Valkyrie's Shadow - 5The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 12, Chapter 1

Chapter 1

23rd Day, Middle Wind Month, 1 CE

Il-Enoweli con He’leyia made his way through the mist along the broad stone road that followed the river to the sea. The river’s rushing waters offered the only sounds in the stillness of the morning as he walked past the countless Human farms that straddled its course. At his shoulder, Eneleli – the leader of one of the tribes under his clan and a longtime friend – eyed the surroundings warily.

“What is the point in this?” Eneleli said, “we have a long march ahead of us, and I doubt that the Humans will respond favourably.”

“There is no harm in asking,” il-Enoweli replied.

“I feel my honour chafing with every step,” his friend sighed.

He could empathise with his frustrations. Five months had passed since the discovery of the verdant valley hidden far in the south. With how quickly the Humans in the mountains on the way had given up their territories, he never imagined that they would still be trying to take it nearly two seasons later.

A part of him blamed himself, as the initial results made him confident that the Humans would be firmly under Beastman control before the wet season. Mostly, however, he blamed Sage Khhschlr, who was ‘managing’ their efforts in the Draconic Kingdom since the loss of il-Endratha. The late Warmaster would have probably foreseen the issues they would face and chided il-Enoweli for his reckless optimism. Then he would have dispatched the forces necessary for a swift and decisive conquest.

Two silhouettes appeared in the mist, resolving into a pair of hunters that had been dispatched ahead of them. The two Con jogged up to report their findings.

“We’re clear to the coast,” one of them said. “It doesn’t look like the Humans have left the city since the deluge started.”

“I don’t blame them,” il-Enoweli grumbled. “Any sane person would be at home with their families right now.”

The morning fog dissipated over the next hour, revealing the long bay with the city at its western end. The obnoxiously resilient Human fortress was positioned atop a modest cliff overlooking the bay, with sheer cliffs that ran along its southern side until they joined with the sea. A ten-metre-high wall of grey basalt stretched from the cliffs to the sea. Access to the city by land was limited to a barren defile past the bridge leading to its western gate.

Even the Con, who thrived in rugged, mountainous terrain, couldn’t challenge its natural defences. Early on, an attempt had been made through the water against the harbour nestled far on the eastern side of the city, but the assault had been prematurely ended by the Humans’ hidden allies.

Why would they side with the Humans, anyway? They would see all Demihumans dead if presented with the opportunity.

The bay was inhabited by a clan of aquatic Demihumans whose appearance still eluded them. All that mattered, however, was that il-Enoweli’s forces were no match for them in the water. To make matters worse, the Demihumans conducted trade with the Humans, serving as an unassailable supply line.

In an attempt to sway the aquatic Demihumans to their side, a few of the civilian tribes attempted to initiate trade with them. Those attempts, however, were simply ignored.

For their confederation, it was an unprecedented situation. If the world was filled with alliances between different peoples, then Rol’en’gorek suffered a worrisome disadvantage.

All of their neighbours were some level of hostile. The tribes of the Worldspine to their north were simply savages who saw everyone else as food. The Jorgulans in the east served the malevolent whims of their Green Dragon masters. To their south, the Merchants of the Great Lut only sought to exploit them for resources, squeezing them for everything that they were worth. The Humans of the west sought their extermination.

Hundreds of heads popped up along the city wall as il-Enoweli and his entourage approached. He scanned the battlements, looking for anyone that resembled a Human Lord. Several arrows struck the road a few dozen metres ahead and skipped away.

“I will only say this once,” il-Enoweli directed his voice to the group atop the gatehouse. “A horde of Undead has swept in from your country’s northwest. Half of the Draconic Kingdom has already fallen to their advance.”

“You should stick to trying to eat us,” a Human male in the centre of the group replied. “Your skills as a Bard are dismal, at best!”

“This is no tale!” Il-Enoweli roared up at him, “The Undead are enemies of all that live, and we would have your warriors join us to face this dire threat.”

The Human Lord glanced at the males to either side of him. A low chuckle rose from his throat, which was echoed by the defenders from parapet to parapet. Their laughter grew, echoing off of the cliffs above.

“Is that the best you can come up with, you slithering hairball?” He shouted down at him, “There is no fool in existence who would fall for your preposterous proposal!”

“I speak no falsehoods!” Il-Enoweli growled, “And I do not believe for one moment that a Lord would give his people up to the Undead!”

“You have no proof of your claim. Even if they were coming, we’re more than happy to have them take care of you first!”

“They will come for you, next!”

“Then let them come!” The Lord raised his longbow overhead, “The walls of Foca Bay will ever stand proud and flat, just like our glorious Queen!”

“Uohhhhhhhhh!”

The thunderous cheer of the city’s defenders rolled over them and up the valley.

“Shouldn’t it be ‘proud and tall’?” Eneleli said.

“There’s definitely something wrong with these people,” il-Enoweli flicked an ear. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

With his task carried out, he led their warbands back up to the valley. Five kilometres to the east, the main body of his forces was preparing for the journey north. As they did, warbands occasionally arrived from the mountain valleys all around to add to their number.

“This call is just too sudden,” il-Enoweli said. “I bet that Khhschlr expects a hundred thousand of us to come up the highway to her aid.”

“The runner never said we’d be fighting as soon as we arrived,” Eneleli noted. “But you’re right: we won’t be able to muster even a third of our forces in any reasonable timeframe.”

Their fight in the mountains of the south wasn’t anything like what had happened in the lowlands of the north. Thousands of skirmishes in hundreds of valleys, ridges, and forests flared up every day. They may have had a hundred thousand between their warriors and civilians, but those numbers were spread out across the southern ranges and couldn’t be recalled so easily.

He made his way through the chaotic preparations and entered a small grove along the river where the Lords were trying to coordinate their impromptu reassignment. Most of them were too busy with one thing or another to greet him, so he was able to go straight to the group gathered around a wide stone table.

“What are we at?” Il-Enoweli asked.

“Fifteen thousand,” one of the Lords answered. “We may have twenty by this evening.”

“Did we at least manage to contact il-Enchawi?”

“No,” the Lord shook his head. “It’s unreasonable to think that we could reach il-Enchawi, il-Enhoorl, il-Envorst and il-Ensaagh on such short notice.”

Il-Enoweli sighed. Not only did they distribute their clans across a two-hundred-kilometre-wide theatre, but the nature of the conflict was highly mobile. The runners sent out to recall the clans could spend weeks wandering around without finding them.

“They’ll arrive when they arrive, I guess,” he said. “How long before we’re ready to depart?”

“Before noon. We’ve sent hunters to screen the way ahead already.”

If they left by noon, they would arrive at the Human fortress guarding the pass by evening. Sage Khhshclr wanted them ‘right away’, but there was no such convenient thing.

A long column of Con snaked out of the camp an hour before noon, and il-Enoweni took his place at the front. After taking a look at their immediate surroundings, his gaze went to the clouds shrouding the mountain peaks in the north.

“How are the conditions ahead?” He asked a nearby mystic.

“We expect rain,” the mystic replied, “but that should be a given during the deluge. Even so, we should be fine so long as we use this road.”

The deluge brought different conditions to different parts of Rol’en’gorek, and the Draconic Kingdom was no different. While the winds of the season could send temperatures plummeting along the Worldspine and flood the jungles of the basin, the deluge in the south created hazards such as flash floods and mudslides.

“I wonder if the people back home could imitate this road,” il-Enoweli said. “It’s so miraculously resistant against the elements that I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me it was made through magic.”

“We’ve confirmed that the road is not magic, at least,” the mystic chuckled. “Which makes it even more of a wonder. We should learn how to construct them after all this is over and we finish subjugating the Humans.”

Il-Enoweli grunted in agreement. While the lowlands could rely on its robust river networks for transportation, the highland homes of the Con exclusively relied on trails and roads. Every year, hundreds of routes were washed out by floods, mudslides or simple erosion, and the introduction of the Draconic Kingdom’s land infrastructure would be an incalculable boon.

An hour into their ascent, a drizzle started, which eventually turned into steady rain. The usually dry gulches turned into catchments that added churning torrents of water to the river along the road. A peal of thunder occasionally rattled the stones, but there appeared to be no threats along their path aside from natural ones.

“Do you think the Humans will move once they realise we’ve left?” Eneleli asked.

“I don’t doubt it,” il-Enoweli answered. “They can enjoy their freedom for now. When we return from this, we aren’t sheathing our claws.”

The light approach against the Humans forced upon them by Sage Khhshclr had proven to be a terrible move. Without acting to decisively crush all Human resistance as il-Endratha had, the Humans seemed willing to fight without end.

If it was just that, it would have been fine. It was natural for prey to flee predators or fight for their lives, after all. The problem was that they were mysteriously getting better at fighting. All of the mystics that he asked didn’t seem to have an answer as to why, but reality could not be denied. The situation had developed to the point where it seemed that the entire region was embroiled in conflict, and the promising new land for the civilian migrants had turned into a deathtrap.

It wasn’t something that happened when they were simply raiding the Draconic Kingdom, and they needed to deal with it as soon as possible. Since Sage Khhschlr had called even the warrior clans of the homeland for aid, il-Endratha entertained the idea of bringing them in to assist with the Humans once the Undead were dealt with. Fighting the Undead was a fruitless endeavour, so more than a few Clanlords would likely be receptive to his proposals. Payment for their services could be rendered over time.

The day went by uneventfully, and evening saw the familiar landmarks that indicated they were near the top of the pass. His intuition as a war leader told him that this was the most dangerous part of their journey. The road hugged a canyon wall that wound with the course of the river over a thousand metres below, and the clouds above were low enough that one might believe they could reach out and touch them.

When he had first taken the pass, the Humans used the road’s narrow width to great effect, forcing head-on engagements against their defensive formations and limiting the number of Beastmen that could fight at once. The fighting went on for weeks, at which point the honour of his warriors was satisfied and il-Enoweli could step forward to single-handedly tear apart the entire Human army.

Since the Humans no longer fought that way, the sense of danger was likely just the recognition of dangerous terrain and the memory of that struggle. Still, it took a good half hour for him to settle down.

“There it is,” he pointed as a massive fortress appeared in the clouds ahead. “I can’t wait to get dry…hmm, shouldn’t our scouts have reported back to us by now?”

“It’s been more than long enough for them to get there and back again,” Eneleli agreed.

Il-Enoweli held up a paw. The column halted behind him. His sense of danger returned and he looked all around him for its source.

Rain, clouds, mountains and more clouds…

Had the Humans occupied the fortress again? Since the nature of the conflict had changed, the structure became all but useless and both sides had left it empty. He peered in the direction of the daunting structure, half-expecting an arrow to come flying out of the mist.

And then an orb of fire came flying out of the mist, exploding at his feet and enveloping the road in flame.

Screams of pain and panic rose from below as the Beastman column was hammered by a hail of Fireballs. The underside of Raul’s Skeletal Dragon glowed orange as twenty-five sets of four Elder Liches razed a four-kilometre stretch of Foca Pass. There was nowhere for the Beastmen to run: they could only burn.

Well, they could jump, but that’d kill them all the same.

The advance into the eastern provinces of the Draconic Kingdom was going well on paper, but there was plenty of unexpected weirdness going on for the people on the field. In terms of ‘battles’, the inferno rising below him was actually the first formal one for the forces under his command.

“Are you sure I’m having an effect?” He asked.

“Yes,” the Elder Lich riding behind him answered.

“How much?”

“Without knowing the exact strength of our opposition, this one cannot provide an exact number.”

“Yet you say I’m having an effect.”

“Yes.”

Raul frowned and scratched his head. The Elder Lich was sure he had an effect, but it didn’t have any evidence that he had an effect. Only a ‘feeling’. For Raul’s part, he didn’t feel anything coming out. He wasn’t even trying to make anything come out: he was just sitting there wrinkling his nose at the smell of a lot of burnt hair.

“The manoeuvre is complete,” the Elder Lich said.

“Did we get them all?”

“No.”

“Really?”

How many Fireballs did they cast? There were a hundred Elder Liches, it took six seconds for each of them to cast one spell and they had been casting spells for about two minutes. That made it…

“The damage variance of Fireball is high,” the Elder Lich said. “If one is ‘lucky’, an average Beastman civilian can survive up to four regular Fireballs from a Black Counterfeiter.”

And if they were unlucky, they were fried in one. It did explain why each flight of Elder Liches had four members, though.

Raul ordered the Skeletal Dragon to fly lower as he surveyed the aftermath. Every dozen or so metres, a shocked and thoroughly-singed Beastman stood over a long carpet of corpses. Rather than a battle, it was more of a precisely-calculated magical artillery strike.

According to Captain Zahradnik, tales of adventure and powerful wizards flinging spells served as poor references for Commanders. As an Adventurer herself, she explained that a lot of the flashy stuff in stories was, in reality, highly luck dependent. A Fireball could be as devastating as the Bards described, or it could do next to nothing. In the case of Rogues and other nimble targets, that same Fireball could end up doing nothing at all.

The Captain had her own stories of Adventurers, many of which contained events where bad luck with magic prematurely ended their team exercises. Raul’s low-rank league matches had proven those stories to be true, as even the use of low-level Skeleton Mages produced wildly variable results.

Using Metamagic fixed many of those luck-related problems, but it dramatically increased the cost of spells. It was something like the difference between a jab and a haymaker: hitting with a haymaker would hurt a lot more, but missing was costly.

A different sort of thinking was required for an army, however. Especially one that was ‘caster rich’ like the Sorcerous Kingdom’s. The sheer scale of a theatre made the ‘group tactics’ and awe-inspiring feats of magic portrayed in tales of adventure generally useless. In the place of those heroic feats came cold calculation that weighed spells in terms of their statistical efficiency.

Most of the Royal Army’s mana wasn’t spent on spells that dealt direct damage at all. All it took to heal the average damage of a single Fireball was a decent area effect healing spell, and divine casters tended to be the most plentiful type of caster in any force. A summoned Wraith could sneak around hurting and draining hundreds of people, forcing healers to use hundreds of healing spells at the cost of a single spell.

One could support a Death Warrior that could hit harder than a Fireball with every swing. Or cover their forces with clouds of fog, preventing the enemy from endlessly whittling away at them through ranged skirmishing. There simply were too many things that one could do with their mana that were more efficient.

Of course, there was a place for damage-dealing spells, which was when you needed something to die now and they couldn’t be reached in any better way. The ‘Undead horde’ strategy provided few opportunities to do so, but they did present some good ones occasionally. The Beastman column trying to cross Foca Pass was one of them.

The general staff predicted that the Beastmen would recall their forces in the south once the Undead renewed their advance. When they did, Raul was waiting for them with the Elder Liches dominating the Undead on his part of the front.

“Hmm…what should we do with these leftovers?”

“We lack the appropriate assets to assess their strength,” the Elder Lich said, “but they should all be at least the equivalent of Mithril-rank Adventurers. Caution is advised.”

“Let’s just get rid of them with Wraiths, I guess.”

Four hundred Wraiths swept over the pass, wailing dramatically as they did. The surviving Beastmen had no chance…except for the one at the front, who destroyed all the Wraiths.

“What the heck?” Raul frowned, “How strong is that guy?”

“This one estimates that the target should be in the so-called ‘Realm of Heroes’. I believe that our Adventurer Guild would rate it at ‘Adamantite II’.

That was stupid strong. As strong as the Death-series Servitors.

“A Magic Arrow barrage should be the most efficient means of eliminating the target,” the Elder Lich said.

“Sure, let’s do that,” Raul said. “We have to get back to all those villages or we’ll fall behind.”

The blue-white flares of hundreds of Magic Arrows flashed through the clouds. Their last target finally fell to the ground. The Elder Liches formed up around Raul’s Skeletal Dragon and they flew back north. Raul sighed as the Draconic Kingdom’s riverlands came back into view.

“How many do we have to go?”

“Seventy-five villages, eight towns and one large town.”

“Ugh…”

Back when he had first decided to become an apprentice Commander, the work awaiting him would have never entered his mind. Rather than dealing with their enemies, he spent most of his time dealing with their allies.

His Skeletal Dragon descended toward a town that straddled a small river. At least this one wouldn’t be as bad as some of the others.

The effectiveness of the Beastmen’s efforts to ‘sedate’ the Draconic Kingdom’s population varied depending on each settlement’s water source. Since they were basically poisoning the water supply, the villages and towns that depended on wells were hit the hardest. Dumping Laira into running water was nowhere near as effective, but it could poison everyone downstream. The further downstream a village was, the worse it got.

An advisory had been issued to all of the towns and villages along the Oriculon to the west, as well. Captain Zahradnik said that there was no way that such a huge river in the middle of the rainy season could be poisoned by so little, but the Draconic Kingdom’s government wanted to play it safe.

The Elder Lich cast Invisibility on the Skeletal Dragon when they got within a few kilometres of the town, and they landed on a muddy road a few dozen metres away. He straightened his outfit and took a deep breath before walking up to its broken gate. A man with a staff barred the way.

“Who’re you?” The man asked.

“My name’s Raul. I’ve come with a message from the Queen.”

He waited patiently as the man with the staff ran off. When he first started visiting the villages, he introduced himself as a member of the Sorcerous Kingdom’s Royal Army. That, however, only invited suspicion. Speaking in the name of the Queen, on the other hand, was like casting a magic spell.

The ‘sentry’ returned with five girls and one boy, who were in turn followed by a small crowd. Raul examined each, but they were all pretty much dressed the same.

“Did any of your Nobles survive?” He asked.

They shook their heads. Raul was pretty sure that would always be the answer, but he was instructed to ask just in case.

“Then, are there any temple staff?”

Three of the girls raised their hands. Raul looked at the other two.

“Who are you?”

“We’re with the Merchant Guild,” the boy said. “Well, the Merchant Guild hasn’t been working for over a year, but…”

“That’s fine,” Raul said. “I just need people who can help coordinate the citizens. How many were poisoned by the stuff the Beastmen put in the water?”

The group exchanged glances.

“A bunch on the north side of the town are acting sort of funny,” the boy said, “but I think the rest of us are alright? I don’t feel poisoned, anyway.”

Raul looked at the three temple staff.

“Those people on the south side were poisoned,” one of the girls said, “but they should be okay after a few days. Why do you ask?”

“Queen Oriculus wants the people to move west just in case the Beastmen try something funny,” Raul said. “Some of the villages out there are poisoned really bad, so we’ve been trying to figure out how to get everyone where they need to be.”

“We can help,” the girl said, and the others nodded. “Just tell us where we need to go.”

They were good people. If it was Re-Estize, half of them would be trying to screw the other half over. And that was without anything like Demihuman raids or famines going on. In the Draconic Kingdom, they got raided regularly and had been treated as livestock for over a year, yet their first thought upon being freed was to help others. He wondered why things were so different here.

After delivering his instructions, he made his way around the town looking for anything he might need to report. Though a lot of things were ‘simplified’ due to the Beastmen banning metal tools and things that might be used as weapons against them, the town was kept in good condition. That simplification extended to the townsfolk as well, with their clothing being well-tended, but lacking in any sophistication or colour. Everyone wore straw sandals and Raul stuck out like a sore thumb.

“Hey, how many girls are you married to?”

Argh, this again…

He turned to find a girl his age standing behind him. She took a step back, clutching a thin shawl in front of her in an effort to hide her swollen belly.

“I’m sorry,” Raul said in a clear voice. “I’m not from this country.”

“Oh.”

The girl turned away, as did two dozen others who had been stalking him down the street. Raul turned back to his work, feeling like a jerk for some reason.

Every village and town he had visited was filled with pregnant girls. Followers of The Six didn’t get married until they were twenty, so it was just weird to see. Yet, all he could feel was pity. They would be kids raising kids, and most of them were still apprentices. How would they even be able to take care of themselves and all the babies? The Elder Liches said something about a ‘one to fifty male-female ratio’ as well, so raising a family in a remotely normal way was pretty much impossible.

They came to him hoping for at least something, yet he couldn’t provide it. Every time he turned them down he felt powerless and inadequate, like a twelve-year-old failure of a man.

Once he completed his rounds, he returned to the spot on the road where he thought the Skeletal Dragon was. The Elder Lich dispelled its invisibility and helped him back up.

“Report,” the Elder Lich said after they took to the skies again.

“We’re close to the mountains,” Raul said, “so the Laira poisoning isn’t severe. Just some people on the south side of town. The town leadership said that they can assist with the surrounding villages.”

After completing his report, Raul stared down at the countryside as the Elder Lich relayed the information. Even with so much martial might at his command, there was so little he could do. He could only pray that someone could figure out how to fix the huge mess.