Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3) (41 page)

"Fancy seeing you here, Vaessa," I smiled at her. "Come to see us off?"

Content to dispense with the formalities, the magus looked over the half-legion standing at attention, her whole demeanor radiating gentle mockery.

"Tell me, Dark One. Was it your plan all long to abandon a helpless and lonely woman in this dump of a province?" 

"It's just that... You know, with the temple..." I tried to object, barely holding back laughter. 

"What about the temple?" the magus arched a graceful brow. "After you and your would-be helper here," she waved at the mage, who was smiling from ear to ear, "herded half of Mishtah's bloody population there, forcing me to take in not twenty seven demons but fifty four, there's no room to swing a bonehound now." 

"Fifty four is good, certainly better than twenty seven," Reece butted in. "Now they can square-dance in two shifts, around the clock! And also chant sorrowful hymns, and—"

"Shut up!" Vaessa snapped at him, then turned back to me. "In all seriousness, the mistress bid me to follow you everywhere, Dark One. Until the very end."

"What end would that be?"

"That she didn't say," the magus sighed. "But you might as well consider us brother and sister." 

"Uh-huh," I smirked. "We even look like twins. Monozygotic." 

"What?" the Mistress of Death frowned, then glared at Reece. "I leave you with the commander for three days and already he's spewing filth you've taught him?"

"It's a scientific term," I chortled, and gave Elnar the signal to set out. "I'm glad you're back with us." 

"As am I," Vaessa smiled. "Where are you taking us this time, by the way?"

"I'll tell you along the way," I grunted, raising a prayer of gratitude to Celphata for this unexpected, spectacular present.

Chapter 17

It's hard losing friends. I don't think I could ever develop a casual attitude towards it. War is war, you say? Can't have war without casualties, right? Excuse me while I wipe my ass with all these justifications and excuses! I was staring down at the mutilated bodies of Ivar, Olta and two more scouts, a cold rage seething inside me. Rage against the bastards that had dared harm my people, against that scumbag Korg for wreaking havoc even in death, against all the filth he'd brought with him to Xantarra's walls... 

"How did this happen?" I asked Elnar, standing to my right. 

I didn't recognize my own voice.
Hart! Back home I would be narrating low-budget horror flicks,
the thought flashed on the fringes of my consciousness. I fought down the wrath fulminating inside me, much like a master might calm a wolfhound growling at a human. 

"I know no more than you do, dar," James said, struggling to hold my stare. "It looks like they were ambushed, but who could have done it?"

"Spectral spiders," leaning over Olta's body, Vaessa brushed her palm against the scout's colorless cheek, then held it up, demonstrating the gray dust that had stuck to it. "Latessia. The spiders were carriers of this hex." 

"Try again, this time in the common tongue," I asked her, trying my damnedest to keep my tone civil.

"Apologies, Dark One," the magus bent down to the ground, picked up a small bone fragment and showed me the symbols carved upon it. "Put simply, with a bone like this and some knowledge of necromancy, a sorcerer can conjure up a spectral spider, bind it to him or herself, imbue it with one to three hexes, and send it out to scour the area. The creatures transfer the hexes to the target they attack, and live no more than five minutes thereafter. On their own spectral spiders are no more dangerous than the zombies I used to raise before we came to Gilthor. They're immune to ordinary iron and steel, and any priest can just dispel the hexes. However..." 

"What?"

"Our guys caught a bad break. There were at least eight spiders on this meadow, and three of them went right for the priest," Vaessa pointed at the corpse of one of the scouts. "Latessia is a nasty hex that causes partial paralysis, and—" 

"Get to the point!"

"Theirs was a painful death, dar," the magus said softly, looking away. 

"Who? Who sent the spiders? Korg? Or that prick in the black mantle?" 

"No," Vaessa shook her head without looking up. "A lich cannot conjure up a spectral spider. This is the disavowed's doing." 

"You mean to tell me the scouts were wrong? That among the undead army we'll also find Vill's lackeys?"

"Not necessarily. Typically a spider won't go further than twenty five miles from its master, but it could also be bound to someone else, like Korg, and made to follow the host to Xantarra." 

"For what purpose? Why all the complications?" 

"Nothing complicated about it, dar. One necromancer can conjure up and send out up to ten spectral spiders to hunt." Vaessa caught the tip of her tail, twirled it in her palm, and finally looked at me. "When the target dies, the necromancer that had sent the spider draws power from it, a part of which goes to their patron. It won't surprise me if there are dozens, maybe hundreds of similar creatures prowling about in Xantarra's vicinity." 

"I see," I looked up at the sky overcast with dark thunderclouds, and gave a heavy sigh. This made it five... I'd lost five people out of those who had joined my clan a month ago. How many more lives would be sacrificed for me to complete this damned quest? No, I couldn't afford to wallow. I couldn't change what happened, couldn't bring back the fallen. But if the scumbags holed up in Suonu thought they could kill my people with impunity, they had another thing coming. 

"Hyld," I addressed the short black-haired tifling. "You're the new squad leader. You heard what the magus said, yes?" Waiting for him to nod in confirmation, I continued.
"Elnar will assign you five trios of fighters. Together with your surviving squadmates, that makes twenty units under your command. From here on your orders are to never scout with a team of less than ten."

"Aye aye, dar," Hyld nodded and patted the muzzle of his horse, who was neighing worriedly. "I have three units about two miles south of here. Shall I call them back?"

"No, they should stay put, but send reinforcements right away. Did you hear that, Elnar? I want fifteen soldiers assigned to scout duty posthaste!"

When James and the new scout leader rode back to the half-legion, I looked back to the corpses of our friends, and then to the magus.

"Can you do that, too?"

"What exactly? Conjure spiders?"

"No. I mean the hexes."

"Latessia? No," Vaessa shook her head. "After you've 'remade' me back at the mages' tower, I can barely remember the name of the hex and what it does, but..." the demoness stopped short, wavering.

"Quit mumbling like an intern in a bordello!" I growled at her. "Spit it out!"

"When I'd turned the altar over to the Mistress, that unlocked a whole new branch of hexes," Vaessa relented. "It doesn't offer anything particularly unique, but if you're looking for something similar to this, there's Velena's Embrace that I could learn at will."

"What does it do? And who's this Velena?"

"Velena is Celphata's companion and her punishing hand. They say no one sees her more than twice in their lifetime. The hex itself paralyzes and slowly kills the target over a period of three days. The victim suffers tremendously and dies in agony, but the Twice Cursed don't get anything from such a death. The hex remains on the target until it dies, and only a servant of the goddess of death can remove it. I wouldn't be able to cast it on the likes of Korg or Nerghall, but only on those weaker than me... Only, as I remember, you were against me learning and using similar abilities."

"Go ahead and learn it. There's a reason Celphata unlocked this branch for you." With a nod to the magus, I turned around to face the tiflings lined up behind me.

"Two more from your original group are gone," I said to the dour-faced soldiers. "Reece, get your mages and burn the bodies—the scouts and their horses. We'll set out to the main tract in half an hour." I looked them over, then gazed toward the distant Suonu. "Those bastards will pay dearly for their deaths, this I promise you. As will their wretched god."

My half-legion made it to the besieged Xantarra by the afternoon of day three after departing Mishtah. 

Through much of our journey I'd cursed at the game's developers for making it impossible to build a portal within one hundred miles of a besieged city. This restriction had been implemented long ago to combat attempts at foul play. Otherwise, what would prevent, say, a clan leader whose castle was being attacked from summoning allies to his aid? Or quickly striking a deal with bands of mercenaries? "No, gentlemen," the devs had said then. "Even in a magical world we mustn't completely dismiss classic medieval methods. If you own a castle, make sure to maintain a garrison capable of defending it!" This exclusion zone of one hundred miles went in effect for everyone without exception the moment any army entered the territory of a city or castle with the aim of capturing it. The decision to block portals was made by the AI governing a particular territory, and it never had a problem telling an army that posed a danger to the local population from your typical band of brigands. 

 Leaving my Wolves a few miles from the city, my scouts and I sneaked up to within a few hundred yards of the city walls, giving me good view of the undead army laying siege to the city.

I counted roughly four thousand skeletal warriors, seven hundred archers and three hundred undead mages. All had been brought to the city by General Korg—the same commander of Erisjat's legion of punishers who had been killed at Xantarra by Ahriman's getare two hundred eighty years ago. Why couldn't the shithead just stay in the Gray Frontier? Korg had come to Xantarra accompanied by fifty different monsters in the 180-200 level range with very similar stats to Daeron and Magroom whom I'd dispatched to the Gray Frontier not too long ago. The mobs' health varied from eight to twelve million HP; with the right attack strategy, my half-legion should be able to eliminate all fifty in five minutes of regular combat. But it wasn't those beasts that worried me. The general—an eighteen-foot-tall level 350 death knight clad in a suit of matte black plate—boasted 700 million HP, while his companion, a lich named Meresmet who looked like a huge field scarecrow in a black mantle, had 380 million HP at level 300. The lich was hardly a dangerous opponent on his own, but in tandem with the general I could see the odd couple posing a real threat to my troops. 

The undead were behaving strangely. In the three hours I spent observing the siege, I saw their soldiers approach the city walls several times, then fall back immediately while leaving behind a few dozen skeletal corpses. The general, stationed in the back of the main host along with his retinue, wasn't moving at all, which made it seem like the undead army was waiting for some sort of signal. Why did they come here? My guess was that the undead had stirred into action because the end of the continental event was barely more than two weeks away. It was perfectly conceivable that the continental event's script had the general attacking Xantarra exactly two weeks before it was scheduled to end. Then again, Korg wasn't your average mob but more like an NPC, so I shouldn't underestimate him.

But what was I to do in this situation?

My scouts had found several boats on the bank of the Great Lake. I probably could send a courier to Satrap Gorm with a request to deploy some naval vessels for us. However, it would take at least several days to transport five hundred soldiers with horses into the city, and then only Hart knew how long the siege would last. Two weeks remained till the end of the continental event. I still had Suonu and Craedia to deal with, and I couldn't afford to lose time by taking a passive position. And besides, I never liked the word "passive." In the end, the courier dispatched to Xantarra was carrying entirely different instructions from me.

I had no intention of reinventing the wheel. Rather, my plan was to move around the army besieging the city, then launch an attack on the general and his sidekicks. Destroying a disorganized leaderless throng of mobs would be infinitely easier, especially with the support of the Xantarrian army. If all went according to plan, the entire army of stiffs would be put to eternal rest tomorrow.

Once done with reconnaissance, I'd returned to the raid party to coordinate the itinerary with Elnar, and was about to signal to start moving toward the road when the recon channel came alive with the death rattle of my men. 

I wasn't especially knowledgeable in the local belief systems as far as what happened to sentient beings after death. According to one belief, most were reborn in some new family and didn't remember anything from their past life. If you were a warrior who had lived a worthy life, you would definitely merit another incarnation as a warrior. A noble would reincarnate as a noble, and a farmer as a farmer. But that was just one school of thought. Others argued that you could be forever imprisoned in the Gray Frontier, or haunt the realm as an evil spirit, or resurrect at a graveyard like real players. With so many different theories to go around, some locals wouldn't bat an eye if someone they saw torn to bits in battle just yesterday would turn up for dinner the following day, all in one piece. There were tons and tons of different rituals, rules and directives in this world, and none of them interested me in any way. I didn't even really believe in the local gods. I simply knew that they existed.