Chapter 107 - Discovery

Notes :

Yes, Rafnar Caldon is one of the book's readers. One of the earliest. The reason for this honor is that they have run numerous psyops on me, including making an argument at the start of the story that Sapphiria should be short due to her mass limitations in her pod. And that is among many, MANY other things.

If that character ever meets Sapphiria, he will most likely make a comment on her height and get decked. We shall see.

Anyway, chapter 108 tomorrow, and after that the next few chapters in the queue are from The Fallen World !

Chapter 107

Starborn Mountains, Aurore Hills

Wilderness

Winter deserved her name. She'd been born in the snow, and would probably die within it too.

She moved through the forest like a ghost, leaving few, if any, traces of her passage. A skill that once had been useful in evading patrols who would have liked to take a close look at what was in her backpack and ask some rather unfortunate questions about custom stamps and other taxes, perhaps even the legality of some of the items, was now the only thing keeping her alive this deep in Bane territory.

Her wolf ears flicked as she came to a halt, her tail moving to correct her balance, preventing her from stumbling.

She was a wolfkin. Not a werewolf, not by a long shot, but even just having the ears and tails went a long way.

She listened for a few seconds.

Undead moving around. Bane patrol?

No, no. The patrols of the army currently besieging the pass were loud and clumsy. Their best were concentrated around it, fretting about getting into the fight.

Besides, those weren't moving like a patrol.

The wolfkin smiled.

That was the contubernium, the squad, from Exacor her unit had been ordered to follow.

It had been hell. Chasing something that does not rest, sleep, or even eat was tough work. But her 'guerilla party', if they could be called that, was tougher.

She slowly lowered herself, and waited for the skeletons to move past her. Thankfully, they were worried about enemy patrols as well, and sweeping for another contubernium, not an individual. No doubt that would change as they approached the picket lines and started looking out for sentries, but that was neither here nor there.

She waited for a few minutes for them to be well out of range, and then continued forward.

The lieutenant was going to be floored by what she'd found.

*****

One advantage to being in the southern foothills of the Starborn mountains, which had been called Aurore, was that there were plenty of caverns about.

Some were natural. Many were attempts by enterprising idiots with geomancers on the payroll -or just enterprising idiotic geomancers- to try and dig into them. Some for mineral wealth, others to try and reach the other side without passing by Starfire Valley, or even a few trying to reach the mythical Vestige that some whispered spanned the entire range.

Winter slid down one, already having gone past the sentry and her challenge -Milra was getting better at this, sharp gal-, and sat up in the half gloom, her eyes automatically adjusting as she made a beeline for the lieutenant, annotating a book by the candlelight.

They were a strange group. Unlike some of the guerillas, they weren't a military unit that got cut off and just started kicking ass back behind the Bane's lines. They were a rag tag mess that had stuck together when the refugee groups exploded after they found out their way out was cut off.

Most of them were civilians. Actually, many were criminals, though no one commented on it. In this crisis, past sins were absolved and forgotten, so long as you didn't visit them upon your fellows. That was why Kellmar and his sticky fingers had stayed, since he returned any items he got a hold of within a minute with a laugh, while Malkun and his wandering hands had ended up with his brains splattered across the landscape.

That little bit was thanks to the lieutenant. He'd been a librarian before this, with a side hobby for competitive pistol shooting. He looked ridiculous when he prepared to fire, or so had everyone thought the first time they'd seen him practice, but he could nail a rabbit in the head at a hundred, hundred and fifty meters if the weather wasn't shit. And she'd seen him down six Bane in as many seconds when a group of skeletons jumped them near Borealis. All of them headshots.

He also had enough book knowledge to make his own powder, though no one liked to think too closely about the ingredients he used.

He hadn't served long in the military, joined up when the Bane landed in Kamer and then got brevetted to officer during the retreat, trying to keep a refugee convoy alive before it completely came apart.

"Lieutenant! You won't believe this, sir."

The surprisingly well kept man, despite their condition, calmly closed the book, stowed the pen and then took off his reading glasses, finally looking up at her. At first she'd found this tick annoying as hell, but now it was almost calming. No matter how hard the shit was hitting the fan, one could always take the time to do things properly. Aim, write, didn't matter. Doing it carefully and deliberately always beat panicking. Had saved Winter's life a couple of times.

"Strange of you to sound so excited. Report, corporal."

They technically had military ranks. The only ones any of the 'enlisted' used was for the lieutenant and sarge. The lieutenant, of course, insisted on doing things right himself.

"There's a Bane army out there, like I thought there was. I got close this time. Really close."

"Careful. I told you to be cautious."

"I did sir! They were super busy. But you won't believe this!" Winter realized that her tail was starting to wag, and with an embarrassed blush, willed it to stop.

"You've already said that. What did you see?"

"They were busy because they'd pulled all their troops near the entrance of the pass. Sir they ain't holding it like I thought! They're besieging it." The lieutenant blinked, and she could see several people shifting in the gloom, suddenly interested enough in the conversation they weren't even bothering to appear like they weren't eavesdropping. "And get this, the thing that happened? They sent a ton of zombies in, and there was artillery, and none came back out!"

The lieutenant sat up straighter.

"Artillery? What kind?"

"The wheezing type! You know thump, wheeee, boom? The kind that goes up then down."

"Howitzers." He turned around, to look at one of the forms in the gloom. "Sergeant. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

The man moved out of the darkness and into the flickering candlelight. His features were weathered and rough, that of a man who'd spent his life at sea. The sergeant had served all his life on naval ships, and the tales he told of the northern voyages in the ice sheets had convinced Winter that they had it easy here. He may wield a cutlass and walk like the land didn't move under his feet enough for his taste, but he laughed off the cold and snow like it was a summer breeze.

"That there's some really tough, really daring army column from the retreat that had the genius of pulling back in the valley and digging in? Aye sir. Sure sounds like it."

"How many zombies went in?" Asked the lieutenant. "And the artillery, how many pieces?"

"I think a few hundred? They were already pouring in, so I can't tell the full number. Five hundred? Seven? No more than a thousand, methinks. As for the artillery I don't know cannons, but there was a boom every ten seconds, and towards the end there were two booms every ten seconds."

The lieutenant and the sergeant exchanged a glance.

"Naval guns, you reckon?" Said the officer. "Seventy five millimeters from the frigates? They're the only ones who even come close to firing that fast."

"I don't think so. They'd have been hell to drag up the hills. Worth it, but hell. They'd have been caught before they'd made it. I think pounders from the army. But on a rotation. Five to eight, depending on how skilled the crews are."

The lieutenant nodded.

"You're probably right." He looked at Winter, and put a hand on her shoulder. "You've done well. Very well. Go fix yourself a meal. We'll talk more about it later."

The wolfkin nodded, and eagerly moved into the back of the cavern, where their cook was doing their best with the warmthstones they had and some of the game her comrades had caught. A good thing about the Bane, is that since they didn't need food, they hadn't wiped out or chased away all the animals around.

Meanwhile, the lieutenant brought his pen back out, and seized a few sheets of paper.

From: Brevet Lieutenant Rafnar Caldon, of the Magistracy's Illustrious Seventh Field Army.

To: Captain Gerard Crozier, of the Thirty-First Royal Infantry Regiment of the Royal Army of Turlor.

Hail, captain.

I write to you to report a most staggering discovery in Starfire Valley...

*****

Click click click click, reverse.

The Hand rolled the coin on their knuckles, looking at the pass.

There was no sound of work in the trenches this night. The Nineteenth had finally decided that enough was enough, apparently.

Losing a massive amount of zombies and three mages will do that to any military unit. Especially when seven maniples had gone the same way over the last few weeks.

They were trying not to think of what the rebel Risen had told them.

They were failing. Miserably.

She is more human than you or I ever will be.

That haunted the Hand. Was it true? They'd seen that abomination kiss someone. Would the Hand ever feel someone else's affection again?

They hadn't been particularly weak to the pleasures of the flesh when they lived, but they were only human. They'd had lovers, participated in great feasts, drank delicious wines.

Now they served, like countless Risen and soulless. Served the Empire. Its people...

What little remained of its people.

The Hand stopped rolling the coin, and gazed at it.

The legate's words came back them, unbidden.

Sarcher. The Emperor would kill us if he saw us now. Don't fool yourself. We do this for the throne, we do this in his memory. But he never would have approved of what we will bring in service of both.

The Hand had done distasteful things for the Empire. For the Throne, and for their Emperor. Things they'd hidden from their ruler. They had been necessary, but...troubling.

What are we doing? They thought to themselves. Avenging the Empire? The Throne?

The latter was already done. The Thronebreakers were dead. All of them. The Imperatrix, the horror that right now sat upon the throne, for all of her faults, had seen to that.

Avenging the Empire? They were bringing its territories back into the fold, to use as a springboard to destroy the homelands of the so called 'Crusaders'. And more importantly, slay the bastards who had set them upon this path.

Would killing the rebels here serve anyone? Was there even a point to this feud with the Nineteenth?

The Hand took a deep, shuddering breath. It was pointless, but long forgotten instincts told their mind they should feel better, and so they did.

They had sworn an oath. That the Emperor that had made them swear it wouldn't approve of what they were doing to fulfill it shouldn't matter.

The Empire must prevail. The Throne may be crippled but it wasn't shattered.

This wasn't over yet.

The Hand looked back, at the valley.

Distantly, they could see the lights of the rebel settlement. The lights. They had mana to spare, clearly.

Perhaps that vehicle of theirs had gone to Icerend and back. If they could do that, and build artillery, and turn every place they set roots down into damned fortresses...

By the time the reinforcements arrived, the only thing preventing the rebels from vaporizing the Hand would be an agreement between them.

Their deal allowed the Empire to hold the other side of the pass because there was no way they would be able to cross it and survive.

This would just be a manpower hole, and-

The Hand stopped.

Yessss...

A hole. For anyone who tried to keep it.

Oh. Oh the legate would not like this idea one bit.

Perhaps it was reckless and mad. But there may be a way to profit from this after all.

After all, profit in war was not just gaining something, but also making your opponent lose some.

They gestured at their bodyguards.

"Get me a velites. No, wait! Let us wait a few days for things to cool down. Then we will send them."

They had a deal to accept. And some things to plan.