Early the next day, they caught sight of the town King Galukar had spent so much time promising them. The giant oaf seemed to think himself vindicated, despite it appearing entirely too early and westward, but Silenos was in no mood to burst the delusional bubble keeping his temporary asset in such an agreeable mood. Instead he maintained focus on approaching the distant settlement, and peering ahead to see what might be gleaned of it from afar.
“Do you know the name of the town?” Ensharia asked, succeeding in diminishing the grinning idiot’s pleasure with just that simple question alone.
“I don’t.” Galukar replied, testily, “But we can learn that easily enough.”
“What about its loyalties?” Falls added. “I don’t want to step into some safe haven only to get lynched.”
The King snorted.
“Oh, they’re traitors, here, to a man. All of them under the Dark Lord, have been for years. They’ll be well used to it I imagine.”
It was Ensharia’s turn to frown at that.
“Won’t they crave freedom? Won’t that make it that much easier to inspire them into revolt?”
The King eyed her, almost pitying.
“No, Paladin, it won’t. Freedom isn’t a dream that survives being unfulfilled for long. They’ll be more tired than angry.”
Silenos could agree with that much, he’d held plenty of cities using just such a concept himself. So long as things did not worsen for people, and they were held tightly and forcibly whilst given time to adjust, the urge to fight back against their conquerors would dissipate surprisingly quickly. It was what had made House Shaiagrazni’s territory so easy to expand back in his own world.
But it did beg one important question.
“If it’s loyal to the enemy, we might run the risk of capture heading into it.” He observed. “I advise that we send some of us in first, those of a less distinct appearance.”
His eyes flitted across the group, though hardly needed to. It was more of a focusing aid than anything.
Galukar was close to two hundred and ten centimetres tall, weighed almost as many kilograms, and had one of the most famous faces and names in the entire continent. Even to say nothing of his being as subtle as a brick dipped in nitroglycerin. He, obviously, was out of the question.
Silenos himself was a few centimetres shorter, but he hardly looked entirely human. His clothing had been torn badly enough in the fighting that patches of keratin armour were visible through the gaps, and his own height was still far in excess of the new world’s norm. His accent would be further evidence of his foreign origins.
Ensharia was an option, however And surprisingly, so was Swick the Swift. The sky pirate looked distinct enough, but likely had better first-hand knowledge of the region than anyone else present, and with her previous Paladin armour destroyed and replaced by Silenos’ Fleshcrafted substitute Ensharia had high odds of at least looking the part of a foreigner of no particular loyalties or inclinations.
The only real question was whether he ought to send Falls in with them, which Silenos eventually decided against. Putting aside the boy’s ridiculous lack of first-hand experience regarding the outside world, he was now an Apprentice of House Shaiagrazni, and one of the most gifted who’d ever lived. Silenos would burn nations to the ground and scatter their ashes across the winds before allowing harm to befall him.
“It will be Ensharia and Swick.” Silenos informed the group, interrupting Galukar in the middle of what looked to be a promisingly horrible tirade. “They have the most required blend of physical indistinction and actual social skills, not to mention worldly knowledge.”
The King glared for a moment, then nodded. Seeming almost annoyed to have been given a logical idea.
“Makes sense.” He conceded, turning to the pair. “Alright, head on in. We want to know where we are, get a map, if possible, and above everything else find some food and water. Horses too if you can manage it.”
The sky pirate eyed him at that, seeming rather affronted.
“I have a couple of silver.” He noted. “Not gold, silver, horses are out of the question. And I’m not sure why I should be getting food for the rest of you as well, it’ll go farther if I just save it for myself.”
“Because you’ll still be holding it when I throw you as hard as I can.” Galukar replied, calmly. “Which, believe it or not, would actually bring you quite close to clearing that horizon.”
Silenos did not inquire as to how the brute knew that, simply spoke up to add his own, less idiotic means of persuasion into the mix.
“And it would also mean you’d be making your way through the Dark Lord’s territory with no assistance, and no chance to collect the debt you’ve sown in us by providing your aid during the battle in the castle.”
He’d had a feeling that it would be the appeal of wealth to sway the captain, and it proved correct. Swick the Swift did not take long to change his tune after Silenos aimed his words at greed and pragmatism, soon nodding, though still looking reluctant enough as he agreed. Good, that would, with luck, leave him more cautious.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The captain’s eyes narrowed after a moment.
“Someone must’ve found the rubble of Castle Edmari by now.” He noted. “And you must’ve known that, are you by chance trying to fuck me?”
Silenos met his eye, keeping his face level.
“I would rather obscure our real numbers for when whoever may or may not be pursuing us reaches the town to ask about any suspicious outsiders.” He replied, preferring not to lie when unnecessary. “I did not feel the need to mention this because I had assumed the rest of you had drawn similar conclusions.”
He glanced around, found varying levels of disbelief greeting his eyes, then Swick the Swift sighed.
“Bloody casters, alright then, let’s go.” He started for the town quickly, and Ensharia hurried after. Silenos watched the pair go with an odd disquet sitting in his gut.
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The air smelled of sulphur, Ensharia thought. Sulphur, and the strange, sickly sweetness of infected flesh. She’d studied such scents during her time training as a Paladin, and knew them both well. They were the tell-tale signs of Necromantic corruption in a landscape.
Normally such a state did not take a place instantly, which was good. When the lands turned dark and twisted like this, they became anathema to life of any kind. Attracted undead from across the continent, like the smell of flesh did scavengers, and strengthened and sustained those that dwelled within. Crops withered, water turned putrid and toxic, and, apparently, even the deep roots and burrowing insects, and the very matter which usually nourished such things, were reduced to such an extent as to deny Silenos his Fleshcrafting.
The Saviour had said, insisted, even, that the Dark Lord’s Necromancy was amateurish by the standards of House Shaiagrazni. She’d believed him once, found the revelation a source of hope and strength, but Ensharia had seen the man’s flaws demonstrated with far too much regularity to just take him at his word any longer.
Could he have underestimated their enemy in such an excessive and extreme way? Perhaps, perhaps. Ensharia didn’t think Silenos Shaiagrazni would ever misjudge a caster who had stood before his eyes, but he’d still not encountered the Dark Lord in person. Until he did, his arrogance may well have been what motivated his conclusions.
“Bloody hate Necrotic lands.” The pirate breathed, beside her. Ensharia glanced over, pulled from her thoughts by the momentary assumption he was talking to her, then relaxing slightly as she found him staring ahead. Just thinking out loud. Ensharia’s concern blossomed again as she studied the man.
Swick the Swift had become famous for his piracy, in more than one way. Mostly, the stories told of his cunning. He’d escaped from more prisons than most pirates with twice his experience had even been thrown in, stolen perhaps a full tonne of gold, made himself rich in the dirty work, and then made himself poor with how he spent it. By all merits, he was a man of staggering intellect and ridiculous impulsivity. She’d been ready for that.
What struck her now, though, was the sheer calm about him. He strutted along the dark, grimy soil as if it were a red carpet, looking almost bored at their surroundings, irritated at their circumstances. But not shaken.
He had rammed a prized skyship into perhaps the most valuable building in the continent, destroying both, and lost each and every one of his crew in a failed attempt to keep them out of the fighting.
Had Ensharia suffered as much misfortune and loss, she wouldn’t have been able to even stand, and yet mere days afterwards Swick the Swift was striding away as if the fact weren’t even occupying space in his head.
It irked her, and she spoke up to let him know as much.
“Does it not bother you, that all your men are dead?”
The man turned, eying her as if she’d just asked if he wanted to drink a puddle of cow urine.
“Ray of sunshine, you, aren’t you love?” He grinned, revealing two teeth which had, at some point, been knocked from his mouth and since replaced by ones made of gold. Ensharia shivered at the smile, returning her eyes to the space ahead of them.
Fortunately, with Falls and the prisoner no longer in their company, she and Swick were able to make far faster progress along the landscape than their entire group had earlier, each stride eating up well over a yard of space and coming faster than would be sustainable for less trained and Vigorous individuals.
Ensharia almost wished they’d been moving slower, soon. It would have given her more time before her eyes took in the withered settlement awaiting them.
It was not a small thing, nor was it particularly large. A town which likely held a few thousand, at first glance. As they entered through its outer wall, however, Ensharia found the streets far too thinly populated for such numbers to possibly be true. It seemed very much as if a typical settlement had had one out of each three of its citizens removed, and those who remained were terribly thinned by hunger and fatigue.
With a few exceptions, which Ensharia had to fight herself not to attack on sight. The soldiers of the Dark Lord were perfectly healthy and well maintained as they walked around, looking as if they were enjoying rations of rare and exceeding quality for the soldier’s lives they’d chosen. The scum.
They weren’t undead, as was common for those servants of Necromancer-tyrants who policed civilian areas rather than marching to battle. That just made things worse. Oh, humans could be relied upon not to eat or slaughter those they watched over, but that was because they were thinking beings. People. It was not mere mindless nature that compelled them to act the way they did or obey orders with a singular savagery, they could choose. And these ones were choosing evil of their own volition.
One of them shoved an old woman and sent her hitting the ground, hard. It happened just a few yards ahead of Ensharia and her companion.
“You owe nine.” The guard snarled, clutching what looked to be less than nine copper coins in one fist, while the other closed tight about a spear at his side. “Are you trying to rob His Majesty?”
The woman couldn’t have been a day younger than sixty, and Ensharia feared her aged body might have given in from just that single shove alone before she rose to her knees, looking up at the soldier with pleading eyes as grey hair spilled over her face.
A hand closed around Ensharia’s wrist, and she turned to see it was Captain Swick’s. His face had grown serious, eyes hard and determined.
“Careful.” He warned. “We’re here to gather information and travel supplies, and we need to keep a low profile.”
“The sentence for theft, woman, is flogging.” The soldier continued up ahead, turning Ensharia’s face back around to watch as another man drew a vicious looking whip out from his belt. “And since you stole from the Dark Lord himself, we’ll be delivering your sentence in public.”
One man moved to expose the woman’s back while the other prepared his instrument of torture, and Ensharia tore her arm from the sky pirate’s grip.
She took one step, then another. Forcing herself to turn away from the sight and leave, knowing that extrication from the situation was the only way she had of ensuring she wouldn’t cave in. Knowing that the impulses of justice and righteousness would kill far more people than one old woman if she were to obey them now and jeopardise her mission.
The woman’s screams came out, each one of them landing in Ensharia’s ears like a whip strike itself. She weathered them.