Imperial Year 768
The Scavenger Lands
Three captains glared at each other across a table under an open-sided tent on a hill outside Kalaax. It was warm and raining heavily, the stench of mud and dung freed by the water wafted across the camp, improving nobody's mood. Skond was the biggest of the three, and he called himself General in dispatches back to his lords in the city of Nexus. His company was also the largest, their arms and armor well made in the foundries of their home city. He was the sort used to getting his way through physical intimidation, curly-haired and muscular, and his snarling put many an observer in mind of lions. "Three weeks, and still nothing! Do you plan to sit here until we all rot in this rain?" He pounded a gauntleted fist on the table for emphasis.
The mercenaries across from him did not seem impressed. Jhasa, a broad woman with greying hair, slouched on a camp stool. Her company had been bandits before they were hired and would likely be bandits again when the contract was done. "There's no well in the city. Give them...oh...four days with no rain, they'll be begging to surrender."
Skond sat back down with a great exhalation. "Four days without rain? This time of year?"
"My astrologer says a dry spell will begin in two days."
The third captain, a skinny man who called himself Sparks, snorted. "You said that last week."
Jhasa gave him a sideways glance. "I said maybe, he's more certain this time."
Around the perimeter of the tent lieutenants and aides watched the three captains argue. Among them sat the Revenant. He'd walked into Jhasa's camp six days prior, challenged one of her lieutenants to a duel for his position, and taken the man's head off with a single blow. Since then his blade had been silent, and he had begun to grow bored. Kalaax had refused Realm tax inspectors, and as the closest subject state Nexus had sent an army to bring them to heel, assembled their own troops and local mercenaries, camped outside the city, and begun to argue. They would proceed for hours, and then leave in a huff, and several days later they would reassemble and do it again. The rain would continue, the siege would continue, no taxes would be paid, and eventually the army would run out of supplies or fever would break out in camp and they'd pull up stakes and go home. No blood.
The Revenant stood and approached the table. The debate fell silent, all three turning to stare at him. "Your pardon, captain, but we can take the city this morning if you'll give me a free hand."
Jhasa was glaring murder at him. "You will remember your place..."
"Wait." Skond's eyes had narrowed, he gave the Revenant a measuring look. "What's your plan?"
"We'll coordinate." The Revenant reached one hand down to doodle gently across the rough sketch of the city and its surroundings. "The parapet is badly built...here, Sparks' archers should be able to keep the defenders pinned down and reduce their effectiveness. We can bring up the ram, under cover of Skond's armored troops, and our light troops will push through once we're through the gate and prevent the defenders from regrouping. It should take under an hour." He stared calmly at the table.
Skond looked at the map, then out at the city, then back at the Revenant. "It's a decent plan. We'll move an advance force of archers to...there, through that grove...", he pointed, "and begin in half an hour. Any questions?" He stared around the table, eyes daring anyone to argue any more delays. "Good. Go, see to your companies."
The Revenant turned, walking away from the table, hiding a smile. "Hey!" He ignored it. Jhasa grabbed his arm and jerked him to a halt. "What was that?"
"We're going to finally earn our pay, instead of sitting around in the mud." He turned to the captain. She was a head shorter than him, but didn't seem to notice. He tried to smile in a reassuring fashion. It didn't seem to help.
"You will respect the chain of command or I will have your head, whelp!"
"Of course, sir!" He stepped back into a formal bow, hands clasped to the front, then fell into a fair approximation of parade rest.
Jhasa stared at him. "Fine. Go roust the men."
Mercenaries. The Revenant laughed at himself, internally, for his contempt, he'd been a mercenary much of his life. The insistence on preserving their force over any other concerns was...well, he supposed it was logical, but it also betrayed a lack of conviction in the face of death. To one who had stared death in the face and risen again it seemed almost quaint.
The force that assembled on the hillside shortly thereafter was not large, not by any measure, but it seemed to the Revenant more than sufficient to the task to come. The Nexus troops in their armored shells formed a solid core, brightly lacquered iron plate, tall shields, bright banners, looking like soldiers out of a storybook. Sparks' company was dispersed, knots of archers here and there, their main strength secreted in a clump of woods slightly too close to the wall for safety. Behind the professionals Jhasa's rabble gathered in a mob, contrasting their allies' neat ranks. The ram was among the Nexus troops, a steel-capped log with handles bolted to the sides, enough take this gate, at least.
Before them the defenders were gathering. Word would be passing throughout the city, an assault!, archers would be assembling, runners bringing bundles of arrows to the wall. Picked men would be assembled at the gate, the heaviest equipment theirs; they could see the lack of ladders, they knew the gate was where the hammer would fall.
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The rain slackened. The creek between the encampment and Kalaax was swollen by the rainy season but it lay outside of easy bowshot of the walls, and the gentle slope up to the walls was sturdy, not yet churned up by the passage of boots. The ground would not hinder them today.
At the forefront Jhasa was yelling something. The Revenant only half listened. He didn't have time for speeches, he was already considering where he needed to be for the next phase of his plan. The daiklaive would not do for this, no, anyone coming across a corpse with gashes rent clean through armor would know it was his work, on this field. He carried a common sword as well, a hardened dagger, and an assortment of razor-sharp throwing blades, if the circumstances presented itself his armament should be more than sufficient.
One of Skond's men raised a horn and blew. The army started forward. The Nexus troops marched in good order, neat ranks. As they crossed the stream their step quickened. Arrows from the wall began to fall among them, and from the stand of trees just to their right archers began to fire back. Nobody had brought any musicians, but the Nexus troops began to sing, out of tune and out of time but full of energy. The mercenaries began to join in on the chorus.
The Revenant moved to the fore as the army moved. For this to work he'd need to be in the thick of things. He began to draw on his essence, just a tiny bit, not enough to flare his aura. The grass in his footsteps turned brittle and grey; nobody on that field had much attention to spare for it. A man to his left fell, a lucky shot. Hunting bows fired into Nexus-forged plate barely left dents, but there were gaps.
The army broke into a run around twenty yards short of the wall. The ranks of the Nexus troops broke apart, letting the ram forward to thump into the gate. It had been braced, of course, reinforced as best the defenders could with the time they had when they saw the approaching army six weeks ago, but there was only so much wood could do in the face of the hardened spikes that crunched into it now.
The Revenant had guessed, to himself, that the gate would stand six solid hits. It held for eight. Down went the ram, forward went the invaders. Skond was in the front; he, at least, had a modicum of courage, the Revenant admitted to himself. Wading into the foe, mace laying about himself, smashing through wooden shields and armored skulls alike, but the press of a general melee could be so...unpredictable. The captain barely felt the long knife sliding in under his ribs from the side, between the plates of his armor, but he certainly felt it moments later as blood began to gush from the wound. The Revenant stepped sideways, away, forward, palming the knife. Always forward.
There was a gap, and he moved, moving up the long stair to the top of the wall, dispatching two more defenders with quick motions. No archers remained on the stretch of wall beside the gate, the bodies testifying to the lack of effective cover the crumbling battlement provided. The Revenant laid his sword down, inside the tower, picked up a bow from a dead man, gave it an experimental draw. Not terrible, but without the flow of essence augmenting hand and eye the shot he was about to make probably wouldn't be possible. A haze of shadow flickered around the edge of his vision, a pinprick of absolute blackness hovering in the center of his forehead. He might have drawn too much. Crouching low he sorted through the arrows he could reach, discarding them one by one, until he found one that was straight and well-fletched; he drew, in the shadows of the doorway into the tower, peeked out over the field, picked out Sparks. The captain had formed up a body of men and was heading for the city. Couldn't stand not to have a good crack at the spoils. The arrow flew, arcing high, then fell, lancing into the man's face. His men clustered around him as he fell.
Below any restraint was gone, the battle had become a sack. A small core pushed towards the government buildings in the center of the city but from his vantage on the wall the Revenant watched, smiling, as fire and smoke and screaming spread. Remove the restraints, let mercenaries and bandits be animals, the Nexus force too disorganized to try and restrain their allies, destruction spread. He ducked back in and down the stairs. Jhasa was somewhere in that chaos, and leaving the set incomplete didn't sit quite right with him.
The whispers in the back of his mind laughed.
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Malice Bay
Middle North
Storms in the White Sea are often sudden and fierce; the essence of Air from the North mixing with the great inflow of Water from the West to build towering thunderheads, sheets of lightning, tornadoes, and all manner of other horrors. Well-built ships and brave crews often did survive these storms, of course, but the free trader Moonlight was neither of those things, and six days after setting out from Karston a wave struck her broadside that split her clean in two, and Kaya found herself floating through the sea on a plank. With nobody watching she abandoned her disguise, reverting to herself, clinging to the bit of wood with all the strength she could muster, glowing bright silver from the effort. It subsided after a time, and it was a very bedraggled crow that shook itself off and took to the air in search of land.
On the beach, once more herself, no idea where she was, Kaya slumped down onto a rock and stared out at the sea, its early-morning flatness seeming to taunt her. The trail was long cold, she didn't even know her quarry's name, and while she had more money than she'd started the voyage with she was also in the middle of nowhere. At least this side of the sea wasn't quite so cold as her home, it was still clearly winter, but the snow on the ground was patchy and there were signs of animals.
Well. No name. What did she know? Dire warnings against the anathema were the province of a caste of southern priests who called themselves the Immaculate Order. They may not have been well-liked or given much stock on the far side of the White Sea from their homelands, but they wandered and did priestly work anyway, wrangling ghosts and uncontrolled spirits and the like. Always looking about them with suspicion. Paranoia.
On the eastern end of the White Sea the Haslanti ruled, a trade league and mutual defense pact between the great cities of the further North. If you drew lines on a map Kaya's home would almost certainly be in their sphere of influence, but the pacts that bound the cities didn't stretch their tendrils out to everywhere between them in the way a nation would. Beyond the southern reaches of the Haslanti, a brief no-man's-land on the vast stretch of land between the White Sea and the Inland Sea before the subject states of the Realm. It was not a well-travelled land, sparsely populated, with no major rivers. Kaya frowned, thinking back to the faded old maps she'd seen in her family's meager library in days past. If she was...she checked the sun...on the west side of the bay, then by wing her shortest path would be south and a bit west to Cherak, cutting across unsettled open country. Following the bay south and east would take her through cities and bring her to the mouth of the River of Tears.
Kaya nodded to herself, once. The rivers of the East, tributaries of the Great River that met the Inland Sea at Lookshy, were in many ways the lifeblood of civilization outside the Blessed Isle in the center, by following the rivers she'd stay near people and be able to learn more about where she was going and what she would face. In moments a crow took wing, following the coast south.