A month had passed since I declared my intention to begin a conquest, and much had changed in the meantime. Despite having come to terms with my failings as a friend and as an… adoptive father, for lack of a better term, I was still determined to go through with what seemed to be the only way to create some semblance of lasting peace.
I’m not the one killing innocents, I kept telling myself. It helped that the initial part of my campaign had gone off with nearly no bloodshed. Most local mayors, lords and other assorted community leaders fell in line pretty easily, and this time I ensured their loyalty through a Fate-bound contract. They’d scrunched their noses at the implied insult, but I had already been burned by trusting a noble with their word.
Therein laid the problem. While the beginning of the campaign had gone smoothly, reaching Count Malloc’s territories had proved to be a major roadblock. He’d done a thorough job attracting people to his cause and arming them for a protracted war, and their hit-and-run tactics were well suited for fighting an army that thrived on wars of attrition.
Another enemy of my own making, I thought with a sigh. If only I’d had more skill with diplomacy, I might have been able to avoid this. For now, however, I had a war to fight.
“They’re hidden behind the hills,” Sarah said as she looked into the distance through a pair of binoculars. “Hard to tell which, though, with the sun shining in our eyes.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“You can see some of the tracks from here. Not very clearly, though, or else I could tell where exactly they are.”
“Or it could be a farmer with a herd of sheep or something,” Shiro muttered from the other side.
“It could if the farmer was stupid enough to stand in the way of an army.”
“It’s not like they have live TV here to keep themselves informed,” Shiro said quietly.
“True, I guess. Still, better to expect an ambush than a herd of sheep,” Sarah said.
“The point is moot,” I said, directing a few birds to fly over the hills to get a look. I wouldn’t be able to look through their eyes, not without a supporting array like the one in the tower, but they were, like all wights, able to communicate very simple ideas. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
“Is it an ambush if we know they’re there?” Shiro asked.
“It’s the thought that matters,” Sarah said with a snicker.
“From Count Malloc with love.”
The two continued to banter while I awaited the signal from the birds. I took the moment to glance at the army arrayed before me. It was a mismatched horde of walking corpses, many of which were missing body parts. There was no uniform, no standard or flag, no coat of arms — the only thing my soldiers had in common was the empty gaze with which they regarded everything and everyone around them.
One of the birds began quickly flying up and down — the predetermined signal for spotted enemies. Sarah raised the binoculars to her eyes, presumably to pinpoint its location. The bird only had the chance for one pass at its strange mating dance before an arrow surged from the right, piercing cleanly through the dead crow, which then proceeded to retreat to our location.
“Stupid,” Shiro commented. “They just gave away their location.”
Sarah grunted noncommittally, and I was similarly unconvinced. It could have been a diversion, maybe, or a decoy trying to feed us false information. I sent two more birds to scan the skies, while reluctantly willing the army to begin marching towards the archer.
“Just be on your guard if you scout ahead,” I told the two. They nodded in acknowledgment and advanced together towards the front of the Legion, Sarah still mounted on her gargantuan bear. She seldom ever left its back, nowadays, and I had to admit, they made for a fearsome pair.
I remained in my spot at the back of the Legion, where I could see the shape of the battlefield while also empowering my minions with magic. Two lithe undead stood at attention behind me — Sarah and Shiro had taken to calling them Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum, for some reason that still escaped me. I recruited them after an assassination attempt that had gotten alarmingly close to ending my current incarnation, so as soon as I dispatched them, I raised them to protect me from others like themselves.
I had always appreciated a little irony.
The Dead Legion trudged across the countryside while I waited patiently for the other shoe to drop.
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We reached the location the crow had marked a few hours later, only to find absolutely nothing.
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There had clearly been people camped here — the tracks on the ground were clear as day, and marks remained where tents had been pitched, but none of them were of any use. The tracks were days old, the hundred or so campers long gone from these hills.
But where?
The tracks seemed to go perpendicular to our path, disappearing well into the horizon. Could it truly have been a coincidence, as Shiro had said?
Or were they perhaps trying to circle us, to attack from behind?
With their hundred people, attacking would be suicide, and yet something about this entire situation made me wary. Checking the Soul threads connected to my flying scouts assured me that they were still alive, and I sent them my intent to broaden their search area.
Despite my unease, we moved forward. There was still much ground to cover if I wanted to reach Brightharbor by morning, and there was still a forest to cross before we reached our destination. Even for undead, forests were a treacherous kind of terrain.
After entering the autumnal forest, some of my apprehension melted, replaced by wonder. The fiery reds and mellow browns of the harvest season painted an entrancing picture along our way, and I couldn’t help but be taken aback by its beauty.
The hours passed and my worries had yet to materialize. We were even making good time through the forest, our passage much less difficult than I had expected.
“I lived near the mountains, back home,” Shiro said, startling me from my reverie, “and during the autumn, when I was a kid, I used to play in the woods. Hiding among the leaves all day together with my sister.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” I said.
“Never mentioned her, before. We… we weren’t on good terms, before all this happened.”
Sarah snorted. “Sibling rivalry?”
Shiro’s lips tightened. “Not really. She was the golden kid, and I… well, I wasn’t.”
“Ah, I understand,” Sarah replied quietly. “I was an only kid, myself. When I was small, I used to beg my parents to make me a sibling — nowadays, I’m just really glad they didn’t,” she spoke, almost to herself, and Shiro nodded, seeming to understand her sorrow.
I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to admit it.
“Must have been nice, having a forest nearby. I was a city kid through and through,” she continued conversationally.
“It was,” Shiro said, “but at least you must have had good internet.”
“Well, true,” she said, a look of longing on her face, “could have been worse, anyway.”
The conversation petered off after that, the two of them stuck in their own reminiscing. But for me, the unease kept gnawing at my mind, and eventually I called for the Legion to stop.
“What’s up, Boss?” Sarah asked, head tilted quizzically.
“I need to check something,” I murmured, and began drawing on threads of Fate.
It was still one of my weakest Aspects, but I had improved by leaps and bounds in the past few months. I was still nowhere near good enough to mimic the array in my observatory, but as I walked, I realized I could do with a simpler spell instead.
I rolled the threads into a construct that looked much like a ball of yarn, except instead of having two ends, this one had dozens. With an effort of will and a great deal of concentration, I tasked the little threads to seek anything they could find, for as far as they could.
The spell’s first hits were Sarah, Shiro, and the Legion — I could see their surroundings through my mind’s eye before I excluded them from the spell’s effect. What I wanted to see was if there was anyone else in the vicinity, someone with a Fate connection to me.
The threads spread out among the trees, and soon I lost track of their ends as they wove themselves around the canopy. I waited patiently as the seconds stretched into minutes, the magic still active, still searching.
I almost didn’t notice when one of the threads tugged softly at my mind — and then one thread became two, and then five, and then twenty. I followed them back with my mind, almost afraid of what I would find.
It took mere moments to zone in on our tail, but to me it felt so much longer — and I barely sneaked a single glance before I returned to myself and spurred the Legion to move.
Count Malloc’s men, or at least some four dozen of them, had followed us into the forest, much like I had feared. But, instead of ambushing us, they had decided on a much more dangerous solution to stop our advance.
I couldn’t see it from here, but behind us, the forest burned.
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A piercing shriek from the west made me change the direction of our advance. We were making good time through the forest, faster than any army had the right to, but fire cared nothing for our struggles. The blaze had spread quickly, and it would soon catch us from behind — the dry foliage was the perfect medium for the fire to spread.
I had sent the birds to scout ahead, to look for something that would keep the fires away. I knew from a map that there was a river somewhere nearby, though I hadn’t paid enough attention to remember its precise location — the birds would hopefully be smart enough to identify a long stretch of water.
The fire was close enough that the heat singed my skin, and I was already doing all I could to keep it from reaching us. I was running behind the Legion, holding a shield of Force to dampen the fire’s energy. Many of them were desiccated and would burn easily, and I wasn’t ready to lose the Legion so soon into my campaign. But there was only so much my meager Force magic could do against a forest fire of these proportions.
I had sent my two minions ahead to scout the way for the mindless army. At least, in part. I was much less worried with them safely away from the worst of the blaze. Undead and fire did not go together very well, and unlike myself, Sarah and Shiro only had one body. Some of the rear of the Legion, the ones farthest from my shielding, were already smoldering — though they gave no complaints. They would keep marching until they couldn’t.
A commotion tore through the ranks as the sea of unliving opened to give way to a distressed Shiro, his eyes darting wildly as he pushed his way through. As his gaze finally fell on me, he rushed to my side in the blink of an eye, moving faster than I could follow.
“Boss, it’s bad,” he started, and I clamped down on my irritation, motioning with my eyes for him to continue while I strained to keep the fires from reaching us. Doing it while walking on treacherous ground was difficult enough as it was.
“We found the river, but there’s a problem,” he said, his brows furrowed. “It’s not on our level — it’s down in a ravine. And it’s a very long way down.”
I suppressed a sigh, sacrificing some of the shield for a weak Haste centered around me. I had bet on the river, and even though it looked like a loss, I was determined to turn it into a draw.
Even if it meant jumping off a fucking cliff.