A Soldier's Life Chapter 236: Crossroads

Chapter 236: Crossroads

As Corvus prepared to leave, he left his bow, quiver, and most of his gear. I tried to refuse, but he insisted, “You need it more than . I know where there is a Hound cache about a hundred miles from here, Eryk, take it and stop complaining. I will be fine,” he said with an affable smile.

“There are caches?” I asked, confused as they were not part of the training.

He studied for a mont and then nodded in confirmation. “Just in the Western Empire. My father set them up, and only a few Hounds have the maps.” He considered and pulled off his leather Hound jacket. Under the light of a glowstone, a map of part of the Western empire was clearly inscribed inside.

“The cache locations are only visible under the light of Neptune’s tear.” He covered the glowstone, and a dozen pricks lit up brightly on the map under the moon’s light. “I will see about getting you a map to the caches when I see you again. They are buried a foot deep, so goblins don’t find them. They are always located near a forking tree, and there is a marker stone over the cache. Each cache has two full sets of Hound gear and four weeks’ worth of ration bars.”

He shouldered his jacket back on and nodded to , “I will need all the artifacts you took from the First Citizen traitor.” He looked apologetic.

“Do you want the gold she carried as well?” I asked without hesitation in a neutral tone.

He considered for a long mont, “That is probably best.” I pulled the amulet over my head and the pack from my dinsional space and handed it to him. “The ring and dagger are in the pack.”

He hefted the pack, appreciating the weight. He looked confused and disappointed, “Those were the only artifacts she was carrying?” I nodded, and he sighed, and the Hound moved away at a jog.

At least not every Hound in the Western Empire was an asshole—sothing tickled in the back of my mind, but quickly slipped away. When I was sure he was gone, I sent the gear he left to my dinsional space. There was no point in carrying it at this point.

The Varvao River was fifty miles long and drained Varvao Lake into Kraken Bay. I moved cautiously into the woods pulsing earth speak. My goal was to circle extrely wide from the river and reach the lake ahead of the fleet. Then, I could report when the orc fleet arrived. The fleet would take ti—probably days crossing the fifty-mile-long lake to disembark its forces near the city of Varvao if they were relying on magic to widen and deepen the river.

As I moved south, the terrain changed. Gone were the hills and rocky elevations. I was now traveling through wet lowland forests. I continued pulsing my earth speak as I went, wanting to avoid any unexpected danger.

After narrowly avoiding a face-to-face encounter with a monstrous spider, I was glad I had been cautious. The tunnels of the spider’s den extended far past the limited range of my earth speak pulse, and I happily left it, and whatever else was lurking in there, well alone.

As morning ca, I took one of the minor perception essences. A montary brain freeze with passing pressure behind the eyes indicated the essence was working. I blinked away my montary migraine and continued.

With the light of a new day, I increased my pace to ensure I got ahead of the fleet moving up the river and hopefully avoiding any more Pathfinders. The muddy terrain soon had my boots caked, and muddy water had soaked into my pants and socks. I was focused on moving silently and surprised a pair of gnolls who were bedded down. There were only two in range of my earth pulse, and I diverted slightly to remove them from the ecosystem.

The two creatures were entwined with each other in slumber, a fresh carcass of a fawn nearby from their hunt last night. My black blade took the largest one completely unaware. The second leaped up when its mate barked in pain from my blade piercing its chest.

It was initially too slow to gain its spear to defend itself. My blade lashed out, cutting deeply into its thigh as it fell away. The muscle cut was deep, and it couldn’t stand but wrapped its clawed hand around its weapon. When it feebly attacked with the spear, my invisible air shield deflected the weapon wide, and my blade finished the male gnoll.

I checked on the first gnoll, and it had bled out from the stab wound near its heart. Its belly was bloated, and its teats were swollen. It was a pregnant female. Even now, I could see the belly turning as the pups inside started to suffocate from the lack of blood circulating to them.

Gnolls were a pestilence on the land, and I didn’t feel guilty about killing the unborn ones. I couldn’t stand to let them suffer, though. I retrieved the collector and placed it over the female. The collector pulled from both the mother and the unborn. This surprised as I watched it work and form an apex essence of empathy.

The modest-sized light pink sphere was a surprise byproduct. I assud it had sothing to do with the female gnoll’s relationship with her unborn pups. It caused a twinge of guilt that I quickly compartntalized. Her belly was now still, and I moved to the other gnoll, getting a minor essence of endurance.

I paused to move the male close to the female, leveraging the corpse over to her with his spear so they could be together in death. I continued south, avoiding other dens and burrows of creatures when my earth speak detected them. I didn’t need to get slowed down again. This region was definitely more wild than other parts of the Empire.

All the practice with the earth speak spell form was continuing to train my skill in interpreting the feedback from the spell efficiently. My path intercepted the Varvao River, and I could see why Corvus thought the orcs would not be able to navigate it. Not only was the river narrow, but a number of fallen trees impeded its slow-moving waters. A narrow channel had been cleared in the center, just wide enough to allow a barge to pass through. At least I knew I had gotten ahead of the orc war fleet.

I followed the river upstream till sunset and rested on a small earthen mound with a view of a section of the river and checked my sending book. Centurion Sergius had sent a ssage, “You must delay the orc fleet. Ensure it does not reach Varvao for five days. Reinforcents will arrive through the portal in Varvao after repelling the Bartiradians, but they need ti.”

Irritably, I wrote back, “I am one person. You want to stop a war fleet?”

“Get ahead of the fleet and use trees to block the river. Set fire to one of the ships at night. Kill so sentries. Do what is required of you, Hound.” I clenched my teeth at the order. The Centurion was essentially ordering to my death. I was sure there were powerful mages on those ships as they were rapidly clearing and widening the river.

It also was not lost on that he had recalled his son before ordering alone to stop a fleet of thirty-eight warships by myself. I moved to the banks of the river and was unhappy as my earth-speak pulse did not echo clearly through the water. Only when the water was heavily clouded with mud would the pulse give a clear image. I took a few monts to find a large tree, nearly four feet in diater. I removed a large wedge of the tree, and the act bottod out my aether. How did a tree resist my ability?

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

As the tree slowly succumbed to gravity, the trunk cracked and echoed, I faded into the woods to wait out my aether recovery as I planned to practice my new career as a lumberjack further south along the river. The massive tree crashed down, and the subsequent splash caused dozens of birds to take flight and sothing large to stir the waters. I was rather proud of my efforts and was considering trying to get one of the trees to fall across one of the decks of the ships when a loud buzzing sound cut the air.

Had I disturbed a nest? I backed further away from the river. A swarm of fist-sized bees or maybe hornets swept over the tree. A fish leaped and seized one from the air, but they did not flee. The buzzing cloud seed to inspect the damage, starting with the upper branches and proceeding to where the tree was cut. They had a weird intelligence to them—I spun and started running. My guess is they had to be controlled by an orc priest. The orcs called their mages priests or clerics, not mages. It was a small point to harp on at the mont.

I think I had been far enough away that they did not notice , but I didn’t stop running for an hour. I didn’t have bug spray to handle dozens of large, stinging insects. The only good thing about this enemy was they were easy to hear from a distance.

During my rest, I could hear them in the early spring canopy of leaves as their buzzing zigged and zagged the distance along the river, searching for . I moved down the river and continued to fell large trees every three miles as my aether permitted. The entire ti, I listened for the warning buzzing. If I was spotted, it would be my last tree.

After the fourth tree, I reached the outlet from Varvao Lake. The expansive, fresh body of water looked more like an ocean or sea from the shore. I didn’t admire it for long, felling one more tree before I moved along the western shore, gaining distance from the outlet. When I reached a spot about seven miles away, I set up a sentry post by hollowing out one of the few boulders along the shore and making a slit to use my spyglass.

After the long, grueling day of constant surging adrenaline, I rested and waited in hopeful safety. As the evening ca, I opened the book to report. “Dropped a few trees to slow their progress. They have not reached Varvao Lake.” I then took out my sending stone from Zyna, maybe tonight was the night she would contact .

There was no imdiate response from either device as I consud a warm burrito and cold blood orange juice. I sealed the entrance to my hollowed-out, improvised hideout. I took short naps all night, and when I woke, I was briefly disoriented from my dreams. I used the night vision goggles in concert with my spyglass, awaiting the imminent fleet’s arrival.

The orc fleet still hadn’t arrived by morning, and I noted that fact in my book, which still had no responses from Centurion Sergius. Disappointedly, I stored my ssaging stone. It wasn’t until near sunset that I heard the familiar buzzing of the spy drone insects. It had taken most of the day to co up with that na for the insect swarm. Of course, my cleverness would be lost on the people of this world.

It wasn’t until late into the night that the first ship appeared—both the book and stone had been absent of ssages for another day. The first ship was preceded by so underwater monstrosity surging out of the mouth of the river, either so creature they controlled or sothing that thought better than to confront the orc clerics. An hour later, the trees seed to twist away from the banks, and the water churned a muddy mix before I noticed the sails. The ship moved slowly up the river and then out into the lake.

A nearly naked female orc stood on the bow, sweating from her efforts, and I assud by her body movents that she was the one clearing the way with her aetheric magic. She was fit, and her body was untouched by tattoos. Her glossy black hair was braided and swung behind her as she moved. She seed to stumble, and a massive, heavily tattooed orc rushed to cover her in a heavy fur cloak. I burned her face into my mory, as she was clearly a powerful cleric of the Caliphate. She was helped below deck, and my attention turned to the rest of the ship.

Dozens of other orcs, most of whom were also tattooed, worked across the deck, storing sails. Others scanned the water and shore in the light of the moon. There were over a hundred orcs just on the deck of this first ship. Saturn only knew how many were below deck.

The ship didn’t travel far before dropping an anchor. Twenty minutes later, a second ship, just as formidable, joined the first. Through the spyglass, I spotted other orc clerics on deck supplying the sails with aetheric wind. A third warship was coming behind, its sails barely visible to . I scribbled into my book: “The first warship just reached the lake. They are waiting on the others. I estimate it should be half a day before the fleet starts to sail for Varvao.”

I thought I had done a fairly good job slowing them. If my estimation was correct, I would have given Varvao nearly four out of the five days the Centurion requested. Apparently, my effort was not appreciated, and the script flowed across the page. “Duke Tiberius needs four more days to rout the Bartiradians and send reinforcents.”

I stared at the words and shook my head. Doing the math in my head, he wanted to stall them for a total of six days—not five. Duke Tiberius was also the duke who had dragged his feet and left us to face the Bartiradian army in Macha with just two mages to defend the walls against overwhelming odds.

If I did nothing, the fleet would take half a day to form up and probably a day to sail the fifty miles to Varvao with the aid of the clerics. The only thing I could think to do was swim out in the lake and remove a section of the hull to sink a few ships before they discovered and drowned in short order. I was mostly certain each warship had at least one cleric, but probably more. I continued to watch as ship after ship erged, about one every twenty minutes, like the river was giving birth to Varvao’s doom in the middle of the night.

There was an infrequent sound of buzzing overhead as their insect drones searched for threats. When the thirty-eighth ship erged, shortly before midday, they did not sail imdiately as I had predicted. Scanning the decks, I understood the delay. Their priests were not on deck, so they were recovering their aether below—at least that is what I presud. There was almost no wind to move their ships so it would have to be supplied.

The warriors on deck had also thinned considerably. They had been prepared for an attack when they erged into the lake and nothing had materialized and were now resting for when they reached the city.

I decided not to throw away my life and would remain here. Once the fleet passed, I would report and race west. I pulled out my blood compass and carefully retrieved Corvus’s sample on a piece of clean cloth. The tiny bit of flesh soaked the cloth with blood and then I dried it with my Hound thermal stone. Wet blood would corrode the compass and make it more difficult to clean.

I made sure the compass was prepared as well, heating and cleaning it thoroughly. Then, I activated it with the new dried sample. The pull was weak, so Corvus was already a good distance away. My duplicity had been successful, though. I should be able to follow the compass to the Archives. I relaxed in my stone coffin and waited.

There didn’t appear to be much activity on the ships, even as evening approached hours later. Maybe they were waiting on sothing else? Centurion Sergius had asked for an update in the book. I replied, “All 38 ships erged from the river. I have managed to prevent them from sailing imdiately, but cannot hold them much longer.” Taking credit for their clerics clearly resting to recover may have been a little hubris on my part.

As if my words had cursed , a few decks started to light up with lamps and glowstones. The female priest who had led the first ship walked imperiously on deck toward the bow, dropping her heavy cloak and revealing herself once again. The decks were awash with activity as orcs and a few goliaths moved to ready the fleet to sail. I wrote my ssage. “The fleet will sail in the next hour for Varvao, I have done all I could.”

I was expecting a ‘good job’ or ‘throw yourself in front of the ship’ or sothing else. Instead, the ssage was, “We can discuss your failure when we et next. Get to Varvao and report to Mage Commander Gracious.”

I looked at the ssage for a long ti in disbelief. He wanted to go to a city that was going to be besieged by orcs in a day’s ti? I had flashes of Macha and slowly shook my head, closing the book. There was also almost no way I could get there before the fleet anyway. I pulled the blood compass out of my belt and prepared to leave after the fleet sailed past my position. Two hours later, the first sail was raised, and the others followed as the armada proceeded toward Varvao.

As I made ready to leave, my earth pulse picked up movent. Shit, Pathfinders were walking the shore, ready to shadow the fleet as it moved.

© Copyrighted 2024, 2025 by AlwaysRollsAOne

No permission is granted to translate, copy, repost, or convert this original work of fiction into audio format. If you are viewing this on a site other than my Patreon, RoyalRoad, or Scribblehub, it has been stolen without my consent and violates the DMCA. Please note that this work is the result of my creative effort and is protected by copyright law. Removing or modifying this notification acknowledges that you are aware you are violating the DMCA. No permission is granted for my original work to be used to train AI.