Chapter 19 - Raiders in the Night

  Over the next few days conversation came easier between everyone. Even Teth deigned to speak with Kaila from time to time, though neither of them exchanged many words, nor initiated conversation unless they were forced to by circumstances, or by one of the two former black blades. What had started as a thoroughly uncomfortable journey between a client, her friend, an ass hole and a potential serial killer had turned into a much more pleasant experience.

  Cal had trained with Teth every night, spent time chatting with Kaila and they’d all eaten whatever Meliana had cooked together. It had become much like any trip he had ever taken with an adventuring group.

  And yet on the sixth day, one day before they reached Silverdale everyone arose to a sense of unease. It was like there was something on the wind that they all recognised but didn’t know why. They broke camp in silence and got on the move as soon as it was light enough to do so. They didn’t even have breakfast, instead opting to eat dry rations on the road.

  A few days earlier they’d left the main road south to start heading towards Silverdale. The day before they had crossed the Bilvine river and they were getting closer to the blackwood forest. Cal wondered for a while if what they were feeling was just a symptom of being so close to a forest with such a… reputation, but there was definitely something in the air.

  After a short while of riding, Meliana turned back to Cal. “What do you reckon?” She asked.

  Cal shook his head, patting Melt’s neck as she walked solemnly, nervously forward. “Something happened last night.” He said.

  “Did you hear something?”

  “No, it’s just a feeling.” He said, turning to look back at Kaila on her ghostly steed. “Can you send something to scout ahead?”

  “No. I can’t see through their eyes or anything, I’d just be sending a skeleton ahead to come back.” She responded. “We wouldn’t learn anything.”

  “If only your scout had already joined us.” Meliana sighed, looking back to the front. Cal agreed with the sentiment. He’d feel much safer once Veil was with them.

  “Hey that plume of smoke ahead.” Teth called back to them. “That look funny to you?”

  The others followed Teth’s gaze, squinting into the distance. About an hour’s ride ahead there was a pillar of smoke rising up from the road. Maybe a little ways off of it closer to the forest.

  “Is it a camp fire?” Kaila asked.

  “No.” Cal said immediately, with a great amount of concern in his voice. “Camp fire would have gone out by now and the smoke wouldn’t be that colour.”

  “You’re right.” Meliana said. “Everyone be careful. If that’s not a caravan that’s been attacked by bandits I’ll be damned.”

  She was half right.

  As they got closer they could clearly see that it was a caravan, a convoy of five in fact. It looked like they’d done everything right. They’d parked their caravans in a circle around their camp for protection and they’d made a nice big perimeter for themselves.

  Whatever had hit them hadn’t been bandits though. Cal could tell that much from the one wagon that had been flipped, another that had been crushed and a third that looked like it had been crushed and then exploded. It was the one that had exploded that was burning, sending up plumes of black and oddly purple smoke for everyone within a few kilometres to see.

  As they drew close, Teth began to ride around the area, keeping an eye out while Kaila, Meliana and Cal looked through the camp. They wanted to find survivors, but failing that they wanted to find a charter or ledger so that they could report it to someone.

  The camp site was incredibly dishevelled. It was clear a battle had taken place. Peoples things were strewn about, arrows were stuck in wagons and the floor, bodies - Men in armour mostly - littered the area. It looked like there had been a large camp fire in the centre but something had rushed through it, sending fire spraying all around, putting people into disarray. The horses that would have pulled the caravans were nowhere to be seen and any livestock they might have had were long gone.

  Cal started checking each body for a pulse. One after the next he found the bodies dead. Corpse after corpse. He checked their pockets for anything they could use to identify them. He would occasionally find personal effects and gold, but didn’t take them for himself. Instead he piled them up in one of the caravans that had been spared. He called out to Melt, “You think you can lead this?” He asked, pointing at the wagon. She snorted and nodded, a look of determination in her equine features.

  Once he’d checked all of the bodies and was sure that there was nothing useful, he went and found Meliana. She was sifting through the wreckage of the most expensive looking carriage, the one that had been flipped. “Anything?” He asked.

  She looked up from her crouch in the back of the upside down caravan and shook her head. “Lots of papers. Nothing yet on who they were.” She had looked back down at the notes as she started talking, but then looked up at Cal again to ask, “they are all 'were' aren’t they?” she asked, sadly, sure of the answer. Cal, after all, hadn’t called out for help to save any lives. He nodded. He leaned against the opening in the caravan, but when it threatened to roll back over he stood up on his own. “Shame.” She sighed.

  “Yeah.” He agreed. “I’ve been putting anything we can hand over to Silverdale in the caravan closest to the road. I’ll hitch Melt to it and we can take it with us.”

  “Good call.” She agreed. “If I find anything here I’ll put it there. Feel free to get ready to go. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do here.”

  Cal nodded. “I’m going to look around the camp a bit more, see if I can figure out what or who did this. Might be helpful to someone.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Don’t bother burying them.” She said. “The smell of smoke will keep wild animals away for a couple of nights and the people in town can collect them tomorrow.”

  Cal stepped away without verbal or visible agreement, but he understood. They needed to get to Silverdale tonight and they wouldn’t be doing that if they spent the day burying bodies. It was all well and good giving the dead some dignity, but every day they wasted could cost more lives if this artefact got into the wrong hands. It could also cost Cal's own life if he didn't pay the circle in time.

  Having been on the road for so long it was easy to forget that they were on their way to, if not save the world, then at least protect a lot of people from a dangerous necromantic artefact.

  Walking back into the campsite he saw Kaila by one of the caravans nearest to the forest, looking at the arrows on the outside of the circle. He changed his direction and walked over to her.

  “What you got?” He asked, stepping over.

  She side stepped so that she wasn’t as close to him and so that he could see as she pointed to the arrows. “They’re hand made from bits of people and animal. Anything they could find that would do.” She said. “The hafts are parts of bone, like a leg or an arm thats been split into thin shafts. The fletching is hair and the arrowheads…” She reached one of the arrows near her and pulled it free. The head of the arrow was all the way inside the wood but she managed to dislodge it.

  “That’s a dragon scale.” Cal said, eyes widening in surprise and awe.

  “No. It’s a Drakokin scale.” She corrected him. "From a Drakokin's back. The one on the floor over there has a piece of beak or something."

  “So what does that mean?” Cal asked.

  “They’re not stupid beasts, whatever they are. They’re smart enough to make tools and weapons, rather than steal them.” She looked back up at Cal, though she didn’t make eye contact. “But they’re savage, not able to buy real gear. I would be willing to bet people have been going missing around here for a while, and this,” she held up the bone arrow, “is what happens to them.”

  Cal took the arrow from her, it was a strange thing emotionally. They had honed and polished the bone to the point that it could just as easily been a white twig. If she hadn’t told him, he would likely have had no idea, but knowing that it was a strip of a person’s bone made it feel wrong to touch. He looked up at Kaila briefly. Most people didn't like to touch things like bone. The remnants of people, but being a Necromancer, Cal supposed that bones didn't bother Kaila.

  He flipped the arrow over and looked at the nock, where it would balance against the string. The creatures had just taken a blade and hammered it, splitting the end and making it open. He flipped it again and eyed the arrow head. It looked perfectly normal except that it was made out of a person. He held the arrow up and ran his eyes over it. For a moment he didn’t think he was going to be able to learn anything but then his eyes stopped on the fletching. They widened in, if not fear then disgust, when he saw the blood that was used to stick it on. “Goblins.” He said decisively.

  Blood glue was a technique that only goblins used. Not because they were clever, it wasn’t a good adhesive, even a light pull tore half the hairs off of the arrows. They used it because it was all they had at their disposal. A mixture of their spit and the blood created the glue.

  The people here were lucky. Goblins were vicious creatures, they ate people and turned them into… He frowned as he looked at the arrow then back at the camp, which was littered with bodies. The men in armour that had fought to protect the caravan, down to the last man.

  Suddenly Cal’s frown deepened. Something was wrong. Why hadn’t they taken the bodies? And… why were all of the bodies armoured? Why were they all guards?

  He stepped back into the middle of the campsite as Meliana was stepping out of the upturned caravan carrying a handful of papers and flashing them in a ‘we found it’ sort of way.

  “Liana, convoys aren’t usually just just guards right?” Cal asked.

  “Not unless it’s a military convoy.” Meliana replied, she frowned and looked around. “But the wagons look like merchant caravans.”

  “There’s no Alliance military insignia anywhere, not on the caravans, not on the dead.” Cal agreed. “So where are the others?”

  “They were dragged off.” Kaila replied from a crouched position at the edge of the camp-site. She was running her hand over the grass. “I think. This isn’t my area, but these look like tracks? The grass is flattened here in a way it isn’t elsewhere”

  Cal stepped over and stood behind her, looking down at the place where Kaila motioned. “Yeah those are tracks from small two legged creatures - goblins.” He paused, looking around and his brow furrowed as he pointed. “That’s something bigger. You can see there where people were dragged.” He motioned around the area. “We should go after them.”

  “If we hurry-” Kaila was saying.

  “Hold on.” Meliana said, cutting Kaila off. “This isn’t our job, guys. We’re due in Silverdale. We’ll get there today and we can tell them what we learned. They’ll be able to come back better prepared.”

  Cal opened his mouth to object, but then closed it again. They really didn’t have any idea how many goblins were waiting for them, nor what that big thing was.

  “We have more than half a day’s travel time to get there.” Kaila said. “By the time we get there, tell them, make them believe us, they gear up and come back here everyone who was dragged off could be dead. They don’t have the time for us to-”

  “They’re probably dead already anyway.” Meliana snapped. “Goblins don’t leave people alive.”

  “Actually,” Cal said as Teth appeared behind Kaila and Cal on his patrol of the area. He paused to listen to the discussion. “Goblins do take living people back to their camps a lot of the time.” He motioned to Meliana, “Remember that time in West Stormweaver?”

  “Regardless, it’s not like we hurried over here, they’ve probably killed them by now, no reason for us to risk our necks for bodies.” Meliana replied.

  “The boss says we’re moving on, we’re moving on.” Teth called from his horse. “This ain’t our business. We don’t know them and we certainly don’t owe them.”

  “Liana…” Cal frowned. “These are people we’re talking about.”

  “Cal, I need you on my side here. It’s time to go.” Meliana said, a stern look on her face.

  Cal sighed and his eyes drifted from her face down to the floor, like a scolded child. It was then that he saw it. He walked over to Meliana. From her expression she had assumed that he was making a physical representation of his agreement by standing by her, but as soon as he reached her he bent over in front of her and picked something up from by her foot.

  He looked at it and then held it up, showing it to Meliana and she sighed in frustration.

  It was a small stuffed animal toy. It looked well worn, well loved, and it was dirty from being on the ground. “They have kids with them.” He said simply. “You don’t have to come, but I’m going to see if I can at least save the kids.”

  Cal took Meliana’s hand and placed the cuddly toy in it and then turned to leave. As he passed Kaila she fell in beside him - though at a reasonable level of distance for her comfort.

  Ahead of them Teth sat on his horse, he was frowning at them and had his hand on his sword. If Meliana said to stop them, he would have.

  Or… he would have tried at least.

  Cal started to wonder what she would do, but he didn’t need to wonder long. They barely got three meters before Meliana called out, “Fine!”

  Cal let out a quiet breath of relief that he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

  He turned back to face Meliana as she stomped over to them. “We do this but we do this under my rules. Understand?”

  “Explain.” Kaila said, stepping back as the older woman stepped into her personal space.

  “We go in quietly. We don’t get spotted and we see if there are any hostages. If there are none we leave. If there are some we make a decision on whether to rescue them based on whether or not we can defeat the goblins. Understood?”

  “If there’s a child there, I’m not going to leave it to die.” Cal replied.

  “And that’s a decision you can make again when we’re staring down a horde of goblins.” Meliana said. “Understood?”

  Cal considered for a long moment, but eventually he nodded. “Understood.”

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