Ensharia was just about ready to be done with her and the pirate’s little outing, finding herself driven to the edge of her tolerance by more or less every word from him. Her oaths forbade wanton violence, particularly in anger, but breaking them was made more appealing each and every time she heard him smack his lips or murmur about a yearning for alcohol.

Just a few more minutes, Ensharia, just a few more minutes to get the rest of our supplies and you can leave.

The mantra was of some comfort, but her nerves still kept on eroding. Right up until the people around them started moving.

Ensharia didn’t need to ask why the town’s citizens were suddenly slipping along the street like some human river, she found her answer shortly.

“The Generl Venka is calling a town-wide ounce-ment!” Came a voice, dull and heavy as a hammerblow, loud as the sound of a trebuchet striking castle walls. Ensharia barely even noticed that the speaker was an orc, barely even took a moment to glance at the unholy creature. Her mind was occupied by the name sitting in the midst of it, searing a hole in her thoughts.

Venka.

Venka. General Venka, the butcher. The orc-wrangler, the man responsible for putting a dozen cities to the torch and ordering so many hangings that all the world’s scholars had yet to fully uncover, record and count them. Her blood boiled at the mere mention, hands curling into fists so tight they’d have crushed stone caught between their fingers.

She turned to look at the pirate, suddenly struck by a great curiosity of what his reaction might have been. It did not surprise Ensharia that Swick’s emotions on the matter were limited to no more than surprise, concern and a dull, subtle worry.

“We need to leave.” Ensharia told him, doing everything she could to keep from screaming the words out, then following them with a hasty attack on the nearest orc.

“We need to head with the others.” The pirate replied, and Ensharia wore her stare openly.

“Are you mad?!”

“I’m smart.” Swick shot back, with unexpected venom. “Trust me, the most suspicious thing we can possibly do now is leave at the precise moment we found out about some big, town-wide meeting. We follow everyone else, blend in, and leave when we have a chance to do so by walking in the same direction everyone else is.”

Ensharia tried her best to find a flaw in the man’s reasoning, but it proved stubbornly insistent on yielding none. With an exhalation of breath heated almost to scorching by her temper, she nodded.

“Fine, lead the way.”

They both headed onwards.

Around her new, Shaiagrazni-made armour, Silenos had hastily conjured and wrapped cloth constructed from various “materials” within his form. Apparently the issue of food had been less demanding of his redundant armour plating than the issue of disguise.

Being told as much had certainly annoyed Ensharia, but now she couldn’t be more glad for the draped fabrics hiding her abominable armour from sight. Orcs were dull, but it would take only one enemy human taking notice of them for the Dark Lord’s finest General to be brought word of her presence.

That made something else occur to Ensharia, and she turned quickly to Swick.

“Won’t you be recognised?” She asked. “You’re a Hero, right? Even the others had heard of you, and they didn’t study…Outlaws. Your name’s spread halfway across the continent, and you’re a particular issue for the Dark Lord considering you possess the means to travel through his corrupted lands without ever actually encountering a reanimate or monster.”

He smirked at that, in a way that left Ensharia somehow rather disconcerted rather than reassured.

“You ever heard of a witch?”

Her irritation soon replaced the worry.

“Of course I have.” Ensharia snapped. “What does that have to-”

“-Five hundred gold, more or less.” The man cut in, eyes still ahead, smirk still in place. “That’s how much they usually charge to erase the memory of my face and appearance from the world, provided only a few people see me at a time.”

Ensharia was speechless.

Witches were rare, and feared. And both for good reason. Theirs was a miraculous magic, incomparable in power and versatility, yet terrible in practice. Every instance of its use, whether a parlour trick or grand working, cost them a little piece of their lives. Aged them that tiny bit more. The Paladins used them only sparingly, and with great reverence, and most barely had any understanding over even their own powers for fear of wasting their lives by practically training with them.

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Finally, she found her voice.

“How could you do that?” Ensharia demanded, anger, rather than curiosity, flooding through her. Life was sacred, time was sacred, to use a magic that demanded its price in both so casually was…It was beyond evil.

Swick merely shrugged.

“Cost them a few weeks, or months, and over the years it’s probably kept me alive for just as long in total. You don’t live long in my position if you’re prone to being recognised, I might have been held down and killed by orcs already if I were.”

“And you didn’t think to simply not be a pirate and anger people into wanting to kill you, instead?” She snapped. Swick grinned that infuriating, Swick grin that never failed to make Ensharia want to pick him up off the ground and hurl him as hard and far as she could manage.

“Seems to me like that’s the major concern, here, rather than what I pay witches to voluntarily do as part of a mutually beneficial transaction.”

He was right, in the practical matters at least. That wasn’t all that Ensharia cared about of course, it wasn’t all that any Paladin cared about, but it wasn’t a disagreement she had the time to push in their current situation either. For the moment, practicality would have to reign supreme.

It seems that every moment has been one of those moments, of late.

The people were ferried along the streets by yet more orcs, and in following them Ensharia was able to gaze at the creatures more closely than she might have liked. They really were repulsive, like things made by Silenos’ magic. Musculature bulged so broadly and sharply that it seemed almost edged, where it wasn’t covered in thick layers of linen gambeson or hidden behind sheets of ugly iron.

“Don’t stare.” Swick whispered. “They aren’t as stupid as people say.”

Ensharia whipped her head around quickly, feeling her face burn. She was getting corrected a lot, it seemed, by this one. Perhaps he had been the wisest choice of company.

Soon enough the river of flesh reached its mouth, a large town square with a statue placed in the centre and surrounded by cobbles instead of the dirt roads that marked everywhere else in the settlement .Standing at the statue, standing on its very head in fact, was a man Ensharia could only imagine was General Venka.

He was shorter than in the stories she’d heard, which Ensharia had found was an eternal constant common to all Generals. His skin was of a pale Northern shade, like hers rather than the darker fleshed Necromancer they’d captured, and a pink scar ran over the brow and lid of his left eye, reaching just through the cheek.

Venka’s hair was black, like Silenos’, but far shorter, carefully cropped and carefully held in place with such attentive scrutiny that Ensharia found herself wondering whether it might have been encased in molten tar. It was his eyes that struck her most, though. More than the cruel twist to his lip, more than the towering orcs standing at the base of his perch, and more than the creaseless attire covering his body which looked to demand the work of a dozen servants in its maintenance.

The General’s eyes were fierce and inexhaustible in their search of the crowd.

“Good people, I offer my greetings to you all on behalf of our master, the Dark Lord.”

Heads lowered, eyes shifting to avoid meeting his, bodies trembling slightly as the crowd recoiled in mere mention of their dominar. The General continued.

“I am sure that many of you must be startled and disturbed by the presence of my forces in your town, and for that I can only apologise. It is not my intent to spread upset or distress among any of you, nor any other citizen of the Dark Lands. These are hard times we are facing, plagued by war on each side of our borders, and I am well aware that the demands of taxation and rationing will already be gnawing at your livelihoods. You have no need of further concerns added to that, and yet, I am afraid, I have no choice but to burden you with my presence. For among your settlement is a man, woman or group who are working to act against our great nation and all that it stands for. Among you, there are, I believe, enemies. Rebels, terrorists acting against the people of His Majesty's Empire. I am here to extricate them from among you.”

Ensharia’s mind raced. The General, obviously, was talking about them, but she wasn’t certain how he could have followed them. Silenos hadn’t been using magic outside of the crash site, none of them had, and they’d specifically watched the Necromancer to keep her from doing

They were, however, at the nearest town to the site, just a few dozen miles from it. If someone wanted to track them, they’d not need much more information than the simple direction they’d been moving. Was that what the General had been operating on? How could he have gotten even that much?

They turned as the crowd dispersed, hurrying for the edge of the city. So far only a few orcs had made themselves known, and all were armoured in the way of General Venka’s heavy infantry. So elites, too few, Ensharia hoped, to fully encircle the settlement’s perimeter.

Mud streets were dented by their footsteps, so hard did they make their way for the town’s edge. Dirt cratering and spattering outwards with each stride. They reached the edge in a mere minute, and that was when Ensharia;s heart sank.

Orcs waited for them, not heavy infantry. Mere footmen. Numerous slabs of hulking muscle, lined outside the settlement with sneering faces and cruel glints in their eyes. Tusks and fangs split their mouths into perpetual grins, and each one held an ugly weapon tight within their fist.

They started coming for them instantly, having already seen Ensharia and Swick moving for the edge, and doubtless having been told to seize anyone who did so. The General had hidden the bulk of his forces to encourage any traitors hearing his announcement to flee quickly and daringly, an elaborate trap that Ensharia had been just clever and stupid enough to trip.

“Halt.” One of the orcs growled, as a dozen more followed it in marching over to them. They moved in a wedge formation, an oddly complex position which Ensharia imagined said far more about their General than it did them. Each held a spear, shafts thick enough to be driven through stone without breaking, tips as dark and dense as all their other metal.

Obviously, halting was not an option.