Just Cause Draft 01 CH 15 (Patreon)

The team of scouts met Michael’s contubernium, along with the other two Granius had insisted he take, two weeks after leaving Novus Roma; which put them two-third of the way to Rockland.

The praetor had wanted Michael to take a full centuria, since they could be going up against more than a hundred beastkin. Michael refused, because he was already uncomfortable enough leading one contubernium. He didn’t want nine more, but the reason he gave was the need for speed. A centuria needed to travel with an entourage of support personnel. It meant carts, putting up and taking down the camp.

One contubernium could move quickly, hunt for their food, live off the land for the duration, be up with the sun, and push past its setting if needed. When they found the beastkins, they’d create a strategy that took advantage of their low numbers against their large ones. Michael had read enough about guerrilla warfare he thought he could manage something if his strength and skill wasn’t enough to put the odds in their favor.

He won the discussion, but Gravius assigned him two contubernium of veterans; men and women who not only had seen combat, but had extensive survival experience, plus Astair to help them deal with any injuries from the fighting.

With the scouts, it put twenty-eight men under his command, with no one for him to report to and get orders. Michael had kept two panic attacks at bay by felling two trees with his fists, which earned him odd looks when he returned from those two ventures in the forest, but no comments. After the battle with the Gnolls, Michael’s status as a hero capable of performing feats beyond the average legionnaire was well known.

* * * * *

Rockland was no more.

The town had been a hundred buildings large, mostly houses, with farms in the surrounding area. Made of a combination of fieldstones and lumber. No one was left intact. Fires that had burned had died days before Michael and his group arrived, leaving only the smell of charred wood and flesh on the air.

The bodies.

It sickened Michael to see them left to rot where they’d fallen, claw and bite marks on them, some clearly chewed on. While the scouts looked for when the beastkins had gone to, Michael and the others gathered the bodies and burned them. They stood silent vigil. Since none of them had known the people here, they had nothing to say for them.

The scouts returned as the sun touched the horizon with a direction, a trail a week old. Michael picked a building at the edge of the town with three intact walls for them to make camp in for the night.

He watched the ambers of the biers burn out, trying to understand what kind of creature could do this to such a place. And if it was that Outlander, why not come for him directly?

* * * * *

The scream woke him, and he had his sword in hand before it registered he was awake. Joran, Dervel, and Lierin were also awake. Another scream in the opposite direction, accompanied by sounds of animals snarling, woke the others.

Michael ran toward the sound, cursing himself for his carelessness. Of course beastkin had remained behind. They were crafty enough to know someone would come to check on the town, and that meant more people for them to kill. And Michael had only arranged a guard of six around the camp.

He came on the group, six beastkin feasting on the legionnaire’s body. With a scream of his own Michael fell on them, cutting, punching, and kicking. Breaking bones, severing limbs, ending lives.

As he panted over the bodies, rage more than exhaustion, sounds of fighting reached him. By the time he reached them, it was over. Twenty beastkin dead, and four legionnaires. The sentry had been surprised; the beastkins had numbers on each of them. Maybe they’d hoped to be quiet enough to get into the camp before anyone realized they were there. Maybe they’d just wanted to kill whoever was within reach.

It didn’t matter. Michael had lost four of his legionnaires.

They piled the beastkin together to burn them, and built biers for their fallen comrades. No one slept for the rest of that night.

* * * * *

Four days later, the trail led them to more bodies. A small group of travelers. Merchants in clothing Lierin identified as Ethiarian; a small society of artisans to the east of Cosconius, months away by horse-pulled cart. The animals used to pull the two carts were missing, and Michael understood when Batia showed him the harness. Beastkins had pulled the carts.

They burned more bodies.

* * * * *

The next ambush came three days later, as the trail followed a river. Rough spears caught Joran and two others before they were aware of the attack, then the ten beastkin were dispatched quickly. No legionnaire died.

* * * * *

Three more days and the trail vanished. They’d were now traveling more north than east, and the grass and soft earth had made it easy to follow the trails. It took them a full day of backtracking to find the hidden trail.

* * * * *

They caught up to a group of fifteen beastkins four days later, and Michael knew they were being misdirected again. The beastkins had harness attached to lumber they could pull, giving the impression that the grass was being trampled by a larger group.

Michael managed to take a captive, a large bear beastkin, in the hopes of getting some information, but all it did was snarl, roar, and bite anytime he came close. He finally put it down and added the body to the fire.

* * * * *

Michael looked at the rough map he’d drawn. He’d found he had an easier time keeping track of where he was in relation to Novus Roma and the other reference points he knew of, as well as tracing where he’d traveled to from memory. His drawing skills still weren’t worth anything.

“Any luck?” He asked Joran when the legionnaire sat next to him.

“No. The scouts aren’t sure where this false trail started. We may have to backtrack for weeks.”

Michael tapped a point on his make. “There’s an outpost there. I think it’s about three days from here. Do you think they’d know if the beastkin have been around here?”

“They might. They have to report any group of creatures. We’re far enough from Rockland it’s possible they weren’t instructed to be on the lookout for a large group of beastkin.”

“If it’s still large. If we say they were a hundred of them at the start, they left twenty or so at Rockland for that ambush. We have fifteen here. There were what, a dozen at the river? That brings down their numbers to half. At this point I think we can agree they’re cunning enough to know not to travel in a large group, considering they misled us, to here.”

“Then what do you hope to accomplish by going to the outpost?”

“Not returning to Granius empty-handed,” Michael replied dejectedly. “Where are they going?”

“Animals might lead a hunter away from a den.”

“Okay, so that’s what this group was doing, what’s their goal, the overall one?”

“I don’t know you that they think that way,” Joran said.

“They have too. Even animals have drives. Eating, safety, shelter. The main group has to have a goal, something they want. I wish I’d thought to check if Rockland had beastkins.”

“They did. Every village and town will have them.”

“Maybe that’s what we’re being led away from. Other attacks on towns. The merchants had beastkins, and they weren’t among the bodies.”

“They took in their own kind?”

“Except they aren’t, right? Beastkins are clannish. Only associate with others when they don’t have a choice. That’s what I was told. We’ve seen bears, wolves, foxes, a few beavers, squirrels, rats, and others. What’s getting them to work together?”

“You’re thinking the Outlander?”

“Except they’re clearly rescuing some of the beastkins they come across. I don’t think she’d bother with that, or let them waste the time.”

“You may be overthinking this, Michael.”

“Maybe. I just can’t help feeling like there’s something we’re missing.” He rested his hand against the tree. “I just wish someone would hand me the script so I can look ahead and figure out what I have to do.”

“Script?”

Michael shook his head. “Never mind. When the scouts come back, we’ll head to the outpost. If nothing else, having food prepared by cooks and cots will do us good. If they have nothing, we’re no worse off than now.”

* * * * *

The outpost tower came into view three days later, and the leader, a stocky man with a beard going down to the middle of his chest. Nowhere near acceptable for a legionnaire, but Michael’s own beard was unkempt by then and longer than he liked.

While the others washed, ate, and slept, Michael and the outpost leader went over the reports. There had been reports of beastkin going missing from the closest villages, and patrols had noticed more animal trails than usual, but there hadn’t been anything about them out of the ordinary.

Two of the patrols had noted the trail went southwest, and with nothing else to go on, Michael tracked down the other patrols to see if they remembered anything else, two others thought they went in a westerly direction, the others didn’t remember.

Michael dearly wanted radio communication so he could call the closest outposts and find out if they had similar disappearances. He needed data.

Or he could go with a hunch. Four trails heading westerly. If he could locate one, it might lead him to the beastkins; or it could just be a migration trail and he’d waste his time.

He was spinning his wheel. He could spend the rest of his life convincing himself not to do anything. He grabbed one of the scouts and went looking for one of the trails.

The scout found it, based on more information than he’d gotten from the patrols. The trail was a few days old, skirting the usual patrol routes. It looked like a trail with hooves marks in the soil. He’d convince himself he was wasting his time when the scout pointed out that those who had made the trail walked on two legs, and that the hooves did their best to hide the marks of claws.

It confirmed it was a mixed group that had made the trail, and that meant beastkin.

Now Micheal just hoped it was the beastkins he was after and not some other group who had nothing to do with what was happening