armor and weapons, the magical research. I lost count of the number of soldiers you have. Beastmen, demihuman, and humans mixing together, working together. Gorgon of all things. No, dragonoids of all things…”
“Just the one.” Arkk hadn’t seen Priscilla on the tour. Although she was working with him, she didn’t exactly get along with many of the others at the fortress. Mostly just the fairies, who Arkk presumed to spark some note of kinship in her given their loss of magic in the Calamity.
“The rate at which you’ve built your organization is staggering. It’s been, what, a little over six months since you stumbled into Cliff City looking lost? You claimed to have two dozen orcs in your employ at the time and were having them doing farming work,” he said with a loud laugh. “I figured you would go out and handle a few bandits or other menial work before some other company annexed your group, offering benefits you couldn’t provide. Maybe suffer a mutiny if you try to get the orcs farming again…”
“You didn’t mention that at the time.”
“I like to think of myself as a man with boundless optimism and firmly believed in your eventual successes.” Hawkwood knocked back the entire glass of alcohol. His face twisted like he expected a burn only to find that burn missing. He looked down at the glass with a frown. “A bit weak,” he said.
Arkk, after taking a long drink from his own glass, Arkk shrugged. “I’m not much of a drinker. Give me a celebration or social meeting like this and I’ll pour a glass. Otherwise, it isn’t to my taste. If you want something stronger…” Arkk held out a hand and, in an instant, a small keg appeared on the tabletop, pretapped with a little nozzle. “This is what the orcs drink.”
Although Hawkwood jolted at the sudden appearance, he only looked at the keg with mild suspicion before twisting the nozzle and filling his glass. He immediately tried a bit only to start coughing. “That’s,” he started with a wheeze in his voice, “a bit stronger.”
Arkk laughed, leaning back in his chair. “My success is definitely not because of any iota of charisma or leadership qualities. I lucked into a magical artifact that lets me do things no other mercenary leader would be able to manage,” he said with a nod toward the keg. “An assistant who pushed me along, driving me to be what I am today,” he continued. Then, dipped his head toward Hawkwood. “And a decent mentor.” Arkk held his glass aloft in a small toast.
Hawkwood hesitated a moment before slowly smiling and taking another sip.
Drinking it just made him cough again.
“You shouldn’t disparage yourself so much,” Hawkwood said as he got the last of the coughs out. “I’ve seen men squander wealth, born leaders waste away in depravity and laziness, and corruption take hold of even the most honest of men. In the hands of the majority of people, a magical artifact would have gone to waste at best, directed toward nefarious ends at worst.” He paused and chuckled. “And don’t underestimate the value of a trusted assistant. You think White Company would be what it is today if I didn’t have my advisers and adjutants? I would have been the squanderer.”
Arkk wasn’t sure that he believed that. Hawkwood was probably just being polite and humble.
“And a mentor? I hope you aren’t referring to me,” he said with another humble laugh.
“Well, someone who showed me the ropes. I might have tried to send the orcs into the gorgon’s mine if left to my own devices and that would have ended in a mutiny for sure. I…” Arkk paused, feeling a tug from the scrying team. “I’ll be right back,” he said, bolting to his feet.
He had specifically asked to not be disturbed today unless an emergency came up. That someone was trying to get his attention meant that something had gone wrong.
Harvey, the flopkin, sat in front of one of the crystal balls with worry lining his rabbit-like face. The moment Arkk teleported into the scrying room, Harvey sat upright and waved him over.
“Kia and Claire were ambushing an Evestani supply caravan as normal,” he said without prompt. “They were ambushed in turn. Fog obscured the crystal ball before I could see much more.”
Arkk blinked twice and cast his attentions out, following the link from himself to Kia. He could sense the dark elf but it was distant, like the fog in the crystal ball was affecting the employee link. It was an unnerving sensation. He had been inside the Evestani encampment during the siege of Elmshadow but hadn’t felt that effect.
Evestani weren’t resting on their asses while waiting for winter to end. They had been working to counter him just as he was working to counter them.
Unfortunately, it was something he would have to think about later.
Arkk teleported Dakka, Alma, Rekk’ar, Zharja, and Joanne straight to him. “We have an emergency,” he said before they fully got their bearings. “Dakka, Alma, Zharja, Joanne, I need you and your teams ready for combat immediately. Rekk’ar, you get everyone remaining on high alert. That means gear and postings. I’m teleporting you all to the armory. A full briefing will be conducted in a few moments as you are armoring up.”
He teleported them again before they could even think to argue and then teleported himself back to Hawkwood.
The man, standing and looking somewhat alarmed at Arkk’s sudden disappearance, jolted at Arkk’s sudden reappearance.
“Sorry, we’re going to have to cut this short. There is an emergency.”
“Something I can assist with?”
Arkk paused to consider. Most of White Company were out around Smilesville Burg. They weren’t his employees yet—maybe ever—so he couldn’t just teleport them around. It would take too long to get them over here. So Arkk just shook his head. “Not this time. Ilya,” he said, gesturing to where the elf appeared in the meeting room with a short, surprised squeak. “Ilya, if you would be so kind as to help Hawkwood. He is welcome to stay if he wishes or show him the way to the teleportation ritual back to the tower if he wishes to return to his men.”
“Arkk, what’s—”
“Sorry, no time to explain more. Kia and Claire’s group were ambushed.”