Castrum Cerasus – Interrogation
The Chemists’ Code was widely adopted following the conclusion of the Four Sons War and in response to the many tragedies that befell Agonis Citadel during that ancient, pre-Protectorate conflict. It was during those troubled years that an attempted coup turned siege as ranks of the fledgling Trade Syndicate’s mercenary armies attempted to depose city-state dictator, Emperor Cynomys. The siege was ill-planned by the corporatists however, and they soon found that the bounteous freshwater wells and fishponds of the city meant that increasingly radical solutions would be required to meet their desired goals.
To that end, and over the four-decade length of the encirclement, the both armies spared no expense in first procuring, then further developing, the most devious and destructive weapons available across the lands of Lastion and beyond.
Among the most effective, a barbaric concoction known as ‘death-smoke’ was found useful in a wide range of circumstances and applications with early experiments in the North finding outstanding success breaking the stalemate in colonization efforts there a century before. Emperor Cynomys seeking an end to the strife that had come to define his tenure, adopted the substance wholesale following a few effective uses of the substance against sappers attempting to breach the walls of the ancient citadel. Soon deaths in the thousands and injuries ten times that in surrounding villages spurred the mercenary armies to invest heavily in the substance themselves.
Properly compounded and heated, the weapon was capable of swathes of absolute devastation where desired, and mild sickness or psychosis were needed. The results were carnage of a kind that had been unimaginable before and which now lives in such infamy as to be outside of today’s imagination as well. More than a hundred thousand survivors walked free of the city at the end of the Siege of Agonis, all of them mutilated spiritually and emotionally in addition to the various maladies afflicting them physically.
“We see them every day, pulling themselves from gutters and closets and woodsheds throughout the city. We call them ‘damned,’ but in reality, we think they are worse off than that. Some have lost not only generations of family to wasting sickness, but entire appendages or faces to the ravages of the sickness released here. Many without lips or eyelids or ears walk blind and aimless, flesh falling without notice and simply walking on. Word is that some have already been found as far away as Alba after having walked through the west gate of the newfound City-of-Three (read: Agonis) and just continuing straight across the plains for a couple hundred miles. Who knows for certain?
According to the estimates of our doctors, it is believed that only one of every six people, or ~100,000, in the Fourth Citadel have survived the conflict. Most, if not all, are sick in ways related to their long-term exposure to the environment and which will undoubtedly haunt them until they die. If the lessons of other similar engagements involving weapons of Oxycarpa hold here, most will die young and those who are not sterilized by their traumas will provide sickly, maldeveloped offspring.”
The true mechanisms of this weapon are, after all these years, a mystery and the subsequent purge of the alchemical schools following the atrocity have all but ensured that the secrets of death-smoke were lost to time with no recorded attacks with the weapon in the five centuries since.
-Understanding the Laws of the Protectorate: A Beginner’s Guide
Maester Jugularis, Chem.
Fourth Squad was awoken by silent prods and firm nudges, the hands of Doc Pan’s assistant medics interfering in fitful dreams to pull them back to reality. They held fingers to lips and pointed wordlessly out the small window toward Cerasus Township some distance up the hill in the darkness of the very early morning, indicating impatiently that they had been summoned, despite the hour, to attend to their superiors. The troopers stirred, pulling themselves up wearily and eyeing one another in silence as they hastily reassembled their uniforms and donned their brigandine.
Night-owls, light-sleepers, and early-risers alike cast questioning scowls toward the young troopers attempting to quietly dress against the dim light of a slumbering hearth. A log was tossed onto the embers and groans elicited.
‘What’s going on?’ Pellia asked timidly. She shook in the cool night air that had poured in as the white-cloaked medics took their leave. ‘Where is the Sergeant?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sily answered a bit more grumpily than she intended, ‘apparently missing our turn to burn the latrines.’
She was clearly annoyed at being awoken but managed to grimace at the look Pellia gave her, wincing at the poor impression and amending it quietly. ‘I…I’m sorry,’ she added with a downward glance, ‘didn’t mean anything by that.’
‘Should watch that tongue,’ Pica warned her quietly with a quick look around, ‘Tacca might not care but you know what the Lieutenant would think...’ He let the words hang, the implications obvious after the events of the days before.
Pellia looked between them, her unease written across her furrowed brow as she glanced at the cold night outside. ‘Auditors,’ she breathed, remembering the horrific absence that was the one they had seen a few days prior. ‘They’re giving us to the auditors.’
They had yet to mention the fight or horrors of their milk-run through Cerasus to any of their comrades and Sily shushed the younger woman with a hard look.
‘We talking about Scribe again?’ Simen asked cheekily as he grunted his stiff armor over his head. He looked around for emphasis, ‘Gods know where he is now, what he writes in that book of his?’ He winked at Pellia good-naturedly, intending a little light-hearted teasing to start an otherwise miserable morning.
Sily flared, instantly incensed. ‘Don’t.’ Her voice dropped low as she turned to face the broad man head-on. ‘I will not have you saying that nonsense. Not anymore.’
Rusa and Alces shifted toward her slightly, unsure of what they had missed but defaulting to their sister’s defense instinctively.
Simen stood straight, turning to meet her frigid blue eyes unflinchingly. ‘Oh? And why not?’ he dared her, willing to fight away his hangover in the courtyard instead if the woman was looking for it.
‘It’s just a joke, Sily.’ Pica attempted to intercede, recognizing the coming conflict as well as anyone else. Simen continued unimpeded.
‘None of us get a peek over his shoulder like you do, he isn’t here now as we are summoned away in the night.
Can’t blame us for what we don’t know about, Sily.’ Simen pushed the conspiracy forward, enjoying the sport of it as he sauntered toward the door provocatively. ‘Where has he been since we got here anyway?’
‘He isn’t some fucking Inquisitor!’ the tall woman bridled, dropping her bracer onto the floor and taking a step towards the man. ‘He has done nothing but keep you alive and you have no reason whatsoever to imply otherwise!’
A variety of curses aimed at the squabbling pair began floating throughout the darkened house as the rest of Fourth Platoon officially found themselves awoken at the ungodly hour.
‘Out!’ Alces and Rusa shoved the pair roughly out the door at an imploring look from Pica, breaking the proto-argument cleanly with the brutal briskness of the pre-dawn morning outside and a shower of camp trash from their angry peers.
Although they had spent the better part of the last five days helping to construct the tight defensive ring of logs and the massive supply stockpiles now peppering the area, the night was still dark. It confused them, forcing them around road barriers installed progressively over the nights and through a staffed checkpoint at the furthest farmhouse before the gatehouse proper. It was apparent that something had happened while they slept, an energy infused the darkness that reminded the group of the night before a birthday or holiday but without the benefit of knowing what’s to come.
Over their shoulders, a trail of lights followed the wide road that would ultimately lead to the Northern Highroad. It moved slowly in a twinkling line, turning into individual carts and groups of soldiers as it came closer, their flaring torches visible against the thick, debarked logs that ringed the castrum as they filtered in. They stood out in the moonlessness as they crept forward, each a scene of an all-white brahman or two pulling a tan-and-blue painted covered wagon and accompanied by a group of small figures.
‘Dorylus Battalion?’ Pica wondered aloud as they stared.
‘Looks like.’ Rusa answered, ‘Haven’t seen them in a while. Appear efficient as ever.’
Pellia squinted to get a better look at the activity, following the trail of light to where it ended at the gate into the protected area north of the town proper. ‘There must be fifty teams of oxen!’ she exclaimed, clearly pleased at the sheer size of the ghostly assembly.
‘Closer to one hundred and fifty when in full force,’ Alces’ voice proclaimed, oddly proud, from somewhere in the nearby night, ‘each one a specialized and self-sufficient construction team.’
‘They can build anything,’ Rusa added, mirroring the endearing tone of his brother, ‘and at twice the speed of anybody else.’
Pellia looked about questioningly, Sily scoffed at her siblings.
‘Stow it fanboys, you knew from the start that I was never going to attempt recruitment into Dorylus. Stop trying to guilt me about it seven years later.’
‘So… they’re builders?’ Pellia was clearly intrigued, still finding herself confused by the workings of the Protectorate and the Unitarians.
‘Not builders, engineers!’
She couldn’t tell which had said that.
‘And probably some of the finest heavy infantry the Grove has ever seen.’
Simen snorted into his scarf, disgusted at the sentiment.
Sily laughed, the first true one of the last few days. ‘I’m sure Carissa will be happy to see you too, Simen.’ She shoved the man from behind in a way that could almost be considered playful before turning to Pellia. ‘Look, you can start to see the grid.’
Indeed, as they watched, the carts and their men were spreading out across the formative castrum, organizing themselves in rows in the field that the Badgers had spent the last days fortifying behind a thick line of vertical timbers. They would break into segments, each cart responsible for a unique purpose within the greater device they constituted. Some would begin to build the blocks of tents required to house and supply a force that could exceed a thousand members, throwing them up in a careful layout they perfected beyond textbook.
Teams equipped with large, ox-drawn entrenchment machines were hugging the curtain wall and positioning to begin reinforcing the modest berm currently holding the logs in place. Others still, trundled steadily up the slight hill toward them, heading toward the farmhouse and bringing the hoard of supplies and equipment such a substantial number of soldiers would require over the coming season.
They were, by design, a defensive unit. Primarily interested in field fortifications and affairs of siege, Dorylus often served the additional honor of being the very souls defending those positions until relieved for use elsewhere on the line. As such, they were well-trained and notoriously dangerous, using long pikes, tower shields, and modified heavy crossbows to create an unassailable line of steel anywhere needed while their comrades retreated to the rear to regroup or triage.
The battalion's might-in-motion was on full display for the small squad as they passed under the limp, desaturated Mellivora flag into Cerasus. Before them, forming in densely packed platoons across the market square, the vanguard of the unit was falling in as they ended their long march and awaited further direction. They made an impressive sight, even wearing only the lighter leathers they preferred and in contrast to the oft heavily-armored members of the other Unitarian branches. They had kept their tight composure and despite the hour and the distance they must have traveled, the sky-and-beige corp. presented well for the slate-and-rose rangers that passed before them.
Pellia stopped in shock as they passed the engineer-soldiers and found themselves facing a wall of violet-and-pearl armored giants arrayed in rows before the HQ building. She took in the oddly familiar faces arrayed along their path, a strange feeling of both confusion and kinship rising in her breast; unlike those she had come to see as ‘normal’ for the Grovelands, these soldiers did not have the same complexion or features as her peers in Mellivora, instead having a generally finer browline and thinner jaw than the broad-faced southerners. And where Pica and Simen had the typical rough brown hair, and the siblings a similarly Populan golden color, these soldiers almost all had the shining blue-black hair that the northerner herself had come to see as out-of-place in her company of late. None looked at her as she all but gawked.
‘Who are they?’
‘Hystrix.’ Simen nonanswered. ‘Northerners.’
‘Northerners…’ the words floated from the shocked woman. ‘There are northerners here?’
Simen looked to Sily, clearly confused by the foreignness of the concept to Pellia. ‘Of course there are, look at them.’ He shrugged.
‘But how have I not heard of them? All this time and I wasn’t the only…’ she faded off but lifted a generous lock of her hair for emphasis. Sily laughed.
‘We have mentioned Hystrix a million times, some of my best stories are ones where the pale demons had to save my ass!’
‘But-’ Pellia was becoming frustrated at their inability to understand what she was trying to say. ‘They look like me.’ She tried flatly. ‘They might know where I come from.’
‘Oh!’ Simen looked surprised, ‘they aren’t that sort of Northerner. More importanty, when did they get here?’
‘Wha-’
‘Halt!’ Two hulking guards stepped out of the darkness, drawing any attention from the silent Hystrix as the squad mates approached the door to Cerasus’ new command center. Despite the hour, the specialized rose-and-slate design reserved for the closest guards and senior officers of Captain Haidarum gleamed clear in the torchlight. ‘Fourth.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Uh… Fourth-fourth reporting.’ Sily confirmed. ‘We were summoned—’
The heavy door swung open and Sergeant Tacca’s head appeared from the dimness within. ‘Ah! Perfect, come in. Now.’ She exchanged a look with the guard nearest her before disappearing into the dark interior once more.
Haidarum’s Shields parted silently before returning to tight ranks across the entrance in front of Pellia as she attempted to squeeze by. She yelped and leapt back in surprise and dismay.
‘Return to the farmhouse, Pell,’ Tacca’s hoarse voice floated from the darkness, ‘we’ll meet you soon.’
Pellia hesitated before taking a sharp step back and setting her eyes on the guardsmen all-but towering over her slight form. She almost gave a look of concern and her brow furrowed in frustration at the surprise separation before her face hardened in the affected disinterest of the men staring intently over her head. Without a word, she supplied an unconventional salute and disappeared the way they had come, angered at the spurning and looking at the disinterested rows of Hystrix suspiciously as she passed them by once more.
The room that greeted Pica, Simen, and the triplets was large but well-tightened by an imposition of crates and stacked furniture which had been evacuated from elsewhere in the structure. Based on the prevalence of small round tables and matching chairs, Pica surmised that it must have been a tavern prior to the acquisition by Mellivora. It was clearly either a new structure or under some very robust renovation based on the smell of fresh pine and the pale whiteness of the beams in the room. He wondered whether the owner of the establishment had been here at the time of the raid or if they had been one of the many that fled in the days before the fight even arrived, suspecting or knowing by any number of ways of the coming confrontation between the Badgers and their insurrectionist prey.
Lieutenant Strozzi appeared in the corner as the sleepless soldiers’ eyes acclimated to the variegated light in the room. He greeted them with a curt nod, indicating they should assemble before the door he already attended with a pointed glance at the ground before him. They complied without a word while Sergeant Tacca placed herself to the right of the doorway. Pica could not avoid noticing a grimace painting her pale face, the way her eyes locked on the striations of the fresh-planed pillars just over her young soldiers’ heads.
The squad huddled together and shifted uneasily under the gaze of their wordless officers, some looking about subtly while others wiped the last remnants of lost sleep from reddened eyes. Groaning and shuffling could be heard to the left of the group, Doc Pan’s brusque voice floating through an open door from a hallway to their left. He was arguing with someone in the adjoining room, and as Pica leaned to see in, he was frustrated by its abrupt slamming closed.
Sily looked about the dim chamber, letting out an exasperated sigh and looking at the officers questioningly as thoughts rapidly began taking form on her tongue. The words fell silent in her throat as she caught Tacca’s eyes glaring into her; the sergeant shook her head slowly once in warning. Strozzi supplied no explanation at all, instead smiling faintly and standing at ease before them. They were waiting for something, that was for certain. But what it was remained a mystery as silence protracted into indeterminacy in the muffling space.
The sound of scuffing boots behind Strozzi and Tacca drew all eyes to Doc Pan as he opened the doorway at the officers’ backs. He shuffled in, pushing past them, brow furrowed and eyes gone dim, not sparing more than a surgeonly glance at the troopers before moving across to the hallway from whence Pica had heard his voice before. His curmudgeon’s spark tamped down to suffocation as he crossed the room in silence, the sight of him stopped any formative questions as the weight of their summoning was suddenly all too tangible for the young soldiers.
He motioned to the squad, a flick of long fingers and a hovering gaze that met Lieutenant Strozzi’s stone-grey eyes with deadly seriousness, indicating their wait had come to an end. The lieutenant marched forward without delay, taking everything or nothing at all from the look and darkening the doorway with his broad frame before disappearing behind the solemnized doctor. The rest followed at a trot, Tacca taking a moment to look over each of her charges in turn before following them at the rear and closing the door firmly behind.
The hallway was warm and inviting in the way inns usually are - a strange sensation in the ramping tension - and the craftsmanship on display as they traveled deeper into the structure suggested great expense had been allocated to the project. A grand mix of light and dark lumber decorated door frames and moldings throughout the passage, the richness of walnut serving to highlight stained beech which had been carved into intricate geometries before being embedded within the almost black base-wood. Pica marveled at the work and wondered at the process which was required to make such small and delicate shapes, let alone embed them within hard black walnut. He would ask the twins later he resolved as he looked at the two large men ahead of him, they were clearly taking it in just as eagerly as he and were likely to have a better idea of the craftwork behind the decoration.
A great many of the small rooms they passed were of equal quality, each possessing identical golden-red wood floors and trimmings, crisp, white-plaster walls, as well as a small hearth and space enough to fit the needs of most well-to-do travelers. All, however, were identically empty of both life and furnishings, having been allocated for storage of some sort; perhaps, Pica considered, not even having been furnished at all when Mellivora arrived in the first light of day. Some of the doors were closed and many were bolted tight, and he noted the heavy locks and the signature triangular nails of Dorylus which had been used to affix them. What were they storing that could demand such security in an already well-defended officers’ quarters?
Then they stopped, Doc Pan disappearing through a door Pica couldn’t see from his position in the rear of the procession and returning a moment later to admit first Lieutenant Strozzi, then the members of Fourth Squad.
The room was shocking in its opulent snugness; the warmth of the over-decorated interior startling against the lavish austerity of the rest of the building they had seen thus far. A gasp almost escaped Pica as his vision acclimated, his eyes drawn from the dancing light of a large, central brazier and into the dark shadows it cast in every possible corner of the space.
The ceiling in this room was higher than any they had seen yet and the true dimensions of the space were concealed behind thick, ruby-dyed rugs hanging between thick wooden columns studded down the length of the room. They hung motionless as if solid, their tasseled bottoms weighted with lead hoops between each dangling bunch of fine thread and suppressing any noises which might seek to enter, or leave, the divine space. It created an otherworldly feeling of isolation that was immediate and oppressive as the door closed softly behind them once again.
The popping of the brazier drew Pica’s eyes to the flames and he started as he suddenly beheld the two figures sitting companionably there. They commanded attention in the dimness that dominated elsewhere, and it shocked him that he hadn’t seen them immediately.
He looked uneasily at his comrades and was ill-relieved by the consternation and confusion he marked on more than a few of them.
Strozzi walked away from his troopers and approached the seated two without a word, stopping with such characteristic sharpness that even the muffling, woolen carpet was unable to mute the click of his heels, he bent down to allow one to whisper in his ear. He straightened and turned to look upon the young soldiers arranged behind their sergeant. He stared for a moment, a deep frown pulling his face downward, and with a quick gesture summoned Tacca to his side.
Her face mirrored his own as she approached, her steps sounding reticent as she moved smoothly across the room. After a brief word breathed, she returned to the shifting soldiers and guided them to a place alongside a far wall that was mostly cast in the darkness of a nearby privacy screen. Peeking from behind the paper division, a stout legged table sat accompanied by six appropriately modest chairs.
‘You all sit here.’ She walked away and reappeared a moment later with a bottle and six small cups retrieved from a hidden cabinet nearby. She poured them, conveying her command that they drink in the way she locked eyes with each recipient.
‘Not a word,’ she reminded softly, ‘and not a sound.’
Their sergeant awaited slow nods of assent before leaving the bottle and sidling away, softly placing herself across the fire from the two seated figures and one step behind Lieutenant Strozzi’s left shoulder with the precision of experience.
The young Badgers exchanged quick glances and did as bade, each grasping their glasses and tossing the contents back in one smooth gulp. Numbness followed closely behind the drink as it snaked a burning path to their stomachs, settling there as a burning pit while ice raced simultaneously in needlelike tendrils to the tips of their fingers and toes. Their tongues felt swollen and their throats froze under the touch of the tonic, instantly rendering their ability to speak all but nonexistent while the stuff worked a tranquilizing magic.
Silence descended in a completeness that verged on unnatural, the only sounds being the sizzles, hisses, and pops of sap escaping hidden capillaries within the firewood; even those small sounds were greedily muted by the hungry weave of the thick rugs strewn across the floors and draped over walls.
‘Now, tell it again.’
Pica strained as a soft voice tenuously floated to their hidden vantage, leaning forward unconsciously as he tried to catch the words before they too were disappeared in the thick cloth muffling the entirety of the room.
‘I said,’ the voice was insistent, prodding and nagging the ears of all in attendance, ‘Tell. It. Again.’
It sounded familiar to Pica as he cocked his head responsively, soft and calm yet sharp and commanding. The accent was uncommon and instantly recognizable as coming from the clifftop neighborhoods of Avium's Highhill. He stared at the two figures, trying to figure which was speaking and which was supposed to do so.
Tacca and Strozzi stood frozen, faces almost lifeless as the low flames cast dramatically upon their features.
‘I…’ a feminine voice coming from the second figure began, ‘I… no.’
The voice was weak, even sickly, Pica thought. An elder from Cerasus? An officer or attendant of some sort? His confusion deepened as he attempted to attach voices to faces turned away and forms disfigured in shifting firelight. He attempted a glance at his companions around him, only his eyes seeming capable of movement but hoping to catch the querulous raised eyebrow of Simen or a concerned scowl from Sily. Neither were found as all stared intensely at the scene before them.
A soft sigh floated toward them from the first voice.
‘Strozzi.’ The voice was sharp and unmistakable then: Captain Haidarum.
Sily and Pica’s minds spiraled as the gruesome dead reared their bloated heads once more in their imaginations. Was that why they had been summoned at such an hour? To explain what they had seen or pay for the act of doing so?
The Lieutenant leapt to attention, needing no instruction as he moved swiftly around the fire to kneel beside the sturdy brazier. With a deftness suggesting much practice, he removed the thick scarf from his neck and wrapped it around his right hand before reaching into the embers without hesitation. He pulled a small steaming kettle from where it had been resting on a flat stone within the glowing, shimmering pool, bowing slightly to Haidarum before presenting it to the officer.
Despite the obvious steaming heat of the liquid, it was thick and looked to freeze in space as it fell smoothly into a mug held forward by the captain. It sheened a ruby hue in the light of the fire, sending forth a cascade of peppery spice, rainforest cinnamon, and the deep sweetness of fermented red honey as it met the warm air. It flowed across the room and even from the removed vantage of the table the smell was tantalizing, Simen leaning forward involuntarily, desiring the promised bliss sure to accompany something so clearly divine.
Haidarum breathed deep of the aroma as he lifted the cup to his nose appreciatively, holding the vessel gingerly in both hands and releasing a satisfied hum as the vapors surrounded him. For a moment he appeared poised to drink himself before he turned and offered it to the person to his right. Under the glinting black eyes of the bearish Strozzi, a shaking hand reached tentatively to accept the cup, the figure leaning into the light just enough to outline the silhouette of her face.
She stared into it silently before returning her eyes to the face of her interrogator. He stared into her, matching her gaze sharply until slowly she leaned forward and inhaled deeply of the aroma herself. Her body relaxed as the vapors greedily enshrouded her face in sticky mist, closing her eyes and holding the cup close as she leaned back into her chair.
Haidarum, satisfied that control was restored, tapped the arm of his chair twice in rapid succession with his middle ring, dismissing Strozzi back to his watchful position across the fire. The lieutenant did so without hesitation, placing the kettle onto the wide edge of the brazier rather than in the embers and turning it so the handle would remain both cool and accessible to the captain if so required. He returned to silently stand beside and before the rigid Sergeant Tacca without sparing a single glance to his soldiers seated in the scene’s periphery.
The woman, now unguided by Haidarum’s hand, lifted the cup to her mouth. She stopped briefly as it reached her lips, giving a final futile thought to resisting the tonic and the persistent efforts of the captain, yet finding herself drawn by the fragrance. She took a small, hesitant sip.
The change in her demeanor was horrifically instant, the tentative sip turning into a wholehearted swallow and then a noisy slurping as she drained the last dregs of scalding liquid from the upturned vessel in seconds. Any meager resistance was relegated to a distant past and a strange new present emerged as she moved from unwilling hostage to eager participant in the captain’s manipulations. A soft sigh turned to a warmhearted hum; she cradled the mug lovingly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Haidarum began again, his voice akin to molasses, ‘I didn’t catch that last bit.’
The woman turned as her reverie settled about. ‘I… what?’
‘We were speaking of the plan, my love, the upcoming Onari assault on the fortress at the Squeeze?’
‘The Squeeze? We don’t plan to attack there, husband.’ She replied easily and with a chuckle, picking up a conversation lost at some unknown point before the arrival of Fourth Squad.
‘No, we head south to meet our allies’ forces near Serrula. We sail to Pyrus from there, not east.’ She looked into her empty cup and offered it to the man beside her for refilling, he obliged her graciously.
An already petrified Pica managed to sink deeper into his seat as the words snuck past the racing of adrenaline and struck him forcibly. Husband? He willed a slow breath past the lump surging in his throat and risked a glance at the officers standing statuesque across the flames from the bizarre charade.
‘The Onari ambassadors should meet us here in the next few days,’ the woman explained to Haidarum’s silence, ‘we will leave afterwards.’
She sounded boastful as she ran through the plan in her mind, laying it out cleanly for the quiet man to her left without a second’s hesitation. The firelight illuminated her face clearly for Fourth Squad as she cast about casually, looking around herself with the unconcern of one looking for friends in a crowded pub. Pica froze as her eyes landed briefly on the table of shadowed figures over her right shoulder, locking on the young man with the bandaged skull.
Fear and revulsion flooded the young soldier. Before them and engaged in a casual chat with their primary officer sat the woman from the blacksmith’s shop, the very one slain in the streets just a few days prior, only now she was bathed, bandaged, and very clearly alive. Doc Pan’s handiwork was well apparent in the regimented uniformity of the taut cotton wrapping her chest and clavicle, a meticulously layered snow-white canvas slowly giving way to black blood seeping through in concentrated blotches.
She was pale, alarmingly so; the blue veins in her face spiderwebbing, the exposed sections of her neck and shoulder gleening waxy and drawn against the red flush suffusing her cheeks and swollen eyes. There was a madness there, a glinting blackness against the fat red webs tainting her yellowed whites. How was she alive?
Pica relived the moment of her supposed death again, the great explosion as the cart became flying shrapnel, wood piercing the soft meat between throat and clavicle just as her hammer connected viciously with his head and he was thrown into darkness. So much of that day was still unrecognizable and didn’t stitch together quite right under his questing. But he recalled her as well as he remembered the headache that had followed him since they had met, the same which was still humming just behind his eyes.
The little slip of paper and its unreadable script rolled across his mind, the filigree of gold and the intricately painted flower flaring as he recalled it in the high sunlight. He inhaled sharply as he imagined it burning him through his pocket and caught a questioning glance from Sily. His eyes turned downward while the blood fled from his face.
The woman at the fire looked curiously at the table of dark strangers in deeper shadow but turned away without any sort of recognition as she found herself drawn back to her part in the strange scene by Haidarum’s hand landing softly upon her own.
‘My love!’ she exclaimed as their eyes met once more, her racing mind seeming to skip backwards in a horrific jolt, ‘you’ve returned from the docks so soon! And the boys will be so happy to see you.’ Her broad smile could be felt in her words, an earnestness emanating from her as she spoke. ‘Have you seen them since you’ve been home? Where have they got to? They should have surely been home themselves by now.’ She sighed, ‘blessings that you have returned from Avium, I hope you’ve brought good news from the city.’
‘Aye, our contacts there are making ready.’ Haidarum mimicked the flow of her accent perfectly, leaning forward intimately as he guided a mind Pica worried was being dissolved before his eyes. The Captain had clearly extracted much from his subject already, perhaps repeating this same cycle for hours before calling Fourth Squad to act as his penultimate audience. How long had they been in the sweltering, smothering of the insulated room before they had arrived?
The woman hummed to herself quietly, considering something. ‘The scouts have returned from the North Road. They say that Company Mellivora is moving slower than expected and are weakened by a missing platoon, that they will arrive here within a week if they turn south at Primula.’
‘Why are they weakened?’ Haidarum asked the question innocently, knowing the end to her scheme had come to pass in tragedy for the rebels and their mountain allies.
‘According to them, Mellivora were attacked by some force further east in Populus. They peeled off a unit to pursue them back to the border.’
‘Fortuitous for us’ Haidarum breathed, ‘much has changed for the better in my absence.’
She smiled as she beheld her beloved, raising his hand to her lips and kissing his palm tenderly.
‘This is true, dear Addax. We have missed you so, myself and the boys-’ She faltered for a moment, something slithering across her memory as she tried to envision her family through her stupor. Haidarum grabbed her chin and held her face to his as she again started to glance around. His eyes bored into hers, he spoke calmly and forcefully.
‘They’re fine.’
They weren’t. Pica was near certain of that. More likely, they had been intercepted by some other unit during that first raid and had ended up captured or killed.
Even if her sons had escaped, they had lost their home and their mother, likely exiled to the forests or lurking in damp cellars to avoid the soldiers trickling into Cerasus by the minute. He doubted they were fine by any stretch of imagination.
Though the woman shifted uncomfortably, she nodded slowly and relaxed once more. She looked at her cup and was dismayed to find it empty. The Captain remedied that and her interrogation continued, the words beginning to become heavier in content and slower in delivery.
‘Did you get word of why they were heading westward?’ Haidarum opened.
‘Word came in this morning from our man in Primula. The Protector’s armies are so heavily occupied with raiders and insurrectionists in the northern provinces that those bastards have been called up there to help. Another of Haidarum’s platoons split off at speed and was seen dashing north through the Primula crossroads without even stopping to change mounts at the station there.’ She snorted. ‘A shame we weren’t able to ambush them here as planned, we lost several days requesting Onari support under the assumption the armies would stop here if requested back to Avium.'
‘Hmmm… but more good news nonetheless, darling. I think we should all be grateful for any opportunity to avoid bloodshed.’ The Captain moved fluidly from each emotion to the next, melting between every expression with precision and perfectly tempering every response to further his ends in the bizarre interview. Had Pica not known better, he may have truly bought that they were long married; that the officer holding the woman’s hand was indeed deeply in love with her and only looking out for her best interest.
‘As I told you, Addax, General Catoprion himself crossed north through the old passes of the Aurums with no less than sixty-five Lancers, he and his forces arrived this morning and are already returning to our original plans to the south.’ She seemed to be becoming annoyed.
Pica repeated her words to himself silently. An Onarian general? He had never heard of such a thing and the idea of something so insignificant as a rebellion having officers of such experience and esteem seemed ludicrous to the young soldier’s mind. Surely not. But what else? He pushed past the oppressive mental numbness and acquiescence of the bottle of syrupy liquor on the table. Why would she say it if it weren’t true? True enough to believe in this condition at least.
Haidarum had leaned forward sharply at the mention of the name, finally catching sight of his true quarry and seizing it in his claws as his eyes blackened. ‘General Catoprion was here?’ His voice was quiet, verging on unheard, and of his natural timbre once more. The woman froze, her brain frantically trying to regain control of itself as it recognized an error of dire proportion. She shook gently as she turned her eyes down into the crackling embers, endeavoring to make sense of anything about her.
‘Who? What… is this?’ Her voice was changed, now weak and raspy as if she suffered the swollen lung disease that haunted places of poor hygiene and absent opportunity.
The Captain had pushed too hard. He recognized it immediately, his face melting into its usual expressionlessness and grey eyes once again turning cold and hard. ‘Witch.’ His voice cut bladelike across the room, dispersing any magical nicety as a draft stealing smoke; the woman jumped as if stabbed and looked at him in horror, his terrifying visage floating mere inches away from her. She recoiled, a scream attempting to erupt from her swollen lips.
‘Y…you…’ she stuttered, ‘it’s you. How…’
The officer’s face remained motionless as he looked upon the quavering woman forcing herself as far away and into the corner of the chair as she could; her eyes stayed locked on him, uncomprehending. He said nothing.
‘Haidarum,’ she squeaked, ‘it can’t be... where’s…?’ She faltered.
He smiled as they arrived at the part he most enjoyed about his special interrogations. ‘Even, as you thought yourself clever,’ he said with a savoring slowness, ‘you were never even a single step ahead. Once you crossed through the Hematis and into Fraxinus, I had you beat.’
The woman froze as a mouse under the eyes of a barn cat.
‘Anticlea.’ The name dripped with malevolence as he uttered it aloud for the first time and as if a scalpel through fat, it burst whatever remnants of the drugs may have still been clouding the woman’s mind and inhibiting her movement.
As if Haidarum had cast scalding oil upon her, the rebel leader wrenched her hand from his loose grip, screamed bansheelike and attempting to propel herself away from the monster beside her. She howled again hideously as she tried to use her right hand to lift herself away and out of the deep-seated chair only to find that the extremity was no longer there, her wrist bone, exposed to open air and surrounded by hastily cauterized tissue, smashing into the chair arm with a sickening crack that sent her crashing to the floor. She cradled her arm and sobbed unintelligibly as blood flowed freely from the mangled limb, the bandage over her shoulder unleashing its own burst of bright crimson as whatever stitching was holding her together there burst as well, readily saturating the wrapping and the carpet beneath her.
Nobody moved, or breathed, or blinked, all eyes drawn to the abhorrent finale of the twilight spectacle and awaiting the judgement of its primary director. He watched her in silence, eyes shining as she hemorrhaged at his feet, appearing to revel in the demise of his catch and the damage he had done in his chase. Nobody dared look away; even the vomit attempting to surge through Pica seemed to notice, freezing somewhere in his trachea to avoid snapping the tension saturating the room. He was going to let her die on the floor. And he was going to make them watch.
A snap of leather and thick vellum leapt from the darkness and broke the entrancing scene into something resembling brutal reality; three figures appeared from the deep shadows at the far back of the structure. They were all tall and skinny, seeming to float more than walk beneath the thick fabric that cloaked their forms. Two wore the grey, silver-speckled masks of the Auditors, their lampblack linen robes clinging tightly to gaunt forms. They flashed forward and seized the pseudo-conscious woman by her shoulders, lifting her up as if weightless and whisking her back into the shadows from whence they had arrived.
Simen coughed as he looked at the third figure still partially obscured by deeper shadow; the green eyes of Scribe peered at the troopers gathered at the table, a small smile playing across his face and his book held tightly to his side.
A mist had crept down from the foothills and settled thickly onto the valley floor in the time the troopers had spent in the bizarre, horrific company of Captain Haidarum; it imposed a sense of calm on the area, the sounds of nearby construction were muted and seemed further away than they truly were, the slumbering shape of Cerasus ghostly where it poked through the dense vapors across the market and to their south.
Simen sighed a long-pent breath as the fog fully enveloped them on their way back to their bunks, releasing the collective tension in the group as their pace slowed and they clustered instinctively closer together. Whatever they had just experienced in the dark, sweltering room of their commanding officer, it was something strange enough to defy even his ability to produce a sharp quip.
The ponderous silence that surrounded them showed that all were similarly affected. There would be no returning to sleep, even if they could have, the night seeming to have fled and the clock leaping forward while they had been in that strange world.
‘We captured Anticlea?’ Sily’s voice was almost imperceptible, ‘the Anticlea? How is that possible?’
Pica swallowed, briefly considering his own role in the seizing of the woman and suddenly revisiting the scene they were rapidly leaving behind.
‘If that is true,’ Simen spoke slowly, piecing it together past the inebriating effects of the experience, ‘then the rebellion is over. We won.’
‘Captain Haidarum won,’ Sily corrected smoothly, ‘and hardly the end of the rebellion.’
‘What do you mean?’
She glared at him like he was being purposefully stupid. ‘Did you smoke yourself beyond return, Simen? Just because we have their leader, the body of the thing remains in action.’
‘Heading south according to the lady,’ Rusa looked to his brother, ‘think we’ll have to follow?’ Alces simply shrugged, seemingly uninterested in both the conversation and the officership’s plots.
‘I expect we will do as required by the charter and head to Keeptown. Our campaign contract is over and if we want to eat, we have to go back to pick up our work from leadership.’ Sily’s words alleviated her brother who smiled as he imagined the room awaiting them a week’s ride to the west.
Sily was similar to Scribe in that way, and it likely explained some of her infatuation with the odd man. She was of the type fascinated by a multitude of small, temporary hobbies and distractions; prone to learning a great deal about something before swiftly moving to something of no less, but differing, interest. Among those fixations, she nurtured a softness for reading that had crossed paths serendipitously with the Unitary Army Charter one lazy summer guarding the swamps of borderland Populus and Aila. In that time, she had dismantled the small booklet, gaining Strozzi’s attention, and receiving a stack of union by-laws and Company records stretching back centuries. She had moved on soon after, but not before she had attained a frighteningly proficient grasp on the legal foundations of Mellivora and their Unitarian peers.
‘Probably works in the Captain’s favor,’ the Populan woman continued, ‘that woman said that they were planning to skirt the coast to Pyrus, and it sounded like they planned to head to Avium from there. Even if he could skip recommission in Avium, I expect the Captain will find getting to the Capitol first more to his advantage than trying to catch General What’s-his-name before he sails from Serrula.’
Nobody said anything, as always unable to find a flaw in the thinking of their friend, and unwilling to stoke her quick temper even if they had. They shuffled quietly and dwelt on too much at once, hoping the bedroll they had left a few hours before had managed to hold a little heat for their return.
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