BBook 2: Chapter 27: Upkeep II.
It seemed ridiculous to one not familiar with the realities of violence that the wait for several brief, chaotic moments might sway a persons life to such an extreme. The trepidation and anticipation of what was to come made every moment that passed seem as mire to be slogged through. All thoughts of importance returned to focus upon that subject, sooner rather than later.
One never grew accustomed enough to disregard this, I had found. Experience only made it easier to bear.
No longer was it a question of if there would be bloodshed. Now the mystery only remained when.
Somewhere out there, beyond my half-constructed walls lurked forces that wished me dead. And for once, I had no knowledge as to where they lay. It was this uncertainty, this doubt that might shake even hardened veterans. An enemy unseen was an enemy most feared.
I remained steadfast in one piece of knowledge, however. To kill me, they would have to fight on my terms, in a place of my choosing. I had something they wanted. There was a reassurance that came with the knowledge that I was the target of all this. One certainty was not subject to change. My life was the one that needed be forfeited for my enemys ambitions to become realized.
The small speck of knowledge I safeguarded as I worked. A small comfort that helped me slog through the days as time stretched on. My enemies might be legion, their locations might be unknown, but despite it all, they had to come to me. Through every swing of my axe, under every load of lumber I carried, i held this knowledge close.
The days might be slow, but progress could not claim the same.
As a minotaur, I logged with the speed of a dozen men, maybe more. My axe and brute strength veritably tore through the forest that surrounded my farm. So fast was I, so vast the trail of trees I left behind that other loggers abandoned their positions and returned to lend their strength to other aspects of the construction.
Harvests Bounty kept me a tireless juggernaut, my vitality refreshed for every tree I felled. Spurred onward by the Skills magic, I had cleared a frankly massive area within the span of a few days. A battlefield of stumps were all that remained once I lay down my axe. Even with breaks in the chopping to carry loads of felled trees back into the farms property, my pace had outstripped the workforces combined efforts.
Piled trees lay untrimmed in great heaps, while those with the branches hacked off were roughly stacked and awaited their turns over the sawing pits. For the past several days, I had been the lone logger that supplied all this.
Yet overburdened as they were, Lidya and her crew made incredible headway. The more unskilled labour was transferred into the saw-pits, I saw. Sean and his guards were sweating furiously, coated in wood shavings and baking in the heat. Zheli had, with her cooking duties finished, taken to hauling buckets of water from the clear, shaded river up and across the farm to the pits.
Several men and women lingered around the area where tree-branches were being shaved off whenever she drew near, I noticed. No doubt in order to get first dibs on the clear, undirtied water. Buckets came, were drank and splashed onto hot, messy faces in equal measure and sent back for more.
Heated and difficult as these jobs were, they could barely keep up with the brutal pace pushed by Lidyas crew. Teams with rolled-up sleeves and sweat-stained shirts dug in the ground, dirt being moved so wood might take its place. Thick pillars of wood were rolled into position, lifted, slid in and packed into place.
Then the diggers moved on as other teams approached to secure, fill in the gaps and periodically place the skeletons for the inside structures. How exactly it all flowed together, I was unsure, but I suspected there were a myriad of Skills at work that tied all the different aspects and parts together into a functioning whole.
Without time for substance, I had elected to go with crude ramparts on the inside. Platforms that stretched along the wall's entire diameter and allowed sentinels to see over, and, perhaps, even levy a bow in the direction of anything that approached.
Enough to dissuade most anyone that sought to make trouble. Perhaps it would even prove sufficient to slow down the minotaur warbands. But I did not think myself enough of a fool to dream that it would stop them.
It was only once the main gate was erected that I realized another problem presented itself.
A singular road led up the mountain along this way.
One that ran right through my farm. Which I had just walled off.
While the thought of collecting tolls might lead to riches, it would no doubt cause me to be despised. And so that faint glimmer of thought was discarded and I went back to more viable solutions.
The point of these walls was to keep enemies out, obviously. Having the open the gates for every rider that came up and down the mountain seemed a fair bit too monotonous. So instead of assigning workers to do naught but stand and man gates all day, another idea struck me with its brilliance.
Why not simply make another road?
This packed trail of dirt and ruts was already barely able to be called that. No matter how poorly I completed this task, any outcome would exceed what currently lay here in quality. Now I did not strictly have to, I realized. Yet it was unbecoming of a neighbor to snatch up an entire important trail and disallow anyone from using it.
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And so I grabbed my trusty axe, left the gated walls of my farm and set about to hacking a new road into the hot, hard dirt of what had been a dense forest just days ago.
A basic path was required, first a foremost. Ax edragged blade-down behind me, I etched one into the field of stumps that surrounded my freshly-built walls. It gave a wide berth to my walls, nearly against the trees that still stood.
Then came the difficult part. I might possess the strength of dozens, but all were made equal in their frustration when ripping up stumps. Strong as i was, each one was still a struggle as I yanked up entire root systems. I soon shed my dreams of clearing every single stump between my walls and the road, worn down to focus solely on those on the path itself.
Even then, the proverbial going was slow. Through great effort and a few possible strained muscles, I did what would normally require some technique and brute-forced every root system and attached piece of tree out of the dirt.
The first rider to encounter my new walls seemed confused and surprised as he slowly picked his way through the stumps towards me. A man dressed in the loose solours of the Verdant Dawn, no other liveries attached. I was halfway around the walls with my new road and only just realized that perhaps I should have started up the mountain and worked my downwards on the gentle slope.
A letter was handed to me gazed at the rider with a tired expression, my eyes level with his own. I could smell the man was unsettled by my mere presence, and waved him off once I had the delivery in hand.
The sender declared himself to be none other than Raffnyk once I unfolded the parchment. A short, hastily written notice that his company had just received orders to leave the area. My eyebrows rose with every sentance I read over. No rider had ridden through here to relay those orders. These came by letter-hawk. To my knowledge, one of the fastest ways to send messages without magical means.
It is treason to tell you this, my friend. I trust you will understand this and not spread the word. The Verdant Dawn has been unequivocally ordered to leave the Redtip and withdraw from the country. Danger has well and truly stirred, it seems. The grandmasters fear that if we are caught here, all of our order will be dragged into what is to come.
This is not a tribal dispute, I am afraid. Someone larger is making their move. Who, I know not. This is all I can write, I am afraid. The man who delivers this letter will not open it on pain of death.
I hope that you will appreciate what I have done.
Good luck.
So that was it.
Someone was making their move. Someone serious enough that the Verdant Dawn were being withdrawn from the potential crossfire. The question now was, were they targetting Ironmoor or was it aimed at me?
This question haunted me throughout the day. I would stop periodically, reading the letter over again on breaks from work.
Raffnyk had broken his oath for me. That knowledge weighed heavily on me. My friend had chosen to warn me over loyalty to his order. I would not take this lightly.
He hinted at war, possibly.
Ironmoors recent stirrings and what the man had told me would agree.
But who?
I realized then that I did not know. I had never taken the time to familiarize myself with who ruled the surrounding lands. I had even forgotten the countrys name that the Verdant Dawn hailed from. Even the kingdom I resided in had its name be a foggy memory.
This was all simply information that had not been relevant to me. Things I had never paid attention to. And now when I had need of it, I found myself to be lacking.
Shouts from down the road interrupted yet another break as evening began to set. The first sounds made me perk up, alerted by the noise. Almost finished cojoining the two roads, I was close enough that I could hear something further down the mountain.
Shouts of panic and pain.
I needed little more to spit me into action. Axe wrenched from the dirt, I broke into a long-legged sprint, bellowing to alert the workers behind their walls. Dust kicked up in my path as I tore down the road towards whatever catastrophe had unfloded on my front porch now.
Dead and the dying waited for me. Riders in the livery of the baron lay alongside their mounts, arrows jutting from every angle of their armor. Horses neighed as they died slow, thrashing in pain from the sheer amount of arrows buried in them.
So many were the arrows that I suspected an army of archers in the trees.
A scant few survived the slaughter, trapped underneath their creatures or hiding against their dead mounts. Arrows arced over the treetops, their number growing with every second. Unbelievable as it was, I swore that I could plainly see them multiplying mid-flight.
And then they turned and homed towards me. Eyes wide, I watched the approaching flock of wooden death-missiles with some fear and anticipation before I remembered that I was indeed a minotaur. Arrows were little but pinpricks on my hide.
Fool I was for believing that. Only once the first few arrows thudded into my hide and ripped into my form did I call for Ironhide. The mass of missiles that followed clanged off the metallic strength of my skin even as I bellowed in pain from those that had already sunken in.
As a gleaming giant coated in metal, I burst forward and tossed the horses off those riders that survived. My strength proved more convincing than their panic, and without further ado I scooped them from the ground, turned and ran even as another flock of fletched wood whistled over the treetops.
My body shielded them from the worst of it. But these shots dug into even Ironhide, but were unable to fully pierce it. Hooves crashing through dirt and dust, my back resembled a pincushion by the time the walls came into view.
Bellows to open the gate took far too long to register and even longer to be responded to as Ipounded on the wood, several terrified and wounded soldiers tucked under my arms. Finally, mercifully, the massive slabs of wood were heaved open and I tossed the soldiers through the second the gap was wide enough.
Only once I was inside and the gates were slammed behind me did I allow myself to breathe. That and remember that my axe was gone. Dropped among the corpses. Not that I planned to return there without knowing what in the name of the Gods Above had just happened.
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