Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 4

“Stop! Do it again. Keep both hands on your weapon!”

“But I can’t reach her, Captain.”

“You can,” Ludmila said. “You have over two metres of reach even with both hands on your weapon. That is more than enough to land a solid hit.”

“Mmh…”

On the training grounds of the Royal Army base in Warden’s Vale, Ludmila walked up and down her row of Ranger recruits as they sparred with their quarterstaves. She stopped to observe the boy she had just addressed. He was paired with a juvenile orc who stood just over two metres in height, but lacked the bulk of an adult.

The boy, Cornelio, made an aggressive set of attacks. At the end of his offensive, however, he still couldn’t get past his opponent’s weapon.

“Aeela’s too tall,” Cornelio panted. “Her arms are longer than mine. If you let me lunge, I could score a point.”

“Then go ahead and try,” Ludmila said.

Cornelio and Aeela once again assumed their stances. Their weapons clacked against one another as Cornelio probed for an opening. After several light exchanges, he suddenly released his left hand on his weapon and threw himself into a picturesque-looking lunge. At its full extension, it would have allowed him to strike at a target around four metres away, but Aeela merely swatted the weapon aside and brought her own down on her opponent’s shoulder.

Cornelio went down in a heap, groaning in pain.

“Glasir,” Ludmila called.

“Coming~”

Glasir’s sweet voice drifted in from the other end of the row of trainees. She knelt beside the fallen boy and examined him for a moment.

“Your collarbone is broken,” the Dryad said.

“Ya think?” Cornelio said through his gritted teeth.

“You Humans are so fragile,” Glasir gave the boy a poke.

“How would you feel if your bones got broken?”

“I’m a Dryad. I don’t have any bones.”

The familiar glow of healing magic washed over Cornelio. He pushed himself back up to his feet, looking more annoyed than anything else. Overall, injuries of that severity happened a few dozen times a day, mostly because the new trainees hadn’t figured out how to hold back yet.

“When you lunge,” Ludmila said, “you sacrifice control and leverage for reach. It might seem like a good idea, but it usually never is. Your opponent will easily take control of your weapon and then they are free to do whatever they want with you.”

“Then I can’t beat her,” Cornelio grumbled. “She’s taller, stronger, and heavier. We can’t do anything about that.”

“Aeela may be everything that you say she is,” Ludmila told the boy, “but she is still subject to the same rules as everyone else. Understanding how your weapon works is the first step to defeating your opponents.”

Cornelio frowned down at his quarterstaff before picking it up off of the ground.

“Most people believe that the advantage of a polearm is in its reach and power,” Ludmila cast her voice over the row of trainees. “But that does not fully explain how the weapon works. A polearm’s versatility and leverage are what makes it the king of the battlefield.”

“Do we need this training at all, Captain?” Another student asked, “We have bows.”

“Rangers are skirmishers,” Ludmila replied. “You must be proficient in both ranged and melee combat. Taking down an opponent at range may seem ideal, but you will not always find yourselves in ideal circumstances for ranged combat. In more than a few cases, engaging in melee combat may even be preferable.”

“Then how do I beat her?” Cornelio asked.

“Aeela,” Ludmila said. “Assume your defensive stance again.”

The Orc nodded, gripping the lower third of her staff and threatening her opponent with the opposite end. Ludmila called for the other students to observe.

“I believe everyone here should be familiar with levers from helping their families around the house,” she said. “Levers also form out of body parts and weapons. Your arms, legs, feet, and even fingers function as levers. Aeela’s quarterstaff is also a lever. When considered as such, where would one pull on the lever to exert the most force?”

“The end of it,” a student down the line said.

“Cornelio,” Ludmila said, “give the lever a pull. Aeela, do your best to hold the staff still.”

Cornelio came forward, leaning his staff against his shoulder so he could grip the end of the Orc’s weapon. He gave it a yank. It seemingly moved without resistance. Aeela furrowed her brow, grunting in effort as she tried to regain control of her weapon. Cornelio’s eyes widened as he released one hand and discovered that he was still able to overpower the Orc.

“Now,” Ludmila said, “try it with your weapon.”

By then, several other pairs of students were already experimenting with their own staves. Cornelio tested several grips before figuring out how much leverage he needed to control the end of Aeela’s weapon with his.

“Captain,” Aeela asked, “if I apply the same knowledge, won’t we go back to the original problem?”

“No,” Ludmila answered. “Your raw physical strength will give you an inherent advantage, but, now that everyone is exploring the principles that drive their weapons, they will always be aware that options exist to counter or at least mitigate your advantage. In your case, initiating a grapple is the best action against a much weaker opponent in single combat…unless they’re a Monk or something similar.”

“I see,” the Orc nodded. “That makes sense. I can just trample them while they puzzle out how to deal with my weapon.”

“For now,” Ludmila said. “As everyone gets stronger, the relative gap in power between you will shrink and you’ll have many techniques and Martial Arts at your disposal. The key to learning those, however, is a strong martial foundation and the mental and physical discipline to go along with it.”

The average Orc had double the physical strength of the average Human, making them similar to the Beastmen that had invaded the Holy Kingdom. She supposed that they were Beastmen, after all. Aeela’s growth relative to her fellow Rangers was a topic of keen interest to Ludmila. Was she better off growing as a Ranger, Orc, or some mix between the two? Could her Racial Class growth even be controlled? Unless Orcs were a sort of natural warrior, it would be a tradeoff between raw physical attributes with a handful of other natural advantages and access to a greater variety of Job Class perks.

Ludmila had the trainee Rangers continue experimenting with their new knowledge until the end of the morning session. Once the class was dismissed, she rode back to the harbour village on a passenger wagon with Glasir.

“How much mana did you use this time?” Ludmila asked.

“About half,” Glasir said. “We’re practising ritual magic this evening, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“What about your work around the village?”

“It’s been pretty quiet since the temple staff moved in. I’ve only been asked to do little things here and there. The rest of the time, I’ve been working on setting up new plots.”

Once they arrived at the village, they disembarked from the carriage and stepped onto a wagon lot that was now decorated by Glasir’s plots of dirt. Patches of grass and small wildflowers added a bit of colour to the grey granite expanse of the harbour’s bedrock, which was not only appreciated by the citizens, but also by the local wildlife.

Ludmila and Glasir stopped to watch several bees forage through a patch of blue clover blossoms. If things continued as they were, a small apiary for the village wouldn’t be out of the question next spring.

“Are you enjoying your work?” Ludmila asked.

“It’s fun,” Glasir replied. “I know people think that I’m just throwing dirt around, but there’s a lot of logic to it. At least everyone seems to like what I’m doing.”

“How long is your list of colonisers now?”

“Outside of the ones that Lord Mare brought out here, eight. Those kids are super picky.”

Most of Glasir’s free time was spent wandering the length and breadth of Ludmila’s territory, looking for plants and invertebrates that were compatible with the ‘Divine Ash Ecology’ they were trying to establish in the harbour. As the Dryad had mentioned, the plants that Lord Mare dropped off to raise alongside Glasir’s tree had a major say in which of the local flora could grow alongside them. Even the soil that they grew in contained elements that made it difficult or outright impossible for many of the local species to survive.

“We will just have to keep looking,” Ludmila said. “Having only a couple of dozen plant species in an environment is too few. Maybe we can have plants or seeds imported from other regions to see how well they fare.”

“Is that safe?” Glasir asked.

“You are the harbour’s custodian,” Ludmila said, “what do you think?”

“Hmm…the harbour will be its own biome so I’m not too worried about that, but stuff that we bring in might escape and spread to the rest of Warden’s Vale. The river might transport alien species to the lands downstream, as well. I don’t think it’s safe to bring in species from other parts of the world until we have enough Druids and Rangers patrolling the area to keep an eye out for them.”

Ludmila smiled and patted Glasir on her leafy head. She was indeed shaping up to be an excellent custodian for the harbour.

“Then it sounds like a plan,” Ludmila said. “Hopefully one that we can enact within a generation. Speaking of invasive species, where do you sit on the Circle’s debate?”

The telltale tread of Glasir’s Death Knight accompanied them as they made their way into the village. Most of the citizens appeared to be enjoying lunch in the warm summer air, seating themselves around the shaded wooden tables set up across the lanes from the storefronts.

“I’m on the ‘natural’ side,” Glasir said. “Intelligent species are still a part of nature, so anything that they do can be considered a part of natural processes. The difference between a bird eating berries and spreading the seeds far from the parent plant and intelligent races purposely planting the seeds for agriculture is that people can purposely pick and choose where everything goes and how much they want of it. Either way, it’s the result of a survival strategy on the part of the berry bush combined with the behaviours of those who interact with them.”

“There are those who would take that rationale as a justification to do anything they want,” Ludmila noted. “Even to the point where they ruin the land and thus any prospects of living off of it for themselves and future generations.”

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“Then the death of those people is also natural,” Glasir replied. “It’s a failure of the systems that they use and the behaviours that stem from them. Failures become fertiliser.”

Ludmila stifled a laugh at the Dryad’s matter-of-fact reasoning.

“While said failures are in the process of failing,” Ludmila said, “They may be adversely affecting the survival of others who are connected to them in one way or another.”

“Then those others should eliminate them,” Glasir shrugged. “It’s only natural. Actually, it doesn’t make sense that anyone would do what you said, though. Only unintelligent animals mindlessly do things until their environment is ruined. Who’s doing this?”

“Rather than any particular person, I would say that societies advance to the point where people no longer understand the effect that their activity has on the world beyond the small piece of it that they are exposed to. At least in my experience, no one ever lights their house on fire and wonders why there is a pile of ashes where their house used to be a day later.”

“I don’t really understand…”

“Good afternoon, m’lady. Dame Glasir.”

They exchanged greetings with a passing group of villagers on their way across the square. From the sound of things, it was shaping up to be another uneventful day. The end of summer was already well on its way, so many of the activities in Warden’s Vale were focused on the coming harvest. A row of new granaries had been built in the warehouse district and an additional berth was having its machinery installed in anticipation of increased freight traffic to Corelyn Harbour.

“I believe by now you understand that many do not live as Dryads do,” Ludmila said. “Even with the simple economy in Warden’s Vale, individuals can only vaguely grasp how the goods and services that enter their lives come to be. To most, there are only needs and how one goes about fulfilling those needs.”

“You mean all the things they sell in the shops?” Glasir asked.

“For simplicity’s sake, yes,” Ludmila answered. “Take food, for instance. In a city, almost all of the provisions that its citizens need to survive are imported from rural regions. The citizens understand that grain comes from ‘farms’, but this merely becomes an abstraction unless they’re directly involved in the supply chain. What matters to most is that they can get food from the market, a bakery, or some other establishment. As the city’s population grows, it demands more and more food. What do you think happens then?”

Glasir looked over at the shops across the square.

“They compete for resources? The weak will starve or get eaten and equilibrium will be established.”

“Unfortunately not,” Ludmila smiled slightly. “You are correct about the competition part, but competition is fundamentally different in urban settings. One does not hunt, forage, fish, or farm: they work. Compensation is provided in exchange for work. Some people receive greater compensation and have an easier time procuring resources. The vast majority will work harder in the hopes that better compensation will help them survive. Eating fellow citizens usually gets one in trouble with the law, but people may resort to stealing resources from others, which I suppose can be interpreted as raiding.”

“Wild animals do the same thing,” Glasir noted.

“You are correct,” Ludmila said, “and that is my point. Many believe that intelligence and technological advancement cause one to rise above their base nature. The truth is that they are still bound by it. Worse yet, populations take on the characteristics of their members’ natures, making it difficult for individuals to control. They gain a collective appetite that places its demands on a region. Innovations that enhance the efficiency of economic and industrial activity give a population both a productiveness and reach that dwarfs the means of any single tribal unit.”

“So populations become like animals themselves?”

“It can be seen like that. With or without governance, populations will seek to expand their capacity to support themselves using the systems and practices available to them. A hungry mouth in Arwintar will fell a forest on the imperial frontier without either side ever realising what is compelling them to behave as they do. In this state, the result is a purposeful, yet mindless civilisation.”

“Is that why government exists?” Glasir asked, “The Humans here could behave like that and they probably do to some degree, but they have a Warden to set boundaries to protect the rest of the territory.”

They arrived at their home, stopping outside to tend to the plants that had come out to greet them. Her ‘manor’ was the largest green patch in the harbour, with every rainfall washing soil further out from Glasir’s compost pile. The Dryad went over to examine a swale that she had fashioned a week previous, where the first set of shrubs was being tested for compatibility with her tree’s ecology. One of them looked like it had been murdered by Lord Mare’s plants.

“Government can serve that purpose,” Ludmila said, “but it is often not the best or most efficient actor in that regard. The best option is to have people observe boundaries out of their own free will. In order to have that happen, however, awareness of issues and an education that allows them to make effective decisions is necessary. Well, I say that, but many decisions are simple.

“For instance, people in a city will change their behaviour if they are informed of events that impact themselves and their communities. Merchants may bring word of a poor harvest or the local government will enact rationing measures to stave off mass starvation. Unfortunately, the reaction of the population is rarely uniform. Small, tightly-knit communities like farming villages or frontier holdings tend to collaborate to ensure the community’s survival, but larger populations that are made up of many communities, families, and individuals in isolation become a mess of competing interests. Survival instincts tend to be strong, so they begin to supersede measures to regulate undesirable behaviour.”

As a Dryad, which was a heteromorphic species that tended to live in isolation, population dynamics was a weak point in Glasir’s worldly understanding. Even after living in Warden’s Vale for nearly a year, Ludmila was fairly certain that her ‘daughter’ framed the world around her in ways that were utterly alien to everyone else. The closest person to Glasir in mentality was probably Ilyshn’ish, who was also a Heteromorph with a mostly solitary nature.

“So, when they reach that point,” Glasir said, “do they start fighting? There are bound to be plenty of weaklings that can be weeded out for the greater good of the population.”

“I am sure some people believe just that,” Ludmila replied. “But the weaklings in this case would only be ‘weak’ when it comes to securing resources in that particular situation. Following that sort of logic will only result in a society where the strong rule over the weak. This is the state of most of the wilderness tribes that we have encountered.”

“What’s wrong with that? You’ve mentioned a few times that forgetting how to fight and becoming weak leads to all sorts of problems.”

“I did,” Ludmila nodded, “but what qualifies as weakness varies from situation to situation. A society that prioritises martial strength and considers creative pursuits a weakness will be doomed to having territorial expansion as the only means by which it can support a growing population. One that neglects martial strength becomes a token conquest for those that have not. Of course, a highly belligerent society can have the effect of forcing its neighbours onto the same path for survival, which can lead to entire regions becoming indefinitely locked into a state of slow to no progress in other fields. This is, in effect, what has happened in the Abelion Wilderness and other places like it.”

“In that case,” Glasir said, “what’s your strategy for Warden’s Vale?”

“Warden’s Vale gets to ‘cheat’.”

The red-gold leaves on Glasir’s head rustled as she looked up from her work with a frown.

“Cheat?”

“As far as I have seen,” Ludmila said, “the regional paradigm is ‘grow or die’. Both tribes and countries must grow or be overwhelmed by aggressive neighbours. This is especially the case when one has powerful Demihumans on their border, as it seems that no technological or economic advantage can adequately make up for the natural advantages that those races enjoy.

“The Sorcerous Kingdom, however, is not chained to that paradigm. Our armed forces are peerless and the economic burden that the military imposes is extraordinarily light. As a result, the vast majority of our resources are dedicated to advancing our civilisation in economic, industrial, and societal fields. Because of the advantage we enjoy, the strides that we take need not be tied to population growth. The effects of this cannot be understated. Perhaps most importantly, it divorces us from stresses that cause primal behaviours to unconsciously manifest, allowing us to create a culture where people can master their nature rather than be slaves to it.”

“Hmm…” Glasir stood up and dusted off her hands, “I guess that makes sense. It’s better than being little more than a pack of animals without ever realising it.”

“I would say so,” Ludmila said. “There are many ‘first steps’ to accomplishing this, which all involve laying down the cultural foundation for such a society. For the harbour, it means creating a place where people from all walks of life can exist alongside one another without the characteristic segregation that occurs between them. A cultural consciousness that is well-informed of how the world around them works is instrumental in having people police their own behaviours.”

After checking on a few more things outside of the manor, Ludmila went inside. She walked straight to the office to check with Nonna for any work that had come in.

“Nonna,” she said, “is there anything new that requires my attention?”

“No,” the Elder Lich didn’t look up from her desk. “Elements throughout the territory have been unable to keep up with the recent surge in administrative efficiency.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it?”

Ludmila rolled her eyes and left the office. As always, the administrative Elder Liches assumed that more was better, trying to squeeze as much as they could out of their respective jurisdictions. It was half a wonder that the Imperial Administration didn’t lease them en masse.

Back in the hall, Glasir was sweeping dirt and dead leaves away from the kitchen. The hall itself looked more outdoors than indoors, having grown a thick carpet of grass that Glasir identified as compatible with the other plants. It made for an interesting method to clean the place, as most things could simply be emptied onto the grass. Aemilia had accidentally left her stockings there one night and they vanished by the time she woke up in the morning.

Everything that Glasir adds to the ecosystem is pretty voracious. It may not be a bad thing to have this ecosystem integrated into other urban centres.

Lord Mare may have been planning just that. He presumably placed Divine Ash saplings around the Sorcerous Kingdom for teleportation purposes, but most of the locations were towns. E-Rantel had its Divine Ash planted on the island in the centre of the pond in the Demihuman Quarter.

“I’m going to school now,” Glasir said.

“Have fun,” Ludmila smiled as she checked over the Dryad’s appearance. “Are you going to be out until you come back from the Lizardman village?”

“Mhm. Since it’s ritual practice, things are probably going to run extra late. The last time, they used up all of our mana making Cure Disease scrolls.”

“That seems prudent. You never know when you might need them.”

Glasir waved to her as she went out the door. Ludmila returned to her office, determined to get ahead of her work. When the shrine’s bell – it was a hand-held one – marked the dinner hour, she came out to mingle with her people. She found Olga and Raul seated at a table in the square across from the restaurant with the most current rendition of the village’s crab dinner. They started to rise at her approach, but she motioned for them to be at ease.

“Good evening, Lady Zahradnik.”

“Good evening,” Ludmila replied. “How did today’s practice match go?”

The awkward silence was answer enough. It appeared that Raul had lost again. Ludmila pulled up a chair to sit between her two apprentice Commanders.

“Is he still holding back?” She asked.

“He is,” Olga answered. “He is half as aggressive as before.”

“‘He’ is right here,” Raul said.

“No, he is not,” Ludmila replied, “He is still languishing in loser land somewhere.”

Olga’s mouth fell open at Ludmila’s verbal jab, but Raul only pouted. A larger class of apprentice Commanders couldn’t come sooner: Ludmila suspected that Raul would have recovered far more quickly if there were other boys around to stoke his competitive spirit.

“So,” Ludmila said, “what is the actual problem? I somehow do not think that you believe that you are being too aggressive.”

“I was too aggressive,” Raul replied. “I got too aggressive and it made me stupid. The Elder Lich is still angry at me for losing its Skeletal Dragon.”

“It got angry at you?”

“…not exactly. I apologised and it said that it was ‘fine’, but it was definitely depressed over it.”

“Can the Undead even get depressed?” Olga frowned.

“Of course they can,” Ludmila told her. “Still, it is not a reason for you to lose your aggression. Aggression is an essential facet of every Commander. You must understand how to make it work for you, not avoid it. As for the Skeletal Dragon…”

Ludmila looked around the square, finding a group of Necromancers enjoying their meal nearby. Isabella looked entirely focused on sucking the meat out of a crab leg.

“Isabella.”

The Necromancer froze and looked in her direction.

“Do you know anyone who can create Skeletal Dragons?” Ludmila asked.

“Skeletal Dragons? Yeah. Hold on.”

Ludmila exchanged looks with Olga and Raul. She hadn’t expected the immediate response.

“He’s coming, my lady,” Isabella called out.

“He is?” Ludmila glanced about.

“Yeah, I told him that you wanted someone who could do the thing, so he’s coming over to do the thing.”

What is ‘the thing’?

She could only assume that Isabella didn’t know what was involved in the creation of a Skeletal Dragon. Hopefully, they had what was required in Warden’s Vale.

“That’s…sudden,” Ludmila said. “What was he doing before?”

“He runs a butcher shop somewhere in Karnassus,” Isabella replied. “Easy way to get materials, yeah?”

“I see. How long until he arrives?”

“Well, I told him he could stay with us…that’s alright, right?”

“Yes, of course. My offer extends to everyone. So long as he follows the rules. I can prepare a place for him.”

“In that case, he’ll be dragging all of his crap with him. Give it a couple of months.”

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