A Soldier's ife - 236 - Crossroads (Patreon)

Chapter 236: Crossroads

As Aesop prepared to leave, he left me his bow, quiver, and most of his gear. I tried to refuse but he insisted. “You need it more than me. I know where there is a Hound cache about a hundred miles from here, Eryk, take it and stop complaining. I will be fine.”

“There are caches?” I asked, confused as they were not part of the training.

He studied me for a moment and then nodded, “Just in the Western Empire. My father set them up, and only a few Hounds have the maps.” He considered me and pulled off his leather Hound jacket. Under the light of a glowstone, a map of part of the Western empire was clearly inscribed inside. “The cache locations are only visible under the light of Neptune’s tear.” He covered the glowstone, and a dozen pricks lit up brightly on the map under the moon’s light. “I will see about getting you a map to the caches when I see you again. They are buried a foot deep, so goblins don’t find them. They are always located near a forking tree, and there is a marker stone over the cache. Each cache has two full sets of Hound gear and four weeks’ worth of ration bars.” 

He shouldered his jacket back on and nodded to me, “I will need all the artifacts from the First Citizen traitor was carrying.” He looked apologetic.

“Do you want the gold she carried as well?” I asked without hesitation in a neutral tone.  

He considered for a long moment, “That is probably best.” I pulled the amulet over my head and the pack from my dimensional space and handed it to him. “The ring is in the pack.”

He hefted the pack, appreciating the weight. He looked confused and disappointed, “The only artifacts she was carrying were the amulet and ring?” I nodded, and he sighed, and the Hound moved away at a jog. At least not every Hound in the Western Empire was an asshole—something tickled in the back of my mind, but quickly slipped away. When I was sure he was gone, I sent the gear he left me to my dimensional space. There was no point carrying it at this point.

The Varvao River was fifty miles long and drained Varvao Lake into Kraken Bay. I moved cautiously into the woods pulsing earth speak. My goal was to circle extremely wide from the river and reach the Lake ahead of the fleet. Then, I could report when the orc fleet arrived there. The fleet would take time—probably another day crossing the fifty-mile-long lake to disembark its forces near the city of Varvao.

As I moved south, the terrain changed. There were no longer elevated hills or any elevated terrain. I was now traveling through wet lowland forests. I was pulsing my earth speak, and it allowed me to avoid danger. The first of which was a monstrous spider den. The tunnels of the spider extended far past the range of my earth speak pulse and I left it alone. As morning came, I took one of the minor perception essences. A momentary brain freeze and a quick passing pressure behind the eyes indicated the essence was working. I blinked away my momentary migraine and continued.

I increased my pace with the light of a new day to ensure I got ahead of the fleet moving up the river and hopefully avoiding any more Pathfinders. The muddy terrain soon had my boots caked, and muddy water had soaked into my pants and socks. I was focused on moving silently and surprised a pair of gnolls who were bedded down. There were only two in range of my earth pulse, and I diverted slightly to remove them from the ecosystem.

The two creatures were entwined with each other in slumber, a fresh carcass of a fawn nearby from their hunt last night. My black blade took the largest one completely unaware. The second leaped up when its mate barked in pain from my blade piercing its chest. It was too slow to gain its spear to defend itself. My blade lashed out, cutting deeply into its thigh as it fell away. The muscle cut was deep, and it couldn’t stand but wrapped its clawed hand around its weapon. When it feebly attacked with the spear, my invisible air shield deflected the weapon wide, and my blade finished the male gnoll.

I checked on the first gnoll, and it had bled out from the stab wound near its heart. Its belly was bloated, and its teats were swollen. It was a pregnant female. Even now, I could see the belly turning as the pups inside started to suffocate from the lack of blood circulating to them. Gnolls were a pestilence on the land, and I didn’t feel guilty about killing the unborn ones. I couldn’t stand to let them suffer, though. I retrieved the collector and placed it over the female. The collector pulled from both the mother and the unborn. This surprised me as I watched it work and form an apex essence of empathy.

The modest-sized light pink sphere was a surprise product. I assumed it had something to do with the female gnoll’s relationship with her unborn pups. It caused a twinge of guilt that I quickly compartmentalized. Her belly was now still, and I moved to the other gnoll, getting a minor essence of endurance.

I paused to move the male close to the female, leveraging the corpse over to her with his spear. I continued south, avoiding other dens and burrows of creatures when my earth speak detected them. I didn’t need to get slowed down again. This region was definitely more wild than other parts of the Empire.

All the practice with the earth speak spell form was continuing to train my skill in interpreting the feedback from the spell efficiently. My path intercepted the Varvao River, and I could see why Aesop thought the orcs would not be able to navigate it. Not only was the river narrow, but a number of trees had fallen into the slow-moving river. Only a narrow path had been cleared in the river for barges. At least I knew I had gotten ahead of the orc war fleet.

I followed the river upstream till sunset and rested on a small earthen mound with a view of a section of the river and checked my sending book. Centurion Sergius had sent me a message, “You need to slow the orc fleet. Make sure it doesn’t reach Varvao for five days. Reinforcements will come through the portal in Varvao after pushing back the Bartiradians but they need time.”

Irritably, I wrote back, “I am one person. You want me to stop a war fleet?”

“Get ahead of the fleet and use trees to block the river. Set fire to one of the ships at night. Kill some sentries. Do what is required of you, Hound.” I clenched my teeth at the order. The Centurion was essentially ordering me to my death. I was sure there were powerful mages on those ships in the fleet as they were rapidly clearing and widening the river.

It also was not lost on me that he had recalled his son before ordering me alone to stop a fleet of thirty-eight warships by myself. I moved to the banks of the river and was unhappy as my earth-speak pulse did not echo clearly through the water. Only if the water was clouded with mud would the pulse give me a clear image. I took a few moments to find a large tree, nearly four feet in diameter.  I removed a large wedge of a tree, and the act bottomed out my aether. How did a tree resist my ability?

As the tree slowly succumbed to gravity, I faded into the woods to wait out my aether recovery as I planned to practice my new career as a lumberjack further south along the river. The massive tree slowly fell toward the water, and the crash and subsequent splash caused dozens of birds to take flight and something large to stir the waters. I was rather proud of my efforts and was considering trying to get one of the trees to fall across one of the decks of the ships when a loud buzzing sound cut the air.

Had I disturbed a nest? I backed further away from the river. A swarm of fist-sized bees or maybe hornets swept over the tree. A fish leaped and seized one from the air, but they did not flee. The buzzing cloud seemed to inspect the damage, starting with the upper branches and proceeding to where the tree was cut. They had a weird intelligence to them—I spun and started running. My guess is they had to be controlled by an orc priest. The orcs called their mages priests or clerics, not mages. It was a small point to harp on at the moment.

I think I had been far enough away that they did not notice me, but I didn't stop running for an hour. I didn’t have bug spray to handle dozens of large, stinging insects. The only good thing about this enemy was they were easy to hear from a distance. During my rest, I could hear them in the early spring canopy of leaves as their buzzing zigged and zagged in the distance along the river, searching for me. I moved up the river and continued to fell large trees every three miles as my aether permitted. The entire time, I listened for the buzzing warning.

After the fourth tree, I reached the outlet from Varvao Lake. The expansive, fresh body of water looked more like an ocean or sea from the shore. I didn’t admire it for long, felling one more tree before I moved along the western shore, gaining distance from the outlet. When I reached a spot about seven miles away, I set up a sentry post by hollowing out one of the few boulders along the shore and making a slit to use my spyglass. After the long, grueling day of constant surging adrenaline, I rested and waited.

As the evening came, I opened the book to report. “Dropped a few trees to slow their progress. They have not reached Varvao Lake.”

There was no immediate response as I consumed a warm burrito and cold blood orange juice. I sealed the entrance to my hollowed-out improvised hideout. I took short naps all night, and when I woke, I was briefly disoriented from my dreams. I used the night vision goggles in concert with my spyglass, awaiting the imminent fleet’s arrival.

The orc fleet still hadn’t arrived by morning, and I noted the fact in my book, which still had no responses from Centurion Sergius. It wasn’t until near sunset that I heard the familiar buzzing of the spy drone insects. It had taken me most of the day to come up with that name for the insect swarm. Of course, my cleverness would be lost on the people of this world.

It wasn’t until late into the night that the first ship appeared. It was preceded by some monstrosity surging out of the mouth of the river, either some creature they controlled or something that thought better than to confront the orc priests. An hour later, the trees seemed to twist away from the banks, and the water churned a muddy mix before I noticed the sails. The ship moved slowly up the river and then out into the lake.

A nearly naked female orc stood on the bow, sweating from her efforts, and I assumed by her body movements that she was the one clearing the way with her aetheric magic. She was fit, and her body was untouched by tattoos. Her glossy black hair was braided and swung behind her as she moved. She seemed to stumble, and a heavily tattooed massive orc rushed to cover her in a heavy fur cloak. I burned her face into my memory, as she was clearly a powerful priest of the Caliphate. She was helped below deck, and my attention turned to the rest of the ship.

Dozens of other orcs, most of whom were also tattooed, worked across the deck, storing sails. Others scanned the water and shore in the light of the moon. There were over a hundred orcs just on the deck of this first ship. Saturn only knew how many were below deck.

The ship didn’t travel far before dropping an anchor. Twenty minutes later, a second ship, just as formidable, joined the first. I spotted other orc priests on deck supplying the sails with aetheric wind. A third warship was coming behind, its sails barely visible to me. I scribbled into my book: “The first warship just reached the lake. They are waiting on the others. It should be half a day before the fleet starts to sail for Varvao.”

I thought I had done a fairly good job slowing them. If my estimation was correct, I would have given Varvao nearly four out of the five days the Centurion requested. Apparently, my effort was not appreciated, and the script flowed across the page. “Duke Tiberius needs four more days to rout the Bartiradians and send reinforcements.”

I stared at the words and shook my head. Doing the math in my head, he wanted me to stall them for a total of six days—not five. Duke Tiberius was also the duke who had dragged his feet and left us to face the Bartiradian army with just two mages to defend the walls against overwhelming odds futilely.

If I did nothing, the fleet would take half a day to form up and probably a day to sail the fifty miles to Varvao. The only thing I could think to do was swim out in the lake and remove a section of the hull to sink a few ships before they discovered me and drowned me in short order. I was certain each warship had one of its priests, probably more than one. I continued to watch as ship after ship emerged, about one every twenty minutes, like the river was giving birth to Varvao’s doom.

There was an infrequent sound of buzzing overhead as their watchers searched for threats. When the thirty-eighth ship emerged, shortly before midday, they did not sail immediately as I had predicted. Scanning the decks, I understood the delay. Their priests were not on deck, so they were recovering their aether below—at least that is what I presumed. There was almost no wind to move their ships so it would have to be supplied.

The warriors on deck had also thinned considerably. They had been prepared for an attack when they emerged and nothing had materialized. I decided not to throw away my life and would remain here. Once the fleet passed, I would report and race west. I pulled out my blood compass and carefully retrieved Aesop’s sample on a piece of clean cloth. I made sure the compass was prepared as well, heating and cleaning it thoroughly. Then I activated it with the new sample.

The pull was weak, so Aesop was a good distance away. My duplicity had been successful, though. I should be able to follow the compass to the Archives. I relaxed in my stone coffin and waited.

There didn’t appear to be much activity on the ships, even as evening approached hours later. Maybe they were waiting on something else? Centurion Sergius had asked for an update in the book. I replied, “All 38 ships emerged from the river. I have managed to prevent them from sailing but will not be able to hold them much longer.” Taking credit for their priests clearly resting to recover may have been a little hubris on my part.

As if my words had cursed me, a few decks started to light up with lamps and glowstones. The female priest who had led the first ship walked imperiously on deck toward the bow, dropping her heavy cloak and revealing herself once again. The decks were awash with activity as orcs and a few goliaths moved to ready the fleet to sail. I wrote my message. “The fleet will sail in the next hour. I have done all I could.”

I was expecting a ‘good job’ or ‘throw yourself in front of the ship’ or something else. Instead, the message was, “We can discuss your failure when we meet next. Get to Varvao and report to Mage Commander Gracious.”

I looked at the message for a long time in disbelief. He wanted me to go to a city that was going to be besieged by orcs in a day’s time? I had flashes of Macha and slowly shook my head, closing the book. I pulled the blood compass out of my belt and prepared to leave after the fleet sailed past my position. Two hours later, the first sail was raised, and the others followed as the armada proceeded toward Varvao.

As I made ready to leave, my earth pulse picked up movement. Shit, Pathfinders were walking the shore.

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