Elephant Pond 12: Woes of the weak

The cube grated to a halt an arm's length from Ayva. She, along with the shaper in the mud behind her, peered through the large adjoining holes her blood charged daggers had made, at the druid they had felled.

Behind her, Ayva heard the glasiator shaper sloshing around in the water, as he tried to get to his feet. She had hoped the blow to the head would have rendered him unconscious. But it seemed like the thickness of his shape's skull had absorbed most of the blow. The young shaper propped himself onto wobbling legs and began staggering his way toward his fallen friend.

As he did, Greyum's Molder's Bog came to an end. The huge cube of rock maintained its imposing size and shape while the muddy water around Ayva's knees receded into the ground and the mud reverted to its original cobblestone state.

He sprinted forward past Ayva and leaped onto the cube's almost perfectly flat stone face. Using his hooves he clambered up, and began making his way to the top.

Ayva spotted her remaining three soldiers: Darriyon, Wayard and Leona watching from the edge of what had been the Molder's Bog. Protocol dictated that soldiers, especially close ranged ones, didn't enter a druid's claimed land unless they were absolutely sure they could stop them. That included abandoning anyone already inside of it like a fellow soldier or commander to die.

Ayva motioned with her hands for them to fall back. The battle was essentially over, but there some loose ends that she needed to cut, alone.

Using the holes that ran through the cube as a foundation, Ayva punched her way through the rest of the stone, tunneling through to get to Greyum. The cube was only a few feet deep and Ayva's blood frenzy was still going strong, so within a few minutes she stepped out, onto the opposing side.

There she met the young shaper where he knelt next to Greyum. He was still in glasiator shape, furry limbs still caked with mud and horns shattered as he held Greyum's hand in his, whispering to him softly.

Most of the druid's chest cavity had been completely blown away. Enough blood had gushed out from the twin holes, that it had pooled where he lay next to his axe. He had died well before either of them had gotten there.

"You monster!" he exclaimed in a choked voice, casting a deadly glare at Ayva as she approached them.

"I did my job," she corrected. "The very same thing that both of you were prepared to do to me. The same thing you have done to the Harcovians before me and I have done to the Plain-walkers before you."

"I don't care," he said squeezing his fists.

"Don't make this war anything more than it already is, I left you with your life, don't throw it away now. Don't be childish."

He leaped at Ayva, shattering the ground, as he regrew both sets of horns.

She lunged forward to meet him and grabbed him by his horns, stopping him in mid-air. When his hooves touched the ground, he kicked and pushed forward as hard as he could, in a fit of rage, frothing from his snout.

"You seem to have a problem with listening," Ayva said. She gripped his pointed horns in her bare fists, squeezing until they shattered. He leaped away as they did, and pounded the ground in frustration. He was too distraught; he either couldn't see that he had already lost or didn't care, but Ayva couldn't tolerate him anymore.

Ayva ran forward and picked up Greyum's axe in her left hand as the shaper charged. From its base to its blade the single edged axe was as tall as Ayva was with a blade half as wide. But with the strength and instant mastery that her blood drive granted her, its overbearing size and weight was only an asset.

Now hornless again, the shaper resorted to a sluggish punch that Ayva sidestepped with ease while she twirled the axe, by its wooden handle, behind her back from her left hand to her right then swung it. The offending arm came cleanly off and dropped to the ground. He wailed as he clutched at the bleeding stump, falling onto his knees.

After a minute or two passed, Ayva rest the still bloody axe on her shoulder.

"You are done, right?"

He nodded solemnly, refusing to make eye contact with her. "Fine, I'll come peacefully, for my sister's sake."

"Come where?" Ayva asked.

"To your camp, you offered to spare my sister and I if we came with you," he asked, confused.

"Did you not hear me when I had said: this is your last chance? You turned down my offer and then tried to kill me, which you failed to do, so your lives are now forfeit."

"Please…if not for me, then at least spare my sister."

"You'll have to do better than begging. You and the other rebels ambushed us, killed three of my soldiers and left another with one less arm than they came with. If you want to you and your sister to leave here alive, you'll have to offer something worth your lives and the lives of my soldiers too."

"….I can tell you where Avaad's vault is."

Avaad's vault was one of the most sacred locations in the Plains that most younger Plain-walkers didn't even know of, much less its location. It was rumored to be a place of such power that even the Plain-walkers' god feared it. Countless before Ayva had died seeking it, yet here a child was, claiming he knew what tens of thousands had died in search of.

"Where is it?"

He looked up at her, considering the ramifications of playing his only bargaining chip now. But he ultimately recognized that he wasn't in any position to refuse, nor did he have time the luxury of time to bargain further with his arm bleeding out. He needed to shift back to his original form to avoid bleeding out where he knelt, and Ayva was blatantly leveraging it against him.

"North-west of the Central Plains, between Haph's glades and the barrier before The Grasp."

"That information is undoubtedly worth a lot. I'll spare your sister and after I question her further to verify your information; you have my word that she'll be released without any harm."

His furry brown shoulders sagged with relief.

"But I'm afraid; it's not enough for me to spare yours."

They returned to camp just the four of them; Ayva and Darriyon in the lead and Wayard and Leona behind them. They had repurposed two carts they had found in the village for their own means, using the horses their fallen comrades had ridden to pull them.

Their bodies and valuable things they'd claimed Cask Village were in the first cart and the druidess in the other. She had woken up some time earlier, screaming and cussing the soldiers so much that Wayard had stopped them to gag her on top of the chains that bound her.

Now they were on a slow trot through the forest of wax trees, taking their time as the last of the evening's sun glazed patches of waxy leaves and manicured grass golden. Lingering in the forest this late was bad procedure. She knew it, but she also knew better than to pester long faces after a hard battle.

Leona and Darriyon looked the least eager to return to camp. For Darriyon, his uncle who had been his role model and unbeatable mentor would be there, likely now crippled and for Leona the guilt of it all awaited her.

"The Blood Mother has been too fickle," Wayard said breaking the silence. "We've been itching for a fight like this for weeks. We yearn for the thrill of combat, the only true baptism as the Blood Magi say, as the Blood Mother made us to. Yet here we are, returning from her baptism, nursing more regrets than we came with." It sounded to Ayva like an attempt at compassion. An oddly worded one but an attempt nevertheless.

"The Blood Mother weaves our fates but she only gives us the opportunity to experience the beauty of war. Whether we are strong enough to fight and survive without loss is entirely on us," Leona said thoughtfully.

Wayard opened his mouth to argue with her, as he often did for argument's sake but decided against it, so silence fell onto the four until they entered camp.

For a Port Guard, their camp had little to no degree of permanence. It was quite literally an assortment of a few dozen grey tents of varying size and decorated with a few of Harcovia's mandatory red and black banners. Aside from a wooden scouting tower identical to the ones before and leading to the coast, if a strong enough wind blew, no one would be able tell Ayva's squadron was ever here.

They rolled into the camp mid-celebration. Numerous small groups of men and women were huddle around barrels of mead and wild meat searing over open flames. Ayva handed off the reins to one of her soldiers waiting at the entrance and headed right for her personal tent to change before starting her reports. Wayard went off to find drink among the groups of his comrades, while Leona and Darriyon made their way to the Blood Mage's medical tent, separately but equally reluctantly.

After a bath and changing everything she'd been wearing, Ayva sat down into the same chair she had started her day in. Once again behind her desk at the end of a long aisle of goods she was tasked with defending and deterring enemies from, assaulted by their gaudy aromas again. In the light of the lantern atop her desk, the crates and barrels cast long shadows that snaked up the walls of the tent till they morphed into vaguely humanoid shapes. Somehow Ayva felt like they watched her expectantly.

Outside of her tent she heard cheering and laughing as her soldiers celebrated the day's triumph. It was a glorious day for her squadron, but a miserable day for a few. Taking down multiple rebels, especially a shaper capable of a Rot Tusk's shape and a druid of Greyum's caliber was worthy of accolades. And those that lost what they did in the process could make no claim to dampen the mood.

"Your victories are Harcovia's and your losses are yours," Ayva repeated to herself softly. Her mother had had her repeat it as a child.

"Permission to enter." Dale called from behind the flap to the command tent.

"Granted." Ayva affirmed.

He entered wearing a simple white cotton shirt and brown trousers, no armor, no blade or axe at his belt. His arm just below his elbow was gone, amputated to save the rest of him, bloody bandages marking the place where the Blood Mage had severed it. The lantern light casts thick shadows into his face, exaggerating the wrinkles and creases on his face, aging the older man's grimace even further. Ayva could tell he already knew what she was going to say.

Dale stopped in front of Ayva's desk, and gave the customary salute, head slightly bowed with his right hand over his heart.

"Commander...I'm already old, I'm aware of it. I can promise that for the rest of my service I'll be fearless and work twice as hard as anyone till my last breath. Regardless, I'm also aware that, in the face of my age and my missing arm, those promises aren't worth more than the piles of scrag dung back home."

"I know," Ayva said.

"But if I go back now, with my age....the Harcov Bane will take me fast, in a few I might be gone. I'd rather die, slain in the mud, with no arms left and my heart skewered or crushed under some shaper's hoof. I'd rather suffer any other end than waste away in a chair, reminiscing about the battles I've fought until my mind fades into nothingness."

"I know."

He had stated his claim and nothing more could be said beyond it. So a tangibly uncomfortable silence fell over the tent as Dale awaited Ayva's word. He stared at Ayva's perpetually blank expression with prying eyes and, she stared back with her typical indifference even then.

Losing an arm to a Rot Tusk was no cause for shame. His house, House Thanick wouldn't sing songs of him, as they hardly did for those that hadn't met glorious ends. But the older warrior would be far from shunned and would live relatively comfortably. Much more so than he how he lived now as a solider, though that was little recompense in the face of the Harcov Bane.

"Dale Thanick, you have hereby been relieved of your duties here in the Plains. Gather your personal belongings and return to Harcovia," Ayva stated.

He saluted Ayva, his now former Commander, for his last time and then took his leave without another word.

Shortly after, her right hand, Lieutenant Viccard Savyon was at the tent's entrance. Through their shadows Ayva saw him pat Dale on the back and say something she was too far away to hear. Then he stood just outside of her tent and called.

"Requesting permission to enter, Commander."

"Is it urgent?" Ayva asked.

"Gravely so," Viccard, "The Citadel has sent orders."

"Granted."

The message must have reached him mid-drink because he when Viccard entered, he walked with a slight sway and flushed cheeks on a displeased expression. He looked peeved and just drunk enough to be brazen about it.

"I understand the policy, but Dale shouldn't have been discharged. All of us are trained to fight in the event we lose limbs, and he lost his saving a fellow soldier," Viccard said, "It's like you're punishing him for saving Leona's life. That's a bad call in my books."

Viccard didn't have slurred words to match his walk but he did have the liquid courage.

Ayva raised an eyebrow at the accusation.

"With all due respect, Commander," he added sheepishly.

"I didn't discharge Dale just because he lost his arm saving Leona. I discharged him because he disobeyed a direct order not to intervene, and when he did he immediately lost the fight he picked."

"So what should he have done, watch the boar take bites out of her?"

"He should have prioritized taking it down. The Plain walker rebels are getting more suspicious of our camp, and soon they'll be more daring than the siblings we caught. We won't be able to afford those mistakes then, or the example his actions set. Heroics have no place in the Harcovian Empire, especially from people too weak to survive them."

He opened his satchel and produced a roll of paper, bound by the Citadel's crimson wax seal. He unfurled it and then skimmed the contents of the letter.

"Members of the high council have ordered you to expedite their usual shipments because their personal stores are running low."

He turned to the second page then he blinked a few times, rubbed his eyes with hands before reading it again, going over each word intently.

"A few days ago, the Citadel received word that some pirates managed to take a few sea smiths alive, from Khantani's waters. Their course suggests that the pirates are headed down the Knife Isles to Korenth, instead of White Coast."

Ayva was sincerely surprised. No one had even seen a sea smith in centuries and no one had ever actually managed to take them alive, at least to her knowledge.

"So my orders are to retrieve them?"

"Not exactly. In light of their capabilities, The High Magi Council of the Citadel has determined the sea smiths' existence outside of Khantani to be an unacceptable offense. By extension, the sea smiths falling into the service of Korenth has been deemed an existential threat to the Harcovian Empire and the island as a whole. You have been ordered to find the sea smiths and execute them all."