Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3)

by Akella,G.

  The horses received from the elder varied in color from dirty gray to dark brown. For a moment I even regretted never learning about horse coat colors in my past life. My scant knowledge on the matter enabled me to recognize only three types: black, dun and chestnut. Out of those, the only mount in our party that fit the black categorization was my own razorback. Speaking of Gloom, after carefully inspecting the new arrivals—and grunting loudly as the animals whinnied and recoiled in fear—the boar seemed generally satisfied. The horses were all in the 130 to 145 level range, with stats nearly identical to my Lucy. The biggest difference was that their maximum gallop speed was thirty miles per hour to Lucy's twenty eight.

  The lightly armored mounts I assigned to the archers and Hagedia, their dedicated healer. Their chainmail armor boosted armor class to fifteen hundred, while reducing maximum gallop speed by only two mph. Everyone else, including the mage, would prance around on mounts in full plate, bringing their armor class to around three thousand and their maximum gallop to twenty four mph, which was still good enough for Iam and Surat to deal upwards of 160k damage with their lances. Tanks' damage output was some fifty percent less, but considering the fact that even plate-wearing undead rarely boasted more than forty percent physical damage absorption, even they should be able to one-shot practically any opponent of equal level when galloping at full speed. From the start I split my demons into two even groups, and briefly relayed to Salta the few combat tricks of mounted archers that I'd picked up from military history books. Iam didn't require any additional instructions, as everything was clear enough already: the strike force of tanks and melee fighters went in the front, healers and Reece went in the back.

  I watched from the side for a while as Salta's squad kited a pack of undead, picking them off from a safe distance, and decided to give every archer a lance of their own. This added a fair bit of oomph to the action: as soon as the the numbers of undead matched the archers', the demons turned around and finished off the fight in one fell swoop. Though the archers' physical damage output was some thirty-forty percent higher than that of melee fighters, their lance multiplier was only half as much—still, that was more than enough to dispatch any plate-wearing skeleton to kingdom come. There were some issues with debuffs—oftentimes Hagedia struggled to keep up with dispelling them—but the party was never in any real danger, so I wasn't particularly worried.

  A couple of hours later I brought the groups back together to continue their training. Boredom set in almost immediately, as packs of undead around level 170 were put down literally within seconds. The ram attack took out a third of the pack right off the bat, and the archers then picked off the rest from both flanks. I kept them running drills for another hour or so, and signaled a return to Ballan when the sun started to set.

  The night sky grew overcast, followed by scattered showers in the predawn hours. After a quick breakfast, we set out of the village, leading a caravan of refugees.

  None of us are strangers to moving. Most people agree that moving is one of the most stressful experiences in life, and psychologists liken it to surviving a fire or a natural disaster. Personally, I never was afraid of shaking up my place of residence or employment. For me, a change of atmosphere meant a clean slate, the chance to forge new relationships and have new experiences—all of which evoked only positive emotions. Today, however, I felt sorrow and pity for these farmers who were being forced to leave behind the only home they had ever known, with barely anything to their names besides. Though the men were putting on a brave front, the women were unashamed of their tears, and the children—wrapped in ragged cloaks from head to toe—gazed with infinite sadness at their beloved village, shrinking inexorably in size as the caravan moved away. They understood that they were out of options, but it didn't change the fact that they were bidding farewell to their entire past. And it didn't matter whether that past was filled with joys or regrets.

  The caravan's speed was hardly hampered by the packs of undead encountered along the way, one pack every two hundred yards or so, which stopped appearing altogether closer to the final stretch. In the end, the entire journey of roughly twelve miles was completed in about seven hours.

  "That can't be good," Gvert, who had been riding alongside me the past few miles, shielded his face with one hand from the raindrops trickling from his hood, and pointed with the other toward a long string of wagons stretching out of the fort gates and moving westward. "Whatever happened here, I fear it won't help our cause," the elder drew a heavy sigh.

  Farot had the look of a fort from the Old West. Shaped like a square with each side roughly three hundred yards long, a fifteen-foot palisade all around, and eight guard towers—four at each corner of the square and four more at the midway point of each wall, the latter being large enough to house close to twenty archers each. Only none of those four towers—not even the one looming over the open gates—had any archers manning them.

  "What makes you say that?" I had been wondering what kind of surprise the governing AI would have in store for us when we got to Farot, hoping against hope that things would be easy for once.

  All right, sure, I was the only living player in the princedom, if not in all of Demon Grounds—somehow I doubted Cheney had stuffed anyone else in here besides myself. This explained why the local AIs were falling over themselves to offer me quests that I never could have gotten otherwise. The problem was that the governing AI didn't sort these quests by achievability, meaning he didn't know—or care—if I was here alone or with an army of five hundred. Thus the quests I was being offered were just as likely to make me lose my shit as jump for joy. Fighting back the storming rage inside me at the memory of the scumbag responsible for my exile, I took a few deep breaths to clear my head, then repeated my question in a different tone.

  "Is something the matter with Farot?"

  "Don't scare me like that, dar," the elder's horse recoiled from me, as Gvert drew a warding-off sign in the air. "If I start stuttering because of you, who will look after these people? I wonder how your fighters haven't all run away screaming..."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Look at your reflection once in a while! If you could see your eyes now..." the elder pulled on the reins to steady his frightened horse, then motioned toward the fort. "There used to be a garrison in Farot—some three hundred legionnaires and archers. And look at it now... Dar Elnar is not one to assign rookies to man the gates. He may be young himself, but a fine commander just the same, having served as a centurion in Satrap Gorm's army and in his father's half-legion before his death. Didn't I tell you about the troops advancing from the direction of Suonu..."

  "Do you think Farot has been attacked?"

  "I'm sure of it," Gvert sighed. "And I feel we'll need to keep moving toward Xantarra."

  When our caravan was within fifty yards of the fort, one of the guards at the gates tossed his spear from one hand to the other, pointed in our direction and yelled:

  "Hey, that's that dar on his piglet! Tilly, run along to the commander and report! Move your buns, girl, haven't you ever seen a wild boar?"

  The second guard ended up being a young woman, freckled and pug-nosed. After gawking at Gloom for a good fifteen seconds, the girl finally responded to her partner's cry, spun around and slipped into the fort.

  "I could get used to guards like that," said Reece with a lascivious smirk, riding out from behind me. Seeing my incredulous look, he quickly added, "I'm talking about the one who disappeared!"

  The remaining guard squeezed through the wagons rolling out of the gates, blew his nose right on the ground, fixed the helm that was sliding over his eyes, and bawled at us:

  "Who the hell are you?"

  "Weren't you the one yelling just now about 'that dar on his piglet?'" I gave him a hard stare, my head slightly cocked. "Or did you forget?"

  "You're in trouble, pal," Reece said with deep sorrow in his voice as the demon considered his response. "That's not your typical boar, you know,
and he doesn't take kindly to being compared to common pigs. Would you like it if someone called you a broad? Didn't think so," the mage feigned a heavy sigh. "And considering the fact that this extraordinary boar was a gift from the goddess of vengeance herself, our dar will be forced to exact righteous vengeance upon you for your careless words."

  Sensing that the conversation was about him, Gloom snorted loudly, shook his massive head from left to right, and took a few steps toward the guard, who was already backing away.

  "I didn't mean anything bad by it!" the young demon mumbled, his voice hoarse. "I have the utmost respect for you, dar. We hear all kinds of stories about you and your boar..."

  "Tell me what's happened here?" I decided to put an end to the farce.

  "We're in dire straights, dar. A throng of undead came 'round three days back and really gave us a thrashing!" The young demon frowned, forgetting all about the boar. "There's barely fifty of us left, plus these refugees," he gestured at the wagons rolling slowly westward. "The fort is filled with survivors from nearby villages. Our scouts just returned, reporting that a host of five hundred is coming this way, with four terrible monsters in their midst."

  "Where from?"

  "From the direction of Suonu, damn that wretched place," the guard spat. "We're all dead men here. Dar Elnar has decided to hold back the bastards, otherwise all these refugees are done for. The road to Xantarra is clear, but the city is over a hundred miles away. That's at least three days' travel with kids, and the monsters don't know the meaning of fatigue. We ain't got a prayer if we meet them out in the open—we won't last a minute..."

  "Aren't there any legionnaires in Xantarra?"

  "There's no time. The undead will be here in a day—that's just long enough for them to receive our letter..."

  All the pieces were falling into place. I wasn't especially surprised that the kid had recognized me. Magic mail was still in effect in the princedom, and, being the subject of Satrap Gorm, Gvert must have reported to him on the developments in the village and its surroundings. And I didn't mind not having to explain anymore who I was and where the heck I came from. Next, just as the genre would have it, Elnar would show up and solemnly hand me the quest to defend the settlement from the advancing half-legion. How? Well, that's your problem, Krian. Not that I had much of a choice anyway—I needed at least fifty fighters for a shot at the first half of the scroll anyway, and I had nowhere near that number. The kid at the gates was level 181, which was somewhat encouraging. I wasn't holding out hope that the fighters who had sworn allegiance to the local satrap would agree to join my clan, but they should prove useful just the same. And if Iam and Gvert were to be believed, their commander was a seasoned and capable military leader. So perhaps not all was lost...

  "Gvert, take your people and go to Xantarra," shifting my gaze to the elder, I waved my hand westward. "Things are going to get hairy here before long. Leave the extra horses in Xantarra—you have greater need of them now."

  The elder didn't argue—smart man. Turning his horse around, he started back for the caravan, barking orders as he went.

  "Are we sticking around?" there was a hint of a smile on the head archeress' lips.

  Apparently, my formerly docile clanmates were quickly turning into adrenaline junkies.

  "Got any other suggestions?" I arched my right eyebrow at her.

  Despite the hood covering her open helm, Salta looked equally stunning and enchanting. There was a playful spark in the archeress' eyes, and her cheeks sported a rosy glow.

  "And miss all the fun? No way," she smiled back at me.

  "I haven't decided yet," I said evenly, looking over my fighters. "There's not enough information. We'll see how things are looking on location."

  "I'm not saying goodbye, dar!" Gvert waved at me from a distance. "I expect to see every single one of you alive and well in Xantarra!"

  I nodded farewell to the elder, then touched the boar's sides with my heels, steering him toward the Farot gates...

  Our party entered the fort just as the tail end of the departing caravan was leaving. We found ourselves inside a square courtyard of impressive proportions, at the center of which a stone well jutted out of the ground. Piles of boards and beams were stacked along the perimeter—evidently, the fort's commander had ordered the dismantling of all internal structures to accommodate all the refugees flooding into Farot. Work was buzzing, but there was no fuss about it. A few dozen demons were closing up a couple of breaches in the eastern wall, gaping on either side of the guard tower like open wounds. Several legionnaires were carrying water toward an elongated squat structure; two more were napping in the shade of a woodshed. There were no smiles on their faces—not that I expected them to find them bubbling with joy, what with an army of undead closing in.

  "There's an inn over there, past the barracks," Iam gestured toward a small complex of structures enclosed by a seven-foot-tall palisade, and spurred his horse in that direction.

  Gloom was pacing back and forth along the pebbled road, twitching his muzzle occasionally—no doubt the scoundrel was trying to sniff out a puddle like the one in Feator's main square that he had been his favored hangout spot. One time I had tried to lock up the boar in a stable—praise Hart, my valiant mount obeyed my orders without question—but one look at his miserable mug, coupled with Salta's and Reena's indignant wailing, and I had capitulated at that very moment. Besides, Gloom preferred sleeping out in the yard anyway, and come morning the muck that covered the razorback from head to the end of his tail would magically vanish, so I wasn't much bothered by his lacking hygiene habits.

  The legionnaires encountered along the way would stop and stare in disbelief at our procession. But no one pestered us with any questions, so we just continued on without any trouble.

  The local inn was called Old Yeller, its signboard bearing a wrinkled geezer with a gap-toothed mouth opened wide, ostensibly yelling. I chuckled and at once felt a pang of nostalgia, reminded of my last job in the real world. There was no shortage of funny guys working for the company, and being that deadlines were always pressing, requiring plenty of OT and sacrifices to social life, the brass would occasionally let slip harmless jests such as this.

  Enclosed by a solid fence, the squat stone building with an adjoining stable and wooden annexes was located near the very center of the fort. A massive sow lounged regally in the middle of the yard, a flock of motley hens rambling around her.

  "Look, Gloom, there's a bride here waiting for you!" Reece hopped off his horse, his armor clinking, and turned to me while holding the reins. "I doubt anyone's going to be checking us in, dar. The folks are probably on the road to Xantarra—we'll need to settle in ourselves."

  At the sight of my valiant mount, "the bride" leaped up to her feet and and trotted away toward the nearest wooden structure with verve belying her ample dimensions.

  "Figures," the mage declared with reproach, watching the sow's hasty retreat. "They all play hard to get at first..."

  "You just keep talking," dismounting near the young mage, Salta shot him a nasty look.

  "Let's quarter the horses," said Reece, eager to change the subject, and started toward the stable, leading his chestnut steed by the reins.

  "Can I help you?" a grim-looking fellow emerged from the inn, glowering. The chainmail shirt he was wearing was torn in two places, revealing bent metallic rings underneath; a curved matte blade hung at his waist. He looked to be in his early forties, and built almost like Aritor. In other words, he looked no more like an innkeeper than I did like a first string violinist for the New York Philharmonic.

  "We're looking for a place to stay a little while," dismounting the boar and handing the reins to Reena, I turned toward the demon. "Got any vacancies?"

  "That's complicated, dar," the innkeeper guffawed—his entire disposition brightened the moment he'd spotted the razorback. "We've got more folks here than at a barley festival—no room to swing a lizard. But I reckon I can find something for you
and your people."

  The mess hall had the look of being deserted. Only a single table was occupied by several legionnaires playing dice over beer; the remaining tables—about fifteen of them—were empty.

  "I'll put everything out on the bar. This is a self-serve establishment now—I've sent all the servants to Xantarra," the innkeeper grumbled as soon as we entered the place. "Ale? Wine? Moonshine? It's on the house—dead people have no need for coin."

  "And why didn't you leave, Schen?"

  "I'm tired of running," the demon shook his head wearily. "I've served as the quartermaster for the first century of our dar's father. Don't judge me by my appearance, Krian. I've had my share of war, sure, even made it to sergeant. But as soon as the commander found out I knew how to count, read and write, I was instantly made quartermaster. Only the dar isn't here anymore, nor his first century. Nearly all of them perished in that battle by Xantarra, along with the centurion and Elnar Sr."

  "And how did you end up here?"

  "We've only been here a few months," said the innkeeper, placing a potbellied barrel of ale on the bar stand. "After that battle James dar Elnar brought the survivors here. Civilians fled the fort during the first great wave, though the undead didn't attack it then for some reason. I don't have family in Xantarra, or anywhere else for that matter, so I left with everyone else."

  "You mean the Xantarrian satrap decided to install a garrison here and fill it out with his own people?"

  "Not quite. James dar Elnar never swore fealty to the satrap. In fact, his grandfather was the satrap of Callehzia, which is just south of Xantarra. And the owner of La-Kharte Castle that's on the road to Gilthor. Satrap Quentil dar Elnar perished inside the walls of his castle in the Dark Ages, but his son was studying in the capital at the time, so he survived. After Erisjat's death he gathered up all the surviving legionnaires in the satrapy and tried to recapture the castle, which by then had been claimed by the undead swarming the princedom. Unsurprisingly, nothing came of it. That is how the Callehzian half-legion landed in Xantarra."