A Soldier Life - 235 - Under Scrutiny (Patreon)

Chapter 235:

We moved west before circling south to avoid the Pathfinders. Aesop was talkative for Hound as he remained a few steps behind me. “Noticed your accent. Where are you from?”

 “The south, small village in Tsinga.” I replied cautiously.

 “Were you parents from the Telhian Empire then?” He asked as we slowed to move across a clearing.

 “Don’t know, they never told me where I was from.” It felt like he was digging a little bit and being on guard from the wilds and my companion was mentally taxing.

 “Just never heard of a foreigner in the Hounds,” he said innocently enough.

 “Well, times are desperate, and I have proven myself many times over.” I held up my hand and took cover. I pointed in the distance at a humanoid.

 “Good eyes,” he said. “Troll, five hundred yards that way. Must have wandered up from the swamps. Still, it is a long way from home.” He dropped in sudden thought and took out his notebook. His pages were full of script as he paged to a blank page. I was definitely being short-changed in the information dissemination category. I watched as he wrote, reading.

 “A lone swamp troll on the coast. The orcs may have pushed into the swamp and stirred them up. Any activity along the border forts?”

I frowned as Aesop got an almost immediate response.

 “Just normal troglodyte activity. Has the new Hound reached your position?”

 Aesop scrawled a response, “He is with me now. We are moving to the Varvao River.”

 “Good. They shouldn’t be able to sail up the river and it will slow them. Report on their movements. I will need you at the Archives in a few days. A dragon shitstorm is forming. The goblins have been active to the south, and a horde may be forming. I am sending two Hounds from the Archives to keep an eye on them.”

 Aesop seemed to consider before writing. “Do you want me to go?”

 “No. Get to the Archives when I order you.”

 Aesop sighed and closed his book. “Do you want me to go to the Archives in your place?” I asked.

 The Hound laughed softly. “I doubt my father would be very pleased to see you there. Maybe in a few years, he will trust you. He asked me to form an opinion of you.”

 “Centurion Sergius is your father?” I asked conversationally while tracking the troll in the distance.

 “Yes, he is.” He said with exasperation. “That is why he won't send me into danger, and he is pulling me to the Archives. Nepotism at its best.” He said lightheartedly.

 I digested that before asking about the troll, “What are we going to do about our friend?”

 “We will watch him a bit and make sure he is alone. If it pursues us, a few bleeding arrows will slow him down but won't kill him. They have an incredible sense of smell, and I don’t want to risk it finding our trail. You remember trolls regenerate?” Aesop asked. He didn’t ask about the absence of my own bow.

 I nodded. “Yes. Are we going to kill it then if it follows us?” I asked.

 “No. We don’t have time to wait for it to weaken to get in close to lay fire to it. Three or four bleeding arrows into it, and we can run. If it chases us, the severe blood loss will slow it quickly. After we circle around, we will leave myconid powder behind us.” We waited for a quarter an hour, watching the troll move large boulders. It was building a dwelling, apparently.

 “Okay, there may be others in the area, but we are not waiting. Remember your training; trolls have difficulty bending over, so if it chases us, stay under low branches, it will slow him enough to bleed out from the poison and weaken.” Aesop advised taking the lead. I got a full blast of his scent when he stepped in front of me. How could he stand himself?

 As we circled around, the troll inevitably caught Aesop’s scent and stood tall, sniffing the air. At a hundred yards, I could see it more clearly. It was the height of two men with gray-green skin covered in discolored patches. Aesop didn’t wait and knotched his bow, releasing. The troll was still sniffing the air when the first arrow thudded into his thigh, a second struck a moment later in his chest.

 “Time to move,” Aesop said running. He started in front on me but I was not going to deal with his odor so moved ahead of him. “You got some legs on you,” he huffed from behind me after a time. “Pause for a bit, while I spread the myconid spores.”

 I did as he asked and listened to the woods. Some early spring birds and a distant crashing of branches. We had gained some good distance on the troll. Aesop spread the spores wisely on branches. The troll would shatter the branches and get a faceful of the spores.

 We continued our flight south, and Aesop chuckled after a few miles, “That was exhilarating. We can start to angle back to Kraken Bay and slow down.” He asked as we moved silently among the trees angling west.

 When we paused to eat, the weather had gotten humid, and Aesop was attracting the freshly hatched and voracious flies. I sat upwind of him as he slapped the annoying insects. A thought occurred to me as I watched his neck drip from a nasty bug bite. I handed him a small cloth bandage. He thanked me and, unfortunately, after wiping his neck, pocketed the cloth.

 I decided to risk taking a sample from Aesop. I sent a tiny sliver of his flesh into my dimensional space from his thigh, and my aether bottomed out. He slapped hard, thinking one of the flies had gotten under his clothes. “Damn it. Let’s move. These flies must be the only thing that like the ogre stench.”

I nodded and stood. I now had a blood sample to use in my blood compass. When Aesop was ordered to the Archives, I could track him. We had to swim across one wide river before we reached the coast. The height of the ridgeline had faded, giving us less of a high-perched view, reducing the distance we could see. We both scanned the waters for the orc ships. “Nothing,” I said after changing the magnification a few times.

 Aesop lowered his spyglass. “I have one ship northwest. Probably the one that dropped off the Pathfinders. The inlet to the Varvao River is just ten miles south. They should be anchored there and unloading their troops. They won’t be able to sail up the river.” He opened his book, read a message, and scribbled a response. Not surprisingly, my own message book lacked new orders.

“We need to find the fleet.” Aesop said after he was done responding.

 “Any news,” I indicated his closed book.

 “The Emperor marches the day after tomorrow. The elves are pushing hard for Caranhagan, and he will arrive on time to intercept them. The dukes south of Macha are struggling with the Bartiradians. There is nothing left to reinforce Varvao. They are going to have to hold out on their own, but the forts along the Agorian Front are being abandoned to reinforce the city. That should give them another six thousand soldiers but no legionnaires or mages.” Aesop said, sounding doubtful for the first time about the Empire’s chances.

 The Agorian front was a series of forts along the western swamps that held the trolls and troglodytes at bay. It was where I had first joined Castile’s company.

 Aesop got my attention, “Let's move cautiously. If the fleet is nearby, I expect there to be more Pathfinders.”

 We did move a lot slower, and I continued pulsing earth speak as we shadowed the shoreline. We saw the dark, heavy smoke first, and Aesop frowned. “That is where the town of Bracara is located. It is at the mouth of the Varvao River.” He had his spyglass out, but we didn’t have an angle to see the origin of the smoke.

 By the intensity of the smoke, it was clear the orcs had sacked the town. “Where are the warships then?” I asked, scanning with my own spyglass.

 Aesop was confused. “They might be anchored in the river, but it is too shallow and has too fast a current for the large ships to sail up to Varvao Lake. We will wait until dark to descend and scout the town.”

 We moved away from the coast to make camp. As we set camp, Aesop commented, “I am surprised. Most sentries are hard to work with. Myself, of course, being the exception.” He had a self-deprecating smile.

 I felt I needed to explain myself. “During Hound training, I was far superior to the others in most skills.”

 He studied me before saying, “The Hounds have been taking on unqualified men the last few years. Perhaps the Centurions need to be more open-minded and let more foreigners into or ranks like you.” He was not very subtle in testing me.

 I didn’t hesitate in my response. “I think they are smart not to. The Empire needs to know those who defend its borders are loyal and not traitors with certainty.”

 He picked up his warmed tea off the thermal stone. “Perhaps. The Truthseekers are known to be fallible.” The bastard was testing me. Did he suspect something? No, it must be Centurion Sergius who picked up on something when he questioned me. What had I said that made him doubt me?

I thought I did a good job not expressing a reaction to his statement as I responded. “I have never heard of anyone fooling a Truthseeker. How is that accomplished?” I asked calmly.

 He studied me while I chewed on some spiced jerky. “It is not fooling the Truthseeker but the Truthseeker whose loyalties are suspect.” He took a long pull of his tea. “Did you know two Imperial Truthseekers were found to be working for the Esenhem elves?”

 This was no normal Hound. He knew things that he should not be privy to. “I did not. How do you know about it?”

 “My father is preparing me to take over the Western Hounds. When I am promoted to Centurion, I will need good people close to me. He said I should look at you closely.” Aesop confided. I was left a little shocked. Was he playing mind games with me, or was this genuine? Aesop, besides smelling like ass, definitely had a charisma to him. “I will take a watch and get two hours of sleep.”

 I didn’t object but only closed my eyes and steadied my breathing. I kept my ears on alert in my faux sleep until Aesop woke me. We were fortunate to have a cloudy night, covering Neptune’s Tear and the bright stars. With our night vision goggles, we moved to investigate the town under cover of darkness. Even though Aesop's position appeared to be garnered through nepotism, he was a very competent Hound, and against my better judgment, I was actually finding myself liking him.

From a half mile away, I could smell the burnt wood long before we reached the town. It looked abandoned, with over half the town smoldering. We took cover and scanned the ruins together, I had the right and he had the left. “I see a few orcs. No apparent Pathfinders,” I whispered.

“Seven on my side. No sign of any Talhians besides a few charred bodies. Most would have fled, and any captured would have been collared and loaded on the ships. But where are the ships? Not even the one we saw a few hours ago is here.” I scanned the water to confirm, but I did not see anything.

“Are there any other Hounds stationed nearby?” I asked, thinking he might know.

“There were only three in Kraken Bay. Jakob, who spotted the fleet, was killed by Pathfinders, according to my father, and we are the only two left. Hercule was recalled to join Marconis’ Pack to hunt down an infiltrator.” He stood slowly, “We are going upriver. It is the only place those warships could be.”

We backed away from Bracara and made our way south along the Varvao River. It was only a short time before we found an anchored ship. Oil lamps and glow stones highlighted it through the budding trees. I followed Aesop to the shore to study the ship from a distance. A dead fish floated by, and then another. Aesop was focused on the ship’s deck with his spyglass. “I can see a second ship anchored a mile further up. They shouldn’t have been able to sail this far up the river.”

“Do you think the dead fish have something to do with it?” I asked.

Aesop looked down, confused at the dozens of dead fish floating by. He scooped up some water, which was thick with mud, and cursed. “Let’s go. I need to tell my father.” I had an inkling of what he surmised as we moved away from the river to a safe distance. He opened his book and wrote, “The orc priests are widening and deepening the river. The fleet is traveling upriver and will reach the lake and then sail onto Varvao.”

Just like before, he did not have to wait long for a response from the Centurion. I was surprised Aesop was not keeping the communication secret from me as the words scrawled across the page as they were written. “Leave the new Hound to follow the fleet’s progress. You are to get to the Archives now.”

Aesop closed the book. “Looks like this is where we part company, Hound Eryk. Try to keep yourself alive. The Empire needs men like you.”

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