Chapter 171

  Ways of the Wild (III)

  I can see it!

  The first sign of human civilization in almost a month! There it is, just about a hundred yards up, pressed into the side of a mountain and built atop a rather wide and broad plateau.

  Those beautiful, aged, cracked walls of cinder, and those towering spires jutting beyond it, and the billows of smoke from the ashen chimneys... aah, people! Civilization! It's like finding an oasis after wandering the desert for six decades...

  We hurried up, everyone far too anxious to finally have some free time from one another, and reached it in less than ten minutes despite those hundred yards upwards being actually closer to three miles of road. Yes. It's that insane.

  Anyway, there was nobody on the gates to welcome us in--no guards standing tall, probably because those insane enough to come here weren't the type to just turn around and walk away, so the 'fort' never bothered.

  It was a mix between a fort and a castle, as far as I could tell. Or, well, a castle that leaned a bit more into defense than normal castles do... back on Earth. I've got no idea what the classification of castles and forts was in this world.

  Regardless, it was clearly layered; beyond the outermost facade of walls that rounded the entire clearing, there was another set much deeper within that walled off a small segment. I imagine that's where the important folk lived, sort of like it was back in town where we picked up Wan Lan.

  Defensive towers arose every thirty yards or so, though they were unmanned--and woefully unmaintained, as there were a good two feet of snow stacked across the wall walks.

  There wasn't a pattern to the way the main road cleaved the castle's bailey up--buildings arose sporadically, and I imagine 'paths' naturally formed around them. The keep as well as the distant castle turret were just barely visible due to the rather thick fog that started descending. Come night, I imagine, the visibility here won't be any better than it is in the forest.

  Just as I thought this entire place was abandoned (it wasn't; there were clearly signs of it being lived in), we saw a few people suddenly appear from one of the buildings. They were clearly about six times more shocked than we are to have seen us, and one of them broke off from the group and walked up.

  "You're... not ghosts, right? Or have I drunk so much I'm hallucinating people again?" funny guy.

  He looked to be in his fifties, give or take, with rather round cheeks and belly, wholly red in the face with a rather strong stench of alcohol blasting off of him.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  "No, we're not ghosts, and you're not hallucinating," I said with a chuckle. "My name is Lu, and these are my kids."

  "... welcome then, I suppose," the man said, eyeing us strangely. "Though I know better than to ask what demons need chase a man to bring 'em here, I am indeed tempted."

  "Crossing," I said.

  "Hm. Even worse. Come," he said. "It'll only get colder and darker. I'll take ya' to the Capt'n and have 'im sort your dwelling. We don't got many newcomers here, as you can imagine." To be honest, I wasn't intending for us to come here, either. I didn't even think we'd come upon anything like this, as the goal was simply to cross the mountain and go to the other side. "Name's Zhu," he said. "But you can call me Big Fatty. Everyone else does."

  "Oh. You been here long?"

  "A while, aye. Twenty years comin', I think."

  "Wow."

  "Sounds about right, ha ha," he laughed as we followed him down the rather wet and slippery path between the aged, wooden fences and brick and mortar building--okay, it's probably just brick and not mortar, but what the hell do I know...? "There's some two hundred of us livin' here, give or take. A bit fewer in the recent days." Oh, how I do not like the sound of that.

  "Something happened?"

  "Hm. A few people went missin'," he replied. "Not the most unusual thing, I'm afraid. Not like we get trader caravans here or nothin', so we make huntin' parties to go out and catch some food. But even that's not enough, so sometimes people sneak off on their own, and they just... well, they never come back. The mountain is rather cruel by day, and at night..."

  "Yeah. We experienced it," I said.

  "You got some hard kids there, I must say, if they survived the climb."

  "Yes. I've been blessed."

  "Hm. This 'ere is the 'restaurant'," he pointed at a decrepit, two-story building with a half-hanging, illegible post sign plastered above the entryway. "The food's proper shit, but it's still food. Will charge you a pretty penny, though. Over 'ere is our smith. Hard fella--won't craft if he don't like you. The keep's that way, but that's mostly where the old and the sick go. It's the best isolated place. The Capt'n lives here in the old barracks."

  "Ah. I imagine people here simply inherited the place?"

  "Aye," he nodded. "If you think passage between the north and the south is hard today, it was, supposedly, ten times as hard back in the day, and this was the only bastion at the time. Whoever controlled the castle, controlled the trade. It got abandoned, though, a long, long time ago. Capt'n came across it about a hundred years ago or so and established a small community. Anybody's welcome, so long as they provide and contribute."

  Quite a few buildings lay in ruin and decrepit, rubble and stone strewn about haphazardly--well, 'strewn about' is a strong phrase; it's more like they were just nudged away from the 'main path' and ended up everywhere.

  "Ye' folk came across anything strange comin' up?" he suddenly asked.

  "Strange? You mean the symphony of night is normal?"

  "Ho ho, indeed. It can be a bit terrifying at first."

  "No, nothing strange besides that." Of course I wasn't going to mention the small thing of a corpse blowing up in our faces. "Why? Something wrong?"

  "Ah, it's just that Capt'n has us all lookin' for anything strange. 'corrding to him, recent disappearances aren't animal attacks, and he thinks there's something else afoot here."

  "What?"

  "Uhm... look, Capt'n is a kind, generous man. But he's... well, he's odd." Ah. So, he's nuts. Good to know. "He sees shadows where there are none. That sort." Very familiar with it, yes. "Capt'n, we got some newcomers!"

  He hollered as we came to a halt in front of a rather wide building--dozen or so windows were stapled loosely on its side, each barricaded with a different kind of material, and yet none with actual glass.

  "Let's go in; he's gotten a bit deaf, too."

  Yeah.

  Maybe we should have just taken the scenic route around this damned place?