Chapter 55
Mobile City
Somewhere out in the brush, off to where the land dipped toward what might have been a creek bed, something was singing.
I stopped.
It was the low hum of somebody singing. Mist singer. We’d heard them before, up in the frozen wastes of the hearthlands. We'd been hiding in our shelter while they sang the same tune that drifted up from a fog bank below us.
Shit… I thought they only come out at night!
And then I heard the second sound. Coming from behind the curve of the road, where it bent around a group of trees. A rumble that wasn't thunder… It was the sustained vibration of many heavy things moving across the packed dirt road.
Zo’s right hand was already on the handle of her axe. Her cyan ponytail swung as she lowered herself into a fighting position. The blue-green veins along her forearms pulsed.
"Looks like we’ve got some company," she said.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her sideways off the road, into the brush. She came without fighting me on it—her instincts were good—and we pushed through until we were deep enough from the road's edge that nobody would see us. We crouched behind a patch of growth that came up to chest height.
"What are they?" Zo asked. She kept her fingers loose around the axe handle.
"...I’m not sure yet."
The first wagon came around the bend before I had a chance to send out my scouts. It was a large wooden wagon with a grey, oiled canvas stretched over the top. And pulling it was a creature that looked like someone had crossed an ox with a boulder.
They were squat, wide-shouldered, covered in a hide so thick it had the texture of dried mud.
Its head was almost flat, with two blunt horns that curved forward.
The thing must have weighed more than the wagon it was pulling.
Two more wagons followed behind the first, each pulled by the same kind of beast. Then a fourth.
And a fifth. I counted eleven wagons total by the time the middle of the caravan came into view, and the line kept going.
Between the wagons were armored guards, carrying spears with broad leaf-shaped heads. Some had short swords at their hips. A few carried crossbows with the bolts already seated.
I could tell that they had made this trip multiple times; it was obvious by the bored way they carried themselves.
They were mercenaries, probably… they didn't wear matching colors or any kind of insignia that I could make out from this distance.
But they kept formation, maintained spacing between the wagons, and their eyes were alert.
Scanning the brush line. Checking the road ahead.
Glancing back to confirm the wagon behind them was keeping pace.
Forty guards. Maybe forty-five. My worms in the soil confirmed the count was close.
And then I found the Dragoon.
He rode near the front, mounted on something that was definitely not one of the working beasts.
His mount was taller, leaner, built for war.
It was some kind of scaled horse-thing with a long neck and legs that ended in clawed feet instead of hooves.
The rider sat straight-backed in a saddle of dark leather, wearing a coat of black scale-mail.
A sword hung from his hip. His hand rested on his thigh, relaxed.
The scale-mail was well-made. The sword on his hip was definitely a horned sword. His mount wasn't cheap. And every guard in that outfit positioned themselves around him, though none of them looked at him directly, but were always aware of where he was.
He was competent. Rich and dangerous enough that forty armed mercenaries deferred to him.
"Merchant caravan," I said to Zo, keeping my voice low. "Probably. fortyish guards, one Dragoon that I can see."
"Is he powerful? Can you tell what grade he is from here?"
"Nah… I can’t, he is suppressing his power."
"Great. So somewhere between 'we could take him' and 'he kills us both before breakfast.'" She spat into the dirt. "What's the play?"
That’s a good fucking question… What do we do?
Two lone Dragoons on a road like this were targets.
For bandits, for opportunistic Dragoons, for whatever monstrosities lived in the bush.
The village had been small, scared, and harmless.
But the closer we got to Valdris, the more populated the area would become, and populated meant people who would look at two blood-crusted strangers with no insignia and no known allegiance and make assumptions. Bad ones.
But a caravan—a big, well-guarded merchant caravan—was a mobile city.
It had structure. It had rules. An order that outsiders could slot into if they were useful.
And it was heading in our direction, almost certainly toward Valdris, because that was the only kingdom that could take in this entire merchant caravan.
The risk was real, though. Joining up with strangers meant being watched. It meant questions we couldn't answer. And if the Dragoon at the front decided we were a threat, we'd be fighting forty-five people and a man whose Grade I couldn't read.
But the alternative was worse. Two isolated figures on a road full of caravans would draw more attention than two figures attached to one of those caravans. Hunters watched for stragglers, not for those that moved with a pack. That was true for wolves, and it was true for people.
"Let’s approach, slowly… unarmed. I'll do the talking." I said.
Zo's jaw tightened. "Walk up unarmed to forty armed guards?
Have you lost your mind?" "I'm using my mind," I said.
"These people don't know who the fuck we are, and they'll assume the worst. I don't feel like testing my limits against forty or more armed mercenaries and a dragoon today.
Let me do the talking. You just stand there and look pretty. "
She held my stare. Then she clicked her tongue against her teeth and pulled her hand off the axe.
“I am pretty, aren’t I.” She said, with a wink.