The first in a series of minor disasters was that the Cackle had promptly abandoned them.
In truth, it was hardly unexpected; after all, with the Hyena dead—slain by Gallant Stonehand himself—the mercenaries she commanded were bound to rethink their loyalty to a contract growing riskier by the day.
Still, it was a bitter disappointment that they hadn’t even agreed to escort the refugees to a safe destination before slipping away.
Taelsin had done his best, negotiating late into the night for any extension of their terms, any slight consideration for those they left behind. But on the second morning of their desperate flight from Swinford, the camp awoke to find the Cackle gone, not a trace left behind but the empty spaces they’d once occupied, their loyalty as fleeting as smoke.
Unfortunately, that was merely the first—although perhaps the most organised—of the desertions that plagued them in the weeks that followed.
At first, it was just one or two of Souit’s men slipping away under cover of darkness, their absence noticed only at dawn. Given the battering the King’s Army had taken—both in attacking and then defending Swinford—it was hardly surprising that morale was in tatters.
Loyalty to the Crown was strained, especially as each soldier faced the bitter irony of their mission. Even among those who still held faith with their General, it was difficult to square their original orders with the current reality: they had, after all, not been sent into the West to escort a ragged line of rebels to the safety of another rebel city.
The sense of purpose that had once bound them together had frayed to the barest thread, leaving little more than the primal instinct for self-preservation. A few deserters here, a handful there. And then, almost before anyone fully grasped the scale of it, entire companies began slipping away, disappearing under cover of night or simply blending into the towns they passed.
General Souit, bitterly aware of the irony, could hardly blame them. The mission they’d set out on—to bring stability to the West in the name of the Crown—had morphed into a directionless march alongside rebels they were now expected to protect.
And so, much to Donal’s chagrin, Souit had done the one thing that truly signalled the end: he switched off the Skills that had kept his men compelled to serve, freeing them to leave if they so wished.
He watched them go, powerless, knowing his duty had twisted into something none of them had ever signed up for.
At which stage, the slow bleed became a gushing wound.
It hardly needs saying that the desertion of so many of their protectors did precious little to reassure the refugees of their safety on the Road. The trauma of Swinford’s siege and the brutal expulsion that followed had already scarred them deeply, leaving them wary and desperate.
And each time the ring of mail and swords surrounding them grew smaller, the flicker of faith in Mayor Elm—the man who had once rallied them so fiercely—flickered lower still. "What's he even the Mayor of now, anyway?" some muttered darkly, watching the soldiers vanish into the night.
The irony was almost cruel: the very people they had risked so much to follow were now abandoning them.
And to make matters worse, the first few settlements they approached turned them away, slamming shut their gates and leaving them stranded on the Road. Each refusal only deepened the bitter truth—these people had left everything behind for a cause that now seemed to be leaving them behind.
“You can hardly blame them,” Donal had said. “Firstly, the West is in open rebellion against the King. And who are we dragging along in our merry band? What’s that? A goodly remnant of the King’s Army? A garrison or two of soldiers fresh off the siege, no less? Why, how delightful—certainly no cause for alarm there.”
He gestured toward the haggard mass of civilians trailing behind, their faces drawn. “Secondly, what’s the last thing any well-established town wants on its doorstep in times like these? Oh yes, that’s right: a veritable parade of penniless refugees. And here we are, presenting a grand buffet of mouths to feed, just begging to empty out their warehouses and stretch their resources to breaking point.”
Donal's tone turned even drier. “And thirdly, let’s not forget the tales swirling around about Stonehand’s mercenaries and their... unique approach to diplomacy. Word of their handiwork has spread far and wide. What Council in their right mind is going to throw open their gates and invite that kind of doom right down on their heads just by extending us a bit of ‘hospitality’?”
Taelsin hadn’t replied to his friend’s commentary, choosing instead to fix his gaze on the locked gates of Apforth. His message had gone unanswered; the town’s ruler hadn’t even extended the courtesy of a formal refusal.
Just silence, as though Taelsin and his people were little more than a distant rumour—or a nuisance best ignored.
“We could take the gate?” Degralk had reluctantly offered. “I doubt they’d be expecting us to storm the walls. Probably wouldn’t need more than a couple of companies?” He had glanced at Souit for approval but if the Great General had any thoughts about such a venture, he kept them to himself.
Degralk privately feared that the drawn-out siege of Swinford and his subsequent humbling at the hands of the Stonehand had thoroughly broken General Souit. He sincerely hoped he was wrong in that. The Major feared they would need that man’s brilliance in the days and weeks to come.
“Lady Darkhelm, what do you think?” Taelsin turned to the Knight of the Road – no, he reminded himself, she had evolved her Class recently, hadn’t she? Templar Ascendant – to seek her counsel. “Should we be seeking to gain access to this town by force?”
Daine was already shaking her head. “We need the help of friends, Mayor Elm. I have never put much store in support that is offered down the length of a blade. Besides,” she continued, “would you welcome us with open arms with the storm we drag behind us?”
Taelsin did not have much to say against that.
They’d lingered on the Road outside Apforth for three long days, each passing hour thickening the silence from behind those walls until it became a weapon in itself.
That silence gnawed at them, chipping away at what little unity remained among Swinford’s refugees. Every muttered complaint, every restless shuffle seemed amplified in the absence of a response, until the walls of Apforth might as well have been an impassable canyon.
The fragile threads holding them together began to unravel, strained more by this indifference than by any tangible threat.
The same thing was repeated outside the gates of Whitechurch, Oakfall, and even Stourton. The last particularly hurt Taelsin, as he had considered Mayor Gilmer a close friend.
“It takes an unusual man to step in front of his fellow when he is charged by a boar,” Donal had said, as he and Taelsin had awaited any sign their approach had been acknowledge. “I fear Karl Gilmer is all too normal in that regard.”
As the dwindling column wound its weary way through the West—rebuffed, ignored, and dismissed at every settlement where they sought even a brief respite—the strain of the journey began to splinter their ranks.
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Civilians with family or the faintest connection in nearby towns peeled away, one by one, leaving the column a little sparser each day.
Taelsin watched them go, a grim resignation settling in his bones. Soon, he realised, there would be fewer than five hundred men, women, and children left under his banner—a shadow of the community he had once led. The proud hope of Swinford reduced to a handful of souls clinging to a fading cause.
And then the banditry began.
Considering one of the new Skills Donal had acquired after yet another Class switch was
“It’s a passive Skill,” Donal had explained with a touch too much pride, “that essentially renders me—and anyone in my vicinity—completely invisible to any conventional tracking methods. Scales with Willpower, naturally, which—need I remind anyone?—is rather vast in my case.”
“So, it’s just a coincidence they’re sticking to our tails then?”
“Not at all, my lord,” he had replied to Taelsin’s question. “I’m just pointing out that they’re not following us by any traditional method – physical or magical.”
“What is your man getting at?” rumbled General Souit.
It had been so long since he’d spoken up at one of their meetings that, for a moment, the rest of them simply blinked, struggling to adjust to this unexpected shift. It took them a beat to fully register the sound of his voice, as though they were recalibrating to accommodate this new development.
Daine was the first to respond: “We think that someone amongst our number is liaising with them. Keeping them apprised of our movements. There might even be those who have abandoned our cause riding with them.”
“They are certainly particularly well-equipped bandits for this part of the world. Some may say almost royally provisioned.” Donal chimed in, somewhat unhelpfully to the overall mood.
Souit coloured at the implication there were deserters from his army now preying on the margins of the refugee column. He grumbled under his breath and reached for his glass of wine. All eyes fixed on him to see if there was anything more to be said.
It did not appear that this was the case.
“What do you suggest we do about it?” Taelsin was feeling ground down by the weight of expectations upon him. It had been hard enough to lead his people through the secession crisis and the subsequent destruction of the City his family had stewarded for decades.
He was finding this rootless passage from barred door to barred door to be peculiarly dispiriting.
Once upon a time—was it truly only last year?—he had been quietly celebrated as the Saviour of the West, his name whispered with reverence, high hopes pinned upon his shoulders in every town he passed.
Now, he couldn’t even secure a night’s shelter in a stable for the remnants of his weary, dwindling people.
Donal needed no further encouragement to launch into his plan. “Well, we do seem to be rather short on Mages, don’t we? Otherwise, a few fireballs lobbed in that direction would surely be appreciated. I could, of course, change Class yet again,” he said, with a theatrical sigh, “but I can’t help but worry that our plucky little group is becoming rather dependent on my brilliance. Perhaps it’s time someone else stepped up and took on a bit of the heavy lifting. Good for me to conserve my Mana pool, you see. I’m sure you catch my drift.”
The Lady Darkhelm had sighed as she pulled herself upright, buckling her sword to her waist. “I’m not going to be getting much sleep in the near future, am I?”
*
Daine had been dealing with bandits for most of her adult life.
As a Knight of the Road, she’d been charged with keeping the peace in the West, and—lacking dragons, orcs, goblins, or liches to contend with—the bulk of her time had been spent dealing with men like these.
Men who had left the law far behind, who thrived on the fringes of order, preying on the vulnerable and mocking justice. She knew their kind well; they were her quarry, as constant as the Road itself.
However, this was an unusual situation when, rather than playing the role of the predator, she was the prey.
Well, no, that was not exactly true. The bandits that sniped around the refugee column were certainly not seeking to cross swords with the legendary Darkhelm. There were far easier pickings to be had than engaging a Templar Ascendant in full mail.
And that was proving to be Daine’s challenge.
There were twenty to thirty bandits at least, and none of them showed the slightest interest in engaging her directly. Wherever she stood, that part of the column became an untouchable sanctuary, wholly safe so long as she remained nearby.
Yet, with an almost preternatural precision, the bandits managed to time and position their attacks to strike the areas she couldn’t reach in time. It was as if they knew exactly where her limits lay, slipping in and out like shadows, always just beyond her grasp.
General Souit’s remaining forces, ably supported by Donal, managed to contain the damage from the raids, keeping most of the losses to a minimum. Yet, the relentless assaults wore down the column in other, less tangible ways.
Supplies dwindled, vital equipment vanished into bandit hands, and—more corrosive than all of that—their peace of mind frayed with each attack. The constant threat gnawed at their unity, eroding what little coherence remained in the column, turning their march into a tense, haunted trek.
In the ten relentless days and nights that the bandits had circled them like flies around a rotting carcass, only one encounter had offered Daine any real satisfaction. It had come in the dead of night, when she stumbled upon one of them skulking alone in the woods. The look of surprise, swiftly replaced by terror, had been a rare and gratifying sight amidst the otherwise ceaseless harassment.
But even that had raised more questions than it had answered.
Daine had been moving through the dense undergrowth, every step measured, searching as quietly as she could for any trace of the bandits’ camp. Suddenly, without a sound or warning, a tall, gaunt figure materialised before her, cloaked in dark robes that seemed to blend with the night, a gnarled staff clutched in one bony hand. She stopped dead, every muscle tensing, as a whisper from the Goddess brushed against her mind—a warning, cold and sharp, of imminent danger.
There had been no conversation. There hadn’t been time. Before she could even register the threat—despite all the Speed and Agility her new Class afforded her—the man drove his staff into the earth. The ground shuddered, a tremor rippling through the forest, and within seconds dark, writhing tendrils burst from the soil, slithering toward her like hungry serpents.
Shadows twisted around her feet, each one pulsing with a life of its own, as if the forest itself were closing in.
Daine had stepped back, her boots grinding into the forest floor, and drew her sword, slicing cleanly through the nearest tendril as it coiled toward her, leaving a faint, oily mist in its wake.
Her attacker muttered an incantation that sounded like earth cracking under strain, his staff flaring with a poisonous light. In an instant, the writhing tendrils shifted, reshaping themselves into shadow wolves, each with hollow eyes burning with an unnatural glow.
The pack lunged, their fangs gleaming like shards of broken bone in the dim light.
Daine spun, her blade severing one of the wolves in a single, motion. The creature collapsed, dissipating into tendrils of mist that swirled around her feet. Another wolf latched onto her arm, its teeth sinking into her flesh with an iron grip. She drove her elbow hard into its snout, feeling the force reverberate through her arm, and the beast crumbled back into darkness, a cloud of foul mist curling around her as it vanished.
However, when Daine turned her blade toward the dark, gaunt figure, her sword struck an invisible barrier with a force that jolted her, the impact ringing out like steel against stone. She had poured all her Strength into that strike, yet the barrier held, shimmering faintly, mocking her efforts.
The bandit’s eyes widened in startled disbelief as he watched the barrier crack beneath her assault. Recovering quickly, he thrust his staff forward, and a searing blast of black energy erupted from its tip, hurtling toward Daine’s chest. She twisted just in time, the energy skimming her side and scorching through her tunic, leaving a trail of blistering heat in its wake. The pain was sharp, biting deep—but she didn’t falter.
One of the true benefits of her Class was its near immunity to magery, a resilience woven into all aspects of her being. She pushed forward knowing that his spells, no matter how vicious, were little more than sparks against stone as far she was concerned.
With a fierce yell, Daine shattered the barrier, her sword cleaving through the air and finding its mark in the mage’s chest. The dying man gasped, his eyes widening in stunned horror as the blade plunged deep. He staggered back, clutching the wound with trembling hands, dark blood seeping between his fingers as the black glow of his staff flickered and waned, dimming to a lifeless ember.
Daine stepped back, breathing hard, blood trickling from the bite on her arm and the burn on her side. She kept her sword ready, eyes locked on the wounded man.
But then his dying form shimmered, dissolving into blackness, leaving behind the echo of his pained scream. Daine watched until the last wisp of darkness faded, then sheathed her sword and returned to the column.
She only told Donal what had occurred.
Both agreed it was, to say the least, unusual—if not outright troubling—for bandits to wield that kind of power. The implications hung between them, but they chose to keep their theories to themselves.
Taelsin, after all, had enough burdens on his shoulders without the added weight of dark magic creeping into their path. No, they’d hold this knowledge for now, each quietly aware that whatever was going on went far beyond mere banditry.
However, after that, the frequency of the attacks had dropped, but the horsemen continued to dog their steps across the plains.
It was the end of that week they had first seen the Bloodspires on the horizon.