TVisTV Book 4: Chapter 23 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 23 - Stand and Deliver

There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to me: time.

- Napoleon Bonaparte.

For three weeks, the journey to the capital proceeded without issue. As promised, Meilin proved cultivated and informative company, offering little snippets about the regions, towns, histories, and geographical features they passed along the way. She also pointed out old battle sites as if noting interesting flowers. In this, at least, the Marquis had not lied, for his daughter was the font of, if not always useful, information.

The Empire unfolded beyond the carriage windows in long, changing stretches: vast empty paddy fields reaching toward the horizon, bamboo forests rattling softly in the wind, hills folded one upon another, mountains capped in stubborn snow, and waterfalls as if from the sky. Most impressive of all was the crossing of the great bridge over the Heiyuan He, the Black Source River, which marked the beginning of the Empire’s central provinces.

The bridge itself was a marvel of white-grey stone, wide enough for wagons to pass in both directions, its arches rising from the river like the ribs of some ancient beast. Below the black water of the Heiyuan He moved with slow, heavy purpose.

They guested at the homes of various notables along the road, and those with young sons presented them whenever propriety gave even the faintest excuse. Seraphina could not decline them outright, but since she was on her way to the Court of the Imperial Jade Dragon Throne, she could always defer..

News travelled ahead of her as well. News of Seraphina de Sariens, the Aranthian girl with the Unicorn in harness. And news, of course, of Enkarn.

He and his men were burning and killing their way across the lands, moving faster than any Imperial response could properly contain. His great horde had split apart into smaller forces, making pursuit difficult and defense worse. His harriers and skirmishers blunted every attempt to pin them down, striking at roads, stores, messengers, and the soft places between fortified towns. The tribal northerners thrived in such conditions, and the cold seemed not to touch them in the same way it gnawed at the conscripted troops of the Empire.

Slowly, Seraphina learned that her would-be suitor Enkarn was earning a new title, “The Lamentation of Heaven.”

Most assumed he moved for plunder, glory, and war. Perhaps he did. Men like that usually enjoyed having several reasons to commit the same atrocity. But no one seemed to know, save Seraphina, that Enkarn was headed toward the capital to slay a Dragon.

Now, to enter the heartlands, they had to pass by the rock formations known simply as the Pillars. They rose from the land in red and ochre towers, great weather-carved spires and cliffs that cut the horizon into jagged teeth that resembled something of the rock formations of the Grand Canyon.

Here, mercantile traffic should have been flowing thickly along the road: great beasts pulling carts, porters bent beneath bundles, merchants arguing over tolls, pilgrims, soldiers, officials, peddlers, and foot traffic stretching almost to the horizon. Instead, there was almost nothing.

Only a few farmers, herders, and traders made their way along the excellent road, moving with the forlorn caution of people who had decided necessity was stronger than good sense. Their carts creaked too loudly in the windblown emptiness. 

Seraphina watched them from behind the carriage window and felt the shape of an answer approaching. The girl had a feeling that she would soon learn why traffic had thinned in this particular artery of the Empire. And, like most of her premonitions, it soon came to pass.

Ahead of them, along the paved road between the rising teeth of the Pillars, came a group of men perhaps five score strong. They approached on foot, wearing eclectic armor of mixed quality and poorer maintenance. Some had old helmets. Some had mail shirts patched with leather. A few wore bits of Imperial lamellar over peasant coats, while others had clearly dressed themselves from the corpses of better men. They carried long spears, bows, crossbows, stolen swords, maces, clubs, flails, and other implements of war.

At their head walked a big man, perhaps over two meters tall and almost as wide. He had better armor than the rest, black-and-red lacquered plate and scale that sat heavily upon him, though not uncomfortably. Resting on one shoulder was a wooden club studded with heavy metal knobs, as long as Seraphina was tall and worn ugly enough to suggest it had already seen a great deal of use.

Seraphina idly played with Arvan’s Luck, the bracelet at her wrist and a symbol of simpler times. A time when dealing with rogues had meant simply feeding them to her maid.

Why could life never be simple? she complained to herself.

The head of Seraphina’s escort, Sir Garrett Vikens, a veteran Knight of Carcaronne, rode out to meet the man. He sat tall upon his barded destrier, raising his visor, he showed a grizzled face worn by worry, war, and weather.

“Who are you, and by what right do you block this road?” the Knight demanded in halting Imperial.

“I am Liu,” answered the big man, somehow managing to look down upon Sir Vikens despite the horse beneath him, “and I claim this place by the oldest right of all. Strength of arms. There is a toll now for everyone who comes this way. A toll in gold, or a toll in blood.”

“You—” Sir Vikens began, growing ever more incensed by the sheer temerity of the man.

“Wait here,” Seraphina ordered before simply opening the carriage door and stepping down.

Miriam made a small noise of distress from inside the carriage, which Seraphina ignored on the grounds that Miriam’s feelings were unimportant in the current scheme of things. She patted Spike’s haunches as she passed, then moved toward the front of their formation with her cloak trailing behind her and her expression fixed in a look of mounting irritation.

“Won’t you just do away with this riff-raff, Sir Vikens?” she complained in Aranthian, crossing her arms. “They are expecting us in the capital, and I do not want to explain why we are late. I must say, I am growing quite vexed by all of this.”

“What have we here?” Liu asked, his eyes roving over the young girl with a lasciviousness that was almost impressive in its stupidity. “Could this be the barbarian bride? Seems the price of passage has just increased tenfold. I think there would be many interested parties who would be quite eager to purchase her party.”

Greed stirred in the big man’s eyes, disgusting and, rather ironically, barbaric.

“Run them down,” Seraphina ordered coldly.

Behind her, there came the familiar low hum of gathering energy.

“Of course. It will be done, Lady Seraphina,” Sir Vikens accepted.

Liu raised one hand, and from across the rock formations above, men began to appear as if the cliffs themselves had grown teeth. They rose from behind boulders, from narrow shelves of stone, from gullies and dry cuts in the red earth. More emerged along the road behind them, blocking the path of retreat, while still more filled the ridges above with bows, crossbows, and sling-staffs already in hand.

Bandits and rogues, one and all. A whole army of them.

“I think that is not the wisest course, Lady Seraphina,” Liu drawled mockingly.

Seraphina’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Frest,” she ordered.

Sir Frest moved at once, reaching with practiced hands for the unquiet weapon holstered on his saddle. The strange artifact came into his hands with practiced care, the iron bolt already set along the groove. He braced the artifact against his shoulder and pressed the release, and violet-white light crawled along the groove.

There was no twang of bowstring, no honest sound that belonged to the age around them. Instead, the weapon screamed as the iron bolt vanished in a line of force, the air splitting open with a violent roar.

Liu’s sneer faltered a microsecond before the shot struck him squarely in the chest. The bolt punched through him with such speed and force that it tore through the bandit behind him, and the man behind that one as well, scattering armor, cloth, and viscera. A heartbeat later, the sound reached the cliffs and came back in broken echoes.

Frest lowered the weapon, pale and visibly drained, but wearing a victorious little smile all the same as the scent of ozone filled the cold air.

Seraphina had thought that such a display of overwhelming might would dissuade the average brigand. Unfortunately, here, it seemed, she had thought wrong.

For a moment, the bandits wavered. Then someone shouted. Someone else screamed Liu’s name, though whether in grief, rage, or simple surprise was unclear. The men above began loosing arrows and bolts, and the men ahead and behind the procession surged forward with the eager stupidity of lemmings.

Or perhaps they had simply seen wagons, horses, the noblewomen for ransom, and their obvious wealth. Greed, after all, had a way of making man blind to the limits of the human condition.

Too late, Seraphina realized what they were. These were not ordinary road thieves, but a mountain bandit clan, likely displaced by Imperial hunts and Enkarn’s own rampage. If memory served her correctly, they were also rather popular with the common folk, having dressed up their predation in a quasi-heroic tradition of robbing the rich, feeding the poor, and, by some strange coincidence, keeping the lion’s share for themselves.

More importantly, a cursory look around her numbered them in the thousands at least.

Her own escort was perhaps a little over four hundred fighting men, and that included Meilin’s people. In short, they were trapped by a numerically superior force in disadvantageous terrain, while Seraphina was without her proper weapon at hand and not wearing her armor.

In even shorter terms, the girl was in a bit of a pickle.

However, despite everything, and despite the decidedly unpleasant odds, Sir Vikens had his forces moving almost before the first arrows struck. His voice cut through the confusion, barking orders in the clipped manner of a man who had survived too many bad days to waste this one panicking. Shields came up along the wagons. Crossbowmen took cover behind baggage and wheel. Men-at-arms shoved the servants inward and formed around the carriages, while the Knights of Carcaronne began to gather their line of mounts and lances toward the block of enemies ahead. With some luck, the bandits would fold beneath the grinding weight of iron-shod hooves and long lances.

The arrows and bolts from the cliffs continued in sporadic bursts rather than in disciplined volleys, which was fortunate. Most glanced from Aranthian plate, shields, and carriage panels, though a few found small gaps in lesser armor and caused minor injury. One man near the baggage cursed as a bolt punched through his arm. Somewhere behind Seraphina, a servant began praying with commendable sincerity.

The driver atop her carriage, however, seemed almost offensively calm. He sat with the reins looped beside him, firing his crossbow in a steady, methodical fashion as if this were merely an unpleasant extension of his regular duties.

It was commendable. Perhaps I should learn his name, the girl mused idly as she hurried back to Spike, a bolt narrowly missing her and striking the carriage with a hard wooden thunk. There was a girlish shriek from within. 

Spike twisted his horned head toward her, ears back, eyes bright with a terrible and immediate joy.

Kill?

“Yes,” Seraphina said aloud, working quickly at the harness. “Yes, dear. Now is the time.”

Kill all?

“The bad ones,” she clarified, because one had to maintain standards even in chaos.

Spike’s thoughts surged across the bond with the force of a flood released from a badly maintained dam. Kill bad ones. Kill road men. Kill loud men. Kill all bad ones.

“Precisely.”

The last strap came free.

Spike lunged forward before the leather had even fallen from him, tearing away from the carriage with a shrill, savage neigh that made nearby horses rear and men flinch. For a heartbeat, he seemed almost beautiful, all forest-colored muscle, flashing horn, and fanged mouth, and then he hit the first cluster of bandits like the calamity he was.

A man with a spear vanished beneath his hooves. Another was hooked and thrown by the horn, spinning into the air with his limbs arranged in a way that would have made a physician deeply pessimistic about his odds of survival. Spike bit a third man in the shoulder and shook him once before flinging him aside.

Across the bond came one simple, radiant emotion. Happiness.

Seraphina watched him go and found herself, despite the circumstances, quite pleased.

Good boy, she soothed as experience gain messages scrolled across her vision.