The next two days after the Scouring of Ith-Korr were marked by chaos, exhaustion, and a rising underlying tension. The city was shaken, structurally and socially. Every tier bore awful scars from the World-Eater’s fiends, from the Wardship on the lower levels to the Horizon Arena at the great trees’ peaks.
The Dwellship fared the worst, as we’d seen, and the vampyri was responsible for much of that — I had no idea how well it commanded the rest of the fiends, which seemed pretty mindless, but I assume they were driven towards the Dwellship to cause maximum havoc. By the time the fires were quelled, the streets around the courtyard where the vampyri had made its final stand were nearly unrecognisable; dozens of houses reduced to smoking debris.
The Wardship continued to mobilise, undertaking great efforts to bring every able-bodied jungle-folk into the restoration effort, tirelessly clearing the bodies of both fiends and friends alike, and fortifying the tiers against further invasion, where possible. To me, their efforts felt futile against the scale of the damage.
It turned out it had been almost three dozen, all told, and only one vampyri. It only needed a couple set down in an area to cause mayhem and massive loss of life. The Arena, as I had guessed, fared best, with many fighters that were there early preparing for the dusk bouts jumping into action as soon as the Voracious Chiroptera fiends had landed. The dead were still being counted, but it exceeded one hundred civilians and at least two dozen wardens. From what I saw of the vampyri, it could probably have torn the vine moorings from the trees above in a matter of minutes, so the fact that it didn’t told me it either had orders not to, or else it preferred a more personal approach.
The Craftship had been transformed into a gathering site for displaced families, with the Thriftship setting up tents for temporary shelter. A makeshift hospital had also been set up there. Healers from across Ith-Korr tended to the myriad wounded, patching up those slashed by the fiends’ metallic claws as best they could with herbs and unctions. Crafters set to work repairing the broken planks along the city’s winding streets, and tree surgeons did their best to reinforce the fraying green-glowing vines that held the city’s tiers aloft.
Through it all, as Wardship Captain Paresh had foreseen, discontent festered. I learnt of the promises of the Goldship, essentially Ith-Korr’s bank on the lowest tier of the city — they had established a fund to compensate families and cover the cost of rebuilding, opening themselves up for donations from all over the city. Yet whispers circulated that it was only for show; the promised funds didn’t materialise.
It was clear the city’s poorest had suffered most, but as the Wardship focused efforts on the bottom two tiers, tensions boiled over. The end of the first night saw a scuffle between a couple families and a few wardens in the Dwellship turn into an all-out riot. Residents armed themselves with anything they could grab — clubs, broken planks, the odd dagger — and surged the streets below, shouting demands — some reasonable, some utterly incomprehensible. By the second dawn, it was out of the Wardship’s control — they pushed the swelling crowds back with force and barricaded the entrances to the Dwellship. This stoked the rage, and the riot ebbed and surged like a tide for hours. And as the suns climbed, the shouting and clashes turned bloody. . . .
Alator, Lenya and I were kept up to date by Keza and Brekis of the Woven Vine, which had quickly reopened its business, free for the displaced, and were glad to have us around as strange but authoritative presences each night as curses were spat and hatred was barked about. We helped a little in the ways that we could, mostly assisting the Craftship artisans with moving heavy things (with a few shots of [Vigour] whenever I was sure I could get away with it), but after a little while the carpentry and joinery was too meticulous.
It turned out to be a wasteful and possibly offensive excursion, but during this time I set out to try to find an enchanter, or even just someone who could price up the loot I had from my kills. In the comfort of the Woven Vine, I set my spoils out on a table:
* one Broken Fang — though I could not for the life of me remember where I’d got it;
* one Frostwaith Claw — from the six-legged ghostly panther beast Alator had killed;
* one Frost Venom Gland — the bite marks in my shoulder and hand had healed to pale pin-prick scars, but were very subtly still cold to the touch;
* Cinderback Claw;
* Inferno Heartstone;
* three Reaver Venom Glands — small things from the Dune Reaver scorpions on the Breathing Sands; and
* one Chitin Fragment — I had thrown the other two as distractions and hadn’t collected them again.
The first dozen people I asked said something noncommittal, or just blinked at me, confused and a little horrified that I had asked when their city had just been macabrely bloodied. Starting to feel rather frustrated, and more than a bit embarrassed, I was giving up when one of the wardens overheard one of these exchanges and explained it to me:
“There are no enchanters outside Uruk, Mista Talbot.”
Dismayed, I gave up.
Around noon, we were set up in the Woven Vine, helping with the clean up and fitting new swinging doors onto the doorframe. The inside was lit bright with oil lamps, as the small windows and low ceilings — both ubiquitous in Ith-Korr — did not let in enough light for repairs.
“We cannot delay,” Alator said.
My companion had not sat down at all the past two days, constantly pacing and mumbling about haste under his breath. I constantly forced down the urge to agree with him and run out into the jungles to seek prey.
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“That was the first incursion,” he continued. “The World-Eater has set its sight firmly on Barbican. Likely this wasn’t the only city targeted — I hope they had better warriors.”
I just nodded, focusing on my task. He walked over to me and with all the subtlety and gentleness I had come to expect of him, grabbed the scruff of my neck and pulled me in close.
“Are you listening? We have to move. This city will either stand on its own, or it will fall to utter ruin.”
A few yards away, Keza’s eyes dropped. She quickly finished varnishing a table, packed up her tools and left the room up the stairs.
“Nicely done, Alator,” I remarked.
“Saving feelings, now, Talbot? It has been two days since nearly a hundred people were killed by a relatively very small and merciful attack. The next will come as soon as the World-Eater can tear open a new portal — perhaps a week or two. We will need to be —”
“Then better to be here!” I cut across him. I pulled away from him and rose to meet his eyes. His bright blue eyes were lit by the flickering lamplight, and my own were fiery. “We don’t know if the World-Eater struck other cities; what we know is that this city is under attack.” My companion was gritting his teeth, so I added, trying to appeal to something other than morality, “And there is no better place to learn more.”
“We don’t know anything,” Alator agreed spitefully. “How far away is the next city? How many people live there? Is it an easier target to defend? With fewer than three dozen, the World-Eater tore this city almost to the ground.”
“I —”
“Yes, Lenya, I heard you — you say you can catch us when we fall,” he said, turning aside. Lenya had been silent most of the last few days, the incursion taking a harsh toll on her. I heard her in her room both nights wracked by awful dreams, calling for her mother. Loath to discuss it and force her into further weakness, it was clear that her mother, the Queen of the Fey Plains of her home, had a run in with the Albowesti, as she called it, and that her staff was an heirloom.
“We can help the people here,” she said in a small voice.
“We’d help ourselves by not being here,” he shot back. “You can’t save everyone. You can’t save anyone whose time has come. Neither of you seem to have fully accepted what we’re up against. Fixing doors!”
He reached out and tried half-heartedly to tear the hammer and nails from my hand, but I held them firm.
“Infuriating!” he barked, and left the room, disappearing quickly into the sea of bivouacs.
“Ignore him,” I said to Lenya, forcing a smile.
She squirmed a moment, shooting a glance at her staff by the side of the room — never further than a few yards from her at any time.
“I know Alator only ever speaks the truth,” her voice was low and considered, but dripping tired with sadness. “I only wish he weren’t so heartless.”
I considered their words for a moment, then, feeling the veil that stood between Lenya and I start to shift, start to warm, chose to voice my thoughts:
“I’ve known the man less than two weeks, and he has wilfully put me in situations that could well have killed me, and he did so gleefully — but his savagery is what we need. And I feel his impatience. Lenya. I’m coming up empty handed. What can we do for these people?”
Lenya’s gaze fell and her face blanched. A couple of times, her red lips parted as if to speak, but words failed her each time.
At that moment, as if to answer our plight, a stocky jungle-folk wearing the grey-green of the Wardship stepped out of the crowd towards the Woven Vine. He hailed us both by name.
“Masta Talbot of de Flying Spear, Missus Lenya of de Hoary Gold, tiki-rah.”
That was the moniker Zhokko gave me, guess he’s still hard at work.
We both straightened up and I held out a hand for him to shake. He just touched the palm lightly, the way chimps greet each other.
“Yah presence is requested at de Wardship,” he said simply, then turned on his heel and left.
Sharing a glance with each other, we shrugged. I grabbed my Bronze Spear of Blinding, took a few minutes to properly fasten my Linothorax to me, and Lenya set on her golden jewellery and picked up her mother’s staff, and we made over the courtyard, packed with the displaced, and the narrow alleyway between two of the great red trees, to the barracks.
The front of the barracks had been reinforced with a spiked, heavy wooden fence, and there were two wardens out front that nodded and moved apart to let us inside. Ducking in, we made our presence known to the bookkeeper in the foyer and waited for a couple of minutes.
Wardship Captain Paresh emerged out of a back room. He was dressed in armour suited for warfare, blazoned with the Wardship’s badge, and wore a bronze sword at his hip. Feeling a little out of practice, and out of curiosity, I touched the Analysis Card in my pouch.
Name :
Paresh, Wardship Captain, Level 16
Stats :
Str 12, Dex 15, Con 9, Mnd 5
Skills :
Battle Tactics Lvl 2 (Lvl 3)
Inventory :
Bronze Sword, Bronze Whistle, Mibege Flask, 23 Copper Coins
Weakness :
Reluctant to kill
Home :
Ith-Korr, Barbican
Impressive Stats, and . . . the upgrade! The only thing I can think is . . .
I sent out a probe.
SYS, am I seeing his . . . potential?
// SYS : So it would seem. I do not know how this is determined, but it seems the upgrade to the Analysis Card is now giving you an approximation of the highest possible Skill Level they might achieve. //
This keeps getting better, I thought to Her. After a moment, I added, That’ll take care of the recruiting problem!
“Mista Talbot, Missus Lenya, apologies for summoning you. Thank you for coming so quickly,” Paresh said. His voice was slow and tortured, his face drawn, eyes set deep. “We have a situation on our hands. A very important, sensitive and . . . lucrative bounty.”