B3Ch76-Hells edge (Patreon)

The third one slipped, and Harold caught it a hair before it came apart.

He was holding three braids of mana and trying to manipulate them. Three knots of mana spun out in the air off his open right hand, pacing him along Mors's shoulder as the big stallion climbed the switchback — one just holding its shape, one running a slow reaction pattern Balfiel had taught him that morning, one doing nothing at all but pulsing in a pattern. The point of the exercise was to get the braids of mana each doing different things, and it required him to learn how to split his attention in ways he had never learned. 

But damn, it was difficult.

He bore down on the threads, and they steadied, tightened, and the third one guttered out. He snatched his attention back to it and fed it, and the pattern he'd just fixed wobbled and began to fold.

"No," he said. "No, no—"

He flooded the failing one with mana and shoved it back into shape by force. And of course it worked. All three knots hung off his hand again, spinning, whole.

He held them for a count of four. Then Mors shifted under him to make the turn; his balance moved with the horse, and all three collapsed at once.

"You're muscling it, boy," Balfiel said.

The elf rode a length back on his off side; they had redistributed some of their hard-earned loot so he could ride one of the horses. He hadn't even looked over. He was watching the trail, silver hair tied back with twine and the owl feather in it turned by the wind, the long scar up his bare forearm out in the cold.

"I'm doing what you said to do," Harold said.

"You're holding one, and then another one, and then another one, very fast, and saying you’re doing three." He said it condescendingly. "A child spins one plate. You are running from plate to plate with your arms out, very proud that none of them have hit the floor yet."

Harold opened his hand and let the dead mana bleed off.

"So teach me the trick."

"There's no trick." Balfiel finally shifted his weight in the saddle. "You’re doing one thing with mind, and you do it well for a human. But higher alchemy is not just one thing done well. It is many, many things held at once, none of them allowed to slip, while a tenth thing you didn't plan for goes wrong. You cannot run between them fast enough. You have to become the kind of mind that can do multiple things at once. Until you can do that, everything I have left to teach you is closed. Shut."

Harold turned his hand over, thinking it through out loud.

"Saying I need to split my mind and actually doing it is almost impossible. There has to be a better way to teach me than just saying it. Split your mind." He spat back at the old elf. 

"Yes. Obviously yes." Balfiel replied with a smirk. 

"Are you going to tell me what it is?" He replied through gritted teeth. 

"Most of you humans build stack perks in order to gain access to the highest levels of craft. You cheat." He spat out. “We elves have to learn everything the hard way. The system hands us nothing.”

Harold said nothing. Balfiel, of course, was not finished.

"And you make it worse for yourself. That cauldron of yours." The contempt found a new edge. "The imbued one you have for stability doesn't teach you anything new."

"It's a good cauldron," he replied stubbornly.

"It's a crutch." He looked over now, and his eyes were flat and certain. "You have the mana needed to do it all yourself, Stray. That cauldron shows you how to limp. It will never teach you to run."

Harold let out a breath. "Fine," Harold said. "Again."

He opened his hand and started spinning knots.

From back down the line, not quite quiet enough:

"He's enjoying this," Elroy said.

"Obviously."

"Think he's always been this much of an arsehole?"

"He's an elf. They invented being an arsehole before we invented shoes."

Balfiel's head turned.

Jenkins immediately pointed at Elroy. "His idea."

"It was a joint observation."

"It came from your mouth."

Harold's third construct flickered and collapsed.

Balfiel sighed.

"Again."

Elroy winced. "See, that's cruelty."

Balfiel's eyes narrowed.

Jenkins nudged Elroy's boot with his own. "You've done enough training for both of us today."

His hand came up off his thigh, two fingers lifting, and a thread of mana peeled off him — black shot through with purple, and cracked down the trail with a sound like a snapped branch. It went past Harold, past the guard, and caught Elroy and Jenkins's horse square across the rump.

Their horse went from a walk to a dead bolt in a single stride, straight up the trail with them aboard— Elroy's whoop and Jenkins's shriek stretching out and doubling off the rock, the two of them hauling on the reins and getting nowhere. Corwin lost it completely. Carter laughed his easy laugh with one hand loose on his own reins, and even Jampa, silent the whole ride, let out a laugh freely.

Balfiel lowered his fingers, entirely composed.

"I don't suffer commentary," he said.

"Oh, I know," said Harold.

Mors flicked his ears at the bolting horse and gathered himself to give chase, and Harold nudged him to tell him no and gave him a piece of dried apple. The stallion subsided, aggrieved.

"Again," Balfiel said. "And hold the third one when your tower of a horse moves. The world doesn't wait for you to be ready."

Harold spun up three knots, and Mors carried him up the last of the switchback, and they came over the crest of the ridge.

The valley opened under them.

All three knots died off his hand at once, and he didn't notice.

Below him, filling a fold in the mountains that a season ago had held nothing but snow and stone, was a town. Walls of raw pale mountain rock, still going up in places, scaffolding stitched along the northern side. Smoke stood in a hundred straight lines in the cold still air. And spread out around it — dark against the thawing white, over the valley floor and the lower slopes and every flat foot of ground the walls didn't cover — an army.Harold sat there and let Mors breathe under him.

Dalen had marched a cohort up here in the fall, planted a settlement stone in the ground, and told his people to build a town. And more impressively, he had managed it. They'd cut the stone out of the peaks and stacked it into walls while the wind tried to peel them off the scaffolding. He had come a long way from his first few months here in Gravesend. 

The fires were roaring down there. Tents upon tents were in the valley. The hopes of the peninsula were in this little valley, and Lord Dalen had built it.

"Come on, boys," he said, and turned in the saddle to his circle strung out behind him on the trail. "Warm food and a bed after this. Maybe even real coffee and a drink."

Carter tried to answer, and a shiver took him instead, hard enough to rattle his teeth. He clamped it down and grinned through it. He'd gone gray under the road grime, and he wasn't the only one. Even with winter winding down, it was still brutal this far up into the blackjaws.

Getting here, they'd cleared two more death zones off the map and put down four named monsters. And an uncountable number of lesser monsters. The guard behind him was worn down past the bone from the constant riding and fighting. Balfiel rode like the cold didn’t bother him, but Balfiel was an elf and didn't count. Corwin hadn't made a joke in two days. That was how Harold knew.

"Real food," Jenkins repeated, reverent, like Harold had promised him a title.

"With warm blankets," Elroy whispered excitedly back to him.

Harold turned back to the valley and looked at the army.

It filled the flat ground and climbed the lower slopes. A hundred thousand men, near enough, staged and waiting on the campaign north, and this was only the part he could see. Thousands more sat at three other points along the range, because they all wouldn't fit here.

He looked down at the army and the part of himself that was worried it wouldn't happen loosened a little. He had done it. With this army he could forge an unassailable stronghold of humanity. Destroy the city that inhabited this range and all the rewards that doing that would earn him. But more importantly, cast back the Velthari that were now assembling their own army to attack them.

Kind of small, though. All of it, against what was coming.

He set the thought down.

Because for all of it — the town, the army, the war he'd been building toward since he woke up the second time to a text about Path of Exile — there was really only one thing in his head, and it was standing somewhere down there behind those scarred walls.

Sarah was in that town.

He hadn't laid eyes on his sister in months. She'd been up here since the summer helping him prepare for this operation. He had gotten messages on the forum from here. But it wasn’t the same as seeing her.

"Let's go," Harold said, and touched Mors on the shoulder.

The stallion went off the crest and down the switchback at a flat gallop.

Behind him the trail came apart into shouting — Carter's bark, Ren swearing, the scramble of tired horses. Mors ate the switchback in long reaching strides, hooves throwing wet snow, mana coming up off him in a haze that shivered the air, and he pulled away from every other animal on the trail like they were standing still. He wanted to get down there, and the horse and the man wanted the exact same thing. He leaned into it and gave the monster his head and let the rest of them curse and chase.

They came off the last of the trail onto the repaired road, and the gate of the town stood open ahead, and a soldier stepped out to meet him.

Harold brought Mors down to a walk, which the stallion resented, and stopped him a few strides short.

The man waiting for him was a centurion, and he looked about as rugged as they came. He squared up, eyes already examining him. He snapped a sharp salute.

"Count Harold." His voice was a rasp worn down to gravel. "We were told to expect you."

Then the corner of his mouth pulled into something that on a less tired face might have been a grin.

"Welcome to Hell's Edge."

Harold tilted his head, confused.

The centurion saw it, and a short, rough sound came out of him that was almost a laugh. "Not on any map, sir. Some of the lesser enlisted, sorry Sir, lower enlisted started calling it that, first bad month up here. Wasn't official, far as I know. Suppose you’d know better." He shrugged. "Stuck, though. Even the quartermaster writes it now."

Then the humor went out of him, and he looked him in the eye as he spoke.

"It's been rough up here, Count. We're glad to see you."

Harold looked past him at the town while his guard finally caught up, blowing and cursing, Carter reining in hard at his shoulder.

The walls were scarred along the whole thing. They were scorched, and the pale seams where breaches had been packed back in with fresh stone, and above the gate two towers stood that were plainly newer than the wall they built into, the second one newer than the first. They'd lost those towers and built them, lost them and built them again. Even the road under Mors's feet was fresh, graded and packed in the last few weeks, over ground that had clearly been torn to mud more than once.

Harold swung down out of the saddle. He handed Mors's rein to Corwin without looking, stepped up to the centurion, and put out his hand.

The man took it. Harold gripped it, held on, and looked the soldier in the face. "You'll have to tell me about it properly over drinks tonight," Harold said. "I want your honest assessment of this posting, not the report version. I knew it was rough coming up. But you know how us lords are." He let one side of his mouth go. "We do like to understate it to the people we answer to."

He winked at the man and the centurion stared at him for half a second like he understood the words but not what they actually meant. Then a startled bark of a laugh cracked out of him, and he shook his head and kept shaking.

"Aye, sir. Drinks. I think by now we have all heard of your famous brews."

Up close Harold could see the scar. It came down the man's face from the hairline, through the temple, past the corner of the eye — an ugly runneled seam that had never healed right, the flesh drawn and shiny. Harold knew that mark. Not a blade and not a burn. A handful of poisons and two or three acids around here that lingered long enough that a healing potion couldn't fix it. 

They'd had a harder time of it up here than the reports had said. He understood that "rough" had been the man being polite.

The centurion let go of his hand and straightened, and something apologetic came into the set of his shoulders.

"One thing before you go in, Count. Regulations." He grimaced. "I have to test you as well. No rank exempted — orders are specifically no rank exempted."

He reached to his belt and brought out a flat wooden case, worn at the corners, and opened it against his forearm.

"The reports are thin, sir. On purpose." The centurion handed him a bar of cold iron to grasp and studied his eyes for a long two count. "You don't want half of it on paper. Needless to say, this has not been a boring assignment."

That was when the soldier behind the centurion's shoulder broke.

"We had those fae show up looking for you, sir." It came out of him in a rush, a young man with the fresh-scrubbed look. "Real fae. And real scary looking too."

Harold's head came around.

"Fae?" He forgot the mercury and looked at the man. "Looking for me?"

The centurion shot the soldier a look that should have dropped him through the road. But Harold lifted a hand off his hip and waved the man on. "No — go. Keep going."

The soldier gulped past the glare and went.

"Just walked up out of the tree line one morning, sir. Handful of them. Wearing blood-red helms like they'd been dipped in blood. Scary. Right scary. Didn't say a word, didn't give a name, and when we brought out the iron for the test—" he swallowed again "—they wouldn't touch it. Flat refused. Wouldn't speak to a living soul at this gate. We had spears up. It was about to go badly." He glanced at his centurion and pushed on anyway. "Then your Lord Sister came down. Lady Sarah. And the second she showed, they went quiet as lambs and fell in around her. Been standing guard over her ever since. Won't let a soul near her they don't like the look of. They stand over her at all times."

Harold understood before the man finished.

They must be Redcaps. The ones Lady Iris of the Winter Court had pressed on him — they must be under a glamour. They'd come for him but had attached themselves to the nearest Calder they could find. A laugh came up out of him before he could stop it.

"They're guarding her," he said, half to himself. Sarah, who chafed at anyone who tried to put a wall around her. "God. I'd have loved to see her face when that happened."

The soldier blinked, plainly having expected the Count to be more alarmed that murderous fae had walked up to his gate.

"They're mine," Harold told him. "On loan. It’s fine if they don't touch the iron, don't thank them for anything, and let them do exactly what they're doing. My sister's in the safest room in this valley." He was still grinning. "Which is why it's funny."

The centurion let out a breath that was almost a laugh of his own, and the tension went out of the gate detail all at once. He closed the wooden case.

"You pass, sir," he said. "Obviously."

Harold left Mors with Corwin — the stallion swung his head after him, aggrieved to be handed off twice in one morning — and stepped forward to bring his people in through the gate. Carter came up off his own horse groaning. Balfiel dismounted like the ride didn’t bother him. Jampa was still working his way down off the horse at the back, both hands full of mane.

Harold stopped level with the gate soldiers as he passed and told them plainly, "Keep up the good work. All of you. A reward for this posting's been arranged — for what you've held up here, not for standing pretty at a gate." He didn't slow much. "You've earned it."

The men lit up and didn't bother to hide it, and got back to their posts openly pleased, one of them elbowing the boy who'd talked.

The centurion put his hand out again.

Harold took it, and the man held on, and said it low, so it stayed between the two of them.

"Thank you, sir."

"For what?" Harold said honestly, and turned around. "I haven't done anything but ride in and let you poke me."

The centurion snorted. "The fact that you don't even know what you've done says everything I need to know about you, Count." He let the hand go and straightened, and the tiredness settled back over him. "We've got your back. Yours and Lord Dalen's. Every man here."

Then he went back to his post and left Harold standing there chewing on it, not at all sure what he'd done.

Balfiel came up at his shoulder, reins looped in one hand, and saw the look on him before Harold could turn away.

"Don't stand there looking lost, boy. It's plain enough." The elf's mouth barely moved. "The men worship the ground you walk on."

"I haven’t done anything, though."

Balfiel snorted. "Now that I have linked back up with my contacts, I have learned what you have done since getting back here. Your reputation precedes you." Balfiel walked on through the gate without waiting.

Jampa caught up to Harold's other side, slower, and stopped a step inside the wall to take the town in. He had that still, listening face he got, the one that had nothing to do with his ears.

"These people wear their hearts on the outside," Jampa said quietly. "Everything they feel, it is right there on the skin. It is easy to read a place like this." He was silent a moment, feeling for the rest of it, his hands coming apart and folding together again. "There has been great pain here. A great deal of it."

He paused, and his head tilted, as if the second thing surprised him more than the first.

"But also great happiness."

Harold walked into Hell's Edge.Something came out from between two buildings at a dead sprint — a small blur, low and fast, aimed at him like a titan missile. Harold had half a moment to see it before it knocked the wind out of him.

Mira. She slammed into his chest hard enough that the Thresher King plate groaned around him, both arms clamping onto him.

"Mr. Harold! OMGOMG. You're here!"

"Hi, Mira." He groaned in a greeting.

Over her head, Jace was coming across the ground behind her at a walk, hands loose, watching Harold with an exasperated smile.

"Is Jace going to stab me," Harold said, "if you keep hugging me?"

"Depends how long you hug back," Jace said.

Mira let go and bounced back a step, hands pressed together in front of her, practically buzzing. "No! Well. Maybe.” She shrugged happily. “Okay, okay, okay — I know Sarah's been sending you updates, I know, but there is so much we have to tell you, there's — you don't even — there's a mountain of stuff, and half of it isn't in any report because how would you even write it down! And okay, I'll wait, I'll wait." She took a breath she clearly did not want to take. "But there's a lot."

"I gathered," Harold said, laughing at her obvious excitement. It was a welcome change of pace. People were rarely that open these days.

He stepped past her to Jace and put out his hand.

Jace took it. Gripped hard, held it, and didn't shake right off. He looked Harold in the face a beat longer than a handshake needed.

"Sarah would never admit this," Jace said. "Not in a hundred years. But getting sent up here's been the best and the worst thing that ever happened to us." He shook once, firmly. "Thank you. For sending us." He glanced towards to Mira with a soft smile before looking back at him.

He could tell he meant it. 

Harold looked him over properly while he had the excuse. Jace was worn thin. There were lines in his face that weren’t there before. He looked older than the months could account for. But the knife on his belt was new, and obviously system-made. The cloak on his shoulders was heavy winter wool, but also system-made.

They'd earned things that weren't easy to come by. It was the right call, sending them. Even if it had grown them up faster than he'd have wanted. Gravensend was not an easy place.

"They've been feeding you, at least," Harold said, and let the hand go.

Behind him Mira made a sound — a sharp gasp, then a hiss of pure delight.

"Oh, my god." She'd gone still and then all the way un-still, staring past his shoulder. "Are you — are you an ELF?"

Balfiel stood at Harold's flank, reins still looped in one hand. He did not look at her.

"Go away," he said.

Mira did not go away. "You ARE. You've got the long ears!"

Harold left them to it and looked past the whole business, out across the town, and found Lord Dalen.

Dalen was coming toward him at a near-jog, cloak flaring. He had obviously been told the second the Count arrived at the gate and had dropped whatever he was doing to get here. That part was fine. That part Harold was glad of.

What came behind Dalen was the part he didnt want. Lords. And a whole hell of a lot of them. Sixty of them or near enough, closing on him from three sides at once.

He'd come up here for his sister and his army. Not to hold court with nobles before he'd had so much as a cup of coffee.

Balfiel followed his look, took in the incoming tide, and made a low sound in his throat.

"Now you understand," he said, "why I stopped dealing with those fools in Ism Thalor."

He was already turning. Jampa had already turned — the monk had found, across the square, a low building with a painted sign over the door and warmth spilling out of it, very obviously a pub, and was walking toward it with more purpose than Harold had seen out of him in a week. Balfiel fell in beside him.

"You're leaving me," Harold asked, panicked.

"Your mess to deal with, boy," Balfiel said, and didn't look back.

They cut between two lords who didn't register them and made for the pub door like a pair of loosed arrows.

Harold's guard were already moving up. Carter settled in at his shoulder, Corwin and Ren closing the loose ring at his flanks the way they did without being told, boxing him for the crowd. Mira dropped in on his other side without being asked either, bright-eyed and delighted, plainly under the impression this was going to be fun.

Carter looked at the sixty lords bearing down. Then at the two backs disappearing into the pub. Then at Harold.

"Want me to have a drink sent out to you?" Carter said.

"Two," Harold said, and squared up to meet Lord Dalen and the sixty men behind him.