Dark Path: Book Three of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  The wide roadway they travelled was busy with traffic of all sorts; as the raid group made its way west they encountered long caravans of merchant wagons, individual tinkers and peddlers leading a loaded mule or lugging their wares on their backs, farmers moving produce or animals to and from market, small bands of wandering entertainers in brightly colored wagons and carts, bands of grim-faced Dwarves travelling in heavily-armed, compact formations, and numerous groups and individuals whose profession and purposes were not readily apparent. Military traffic was present as well; although they saw few troops other than bands of recruits practicing long marches between training depots and leave parties returning to garrison, they saw plenty of quartermaster wagons heading out loaded and coming back empty, and dispatch riders on virtually a daily basis. Patrols of mounted Imperial Wardens kept order and deterred bandits, although the miles of road were many and the patrols few, so that the wise traveler went armed and the larger caravans boasted mercenary guards.

  In such diverse traffic the raid group did not stand out at all; Elonia wore a scarf that hid the Threllish points to her ears and let the others do the talking, and all four abstained from wearing Badger insignia. They were far too well-armed to pass as anything harmless, but Elonia had solved their identity problem before they departed by the simple expedient of carrying along a small, finely-worked leather bag containing several books whose pages were blank. This bag was kept close to hand by the four, who never let it out of their sight and were careful to answer no questions about their business; to any who observed them their occupation was immediate obvious: a group of mercenaries transporting books of considerable value. Besides being a safe explanation for their actions, this ruse also gave them a margin of safety: while a bandit group was not likely to try and attack four professionals, they would be even less inclined to try and seize written works, as their resale value would be difficult to establish, easy to trace, and might engender retaliation from the frustrated buyer whose new consignment had been lost.

  For Maxmillian, the west-bound journey was an interesting one, filled with historic sites and places familiar to him from his reading. He had been practicing his riding for weeks before they set out so the long hours in the saddle only stiffened him up for the first few days, and although the travel was as easy as one could hope for, it had still been rigorous enough to burn off the excess pounds he had put on over the winter.

  Travelling along the Old Ward was fascinating to him: Maxmillian I had served here all his life, earning his sword, general's rank, and the 'von' on and above the Old Ward, which had back then been known as the Emperor's Ward, the title now applying to the new line roughly ninety miles north of the old.

  The Old Ward was officially the Second Ward; the original Emperor’s Ward had been established to the south in 498, Second Age. During the nine-year North War in the 870’s the Empire drove north, establishing a new Emperor’s Ward (the Second Ward, while the original was hastily remained the First Ward) an average of one hundred miles north of the old Ward. Roughly two centuries later, in the twenty-first year of the Third Age, the Second North War ended with the border being pushed an average of ninety miles further north, and the Third Ward was established. The Third was known as the Emperor’s Ward in all but the highest level documents, and the Second became known as the Old Ward despite only thirty-odd years of disuse; the First was all but forgotten.

  The Ward consisted of a simple wall (or more properly, an embankment), usually fifteen feet in height with a wide, low ditch on its north side, paralleled by a hard-surfaced road within a quarter-mile to the south, the whole stretching from the east slopes of the Mondschien Mountains (First and Second Wards) or the Elgan Sea coast (Third Ward), to some point on the west slopes of the Thunderpeak Mountains. The wall would be made of local materials, usually packed earth; it would be built and maintained by convict labor, as was the parallel road.

  While the Ward was in fact dotted with forts and outposts that served as garrisons and depots for the fourteen Imperial Legions and twelve Imperial cavalry Manuses that secured the north, the truth of the matter was that the Ward as a physical entity had very little military use, although the road that paced it was vital to the rapid movement of Imperial troops. The Ward did serve as a minor barrier to any invading army with a siege train, forcing it to delay for a day or two to fill the ditch and level a section of wall to bring its wagons through, but Nature had provided far more efficient barriers at no effort to the defenders, and in truth no Imperial plans involved using the Ward as a defensive line. Perhaps the most important military feature of the Ward was to act as a source of concealment to military traffic on the hard surfaced road (which itself allowed units to march without creating a tell-tale dust plume), which had created problems for numerous raiding groups over the centuries.

  The Ward's real strength was emotional: it was the undeniable line between the Empire and danger, a point of honor for the Emperor and his military. Any incursion south of the Ward was an invasion of the homeland and would be met with the utmost Imperial response. No matter how unmilitary or indifferent a particular Emperor was to what went on north of the Ward, any penetration to the south was a serious matter, as it was impossible to write such an incursion off as a ‘raid into border areas’. There were no ‘border areas’ in the Eisenalder Empire; the Empire began on the Ward’s south side, making any foray across it a matter of serious intent.

  The lands bordering the Old Ward were heavily settled; in the thirty-odd years since the Ward moved north the area had seen a constant influx of settlers who were drawn north by the lure of free land. The Second Ward Road was still carefully maintained as a vital east-west conduit of trade, but the Ward itself saw no maintenance, although due to its simple construction little change could be seen in it after three decades other than gaps knocked into it to accommodate new roads, and the occasional stretch that was leveled to make way for pasture and field.

  This latest advancement of the Ward was remarkable in another manner, Maxmillian advised his comrades as they rode along: it established the Ward on what properly could be termed the Northern Wastes. Previously, the term ‘Northern Wastes’ was applied by the Empire to all lands north of the current Ward, a title that was, until the Third Ward was established, only partially accurate. The Northern Wastes were actually the Human title for the great Northern plains, which began roughly where the Third Ward now stood; south of the Third Ward was the northern crown of the great forest that once coated the central lands lying between the west coast of Alhenland and the Thunderpeaks Mountains.

  With the establishment of the Third Ward the Empire had finally encompassed the entire forest within its borders, the historian explained, although over the thousands of years of Human encroachment the memory of the great forest had faded as the Goblin clans were destroyed or driven north and the trees cleared to provide farmland and pasture. Any further expansion of the Empire would be made onto the Northern Wastes itself.

  After twenty-one days of westward travel they rested for two days at a good inn in a pretty village that had grown up in the shadow of a Imperial garrison; the garrison had moved north with the Ward, but the fort it had occupied was now used as a military depot, and the continuation of the roadway north into what was now called the New Lands provided plenty of business from the traffic to make up for the loss of the Legionnaires. The townspeople were well-used to travelers and fighting types, and even warrior-women, as the ranks of the Legions held more than a few; the Raid Group drew no more attention than any other small group of travelers.

  Besides resting, the four used the time inquire about the current conditions in the Northern Wastes, as south-bound military wagons and merchants returning from the north were plentiful and willing to tell all they knew for the price of a tankard or two, especially if Elonia or Bridget was doing the buying. What they learned was neither especially good or especially bad: the Northern Wastes were much as they were on any given year, which is to say, dangerous.<
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  The Imperial military was continuing with its policy of recon and harry, sending out cavalry patrols and mercenary scouts to spy out the doings of the dark forces, and dispatching raiding detachments of foot and horse north of the Ward to keep the foe from getting complaisant and to keep the troops in fighting trim. In return, the Wastes-dwelling tribes of Orcs and Goblins, and the servitors of the Dark Star cult (who included large numbers of Orcs and Goblin vassals) returned the compliment in the form of raids and hit-and-run attacks. Of the Ceth, the hardy barbarians who were the only Eight-following Humans who lived north of the Ward, there was no word aside from rumors, but that was unremarkable as well: few south of the Ward knew much about that amber-skinned people or their unending wars with the Void-followers with whom they shared the Wastes. The Imperial military had regular contact with them, providing arms and supplies of all sort in order to aid the Ceth, and receiving the best intelligence available on the happenings in the Wastes, but they kept the details secret, so the practice was of no help to the Badgers.

  When they headed north into the New Lands after their two-day rest the raid group packed away their books and bag and displayed the tools used to pan gold, as there were numerous streams in the Wastes that were rich in the yellow metal, and it was not unusual for small groups of daring souls to risk death in order to harvest the nuggets.

  The countryside they passed through on a good (and new) hard-surfaced road had been thickly forested as Maxmillian had told them, but now the glades were being rapidly thinned with farms and villages. Commercial logging was stripping away the wild forest in great swathes, leaving behind a few ancient trees in narrow windbreaks to shelter the neat rows of seedlings that would provide the next generation with timber. Traffic changed more radically, with well over half of the encounters being military: Imperial Quartermaster caravans bearing military supplies, herds of remounts and replacement dray animals, dispatch riders, columns of new recruits, and all the other moveable assets of the Imperial war engine save the actual warriors themselves: the Legions garrisoning the north stayed close to the Ward.

  Some thirty miles north of the Old Ward the habitations began to thin, as most people were reluctant to live too close to the Emperor's Ward when safer lands were available, and the raid group was able to see the virgin forest still standing in greater expanses. When they saw their first military patrol, a half-troop of Imperial cavalry resting on the lower crest of a nearby hill, they knew for certain that they were entering the wild lands. The patrol, thirty armored men with the look of veterans about them, was both reassuring and ominous: the Company had campaigned north of the Ward (although Bridget was the only Badger present who had actually done so), and they had no illusions about the security of the Ward. Raiding parties could, and did, cross it to raise havoc in the Imperial lands, going in as deep as the Old Ward on occasions. Another sobering event came on their second night in the New Lands: the raid group slept on the ground, rather than in some friendly farmer's house or barn.

  Maxmillian, cold, soaking wet, road-sore and muddy, cursed wearily as the four Badgers approached the outskirts of the village lying to the east of the road. The third day out from the Old Ward had dawned dark and rain-smelling, and it needed no prediction from Elonia to warn them that there was mud in their future. Less than an hour out from their night camp a cold drizzle fell upon the Raid Group, a drizzle which never completely stopped throughout the day, and occasionally reached the proportions of a driving rain. Thanks to the hard-surfaced road their progress was only mildly slowed, but the four saw scant benefit from it; since noon they had not passed a single dwelling, and the prospect of a night camp in the mud had depressed even Bridget’s hardy spirits. Then, as the last of the day’s gray, cloud-filtered light was fading and the Badgers were discussing whether to make camp or press on in the hopes of reaching shelter, the lights of a village came into view.

  Hope soared at first, only to be steadily beat down as the last mile was crossed. The village was small even by New Land standards: an east-west street that ran opposite a deep stream, a couple large wagon-yards with a few pole-sheds for sheltering valuable cargos south of the main street, a single inn, a dozen or so houses, and a lumber mill, the latter’s angular structure adding an ominous backdrop to the depressing scene.

  It was not the town’s size, however, that brought harsh words from both Maxmillian and Henri, but rather the condition the town found itself in: both wagon yards were filled to capacity, with tents pitched under the pole-sheds, and at least four small carts could be seen parked along the deeply rutted main street (the hard-surfaced road passed the village to the west-by Imperial law the town could not encompass such a vital passage). Worse news was in the offing: as the four turned their horses off the highway onto the frothy mud of the village’s main street a blue lantern could be seen hanging from the inn’s sign, indicating that there was no room for additional customers of any sort.

  Reining up in the eerie glow of the lamp, the Badgers looked at each other from within the hoods of their dripping otter-skin rain-cloaks. From inside the building could be heard the steady rumble of numerous voices and a constant clatter of mugs and tableware; every shuttered window leaked light and pipe smoke. Bridget urged her tired mount forward at the sound of a door opening on the far side of the building; turning the corner she found a bald man with a blue sun tattooed across his bare pate wearing a long leather apron over his food-stained shirt and breeches loading fire wood into a wheelbarrow from a tarp-covered pile.

  “Inn’s full,” he snapped, never pausing in his loading. “I’m not the innkeeper, but he’s sold every room for triple prices and won’t consider another offer. All the homes are full, but there may still be room at the mill barracks.” He jerked the tarp back in place and strained to ram the barrow’s single wheel through the mud. “Can’t feed you, and got no more stable space.”

  “And a good night to you, sir,” Bridget muttered under her breath as she turned her mount away from the inn. “Head towards the mill; supposedly there’s room in the worker barracks. Maxmillian, you do the talking, I’m in no mood for sly comments tonight.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a hot meal?” Henri asked.

  “I wouldn’t think it likely,” Bridget shook her head, eyeing the blue lights that glowed in the windows or hung from the shutters of every house visible. “I’ll be happy if we can just sleep dry. Elonia...” she bit the question off. At every rest stop the Seeress had moved away from the others and applied her Art to determining the future weather; while the results varied as the day passed and the distance they had covered increased, all reports had indicated rain all night, or near enough so that it didn’t matter.

  The bulk of the lumber mill had hidden a cluster of structures upstream; these consisted of a rough longhouse that was apparently the barracks, a smaller cookhouse, and a dozen pole sheds intended to protect new-cut timbers from the worst of the weather, but were now being used as shelter for horses, with ropes strung for tethering, and tarps tied onto two sides to protect them from wind-driven rain. The latter buoyed the group’s hopes, as the number of animals was relatively small. As they made their way across the mill’s graveled service yard, a side door opened and a burly man looked out; seeing the Badgers, he waved them over. Maxmillian urged his mount to the fore. “Good evening, sir, I was told that you might have sleeping quarters for hire.”

  “That’s right, still some room left, last dry space in Nachmung, or ten miles in any direction, for that matter. Logging crews are late this year, and I’ve no mill workers at the moment. I can feed you and stable your mounts, or at least keep them out of the worst of the wet. Grain will be dear, though, running low with all the business. I’m Gareth, owner of this mill.” The mill owner, the scholar saw, was a husky man with shoulders that spoke of years spent swinging an axe; a stout cudgel and a dirk hung on his belt, and the tip of a crossbow’s bow could be seen peeping around the door frame. Clearly Gareth was making
good profits this night, and meant to keep them.

  “I require sleeping space for four, and stabling for six; what is available for food?”

  “Meat and potato pie,” Gareth indicated a circle nearly a foot around. “So big, and fresh bread, half-pound loaf. Butter, too, if there’s any left. Sleeping space is stacked bunks, good wide ones with clean mattresses. The tariff is five shillings per mount, six shillings per bunk, and two shillings for a pie and half a loaf; the same for a half pound of butter. I’ll have to look to see if I’ve any grain left, and you’ll have to tend your mounts yourself.”

  Maxmillian grimaced. “Damned fond of silver, aren’t you?” He did some quick calculations in his head. “We need no grain, but we’ll require two bunks, connected mind you, six mounts, five pie-and-loafs, and a pound of butter. Let us stack our saddles in the mill and I’ll cross your palm with six honest Imperial Marks, and damn your eyes for a hardy businessman. Is there ale?”

  “Done,” Gareth nodded. “Use the side door to unload your saddles; just the saddles, mind you, no packs. I’ve a couple boys inside the barracks selling ale and hot water, and minding the mattresses; it’s up to you to get a single rack. It’s mostly fur buyers in there, a fairly rough crowd. I’m not responsible for keeping order or guarding your goods; if you can’t hold off trouble or keep your possessions safe, sleep in the rain.”

  The scholar leaned down to hand the mill owner two gold coins, a single Mark and a larger five Mark piece. “Not to worry. What about the food?”

  Gareth stepped inside the mill for a moment, then leaned out to pass Maxmillian a scrap of parchment. “Show this to the cook and the mattress-keeper.” He closed the door before Maxmillian could reply.