Scourge Twenty-Five - Obeying

The donkeys can only gallop for so long before they start to tire out. Worse, some of the carts are damaged. One of them near the middle of the formation has a crooked wheel, and I think we’ve all been watching and waiting to see it fly off whenever the road gets even a little bit bumpier.

We start to slow down after fifteen minutes of constant running, then when we climb a particularly tall hill, Esteban orders a halt and reins are pulled and cries go up and down the caravan as we stop.

One of the donkeys is dead, another is clearly injured. A few of the carts have some damage to them. Torn straps and such. Only the one with the crooked wheel is really a threat.

“No time to lose,” Esteban says. “Teo, either get that cart fixed or transfer the things over, Ran, check on the donkeys. Someone unhook that poor creature. Toss the body in a ditch, the monsters can have it.”

I jump off the cart and walk over to Esteban, my friends coming up behind me. “How can we help?” I ask.

He spins towards me, face twisted in an ugly glower. “Get back on your cart and stay there,” he says.

I blink back. “What?”

“Are you unable to follow those orders too?”

“Wait, are you angry because we didn’t listen earlier?” I ask.

“Was that not obvious?” he asks. “Get back on the cart.”

“You might have died if we didn’t help you,” I say. “You were in way over your head.”

Esteban leans down and his tone shifts so that it’s much lower, almost a growl. “I expect my men to follow my orders. I don’t care how talented you are. If you can’t do as you’re told, then you’re not worth much to us.” With that he stomps past me and continues to scream at his mercs to get to work.

Esme’s hand lands on my shoulder and she tugs me back a bit. “Come on, let’s get out of everyone’s way.”

I sigh, but I do follow her back to the cart. The Big Hill Lions seem pretty busy. They set up a watch, using the height of the hill as a vantage point to see a good ways around. A few deer frolic by the edge of the forest a ways away, but other than those and a few birds, there’s not much to see.

“He’s a bit of a jerk,” Felix says.

“He’s not entirely wrong,” Esme says.

I glance up at her. “Really?” I ask. “You’re going to take his side?”

Esme rolls her eyes, then pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “It’s his job, and Teo’s I suppose, to make sure that order is maintained and that their troops stay in formation and work together. Having a rogue element, or four I suppose, threatens the rest.”

“The four of us took out more zombies than anyone else,” I say. I’m really just arguing for the sake of arguing though. I know what Esme’s talking about. If I had to lead a group of monsters and some of them disobeyed a lot, I wouldn’t be amused, even if they were strong.

“Don’t pout,” Felix says.

“I’m not pouting,” I shoot back. “I’m expressing my disappointment.”

“With your face.”

“Don’t make it weird, Felix.”

She grins and bumps her shoulder against mine. “Cheer up, it’s not all bad. We didn’t even want to stay with these guys once we get to the next village or whatever.”

“How long do we have left?” I ask.

Bianca’s the one that replies to me. She’s sitting atop a crate, looking just a bit ruffled. “Teo mentioned that it will take three days to make it to the village at the base of the Caselfellan Mountains.” She gestures eastward, to the unmissable mountain range that takes up the entire horizon. “I don’t know if we’re moving faster than usual or not.”

“We’ve been on the road for one day,” I say. “That means we have another two days of travelling, not counting today.”

“Today wasn’t very productive so far,” Felix says. “I don’t think we’ve made up the time we lost with that fight just by sprinting over to here after, and we’re burning a lot of time right now.”

It looks like the one damaged cart isn’t fixable. Teo and a couple of others shift its cargo over to another cart in a hurry while Ran takes the two unhurt donkeys leading that cart and places them at the front of two others. By the looks of it, a few of the creatures have been hurt. We might end up with too much cargo and not enough animals to pull it all.

The only good thing about the stop is that no one notices when some of my little friends return. Well, Bianca and my friends notice, but they’re not about to make a fuss about a few cute little critters slipping into my cloak and under my clothes.

Esteban’s screaming rants come to an end soon enough, and we all start to move ahead again. I jump off the side and start walking since it looks like that’s what all the others are doing. There’s no point in putting more strain on the animals than we need to. What if that pentagoose returns?

I really don’t want to get caught in a wild pentagoose chase, and I don’t know if I have enough goodwill with the Big Hill Lions to reveal who I am just to keep them safe.

Fortunately, the walk isn’t too bad. Teo makes a point of going around with a water sac for everyone to keep hydrated, and one of the mercenaries cooks a small meal on a sort of metal hotplate using careful spurts of anger magic to heat it up.

It’s lukewarm oatmeal, served in tin bowls and without spoons, but it’s filling food that we can eat without having to stop.

Esteban really wants us to keep moving, no matter what.

I take a couple of little breaks to rest my feet, usually when we’re heading uphill and the caravan is slowing down anyway. It’s all rather boring. I have the impression that all of the mercenaries in the company know that we’re on the outs with Esteban and that they don’t want anything to do with us.

And then we crest a final hill and we can see a fort out ahead.

“The Lion Fort!” Teo calls out, obviously glad to see the building.

It’s a big lump of a fortress, squatting atop a huge sloped hill entirely cleared of trees and with a winding river at the bottom of it. The fort isn’t as big as the last outpost we were at. It’s more of a fortification than that, but it lacks the village surrounding it.

Teo squints ahead from his spot next to one of the cart’s drivers. “I see movement on the walls, and some smoke. The flag’s are all good too. I think it’s manned.”

“About time we got some good news,” Esteban says. “Come on, let’s head on over. I haven’t decided if we’ll be stopping here for the night or not.”

“Is that fort important?” I ask Bianca.

She glances over to the fortress then nods while gesturing to the hills around us. “There’s a wide river that way, and because of the way it cuts into the land it forms something like a cliff-face. The woods are relatively thick too, with very difficult terrain around them. To the east is a large rocky patch from the mountains. That’s more terrain that’s hard to cross. This little area is right in the middle of all that. A sort of natural bottleneck.”

“So they plopped a big old fort right there. Makes sense,” I say.

“I passed here on the way north,” Bianca says. “The fort has a large area designed to funnel monsters in and kill them from above. It’s a clever design. They use that to attract large groups of weaker monsters over then kill them from relative safety. It means that the area is relatively free of weaker monsters.”

I nod along, pretending to just be interested in the trivia. That’s not good news. It’ll be best if we can be through the fort sooner rather than later.

The trek over to the fortress is surprisingly easy. Someone made a point of keeping the roads here well-maintained. There aren’t any zig-zags, just a straight path all the way up to the gates on the side of the fort.

As we come closer, I can make out the guards atop the wall, and it’s clear that they’re all non-zombie humans. Their classes and names help confirm that once we get close enough.

The gates open, and we walk into a large courtyard where a troupe of some ten or so guards are waiting for us, their commander standing tall and proud in the middle of them. “Esteban, you old bastard,” he says. “Still calling yourself a lion?”

“Rafael, you slimy old toad,” Esteban growls right back. “Still sitting atop this old mound and getting fat with old age?”

“Hah! You can only wish you’ll be able to grow as old and fat as I have, you runt,” Rafael says. “But I think I might have to start burning off that fat soon. There’s the stink of battle in the air, and I notice that your so-called lions have been mauled themselves. We should talk.”

***