A Soldier's Life - 246 - The Road Less Traveled

Chapter 246: The Road Less Traveled

 I spent the next three hours proving to Maveith that my range was over fifty feet. I found small animals and even told him where he could find a silver coin twenty paces off the road. As night quickly closed, we moved off the road, Maveith still in disbelief.

“With seeing so much with each earth pulse, how do you interpret what you see so quickly?” he said, cleaning off the ancient silver coin he had dug up. Maveith didn’t care about coins, but this one was ancient, and he wanted to see the stamped images for their historical value. It appeared to be a Telhian coin, featuring the image of a lion on one side and the portrait of a strong-looking man on the other. The script had worn away.

I motioned my distracted friend into some heavy thickets that would be defensible for a camp. Maveith had been awfully vocal today, and I think he missed talking to me, but we were getting closer to the dire wolf territory. As we set camp, I finally answered him. “Lots of practice.”

Maveith looked confused, “How do you not get overwhelmed? From my understanding earth speak shows you everything.”

I thought about how I was doing it as I handed Maveith his pack from my dimensional space. “Before I send out the pulse, I have already focused on where I am looking. I hold the image and study it. If I see something interesting, I refocus and pulse again. With earth speak inscribed on my core, I can pulse two or three times a second now and even pick up movement.”

For the first time I had known Maveith, he looked jealous. As he set up his bedroll, I set trip alarms outside our campsite. I sprinkled myconid powder in a wide arc after I was done to find Maveith already eating. I hitched Ginger’s lead line to a thick bush and wondered how she would react to being placed in my dimensional space. I got myself comfortable on the ground next to him, a rock supporting my back as I took the watch.

“Do you want this?” I held up the dreamscape amulet for Maveith.

He considered for a long moment before nodding slightly, “Yes. I will practice against the orcs and tell my sister we are coming for her.”

“Maveith, that is not how it works,” I said, concerned. Was I setting him up for major disappointment?

Maveith mumbled softly, “I know, Eryk. I just need to talk to her.” I didn’t say more as I let him sleep. In a few days, the ring would cut his sleep down, but still, moving in the dark of night was dangerous for the two of us in this region. I missed my Hound goggles.

The night passed quickly, and only insects and owls spoke to me during the night. My earth speak allowed me to see the nightly foragers come out. Maveith came out of the dreamscape twice to check on me, and both times, I sent him back. I needed to plan our next steps. Getting out of the Empire was not going to be easy.

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep the whole night,” Maveith grumbled as light, misty fog rolled in with the morning. I waved off his concern. The fog felt a little unnatural for this time of year, but a lot of mornings have felt that way recently.

“I am fine, Maveith. I am going to walk Ginger and pick up my snare alarms.” Maveith dug into his pack for breakfast as I moved away. Ginger was probing me for an apple. “Just grass this morning,” I told her, and she immediately looked indignant. As I worked, she eventually took to grazing. I sent out earth speak pulses, only detecting two deer bedded down in a small gulley nearby.

Back on the road, Maveith was chipper from his great night of sleep and, thankfully, talking in a whisper as we walked—well, a whisper for him. The mist cleared, and the azure sky showed itself. Bird songs filled the woods as we walked. Maveith had the right side, and I had the left, but I occasionally focused my earth speak pulse on his side of the road.

Before midday, we encountered our first dire wolf tracks. “Over two days old,” I said, standing. Maveith nodded in agreement. “But there were four of them,” I added unhappily.

Maveith added his input, a little distressed, “If the females had their litter, the males would be hunting during the day and night to feed her while she nursed them.” He looked back at Ginger. “Dire wolves have a fixation for horse meat.” Ginger huffed indignantly, and I couldn’t tell if she understood Maveith’s words or his body language and tone.

“Griffins like horse meat too, but don’t worry, girl. I won’t let them get to you.” I pulled my black spear from my dimensional space to carry with me before we continued.

The dire wolf tracks crossed the road frequently, and we even found a blood trail. Maveith stooped and pressed the large splotch. “We are lucky. It is still tacky. They got some prey last night and probably won’t be hunting again so soon. We should increase our pace.” I agreed, and all three of us broke into a jog. The echoing of Ginger’s shoes on the ancient pavers had me on edge, but haste was our ally.

We covered over fifteen miles in the afternoon and hadn’t seen any tracks for the last few miles. We were approaching the site of the abandoned wagons where the company had discovered with the lockbox, and I had Maveith hold Ginger’s reins while I looked upon the site again.

It looked the same as I approached and sent out earth speak. Metal items and bones were littered a few inches under the soft earth around the site. Scavengers had disrupted whole skeletons, but I located nine different skulls as I fine-tuned my feedback from the spell.

Castile seemed to think there was something extremely odd about this scene, but I didn’t find anything noteworthy as I searched for something besides some clusters of coins. Probably coin purses of the dead. I dug a little and retrieved six gold, nine large silver, seventy-six silver, and dozens of copper coins, large and small. I didn’t need the coin, but it never hurt to have more. The mystery of what had ambushed and killed these traders still remained.

I returned to continue and let Maveith clean the coins while I scouted ahead for us. Two hours later, I yanked on Maveith’s leathers and pulled him off the road. He shoved the coppers he had been cleaning into his rough linen pants. “What?” he hissed.

“Two men about fifty feet ahead, just off the road,” I stated as I did an easy pull hitch for Ginger.

“Bandits?” Maveith asked, confused. I was also confused, as we hadn’t seen any wagon, horse, or human tracks.

“Maybe Hounds or Bartiradian Rangers. Both figures are prone. Give me a moment. My earth speak doesn’t work well through flora and fauna.” I focused and pulsed multiple times before I started to relax. “One of them is dead, and the other is close to it. I can’t discern their race. Wait here.”

I walked cautiously up the road while Maveith prepared his bow in support. Ginger seemed confused as she didn’t sense or see any danger. The two bodies were concealed off the road, but I could easily follow their tracks and dried blood, days old. They had come south from the Caelora Ruins. Maybe men who had thought to raid the city.

I walked over to them and lowered my spear at the one who still lived. He had a runic sword clutched in his hand that was caked in dried blood. He smelled of rot as well, and I could see a larva moving in a massive chest wound. He was not going to live much longer.

I poked him with the spear, and his eyes flashed open, and he coughed painfully and weakly. He was middle-aged with graying hair. His dead companion was very young and didn’t look like a warrior, maybe a servant. He was missing his right arm and had been dead days by the smell and maggots.

The man rasped, and I stepped on his sword and knelt, tilting a canteen into his mouth. He struggled to swallow, and most of the water was wasted. Once he could swallow, I dribbled an orc healing potion into his mouth. He was too far gone to realize the foul taste. It wasn’t going to save his life, but prolong it so I could get answers and decide if he needed saving. He was fairly delirious at the moment, and I did not recognize him.

Maveith appeared behind me while I tended to him and waited for him to speak. I waved Maveith back, as I didn’t want him to see the goliath. I was dressed in common clothes and fairly plain-looking. Maveith understood I didn’t want him to see a goliath and led Ginger a short distance down the road. “Why are you here?” I asked softly.

His eyes couldn’t focus, and he kept wetting his throat and tongue, so I gave him more water till he spoke in a soft rasp. “Our camp was attacked by a wyvern.”

“Why were you on this road?” I asked. I realized the wyvern must be left over from the summoner, and the Empire had not gotten around to removing it with the war escalating. I had seen one flying in the distance when Maveith and I had escaped the city, and there had been two wyverns that had decimated the building we had found near the dungeon entrance.

“We were looting the ruins,” the man managed to say after more water. “The First Citizen was leading us.”

“Which First Citizen, and why isn’t he off fighting the Elves and Bartiradians?” I asked more with curiosity now.

“Boris Angella. He hired us to raid the Caelora Ruins before the Emperor could send an expedition.” His voice was sounding better, and the orc’s lesser healing potion had stabilized him. I doubted Duchess Veronica had sent her brother here. More likely, he was here on his own accord and trying to plunder the ruins without anyone knowing.

“How were you dealing with the specters?” I pressed the dying man. Maybe they had brought the kettle of souls with them.

“He said most of the specters were banished, but we had a necromancer with us, and he had a soul prison. We made slow progress. There were not many specters near the western gate.” The man stated, clearly exhausted from talking. “Is my boy dead?” he asked while I thought.

I looked at the younger man. “Yes, I am sorry.” I didn’t want to have to deal with a wyvern—or two—again. “Is the First Citizen alive? Was Justin Cicero with him? Were there any other First Citizens?” The man appeared to be giving up his weak hold on life after I told him his son was dead. He didn’t answer me, so I shook him a little and repeated my question.

He answered weakly, “No. Only Boris, but Count Cato sponsored the expedition. There were eleven of us when the wyvern attacked. Not sure if any others made it.” The man was straining to look at his son, and I helped him. I looked at his wounds, and I could give him four or five of the orc healing potions to possibly save him, but then he would return and tell someone else about seeing me. He hadn’t seen Maveith at least. Still, the risk was too great.

“I have oblivion pills,” I said softly to the man. “Do you want them? Do you want us to bury you with your son? Or burn your bodies?” His mind was not working well, but he slowly nodded and mouthed, burn. I gave him four oblivion pills and let him drift off and pass away. I didn’t feel right taking his essence after helping him die when I could have saved him.

I worked with Maveith to make a funeral pyre, and we waited till night to start the fire so the smoke wouldn’t draw the wyvern. Once lit, we moved away quickly to where we had prepared our accommodations for the evening.

I sent the man’s runic blade to my dimensional space, but it was unremarkable and poorly forged compared to others of its kind. It was still worth good gold, and he no longer needed it. Our accommodation was a shallow cave on a hill, a good mile from the pyre. It smelled of urine and had small animal bones, so we displaced a modest predator.

I had told Maveith everything the man had told me. “Are we going to search for the First Citizen?” he asked as he ate some jerky with a sour face. I could tell he was upset that the ring of sustenance was working and that he no longer felt hungry.

“No, we are not going to search for him. If we do come across him, we have to kill him. I prefer to avoid the wyvern’s hunting grounds completely. We will move off the road and move parallel to the river under the trees and pick up the old road north of here.” I explained. If we came across First Citizen Boris, I wouldn’t have any choice but to kill him. I couldn’t risk him recognizing me, and to tell the truth, I welcomed his death at my hand.

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