B6 Chapter 656: Crossing the Border (Patreon)

Standing on the nose of the Pegleg, Kaius bit into his sandwich as the wind rushed through his hair. Both the crust and the lettuce were perfectly crisp, and the garlic sauce he’d whipped up was just perfect to avoid overpowering the poultry. He’d been worried about that one. The problem with eating random beasts that had the misfortune to cross their paths just before mealtime was that he was never quite sure how they would taste.

Even if it had looked mostly like a pheasant, the thing had smouldering feathers and came up to his waist.

He took another bite, scanning the brown and withered forest that surrounded them. Distantly, he heard a beast bellow — some sort of grazer, by the timbre of it. Ahead of them, their path wound between and up the hills that dotted the border region of Franlen and Greenseed. This far from a settlement, the road was more like a stretch of beaten flat trail than a proper cobbled thing, and everything was coated in a heavy blanket of brown leaf-litter. Only scattered evergreen brush to keep it from feeling like nature’s graveyard. Ahead of them, the hills grew taller and more numerous, though they never quite grew into true mountains. 

They’d been heading east for over a week now, pushing the Pegleg as hard as she could go. It might not have been quite as fast as some mounts could sprint, but it never had to stop, and they’d been journeying right through the night. That gave them an almost unassailable advantage. 

Unfortunately, the first leg of their journey had seen them backtracking towards Vainblood again — though they’d diverted course once they’d through the pass. It had been visible from atop the hills a few days ago, a malignant bleed that leaked across the southern horizon.

Now, it was only a few more hours until they hit the border crossing. That meant route planning. They’d left Baanswell in a hurry, and they’d had plenty to discuss until now — namely, what other odds and ends they might need before reaching the greater gate, and how many hours they could add to their journey in an effort to see a little of the country on their way through.

Finishing his last bite, Kaius enjoyed the fresh breeze for a few moments longer, before he made his way below decks.

“There you are!” Ianmus said, standing next to their sprawling map-table. 

He and Kenva were clustered around the central region of the continent — where just about everyone lived. Porkchop was sitting nearby. Supervising, no doubt.

A number of pins had been pushed into the wooden carving, their heads painted in an array of colours. Most encircled the various known polities, their borders roped off with coloured thread. Others represented major cities. It was a job they’d put off for a while. Their map might have been astonishingly detailed — but it only showed ancient, Imperial settlements. Not the most useful for navigation, even if the Imperial Walls to the north and south still stood to section off the central regions. 

Kenva pushed another pin into the map, before glancing up at him. 

“Perfect timing. There’s no way in all of the hells that this is accurate, but it’s accurate enough.”

“That’s all that really matters.” Kaius replied, leaning over the table. Greenseed had been unsurprisingly circled in green, with twelve pins for each of the major ducal seats and the central capital. It was a surprisingly large country, sprawling out from one of the major river networks that rolled off of the Wildguard mountains to the west. 

Franlen, less than half the size, sat just east of the border of the lower half of the country. It was still lush, but generally a little drier than Greenseed on the northern end of the country, and wetter south of the major river that cut through Franlen. Especially the closer you got to the lowland swamp beyond the southern border. Kaius trailed his finger across a recessed carving of small hills along the south-eastern border of Greenseed.

“So we’re here?”

Kenva nodded. “And this road will take us here.” She pointed to a stretch of border right next to it. 

It looked like they'd be entering Franlen right at the mid-line, a few days south of the Pasielle River. It was the closest connected border. To their south, Franlen and Greenseed diverged to arc away from each other. It would have been a shorter distance crossing through the unclaimed territory between them, but the overgrown wilds would have slowed down their vessel enough to make it not worth it. The same went for heading south-east out of the Dukedoms to cut directly for the swamp. Roads and open fields were far faster than picking through a forest.

Kaius slid past Franlen, to the trio of even-smaller countries that were clustered in a triangle around the Temerian Swamp. Annoyingly, both Zerrakard and Quesro — the hostile purist nations — stood in a line, a solid stretch of wilds separating them from Franlen’s southern border.

“That’s going to be tricky,” Kaius mused. If the rest of his team stayed locked up in the Pegleg, they might be able to slip through the human nation of Quesro with him acting as their face — but it was too far east. They’d add days to their journey.

Zerrakard was west of it — perfectly placed to be a massive roadblock between them and the centre of the swamp. None of them were felborn, so none of them would be welcome. Certainly not the wisest route, especially right after Guilewind had all but pleaded with them to avoid riling the morons up.

“What if we go this way?” Ianmus asked, tracing his finger down Franlen’s western border, skirting west of Zerrakard, before looping under it to cut through the very northern tip of the more friendly Millios.

Kenva tilted her head. “Maybe as a last resort. That’s a long distance — easily another week. Enough that we wont have saved any time taking the roads through Franlen compared to cutting straight south-east from Baanswell.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Porkchop said. He moved closer, reaching out with one claw to almost daintily trace the map. He moved through Franlen, passing two cities on the way to the centre of the southern border. Then, straight down — right between both Zerrakard and Quesro. “You said they have a large strip of unclaimed territory between them, right?”

It would certainly save time. Perhaps not quite as much as cutting directly though Zerrakard, but all three countries were small, and the marshland was relatively open. The mud might slow most down, but it would barely affect the Pegleg thanks to its stilt-like mechanism. 

Kenva, it seemed, was not so sure. She winced, eying the map dubiously. “It’s risky. That strip of land is technically unclaimed, but it's effectively a shared buffer. Neither will be happy to see us on it, perhaps even more so than skirting directly through their territory.”

“I vote we do it anyway,” Kaius said. “I know we’re trying to avoid antagonising either group needlessly, but I have little interest in capitulating entirely. We’ll be moving fast, and everyone important will have their eyes on the Shardworld. This route will save us a week, maybe two, compared to circling around the swamp entirely.”

“As long as we’re all aware that we might run into some trouble,” Kenva replied.

“Of course.”

Kaius had been ready for that since they’d left Baanswell. The more he heard about these purists, the more he was certain that trouble would be a question of when, not if. If they wanted to get upset about travelers making use of unclaimed territory, it was their own damn problem.

“In which case,” Ianmus said, tapping the location of two Franlen cities along their route. “We’ll be passing by both Montaug and Baxlain, as well as a few smaller towns.”

Ianmus gestured towards the city closest to the southern border, where they would leave Franlen and head towards the swamp. “We should stop in Baxlain, even if just for a few hours. It’s a wetter, more humid climate than both the Frontier and Greenseed, and I've heard they have some interesting cuisine — quite the fan of spice. Plus, it’ll be much easier to find some basic artifice to deal with rain and mud. It’s one thing we didn’t prepare before we left.”

His ears pricked up the second his friend mentioned ‘cuisine’, and his curiosity only grew hearing that it was spicy. A good pepper had been damn hard to find in Baanswell. It wasn’t native to the region, nor were the conditions all that great to grow it. Considering it wasn’t traditional, and few liked it, not many bothered with the effort. 

“On to the border crossing, then.”

“Indeed,” Kenva replied. “It shouldn’t be anything too serious. Just a border post a few leagues from either side of the border, with a few guards. I doubt they’ll do more than wave as we pass.”

….

“Halt, under order of his majesty King Leopald III!”

Ten guards in full kit had been waiting by the Franlen border post. Each a high Steel, they had streamed onto the road — actual cobble, now — and levelled their halberds at the approaching landyacht. As if that would do anything. Greenseed’s guards hadn’t done more than wave. Though, there had been more of them than Kenva had mentioned too.

Kaius sighed, willing the Pegleg to slow. 

“So much for clean and easy, eh?” he whispered to Kenva. All four of them were atop the deck. They’d wanted to be polite. It seemed the Fates had deemed otherwise.

“What’s this about?” he said, stepping up to the nose of their vessel. The guards tried very hard to glare at him. They looked a bit ridiculous when he was ten strides above them. 

“All suspicious persons are to submit themselves to inspection upon entry to Franlen!” the lead guard shouted back. “You must depart your vessel, and relinquish your storage artefacts, if you have them!”

Kaius stared at the man. “Are you thick?”

“Excuse me?!”

“I asked if you are a dullard. Our answer is no.”

“Well, this will be interesting.”

Below them, the lead guard went red, genuine disbelief warring with apoplexy .”By order of the king, I will have your vessel impounded!”

By all of the gods’ graces, what on earth was it with petty tyrants and their faith in higher authorities? Kaius ran a hand over his face.

“You cannot be enough of a fool to think we would ever give you access to our vessel or our storage devices. You quite literally do not have the authority or the strength. How in the hells are we even suspicious?”

He suspected that it was the simple fact they had come from Greenseed. By the gods did he hate politics. Thankfully, he was now capable of making it someone else's problem. 

“You come on an Imperial vessel, through contested territory, with a dangerous beast!”

“Watch your tongue, before I rip it out your neck!” Porkchop growled. 

“Contested territory? Isn’t that interesting,” Kenva murmured.

Indeed it was. Perhaps they’d be using one of those letters the duke had given them sooner than he thought.

“Let me lay it out for you,” Kaius said, staring down at the man. “First, all four of us are delvers. Silver delvers. So unless your king is intentionally violating more agreements than I care to count, we have freedom of movement to go wherever the hell we please. If he is, I am sure that the grandmasters of Wight’s End would be very interested to hear of it. Secondly, I am Kaius of the Tidebreakers, tyrantslayer, dragonslayer, and friend of the House of Flowers. If you think you can force us off this ship, you are damn well welcome to try.”

The guard did not respond immediately. One of his companions shuffled a little awkwardly, and a few of them went pale. Kaius said nothing, standing at ease while he watched them in silence. 

“Josef!” one of them hissed quietly. “The missive said to check for sabateurs, but it didn’t mention no goddamn titled dragonslayers. Farmers, travelers, maybe even a few merchants — I doubt it meant this!”

Well, that was even more interesting. Kaius watched the lead guard closely. A few seconds later, he gave the slightest hint of a nod. The guards pulled back off the road, towards the walls of the grey stone border post.

“As you were!”

Kaius urged the Pegleg on, and they took off, pressing deeper into Franlen.

“Well, that certainly won’t cause any problems,” Ianmus said when they were out of earshot.

“Not for us, it won’t. We do have freedom of movement. The Duke might get a letter — or maybe he won’t. Franlen is definitely up to something,” Kaius replied.

If they saw anything more on their journey through, he’d add it to the letter he penned the man.

A/N: Monday chapter likely to be quite late as im going away for the weekend and wont be back until monday arvo.