Chapter 14: Trouble in the Woods

The armor felt good. Hardened leather plates strapped across her chest, arms, legs, a skull-like mask covering her face connected to a helmet that protected her head. It was lightweight, flexible, and honestly it probably wouldn't even stop a well-placed hack of a sword. So it's only functional purpose was to stop the nicks and scrapes and minor cuts, to put an inch of something between her and a sword, a poison stinger, a burning torch.

But it felt good. For the first time in a year, Lilith felt protected. The armor was a carapace that blocked out the outside world. The helmet muffled her hearing, and the mask muffled her voice. The gloves put a comforting distance between her and everything she touched, and the rest of it put the same distance between everything that touched her. It was no accident that slaves ended up half-dressed most of the time, Lilith knew. It was an intentional act of psychological warfare, to make them feel vulnerable, exposed. But Lilith wasn't like that. Not anymore.

Not that she was exactly free, either. The pendant digging into her chest was a constant reminder of that. But the pain didn't bother her so much now, even though it had, if anything, grown more intense since she strapped the armor over it. She could deal with it. As maddening as it was to have this constant grinding pain in her chest, she could deal with it.

Of course, what she was supposed to be doing now was meditating. One of the side chambers in the Catacombs near the Temple Corridor had become her personal haunt, a place of seclusion to whence she retreated to study and practice alone. Munne trusted her enough not to waste time in here, but sometimes rather than focus her energies with proper meditation Lilith would take some time to just think. She did well enough on whatever tests Munne had set out for her that she didn't feel the need to dedicate all of her efforts to training and study.

“I was told I might find you here,” a familiar voice said, and Lilith glanced over her shoulder to see Paulus the Monk standing there.

“Why are you here?” Lilith asked, suddenly fearful that Munne had taken her without the monk's approval, and he'd come here to reclaim her for petty chores in the Abbey.

“For support on the surface,” Paulus said, “you're a witch, or close enough to one, support on the surface is running slim, and the charr are still rampaging up north, so our problems with manpower are only getting worse. It might not be long before I'm sent north as well, and I want to leave Devona and the Ashford Guard with as little to deal as I can.”

“And...I'm going to help you with this,” Lilith said, getting to her feet.

“You are,” Paulus said, “Devona can't keep Ashford in one piece on her own. The grawl are still a problem, the bandits are growing bolder, if she turns her attentions to one, she loses the ability to defend the village from the other. I hope I don't have to explain why a village being sacked in the shadow of Ascalon City would be a bad thing.”

“Will I never have to stop reminding people that I was a noble?” Lilith asked.

Paulus shrugged and headed for the exit. “Come with me. We're heading to the surface.”

“I can't just leave without Munne's permission,” Lilith said, unmoving.

"I talked to Munne already. How do you think I knew where to find you?" Paulus asked, stopping at the door.

 "Maybe you just looked for the door guarded by war horrors," Lilith said, but followed Paulus nonetheless.

"In this catacomb? It would've taken me hours," Paulus said, as they emerged into the Temple Corridor. Lilith's trio of war horrors began marching along behind them.

Lilith was not a stranger to direct sunlight. Beams of it fell through the outskirts of the catacombs, where she lived and spent a good deal of her time. It still felt strange walking into the open. If nothing else, there was not the usual chill of stepping out into the autumn air wearing thin, ragged clothing, and not much of that. Quietly she prayed that her place in the catacombs at least last through winter, when every slave's errand was a race against frostbite.

"So what's the plan?" Lilith asked as they emerged into Abbey's courtyard.

"We head to the hills. We find the bandits. We kill the bandits," Paulus said.

"Seriously?" Lilith asked, "you worked out who I was by interrogating farmers that night like four weeks ago when I got the stinger for you, but your entire battle plan for attacking the bandits is just...Attack?"

"I am a smiter, and you a witch, and you have your horrors," Paulus said, "I think you overestimate their chances."

"I think you overestimate caster supremacy," Lilith said, "I'm an apprentice. I have three horrors and a few witch tricks. You're better at fighting the dead than the living. We're outnumbered twenty to one, unless the bandits have been on a recruiting drive the past month."

"You don't understand bandits," Paulus said, "they're in it for the money. Because they can't make a livelihood of their own, or because they just don't want to. Either way, when their leaders fall, they'll scatter. If they take heavy losses, they'll scatter. Yes, they can kill us if they sacrifice half their number, but from their perspective, we'll be back later. Why flip a coin for temporary safety when running away is much more likely to get you out alive?"

"If they all run away," Lilith said, "how does that solve the problem?"

"They're no longer organized," Paulus said, "regrouping will take them time, they will be less bold and stay further on the outskirts, they will lose a few of their number to deserters who are too scared to regroup or become lost, and they will lose more to infighting as new leaders establish themselves. The plan, so far as you are concerned, is that we find them, and then we kill them."

Lilith sighed and said “you'd better be right about this.”

“You act like it's not my life on the line, too,” Paulus said.

The rest of the trip was occupied by nothing but idle chatter. The hills on the outskirts of Ashford still thrived with bandits. The camp contained dozens, in plain sight of nearby farmers. Lilith looked to where Pitney's farm was, or rather, had been. The homestead was blackened by fire, and from the state of the weeds growing amongst the crops, had been for at least a week. “So I take it finding them was the easy part?” Lilith asked.

“Indeed,” Paulus said, “get ready.”

Lilith pulled her minions in a bit tighter, forming a shield just a few feet in front of Paulus and herself. She drew in a deep breath and tried to feel out the living, sense their heartbeats, but this was a trick she had not yet got the hang of. She could feel her own thudding in her chest. She could reliably pinpoint Munne's when she focused, but only because Munne's was alone in a sea of empty stone and dusty corpses.

There were heartbeats everywhere now. Anytime she scrutinized one, it always felt wrong. Too fast. Too slow. Bird? Rabbit? Maybe herself and Munne just had unusually fast heartbeats? That one had to be a mouse, though, it was like a constant purr. She couldn't even hear when one beat stopped and another started. Plus, the catacomb had rats. Lilith sometimes spent days at a time living off their blood. Munne was right when she said that it helped hone her ability to track the living, and that the blood of a scant dozen a day would be enough to keep her healthy, but gods did they taste awful.

“Wait,” Lilith said, placing a hand on Paulus' arm to stop him, “something up ahead.” She concentrated. The thump-thump that she did not so much hear as feel was steady, at about the same pace as hers and Munne's and Paulus'. It could be a similarly sized creature, except that it was coming from the trees. “Human heartbeats,” she whispered, “in the trees up above. It's an ambush.”

Paulus squinted up at the trees ahead, and then said in a very loud voice “I don't see anything. You're just getting jumpy because it's your first time.” He followed with a whisper “if you have anything that works at range, use it as soon as you're close enough.”

Lilith had put embarrassingly little thought into how she would actually fight the bandits. Every single one of her orifices was sealed up tight enough that her swarm would be unable to crawl out. She could spoil blood at distance, but that would do little else than make the bandits uneasy, perhaps make them vomit if she was lucky. It wouldn't kill anyone. And her minions couldn't climb trees. And she couldn't even suck blood through her mask. So this is why so many witches only wore the masks at ceremonies and went barefoot.

Lilith still had her staff and her knife, though. She aimed it at the nearest heartbeat and fired, a pulse of deathly energy sapping the life from him, and then, clenching her fist with effort, focused on his heartbeat, on the blood that ran through it, on making it run black. With a strangled noise he fell from the tree, and her minions charged him. The young man, not much older than Lilith, struggled to his feet, arrows sang out from the trees and thudded uselessly into the walking husks, and they carved the man into pieces.

With catlike agility, Paulus leapt straight from the ground and into a tree, catching an arrow with his shield and hacking into the bandit with his blade. Lilith ducked for cover behind a tree, sending bolts of dark energy out from hiding whenever she dared, while Palus moved from one tree to the next, sometimes hacking at the bandits' throats or heads for a quick kill, other times just kicking them out of the tree and onto the ground where Lilith's minions would slaughter them.

Within ten seconds, the direction of the battle was clear. The remaining bandits jumped down from the trees and began running back towards their camp, and Paulus tore after them. Lilith sent her minions charging behind him, but followed at a more cautious distance himself. Let Paulus play the hero if he wanted, Lilith owed nothing to the kingdom of Ascalon, and if Paulus died with no one to inherit her, there wouldn't be anyone coming down into the catacombs to drag her away from her training to risk her life with some surface bandits.

But then, there was that burnt-out homestead. And the last time she had made these sorts of justifications to herself...Well, she still had nightmares about the head of Fadden Hathorn, piked on the walls of Ascalon.

Lilith pulled off her helmet and gloves and followed after Paulus and her minions. As they drew near the camp, she summoned up the swarm from within herself and sent it to devour the bandits, who now roused themselves for battle. As the swarm descended upon them and began devouring three or four, the minions charged in heedless of the limbs hacked off or the flesh burnt away, and Paulus right behind them, sword glowing with fire, the bandits' morale broke and they fled. Lilith found one running in the direction of Pitney's old farm and picked him off with her staff. She left her locusts out to chase the rest until they died a minute or two later, claiming another handful of victims.

Paulus had chased one of the bandits down and cut his legs out from under him before slitting his throat, and now was making his way back up the hill to the camp. Lilith stood amidst the tents, her minions staggering back towards her. Fortunately all of the bandits had spent their time trying to attack the meaty upper half, which resulted in lots of deep cuts, terrible burns, broken bones, and other wounds that damaged an undead minion's capabilities not at all. Their legs and weapon arms were, for the most part, untouched. Lilith herself had come out of the battle unscathed. Having a wall of friendly minions certainly made a difference.

“As I said,” Paulus said as he reached the top of the hill, “cut a few down and the rest scatter.”

“More like a dozen,” Lilith said, looking about the battlefield. One bandit still writhed in pain on the ground, staring at the intestines sprawled out on the dirt. Lilith wasn't sure if it was one of her minions or Paulus who had opened him up. Either way, she knelt down besides him with her knife, his eyes widened with fear as he saw her, and he started to stammer something out when Lilith cut his throat. Blood gurgled up as he sank back into the ground, his eyes glazing over. Lilith sighed and stood. “So that's that?” she asked.

“For the easy part, yes,” Paulus said, “the grawl have greater forces, and they're more savage and less likely to run than these lot anyway.”

“Yeah,” Lilith said, “you can tell these guys didn't have it coming because of how easy it was to give it to them.”

“What?” Paulus asked.

“How many of them ended up where they are because Adelbern fucked everything up?” Lilith asked, “every time he wants to invest in some foreign market or fund a new great wonder of Ascalon, the taxes get raised on his own people. Soon, they can't afford to eat, they get desperate, they become outlaws, and then...We kill them.”

“They were extorting farmers,” Paulus said, “they were forcing others to give up the honest fruits of their own labor in exchange for nothing."

"Because the fruits of their own labor had already been stolen," Lilith said, "they were forced to choose between themselves and others, and they chose themselves. Is that really so bad?"

"Maybe not," Paulus said, "but someone had to pay the price for what was set in motion. Perhaps it should have been Adelbern, but it is far beyond the abilities of you and me to make him pay for this."

"Do you think it should've been Adelbern?" Lilith asked.

“Why?” Paulus asked.

“Do you think Rurik would've done better?” Lilith asked.

“Regardless of who should be sitting on the throne of Ascalon,” Paulus said, “the kingdom will be better off with the grawl driven off. If I answer with an opinion opposite yours, it will drive a needless wedge between us.”

“Yeah,” Lilith said, “I guess you're right. Except...”

“Except what?” Paulus asked, his agitation showing.

Lilith was going to say that she didn't know which side she was on. Didn't know if she liked either side. Rurik himself thought the blood of Thorn ran thin in him, but who else was there? The bloodlines of Kryta ran as thin as those of Ascalon, if it had any survivors at all, and the bloodline of Orr had long since been erased. Maybe it would be better to just do away with the entire royal family and put the most worthy noble yet living on the throne. But who would that even be? Didn't the thinning of the blood apply as much to every noble family as it did to the royal? “Lilith,” Paulus said, stirring her form her internal monologue, “we need to keep moving. Come on!”

“Right. Sorry,” Lilith said, heading back into the wooded hills, “we'll need to take the same route back down, my helmet and gloves are back there,” she explained.

The population of Ashford Village was thinner than it had been before, and those that were there kept to themselves. This time last month, Lilith could hardly walk twenty feet without running into someone trying to pressgang her into doing some chore or another for her. Now she and Paulus could walk from one end of the village to the other without seeing a single person on the streets, though Lilith saw a few through windows or working in their shops.

Devona's guardhouse was still manned, though down to a skeleton crew. Lilith turned her face aside, not eager to be recognized, before she realized that she was wearing a mask. Paulus greeted Devona. “You're finally here,” Devona said, “the last recruiting drive for more men to send north has emptied us almost completely, and I've heard talk they won't be coming back once that damned warband is hunting down. Word is, Adelbern is building an army to counterattack. If that's true, this grawl problem is solved today or it isn't solved at all.”

“Then it's a good thing we're here,” Paulus said, “you said the grawl were hiding out across the bridge?”

“Yes,” Devona said, “give me a half-hour to marshal my men and I'll lead the force. You and the witch can hold the flanks, my men will make up the main body.”

“You catch that?” Paulus asked.

“Yes,” Lilith said, “left flank or right?”

“Right flank will be near the river,” Paulus said, “the grawl will avoid it, but there's a chance of being attacked by skale.”

“So I'm taking the right flank, then?” Lilith asked.

“If you want it,” Paulus said, “the left flank, all you'll have to worry about is grawl. So which scares you more, dumb animals that don't know the terrain, or dumber ones that do?”

“I don't care,” Lilith said, “pick one.”

Paulus shrugged. “Alright, I'll take the left flank, you can have the right.”

Devona's total force was hardly two-dozen men. Each one had proper chain armor and was fully outfitted with the best weapons available. Still, it seemed like a paltry army. Lilith knew that the armies north of the wall were always at least hundreds strong, and often enough thousands. “Is this it?” Lilith asked.

“We're stretched thin,” Devona said, “but there is no need to fear. The soldiers of Thorn have triumphed over ten times their number, and Ascalon is the last kingdom ruled by the blood of Thorn. We are ready for them, this time. We will drive them from Lakeside, and by nightfall we shall have peace and plunder!”

The guardsmen gave a cheer, and Lilith decided to refrain from asking any more potentially demoralizing questions. Historically speaking, if you couldn't inspire courage, chopping off pieces of the people who questioned you was considered a good way to inspire fear, which was the next best thing.

Though each of soldier in it crept along as quietly as they could, the entire army was so obvious that they may as well have had bannermen and drummers leading the march. The sun was drifting off towards afternoon when Devona shouted “grawl!” The army found trees and ditches and rocks to hide behind. Lilith could see them, too, and sought out their heartbeats. It was always convenient, when fighting an enemy of a different breed, because you could feel the difference in their hearts. Your side would beat along one rhythm, theirs on another. Lilith had been taught, and she believed, that the grawl's hearts beat slightly faster than a human's...But damned if she could keep track. They all seemed human to her.

But behind them, there was a heart that beat slow and powerful, a mighty bass to her tiny snare drum. “There's something out there,” she said to a nearby soldier, “something big.”

An arrow thudded into a tree, a harbinger of dozens more. The grawl across the woods snarled and charged, and the archers of Ashford returned fire. Lilith sent her minions out to meet the grawl charge while the guardsmen stayed back to hold the line; her skirmishers fared poorly, cutting up a few grawl but claiming not even a single casualties before the grawl's heavy hammers smashed them to pieces.

Devona met the first grawl of the enemy line with a swing of her hammer that smashed its skull into paste. The guardsmen behind her rushed into the fray, the lines devolving into the confused chaos of battle. An arrow struck Lilith in the arm, and she hissed with pain, snapping the head off and tearing the shaft out. Another arrow, a massive three and a half foot shaft, burrowed through a soldier's chest and pinned him to the tree behind.

A few grawl peeled off towards her flank, caution keeping them from the river, where even now the skale began to gather. Lilith weakened a grawl with a bolt from her staff, shattered its kneecap with a well-placed blow from the bottom end of it, and then shoved him down the riverbank, sending him tumbling down to where the hungry skale waited, pouncing upon the unlucky grawl in an instant, tearing the still-living creature to pieces with their jaws.

Her arm seared with pain, the wound from the grawl arrow taking its toll. The soldiers near Lilith had rushed to meet the enemy. One of the grawl, distracted by a guardsmen, Lilith tackled to the ground. Tearing off her helmet, she bit into its neck. Its blood tasted foul, but not so terrible as the rats she'd grown used to. The wound on her arm sealed up as she sucked the grawl dry.

Rising from her prey, Lilith snatched up her staff and confronted a pair of hammer-wielding grawl who had just finished smashing in the legs of a guardsman, who tried for a moment to crawl away from the distracted grawl, but then gave up with a moan of agony as his ruined legs were dragged across the forest floor. Lilith spoiled the blood of one grawl, and it doubled over with pain, and then shot a pulse from her staff to the other, but despite the enervation it stepped forward and swung hard. Lilith ducked and turned and the hammer smashed into her shoulder instead of her stomach, making a sickening cracking noise and sending her sprawling to the ground. She fought down a wave of nausea and struggled to keep her staff held in her good hand. 

She focused on the grawl's heartbeat as she rose to her feet, hoping to spoil his blood as well, but it attacked again, swinging towards her head, the hammer whistling above as she ducked under. The other grawl staggered up to confront her as well, sickened but not defeated. One took a high swing towards Lilith, and she shrank back out of range while the other pounced on her from the opposite side, swinging its hammer down to shatter her kneecap. She screamed with pain and collapsed to the ground. The two grawl loped towards her, snarling, but an arrow caught the sickened one in the chest, and it staggered backwards. The other looked to his companion, looked to the archer, and flinched as another arrow sailed through the air, this one passing harmlessly to the side. The grawl bellowed with fury. Lilith screamed with pain, rising to her feet. She shoved the bottom of her staff into the grawl's open mouth and channeled raw death into it until it grew limp, and then her hands went slack as well and she dropped to her knees.

Lilith crawled towards the grawl shot by the arrow and sank her teeth into it. Even after the corpse was dry her knee and shoulder moved only with agonizing pain. Lilith clenched her teeth and pulled herself to her feet again, examining the field around her. The grawl were drawing back. Devona and a small force of her guardsmen were among the archers, who drew shortswords and hatchets or else used their bows as clubs in a vain attempt to defend themselves. They were fleeing. In the distance, she could see the bestial form of a charr holding an eight-foot longbow. Its eyes were calculating, a beast that could think like a human. It surveyed the battlefield, saw its scrawny allies falling back, and snarled, retreating with them.

Lilith found a dying guardsman and knelt down beside him, wincing with pain. The guardsman stared down at the gaping hole in his chest, his lungs too damaged to speak. "Shhhh," Lilith said, putting a finger to his lips, which silently mouthed out what looked like gibberish. "I'll put you to sleep," Lilith said, and bit into his neck.

By the time she'd finished feeding from the dead, Lilith was whole again. There would likely be some scars left from the arrow that had pierced her, and she was still having some difficulty walking. Had the bones healed not quite right? Or was she just sore from the fight? She hoped it was the latter. Otherwise she would have to deal with the limp until she could convince Munne to get her the attentions of a proper healer. At least it wasn't much of a limp.

Devona was returning to the main group. It looked like about two-thirds of the guardsmen had survived the fight. By the look of the corpses, the grawl had suffered a similar fraction of casualties, which was impressive given there were three times as many of them. Lilith slipped her mask back on and went to meet with Devona and Paulus. “Get the wounded and help them back to the Abbey for immediate healing,” Devona ordered her men, who immediately set about gathering up the injured. “If we had a damn healer,” Devona muttered to herself without finishing.

Paulus was already helping a man with a mauled foot to his feet, supporting his weight and limping back towards the bridge that led to Ashford Abbey. It was miles from here. It had taken an hour to get here in good condition. In bad, it would be two, perhaps three? Lilith knew that for healing there was a “golden hour” inside which almost any wound could be sealed, but past that, grievous wounds were sometimes beyond the aid of even magical healing. And with a dozen wounded and only one healer to go around, they might not all receive magical healing. She was glad she could heal herself. Waiting in line at the Abbey would be torturous.

“So are we done?” Lilith asked, walking alongside Paulus, “is this it, are we finished?”

“The work is never finished, Lilith,” Paulus said, “there will always be a thief, a runaway slave, a cheat, someone who must be brought to justice.”

“This doesn't strike me as bringing people to justice so much as fighting a localized war,” Lilith said.

“With so few guardsmen, that's about the size of it,” Paulus said, “we have so few men, and have had such bad luck, that the criminals of the county can mass their forces and rampage through the outskirts without our being able to stop them. But at least now they'll be kept to the outskirts.”

“Not just bad luck,” Lilith said, “those grawl were being led by a charr. Didn't you see it?”

“A charr?” Paulus asked, “south of the wall?”

“Ayup,” Lilith said, “Devona suspected someone was behind the attacks when she brought in the wounded from the ambush a few weeks ago. I was still there recovering from the...Well, you know. You're the one who brought me.”

“Aye,” Paulus said, “I remember.”

“At the time I thought she suspected Royalists,” Lilith said.

“No,” Paulus said with a smile. Lilith looked to him quizzically. He couldn't see the quizzical expression on her face, of course, but he noticed her head turning towards him.

“Devona...Never suspects Royalists because there's not many around here,” Paulus said carefully.

“Ah,” Lilith said with a hidden smile, “so that's who you favor for the throne.” Paulus looked towards the guardsman with the mauled foot, on the other side of him. “I wouldn't tell anyone if you just tossed him in the river,” Lilith offered.

“What?!” the guardsman yelped.

“He's a guardsman!” Paulus said, “I can't betray him!” The guardsman breathed a sigh of relief.

“I dunno, he heard some inconvenient things,” Lilith said.

“He heard fodder for rumors. There's enough of those already,” Paulus said, “and if he or anyone else goes missing in the night, I'll know who to suspect.”

“Not I,” Lilith said, “all I said is I wouldn't tell anyone if you wanted to get rid of him. I wouldn't touch him myself.” She clutched at the brand behind her ear, hidden though it was beneath her helmet. “I'm not a noble,” she said, “I've gotten pretty used to doing what other people tell me.”

“Then do as you're told and leave the guard alone,” Paulus said.

“Yes, sir,” Lilith said half-heartedly.

The next few minutes they walked in silence. “I never thanked you,” Lilith said, “for bringing me to the infirmary the one time. I owed this to you, and I've been a brat about it the whole time. I'm sorry.”

“You don't need to thank me,” Paulus said, “you are a subject of the kingdom of Ascalon and the Lakeside County. It is my sworn duty to defend your life when I can.”

“No I'm not,” Lilith said, “a subject of Ascalon, I mean. Not really.”

“I swore my oath to Thorn and the Lunatic Court,” Paulus said, “not to any bloodline.”

“Thanks for taking the oath, then,” Lilith said. They were silent for a while longer. “Just so we're clear,” Lilith said to the wounded guardsman, “you are not to repeat a word of this conversation to anyone.”