Chapter Sixteen - 016
In the grey light of dawn, on the sixteenth day of summer, Magda Aren found herself on the Haarwatch wall overlooking the approach to the Foglands. Here it was summer only in name. Thick, land-bound clouds drifted and swirled amidst the shadows of winter-bare trees, ominous in what they hid. She leaned against the crenelations, feeling somewhat naked without her shields. But being armed and armored for war at all times wasn't something she could afford, not anymore. She fingered the silver medallion hanging around her neck, symbol of her prestige and authority. Chains as far as she was concerned, as good as any manacles.
It was saying something to her state of mind that she didn't notice the man until he was nearly on top of her.
"Ye can't go, Maggie. It be too dangerous out there, now. The fog blinds us, and the beasts be gettin' worse." A heavyset dwarf with a short, bristly beard growled nearly in her ear, while his two bright blue eyes creased in concern. He was dressed in a combination of leathers and mail, effective armor for defending the wall of Haarwatch or wading into an army of monsters. Magda stood up, towering over him by over a foot as she crossed her arms in front of her fine silk tunic and embroidered tabard.
"The Culling be only six months past, but we've yet to see a drop in the chimeric hordes. They've retreated, aye, but our scouts say the wilds are full to bursting. Ye enter there, ye ain't coming out," the dwarf said, brows turned down.
Magda smirked at the dwarf, her hand on her belt. "That sounds like a challenge, Rory."
Rory groaned. "It ain't, ya loon. It's a warning, and a fair one too." Rory turned toward the heavy mist that rolled across the wilds, the area of the Continent folks called the Foglands. "I've been up here for close to twenty years now, and I know how these things go, Maggie. The Culling shoulda cut back the mists and chimeras both, as it always does. But they only went quiet, leavin' us alone in our turtle town. I know they're out there, getting stronger while we wait."
"Then why wait? Take the fight to them, beat them back like you have before." Magda's eyes twinkled, her mouth curved upward in a slow grin. "Don't tell me Raging Rory is afraid of a little fog."
Rory grunted, frown deepening. "It be more than that, and ye know it. Politics, fah," he spat off the side of the wall, and they both watched it disappear into the roiling mists. "The new Governor in Setoria wants a show of force at his festival, a display o' Haarwatch's best. So I'm left with the dregs to man this fog-cursed wall." Rory sighed, a deep bellows gust of air from his sturdy lungs. "Truth be told, I'd rather wade into it with you than watch over a bunch o greenhorns who know the hoe better than their pikes."
"We can't all go walking into the lion's den, someone's got to keep them safe," Magda replied with a smile and a jerk of her thumb backward, toward town. "And besides, I've got greenhorns of my own to shepherd."
Rory grunted, this time smiling. "Oh aye, I heard you've been lugging some dead weight. Who hired the Guild to powerlevel their brats this time? Who had money enough to earn the services of the Shieldwitch herself?"
"My sister, for one."
"Little Evie's old enough to face the wilds? I must be losing track o time; last I knew she weren't any taller than me."
Magda snorted. "Everyone's taller than you."
"Aye aye, laugh it up human," Rory grumbled, grin still not gone. "So Evie is going out, I assume to earn her Omen? Who're the others?"
"Atar V'as, some prodigy from Tethys," Magda's expression soured. "And Vessilia Dayne."
Rory's eyes widened. "Yer shittin me."
"No shit involved, dwarf. Not unless I fail to bring her back in one piece," Magda laughed, but the humor was gone.
Rory leaned against the crenelated wall, armored gauntlets scraping against stone. "Twins' teeth, woman. Here I am, complain' about monsters at the gates and you've got em in your lap." He slapped his thigh and let out a sharp bark of a laugh. "That's some damn luck, Maggie."
Magda's eyes hardened, her mouth a grim line. "Don't I know it."
A dozen blocks east of the wall, a grizzled and scarred man sat in a well appointed office, lounging in an expensively crafted chair in a row of near identical copies. He wasn't much to look at, wearing rumpled woolens and a sweat-stained jerkin. But at his waist were two exquisitely crafted hand axes, and around his neck was a silver medallion. Two heavily armored guards at either end of the room kept eyeing him, as if he were a dangerous animal, both of their hands hovering near their weapons.
A desk carved to look like gryphons held it up on two corners was across the room, and a woman in a pale green dress worked silently on various piles of paperwork. Suddenly, she raised her head, curled hair bobbing in place. "Sir? The Lady is ready for you now."
Slowly, the man stretched his long limbs and stood up. With a rolling gait, he strolled up to the heavy oak door nearby. On its surface was a fine carving of a shield crossed by a sword and spear, to either side of it a gryphon and a creature that was a mixture of a cat and snake. Snorting at it, the man pushed the twelve foot door open and entered.
Within was another very well made office, heavy with wood, rare out here at the edge of the Foglands where harvesting trees could not be done without bloodshed. Dark stain and expensive waxes shined in the light of a series of wrought iron everlamps, and delicately embroidered tapestries filled a couple dedicated alcoves. The faint scratching of quill on paper caught Harn's ears as he saw another woman taking notes and watching him, twin to the receptionist outside save for her faded blue dress. To her right, on the other side of a massive wooden desk, a stately woman in a complicated outfit of silks and armored gauntlets stood, staring idly out of the large picture window behind her. It was only early afternoon, but the sky still looked dark, despite the season.
"What a strange town, Haarwatch. I see people everyday, laboring, trading, training, working their hands to the bone to eke out a living in this fog-touched outpost. They could live out different, more comfortable lives elsewhere. Setoria is not far and is a safe enough journey with a minimal escort. But they stay, and because they stay, so must we.
"The Guild is the wall on which the frenzied hordes break. We are the first defense of the Heirocracy. But we live in rural squalor compared even to Setoria, bloated city that it is. Underfunded, understaffed, and expected to save the empire from the chimeric hordes." The woman, Lady Liza DuFont sighed dramatically, and turned to look at her guest.
"You're quiet today, Harn. Not happy to be back?"
"Hm," he grunted. A man of few words, today he did not feel inclined to indulge. The woman laughed like a bell, and waved at him. Her assistant scritch-scratched another note on her parchment.
"Sit, sit." He remained standing, but she paid him no mind, adjusting her dress and sitting in a plush chair behind the massive desk. She poured two cups of wine and offered one to the silent man. He begrudgingly took it, holding it but not drinking.
"I imagine you're wondering why I've asked you here--"
"I have an inkling," Harn said, eyes surveying the ceiling and walls.
"Hm, yes. I suppose you would," she said, regarding him. "I need to ensure that your operation goes off without a hitch. You understand if something...untoward happened to Lady Dayne, it would reflect disastrously upon the Guild."
"In the form of cutbacks, you mean," Harn lazily suggested, sucking at his teeth unpleasantly. Lady DuFont frowned.
"Indeed. I don't have to tell you that the funds given to us by the Hierocracy are subpar. Even in the best of years we barely have enough well trained Guilders to man this wall. And this has not been the best year." The woman shuffled a number of papers around, clearly searching, before plucking one sheet from the pile and holding it triumphantly. "Here we are! Scouts are reporting an increase in chimeric activity beyond the third front," she looked up from the paper, meeting Harn's eyes. "That is as far as they could penetrate, the hordes too numerous to risk any further."
"Sounds like fun," Harn tried to smile, but it always came out as a smirk. He wasn't sure why, but it irritated people, especially Lady DuFont. He couldn't bring himself to care.
"Fun? We have--"
"Listen, Lady, Maggie and I know our business," Harn growled. "We've been hired to do a job, and we never go back on a contract."
"Which I applaud, Master Kastos. You and your teammate are a valued asset of the Guild, worth more than a dozen lesser teams. Which is why I am having this conversation with you; even your team cannot withstand a swarm of ten thousand beasts. No matter how strong Onslaught and the Shieldwitch become, you can never best the entirety of the Foglands alone." Lady DuFont leaned forward, eyebrows tilted up and blue eyes worried. "I beg of you, reconsider your contract. The Lady Dayne can attain her Omen in a much safer way. I even have a Priest of the Pathless here in Haarwatch that could--"
"Priests! And what did they pay you to recommend that, my lady," Harn snarled, wine spilling from his chalice. "The Pathless aren't worth the hot air they pump out. Revealing an Omen takes challenge and danger, not gibberish before an altar. Those three kids are strong, and revealing their Omen's in battle will make them stronger still." Harn dropped his chalice, thoroughly crushed in his bare grip. "You would have us betray our client's trust and smear the name of the Guild, over politics? You go too far, Eliza."
Lady DuFont had steepled her hands during his tirade, and regarded him with a cool gaze. "Very well. You have heard my objections, as has the record," she glanced at her secretary, who was writing furiously with her quill, then glared at Harn with steel in her eyes. "However, Silver Rank or not, you speak to me like that again and I'll end you, Harn Kastos."
A sudden flare of power and her armored limbs were limned with a yellow light as her aura smothered the room. Harn stumbled, knees bending briefly before Lady DuFont retracted her aura. He straightened slowly, meeting her eyes as he nodded.
"Very well, Elder," Harn growled. "You've been heard."
He marched out of the room.
The oak door, larger than two men put together and weighing nearly five hundred pounds, slammed shut as Harn stormed out.
"That went well," Lady Eliza DuFont observed. Her secretary (either Vera or Tera, she was never sure) stood up from her desk and sprinkled sand over her parchment.
"The meeting is fully recorded in the Guild Logs, as you requested, my Lady."
"Good," Eliza stretched her arms, feeling her shoulders cramp from exerting her aura. It was not a tool used often in polite society, but it had its uses, shutting down belligerent fools being one of them. "Have the Logs taken to the record keepers and notarized."
"As you wish, my Lady."
Tera (or Vera) left the room, a bundle of parchment in her hands. The moment she exited, Eliza let loose a sigh that had been building for the past twenty minutes. She was just about to sit back down in her chair when a soft scraping noise grabbed her attention. Immediately, Eliza had her arms up, yellow light flowing around her limbs as she activated a Skill. "Who dares!?"
A shadow detached from the edge of her office, neatly forming from cast off scraps of light until a figure about five and a half feet tall materialized on her expensive Denarian rug. Wearing flat plates of boiled leather and dyed variations of grey and black, a half mask of featureless matte black porcelain covered their upper face, leaving plump lips stretched over a generous smile. The figure took an elegant bow, white eyes never leaving Eliza's own.
"I bid you a good morning, Elder DuFont."
"Illia, you fog-touched wretch," Eliza breathed, her Skill fading as she lowered her arms. "You are as unnerving as ever."
The pale woman smiled even wider, if that were possible. "The Lady is too kind."
Eliza composed herself, straightening her silk brocade and tugging on the edges of her custom gauntlets. Their presence always helped ease her mind, a weapon constantly to hand. "You saw the whole thing, I presume?"
"It was quite the show," Illia said. "I could have sold tickets."
"A necessary fiction, if our plan is to work. I can't been seen supporting a decision to take the Duke's only daughter into the Foglands." Eliza shook her head, still marveling at the audacity of the adventurer team's plan. "That the Duke and the Guild green-lit this contract is pure madness. I aim to be on the correct side of history."
"With some help, of course," suggested Illia.
Eliza smiled. "Of course. And you are prepared for your part in our arrangement?"
The woman in black flexed her shoulders, an impressive array of blades secured across her torso. "Always. I'll shadow the team the entire way, keep the Duke's brat safe, extracting her once the team falls."
"Good."
"What if they don't?" Illia asked.
Eliza raised an eyebrow. "What if they don't what?"
"Fall."
"They will," Eliza promised, sipping her wine and turning toward the picture window behind her. The Guild Hall was the largest building in Haarwatch, and she could see clear to the walls. Men and women patrolled them, clear as day to her enhanced Perception.
"One way or another."
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