17 Days to the Falling
I may have set out on the quest with half a heart. I had a terrible reluctance to kill men. The memories of the slain Hordesmen near Dodge still haunted my dreams. And the Hordesmen were something I could barely see as human. They were bogeymen—savage, irredeemable monsters who thrived on rape and murder. Driven by desperation to save Lord Chowwick, the killing had been easy, barely giving me pause in the moment.
This mission, to uproot a nest of Green Men, was different. It was premeditated, calculated, cool.
As I said, I may have started with half a heart, but the devastation I saw strengthened my resolve. Buffalo territory had grown increasingly lawless, so the caravan I traveled with was well-armed. I had bolstered its guard with members of the Jaxwulf clan. For now, at least, Dirk and his people were making use of my newly acquired lands for camping, and they continued to be available for hire.
Dirk had no reservations about attacking the Green Men; he seemed to have some intimate familiarity with them. They weren’t entirely ideologically opposed to each other—Dirk also sought to uproot the social order and disdained the structure of class. But the Green Men’s insidious violence disgusted him. He saw them as obstacles to meaningful change, labeling radicals like them as little better than terrorists.
So Dirk accompanied me, with fifty warriors, across the landscape. We left the caravan in a secure location, well-guarded and near water, and I used the Footfield to bring the Burghsmen warriors across the land toward the location of the nest.
The Green Men had a fortress in a mountainous region a few miles south of the main trade route between Buffalo and the Eastern Lands. We passed through burned-out villages and hamlets. When we finally came upon a settlement where there were still people, I halted the field to investigate.
The villagers did not recoil from me. They were bedraggled and dirty, working to rebuild smashed homes and partly burned barns. In the fields, young boys were haphazardly chasing after panicked livestock.
An older man approached, possibly the village leader. At first, he seemed hopeful, my SIGHT giving me a much clearer view of him than he could have of me at a distance. But as we neared, I saw disappointment grow on his face.
I greeted him, “I fear I’m not who you hoped to see.”
The man was respectful. I may have borne the colors of a foreign city, but I was still a Griidlord. “Forgive me, m’lord. I thought you might be a Griidlord of our city. We have great need.”
I made a show of looking around at the devastation in his village. “It seems you do. What’s befallen you?”
The man’s eyes were glassy, though his lips struggled to contain an angry snarl. “The Green Men,” he spat on the ground. “The Green Men laid waste to us, m’lord.”
I shook my head. “I thought the Green Men were for the people, for the common folk. Why would they assault you so?”
The man said, “Aye, that’s what we thought too. Not that we support their cause, m’lord. We’re happy to live in a law-abiding world, that’s a fact beyond doubting. But when we started to notice them in the area, we didn’t think we had anything to fear.”
“And so you shouldn’t,” I replied. “That’s the point of them, is it not?”
The man shook his head slowly and sadly. "They came to us just a few weeks back. A big band of rough men. Told us that it was every common folk’s duty to pull together, that they'd be doing the fighting and us the farming, but that meant we should feed 'em. Felt like extra taxes is what it felt like. But we're simple folk, with hardly a sword in the village. What were we to do but give 'em what they asked for? We sent word to the city that we were being extorted, but no help came. That was weeks ago. We sent the harvest to market a little more'n a week back, and when they came again, we explained that we only had enough food to feed ourselves…”
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The man had to stop for a moment, emotion threatening to engulf him. His eyes shone with tears, and his firm lip trembled.
I said, "It's alright…”
He waved a hand at me, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, m'lord. No, it’s alright. They started taking what they wanted anyway, and when one of the wives tried to stop them, they… they took her round back. The men, the young men, they couldn’t stand for it and tried to fight the roughs. But they had no hope. Before I knew what was happening, there were fires and screaming. They… they killed the men who fought them, and took their time with more of the womenfolk. Told us we'd act as an example to others.”
I said, "I've seen other settlements in a similar state.”
"They've been making lots of examples," he replied.
"This is hardly a way for them to win the hearts and minds of the people.”
The old man spat again, saying, "They don’t care about us. We’re out in the Wilds; we'll make no difference in winning the city. It’s the common folk of the city and the towns they want to woo.”
I looked at the poor, broken soul and felt the urge to tell him why I was here. I wanted to assure him that revenge would be served, and law imposed. I turned my head to the west, where I knew the city of Buffalo lay. I thought of the Griidlords there who failed in their duty, of the leaders and nobles bound to defend these people. The Green Men ran rampant in the countryside, Perdinger wandered with the power of a mad and murderous god.
But I couldn’t reveal my true purpose here. Bishop Ra couldn’t act directly, which was why I’d been sent. I might have even made a mistake by being seen here. Still, a man in a village this remote might not even recognize my colors or speak to anyone who would care to identify me. So, I kept my own counsel.
I said, "My men and I are fiend hunting. If we come across any of these rascals, I'll take their heads off. We’ll be in Buffalo later today, and I promise to appeal to your Griidlords to send you aid.”
The man seemed as satisfied with this as he could be. "Thank you, m'lord. I couldn’t ask so much of you."
We passed only one more village as we streaked into the hills. This one was completely burned out, with no sign of life. As the ground grew rougher and less suitable for farming, signs of human habitation faded away.
Ra had shown me the location of the fort on a chart, and the HUD of my suit had interpreted the location into a waypoint marker. I skirted the marker, traveling further up the slopes until the terrain became too laden with obstacles for the Footfield to function.
We continued the last part of the journey without the aid of the Footfield, but it took little time. The fort revealed itself below us as we crested a hill. I took my cues from the Burghsmen. They were gifted naturals at navigating the wilderness, and I didn’t want my shining form to be the reason we were spotted.
The fort, if that’s what it could be called, was an old ruin, bolstered with roughly sawn logs. Men milled around with no semblance of order; there were no obvious sentries or guards at work.
Dirk crouched alongside me and chuckled lowly. “Easy meat; they’ll be easy meat.”
I said, “I think they outnumber us, Dirk. There’s more than fifty men down there.”
He looked at me, as if trying to understand if I was joking. He said, “Yinz enough for them alone.”
I nodded slowly. I supposed I was. I might have struggled against ten Hordesmen, but Hordesmen were of a different breed and had all been armed with power weapons. The men below had only steel, and they seemed hardly as formidable as the demons of the Entropy storms.
I said, “Maybe I should do it myself, spare your men the risk.”
Dirk laughed and, to my great relief, disagreed with me. “We could do with seeing some action. And I wouldn’t mind seeing up close what color these fuckers really bleed.”
I asked, “How, then? You know this better than I do.”
Dirk said, “The boys and me’ll get in close. Those dumbshits down there won’t see us coming. When we start cutting, yinz can come running in from the other side. It won’t be hard work.”
I nodded, and Dirk melted away. I moved into cover where I wouldn’t be spotted by the fort’s watchful eyes and started to lope around to the opposite side. I felt my stomach clenching slightly in anticipation of what was about to happen. Any reservations I’d had about dispatching these men had faded when I’d seen the devastation they were wreaking on the surroundings.
They said that mortal men fighting a Griidlord with steel was like feeding meat into a grinder. It made sense to me; a Griidlord was a god. Only tremendous numbers and a lucky thrust could let a force of mortal men slay or wound a Griidlord. I knew the stories well, I’d devoured them as a bed-bound youth.
I had never imagined the day would come when I would be the meat grinder itself.