Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 2

8th Day, Upper Fire Month, 1 CE

“Hey,” a man’s voice filtered through the leaves, “over here!”

Liam looked in the direction of the voice, craning his neck back and forth as he tried to catch a glimpse of its owner through the brush.

“Hsst! Not so loud! What if the Demis hear you?”

A second voice came from the same direction – a woman’s voice, worn thin from worry.

“The Demis are all killed,” the man replied. “The Undead got them. You’re worrying for nothing, Corinne.”

“Nonononono!” Corinne grew more insistent, “I heard! I heard they raided just last week! People got ate! Why’d you think they stopped clearin’ nearby?”

“J-just shut yer mouth!” The man’s confident tone quickly disintegrated, “The Demis’ll hear ya!”

Liam moved toward the increasingly panicked conversation, pushing the leafy branches to the side as he made his way forward. While his senses had drastically improved over the past few months, he was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be good enough to detect any Demihumans lurking nearby. There was so much cover that he probably wouldn’t notice any hidden hunters unless he tripped over them.

Still, he didn’t harbour the same concerns as the others. They were still on their side of the border, and, even if they did get lost, they were far from crossing over into the buffer zone between the Sorcerous Kingdom and the Holy Kingdom of Roble.

“Ow!”

Liam glanced over his shoulder. A boy a few years younger than him was following close. His hand was rubbing his cheek where a branch had probably struck him.

“Sorry,” Liam said. “Stay back a bit further so the branches don’t whip into your face.”

The boy didn’t listen. Instead, he raised the rock he always carried around in front of his face. Another ‘Ow!’ sounded from behind Liam as a branch rapped the boy’s knuckles.

A few minutes later, they found the still-arguing pair standing over an old corpse barely visible under the vegetation. The girl was standing a metre or so back from the kneeling man, wringing her hands while trying to look in every direction at once. Though the boy was probably loud enough to be heard from hundreds of metres around, the pair started as he and Liam appeared out of the brush.

“Help me out here,” the man said, lowering his dagger before kneeling over the corpse again.

Liam knelt beside the body. It was a Demihuman, but he couldn’t figure out the race. He could tell what killed it, though. Just below its armpit was a deep stab wound filled with maggots. The Demihuman had probably escaped past the wall near the end of the war and succumbed to its injuries.

“Lift that part over there,” the man said.

Liam grimaced as he stuck his fingers under the Demihuman’s breastplate and pulled. The man – a vagrant from the bay area by the name of Paul – bent in to cut the straps of the harness.

“We got another one over here!” A voice from another team said.

“Nice,” Paul grinned. “Keep an eye out for more!”

By the time they left the brush, five corpses had been discovered. They didn’t come for the corpses, of course: they had come for their equipment. Paul stopped their teams at a stream next to a strip of cleared-out land.

“Why’d we stop here?” Paul’s girl, Corinne, said.

“Clean up the equipment,” Paul gestured toward the stream.

“Here? I told you there’s Demihumans here! Why’d you think they stopped working on this clearing? They got raided and people got eaten!”

“Then be quick! But make sure they're clean. Those smiths’ll use any excuse to cheat us.”

“How much will we get?” Someone asked.

“Dunno. Hey, Liam, you’re a Merchant's get. Whaddya think?”

Liam went over to the equipment piled by Corinne, who was desperately scrubbing away while whispering fervent prayers to The Four. He picked up a washed vambrace fashioned out of dark steel.

Barely a silver…maybe two?

Bards, Merchants, and Rogues all had the ability to appraise items. That ability had nuances between Job Classes, but they could all discern the value of things. It wasn't as simple as having a number pop up in one’s head – though that did actually happen. The problem was that the number rarely, if ever, matched what one could get for something. It was just a baseline to work off of. After that, they had to apply things like local market conditions, connections, and negotiation skills.

“Who are we taking these to?” Liam asked.

“The weasel, maybe?” Paul said.

“The weasel gave us shit prices the last time!” Another scavenger said, “We should go to the trout.”

“Trout’s an extra day,” someone else noted. “Is it worth it?”

“The weasel always takes our stuff,” Paul told them. “He’s right near here so we can get back out here right away. We don’t want anyone else cleaning up our turf.”

If it’s the weasel, then…

“This big suit’s probably worth around twenty silver,” Liam said.

The scavengers leaned forward. Corinne looked up at him with a gleam in her eye.

“Really?” She said.

“Well, it is the weasel, so probably less.”

Twenty silver could keep Paul’s scavenger teams going for another week. Assuming that prices didn’t go up again.

“You’re still getting us a better deal than their bullshit flat rate,” Paul reassured him. “Hey, Ink, you get that?”

“Um…”

The boy that had been following Liam through the brush chalked out something on the flat rock he carried around. Liam wasn’t sure where he had come from, but Ink was the only person in the scavenger crew that could write. In Robles script, anyway.

“How much would they be worth at market?” Ink asked.

“As equipment?” Liam furrowed his brow, “Four or five platinum, I guess?”

“What!”

“The forges are robbing us blind!”

“They’re not,” Ink told the angry scavengers. “We’re selling this as scrap. It doesn’t matter how nice it is as a suit of armour.”

“What a waste,” Paul grumbled. “Hey, couldn’t we just sell this stuff to the Merchant ships? Even if we get half of the value, we’d be way ahead.”

“But the Holy King said that we need the scrap,” Corinne said.

Paul instantly turned jealous for some reason.

“You idiot,” Paul said. “With that kind of money, we could buy all the scrap we want!”

“…but we sold the scrap as equipment,” Ink said.

Paul frowned and remained silent for several seconds.

“Sh-shut up!”

“It’s no use,” Ink sighed. “Even if we had money, we don’t have any connections. The Nobles are controlling everything going in and out and the next fleet doesn’t come in until the end of summer anyway.”

“Damn Nobles. Who gave them the right to do that?”

“…the Holy King?”

Liam stayed out of their grumbling, listing his price predictions for each piece as Corinne cleaned them up. The discussion was part of why he had once again been dispatched to the Holy Kingdom of Roble. This time, he was working both for the Royal Army’s Intelligence Division and the Ministry of Transportation, investigating the issues with the Holy Kingdom’s internal logistics.

From the beginning, things seemed clear enough. With so many of the Holy Kingdom’s northern Nobles dead from Jaldabaoth’s invasion, Nobles from the south had been called in to help manage things. As people with power tended to do, they wasted no time using their authority to bring anything that gave them even more power under their control. With the country half in ruins and half starved, no one could spare the resources to address the problem.

Of course, a report like that wasn’t good enough for the Sorcerous Kingdom. They always wanted to know everything about everything and even more than that, if possible.

His current orders were to join the groups of vagrants salvaging for scrap outside the Great Wall. He had no idea how that was supposed to help with his work, but it was an easy enough task. As long as one was useful, one was accepted with no questions asked.

“So, the total comes out to seventy silver,” Ink said.

“Seventy?” Paul frowned, “Wasn’t the first suit of armour twenty?”

“The first one was from a big Demihuman, so his armour was heavier. We’re paid by weight, not by suit.”

“Tsk. Well, it’s still good coin. A few more finds like this and we’re set for the summer.”

Liam wasn’t so sure about that. Money seemed to just melt away in the Holy Kingdom and all people could do was work harder to survive. Since he was last there, prices for everything had almost doubled and even well water came with a price.

Once Paul was satisfied that their spoils were scrubbed clean, the salvage teams made their way back to the Great Wall. Their destination was its northernmost fortress, which had been destroyed at the start of Jaldabaoth’s invasion. They had come out through a hole there, which saved them the long trip from the Kalinsha Gate two days to the south.

Rather than becoming relaxed as they drew closer to safety, a sense of tension rose over the scavengers. The source of that wariness was soon given form by the distant thunder of hooves.

“Hey,” Liam said. “Do you hear that?”

Paul looked around.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Don’t scare me like that!” Corinne hit him.

“No, I hear it too,” another scavenger said.

The scavengers picked up the pace, but it wasn't long before a set of banners appeared on the horizon.

“A branch with a bird,” one of the scavengers said.

“Shit!” Paul stopped and ran into the ditch by the road, “It’s de Silva. Find a place to hide our stuff.”

They were walking in the clearing out in front of the Great Wall, so there weren’t any good options. Someone threw a piece of armour on the grass and tossed his shirt on top of it, hoping to make it look like a pile of refuse. Others ran further afield, dropping their loot into the tall grass. One guy hurled his breastplate toward the bushes in the distance, though it fell far short of its target.

Under the distant banners came an entire column of Riders, led by a young man in full plate mail. The scavengers shifted nervously. They made it a point to learn which Nobles ran things where they were looking for salvage, and de Silva was one of the houses from the south with a bad reputation.

Liam eyed the Riders and their demilances as the column split up to surround them. If they were anything like the thugs that worked for House Fassett, they wouldn’t think twice about poking holes in people for fun.

“I am Lord Reynaldo de Silva,” the man in armour looked down at them from his warhorse. “And you are intruding on my land.”

“We’re not intruding,” Paul didn’t look up. “We’ve got licences.”

The nobleman jerked his head at the Riders nearby. They dismounted and headed straight for Paul, shoving him onto the ground.

“Hey–”

A Rider knelt and grabbed the back of Paul’s head, shoving his face into the dirt.

“You will address me with the proper respect,” the nobleman said.

Some of the other Riders started going through their things. They found the equipment quickly enough and took it all away. One of the scavengers was struck down with a mail-fisted punch when he stepped forward in reaction. Everyone else knew better than to voice any protest or display their displeasure.

“I found some papers on them, my lord.”

One of the Riders came up to the armoured man, holding up a few crumpled sheets of yellowed paper. The Lord reached down and took them, his eyes running over their content briefly before his lips turned up in an unpleasant smile.

“As I expected,” he said. “This licence is forged. Bind everyone here: we’re taking them to the Kalinsha gate.”

The scavengers bolted. A few of them were immediately clubbed to the ground by the mounted men they tried to dash past. Some of the other Riders didn’t move at all, allowing the scavengers to get through. It was only when they made it a few hundred paces that the men wheeled their horses around.

Liam sat on the ground, trying to make himself as small as possible while watching the men ride off with weapons brandished, their sadistic whoops filling the air.

They’re just like the Fassetts.

He had seen tactics like theirs far too many times. They were just small men who exulted in what little power they had over others and employed fear to keep their ‘lessers’ in line.

A booted foot kicked Liam over. One of the riders stripped his things away. Liam pushed himself up in a panic.

“Wait, that’s–”

Wrong move.

The man taking his things away spun around and kicked him across the face. When Liam came to again, his arms were bound behind him and his heels were dragging over a dirt road.

“Please, I’m bleeding!” A tearful voice came from the side.

The speaker was one of the scavengers who had bolted. He had a deep cut on his right arm from elbow to shoulder. A Rider poked the man from behind with his spear.

“You’ll bleed some more if you don’t keep walking,” he said.

Liam squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will away his wooziness. How long had he been out for? He could still see the coast, so they hadn’t gone far. The members of the scavenger teams were being led north up the road in ropes. Those who couldn’t walk were simply tied to horses and dragged along.

He tried to right himself, worried that his boots might be worn down from the rough treatment. The nobleman and several of his men noticed within seconds, bringing their mounts up close to watch him struggle. Their looks of smug superiority made Liam wonder what they would do if he broke free and started killing them.

It wasn’t certain that he could, however. Roble’s citizens were conscripted into the army for several years, so these men would have the benefit of that training in addition to what they gained by working as thugs.

Liam tried several more times to get his feet under him. He did manage it once, but being dragged backwards with his arms tied behind caused him to lose his balance and fall back painfully on the coarse rope. The men mocked him until he gave up and allowed himself to be dragged along again.

“Take his boots off,” one of the men suggested. “He’ll try harder if he doesn’t want to see his heels scraped off on the road.”

“Why do you have to do this?” Liam asked.

“What kinda stupid question is that?” One of the men spat, “We’re the lord’s men, this is the lord’s land, and this is the lord’s order.”

Of course. All they needed was a few more cliché lines and they would be just like the bit villains portrayed in some stupid street performance.

Liam’s mind started to race when one of the riders looked like he was about to dismount. He looked around for a distraction and discovered a disturbing sight to his right.

“What happened to those men?” Liam asked.

“Justice happened,” the nobleman’s proud tone said it all.

“But they’re wearing army uniforms…”

“The army is not above justice,” the Noble said. “And justice is the purview of the Crown through the Holy King’s loyal Nobles. Those men abandoned their posts to cause trouble along the border, and I brought them to justice.”

It didn’t look like they had been executed beforehand. Each soldier was strung up by his wrists and left to die from dehydration and exposure. There was even a man in an officer’s surcoat hanging beside a boy that was about the same age as Liam. After a few moments, he realised that no women were hanging alongside the men, which was strange. The Holy Kingdom conscripted men and women alike.

Liam glanced at the prideful nobleman and his thugs. The Holy Kingdom was in bad shape when he left it that spring, but he hadn’t seen anything like this back then.

“I’ve never seen people hung up like this before,” Liam said. “What did the Paladins say about this?”

At the mention of the Holy Order of Roble, the Riders sent nervous glances up the road. The one that looked like he was about to come down and take Liam’s boots didn’t seem so keen on it anymore.

“Hey,” someone said. “That whiny guy passed out.”

“Is he dead?”

Several seconds passed in silence between the riders.

“Dump him in the bushes,” one suggested.

“What if he’s not dead?” Another asked.

“Then make sure they’re dead,” the first man answered. “Do you want those uptight shitheads talking down on us at the gate?”

The Riders split up. Not only did they cut the wounded man loose and carry him off, but they also dragged away the other scavengers with visible injuries. Ink – who only had a cut on his forehead – started screaming.

“I-I’m not dead!” He cried, “I can walk! I don’t want to die!”

As a reward, a Rider came along and casually swung his mace, caving Ink’s face in. The scene set off a mass panic, filling the air with screams and exultant battle cries as the Riders ran down anyone who attempted to flee.

Liam curled up into a ball, hiding his face as he listened. Didn’t they get it? The Riders looked for any justification to inflict suffering and death on others.

“Make sure you put them in deep,” a Raider said after the commotion died down. “If someone finds them, they’ll just think it was the Demis.”

Demihumans have the worst reputation here…

Of course, other Human countries thought along those lines as well, but it wasn’t to the point where people would just dump their murder victims in the woods and be perfectly confident that they had gotten away with their crime.

Once the Riders returned, they resumed their journey. The stop at least allowed Liam to get back on his feet. Sweat slicked his body as they were force-marched along the dusty road under a cloudless sky. Liam had to keep an eye on the others just to match how tired he looked. The scavengers had once been a part of the army, too, so maybe their training wasn’t as great as he imagined it to be. Or maybe he had just gotten that much stronger since the last time he had been in the Holy Kingdom.

Even the Riders looked worn out by the time evening fell. It was probably a good time to escape. But did he want to do that? The Noble and his men were clearly dangerous to be around, but Liam’s job in the Holy Kingdom this time was to investigate the issues reportedly festering within its borders. The nobleman seemed like a good lead on those problems. Additionally, unlike his sister, he had been assigned to start around the Great Wall instead of one of the cities, so there must have been some reason for it.

A few Riders brought the remaining captives together, securing them to a tree while the rest of the nobleman’s men set up camp. Once everyone settled down, the Riders started looking in their direction in a dangerous way.

“Hey,” one of them said, “bring the girls over here.”

As one, the bound girls tensed.

“You idiot,” another replied. “We’re a day out from the gate. What are you going to do if one of them squeals?”

“I love me a squealer,” the first man chuckled lasciviously.

“That’s not what I meant, you dumbass.”

“I got this.”

Yet another man rose from his spot at the campfire. He sauntered over with a cocky smile.

“I’m sure you all heard us, so I’ll give it to you straight. Come over to us and you’ll get a warm meal and a tent to sleep in so long as you make for good company. Otherwise, you can stay here and sleep in your piss and shit while you freeze. Course, there’s no promise that a few of our boys figure they’ll come over for a good time anyway.”

Liam sighed internally as the briefest of calculating looks fell over the girls’ faces. In the end, not a single girl stayed behind.

“That bitch!” Paul grated as the sound of Corinne’s laughter drifted over from the camp, “She said that she loved me! That we could get married once we got a place of our own.”

“Women are all whores,” a bitter voice came around the tree.

“You all know what would've happened if they refused,” Liam said.

The man’s offer wasn’t an offer at all – it was a thinly-veiled death threat. If the girls refused to entertain the men willingly in relative comfort, they would be raped while tied to the tree and then their broken corpses would be dumped deep into the woods in the morning.

Of course, saying so probably wouldn’t make things any better, and though he understood that they had no real choice, Liam couldn’t help but feel disgusted as the girls did their best to be ‘good company’ for the nobleman’s thugs. What people said about women having a different sense of pride really was true.

By the time morning came, one of the girls was dead anyway. Though visibly horrified, the scavengers remained silent as her brutally beaten body was carried off. The surviving girls clung to the riders, doing chores and whatever else they thought would improve their chances. On the Riders’ part, they treated it all as if it were normal. The ones that had been ‘chosen’ by a girl even looked proud.

Liam was already tired by the time they broke camp and continued on their way. The scavengers around him were thoroughly demoralised and allowed themselves to be led along by their captors without a word of complaint. He was half certain that the one girl had been killed to produce the exact result that he saw. The nobleman and his thugs were skilled in all the wrong ways – another sign that things in the Holy Kingdom had taken a drastic turn for the worse.

When the gate came into view that evening, the nobleman stopped and instructed his men to check over their captives’ condition. One of them even licked his hand to pat down Liam’s hair. Once they were satisfied with the appearance of their prisoners, they proceeded to the ‘Kalinsha Gate’ – Kalinsha was actually two days from the wall – as everyone called it. It was little more than a giant hole in the Great Wall, but a pair of soldiers were stationed at the place where the gate should have been.

“Lord Reynaldo,” one of them nodded, “what do you have for us?”

That’s as far as respect for this guy goes, I guess.

They showed neither fear before the nobleman and his thugs nor very little interest in his presence. The nobleman probably stayed outside the wall because it was the only place where he could lord over everyone without being challenged.

“Illegal scavengers,” the nobleman replied. “Furthermore, they had the gall to foist forged documents upon me!”

“That’s a lie!” Paul shouted and pointed at Liam, “Just check his papers!”

Oh, you didn’t just…

It seemed that the Noble hadn’t just made up a charge. The soldier, however, ignored the theatrics and held out his hand.

“The Paladins will deal with that,” he said.

“Make sure that my name goes on the report,” the nobleman said. “I’m working day and night out here, you know?”

“Mhm.”

The papers went into the soldier’s hand. Liam also spotted two silver coins going along with them. The soldier whistled up two others from a tent nearby.

“Shift’s just about done,” he said as they shuffled over. “We’re booking these fellas over at the office.”

Another few coins passed hands – copper this time. The soldiers attached Liam and the scavengers’ bonds to a long rope and led them off. Liam looked over his shoulder to get one last good look at the nobleman who had brought them in, but he and his thugs were already riding back the way they came.

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