Following Valerian’s lead, Alex let Cedric hang on to him as he led the crew leader in a staggered trot across the wooden bridge. The battle had left its scars on the structure. Torn railing posts. Splintered furrows where Diana had missed an air-blade trace. Scorch marks from his own fire magic. The bodies of a few Krewal who had made it too far for comfort.

  And it wasn’t as if his plan involved patching things up.

  Cedric suddenly hissed in pain.

  “You alright?”

  Alex made to slow down, but the crew leader urged him on.

  “Give me a day and I’ll be up dancing like a fiddler.” He shot Alex with what should have been a reassuring smile. A nasty bruise over one eye and a split lip made it anything but.

  Alex didn’t give voice to his doubts.

  Beside them, Valerian easily held up the staggering mayor despite the many wounds littering his own body. A particularly bad gash running from the side of the paladin’s chest down to his ribs seemed to cause him pain whenever he breathed out. Not that he let it show on his face.

  At some point, Alex knew, people would start noticing how he always came out unscathed in every fight he leveled up, and questions would follow. Questions he wouldn’t want to answer. Questions to which he didn’t even have the right answers.

  The solution came to him easily enough. So long as he wasn’t anywhere or with anyone for too long, then the problem would never come up. No need to fret over it.

  As they approached the barricade, a loud voice cut through his thoughts.

  “You close that gap and I swear by the First I’ll shove those beige robes o’ yours so far down your throat you’ll never have to wipe your arse again.”

  Yeah, Alex concluded. That sounds like Daven.

  “What’s that even mean, lad?” A bored voice answered. “You should’ve said ‘shove those beige robes so far down your throat they’ll come out brown’ or something of the like. These things have to make sense, you gather?”

  “You—”

  Valerian was the first through the gap in the barricade, and that seemed to shut Daven up. He half-dragged the mayor behind him, and Alex heard the paladin pass him on to someone.

  “He needs urgent care,” the paladin told them.

  Then Alex was pushing Cedric in front of him and finally crossing the gap himself. But not before he shot one last look at the horde they left behind. The Kruwal that had gotten out of the sand pit clustered around the hornblower. There was some shoving between them, fingers being pointed.

  Alex thought it was all too strange, and his confusion must have shown on his face.

  “The strongest will make his claim,” Valerian said, following his gaze. “A few will contest him. When it’s done, they’ll come.”

  On the eastern side of the bridge, the work at the barricade hadn’t stopped. It seemed Daven had gotten the word of his plan out, as a daisy chain of villagers piled up every wooden object they could get their hands on. The already massive barricade swelled with broken up furniture, fence poles, crates, chests, and even doors. Thatch from the roofs and straw bundles were strategically placed in the gaps between the kindling so it could all burn evenly.

  A figure in beige robes crouched by the barricade. When two burly men placed a massive wooden chest to plug the gap they’d just come through, the figure pushed his hands up against the base of the structure and that clay-like cement that had melted to let the villagers pass poured out like a thick oil from his palm. No one else would be coming through.

  “There,” the figure said. No, the Reaper, Alex recalled, though he couldn’t remember his name. “Happy now?”

  Daven huffed. “Happy? They’d be stuck on the other side with those beasts if you had your way.”

  The Reaper chuckled and stood from his crouch. “Lad, if I had my way, I’d be in a Cardoshi villa bouncing a courtesan on my leg while one of the Twin Queens sang me a love song.” Reaching into an inside pocket of his robes, he pulled out some kind of packed leaf, unrolled it, and pushed the whole thing up against the roof of his mouth. “Whichever queen, mind you. I’m not picky.” He swallowed for a moment, then sighed. “But I’m not there, am I? I’m here with the likes of you, in the forgotten arse end of the League, and almost had my head caved in by a Kruwal of all things while out taking a stroll. So, you see, there’s really no need for you to sulk.”

  His job finished and his piece said, the man stalked away down the bridge. Daven sputtered after him, trying and failing to come up with anything. Cedric came to his rescue.

  “Where’s Diana?” he asked.

  Reluctantly, Daven turned from the Reaper, though not before shooting the mana final glare.

  “Er, probably sleeping like a rock by now,” he said. “Would’ve gone with her but that bastard there was trying to close it up with you all on the wrong side of it. Couldn’t have that now, could I? I left Lanna looking after her.”

  Daven pointed to what seemed to be an improvised infirmary that had been set up against the side of a tall house. But that wasn’t what caught Alex’s attention. On the village green, scores of villagers that should’ve been fleeing were passing out weapons amongst each other. Pitchforks, woodsman axes, shovels, some old swords and other crude weapons, and even improvised pikes with corded up knives as spear points found their way into eagerly waiting hands. What seemed to be all the men and half the women of Riverbend gathered there, some still in their teens, others old and gray with crooked backs. Only the children and some adults to care for them seemed to have been sent out already. He could see a few carts and the peddler’s wagon heading away in the distance.

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  Alex balked for a moment. Idiots. The idea was so stupid but also so obvious now that he thought about it. These were village people. Likely, Riverbend was all they’d ever known. They wouldn’t abandon it so easily.

  Brave idiots, yes, but idiots all the same.

  A great blast from a Kruwal horn shattered the momentary silence. The sound echoed in the air like a gunshot. A beat later, another distinct one answered the call. Both came from the western side of the village, but none were close enough to be from the horde they’d been fighting.

  “Another war band,” Valerian said, then shook his head. “No, two of them, further into the forest. Unless they’ve divided their forces to mislead us.”

  The horn blast had the type of effect Alex imagined air raid sirens would have upon a traumatized population. The villagers in the daisy chain dropped what they were carrying and fled the bridge toward their houses. On the green, it only took the sight of their neighbors running for the rest of the men and women to follow. Their spirit quick to break once the odds became clear and mob mentality set in. Not so idiotic, then.

  Alex didn’t have to think twice. Flames formed on the palm of his hand and he flicked them toward a thick bundle of hay in the center of the barricade. Then another and another until every section of the makeshift rampart had hay or thatch afire. Smartly, the Reaper had left some holes on his clay cement around the base of the barricade so air could circulate to keep feeding the fire.

  “I’m hoping we won’t have to find out,” he said.

  xx

  The villagers had calmed down from their initial panic once the fire on the bridge started burning. They were surprisingly quick and organized in their retreat, helping each other tying work horses and donkeys to grain carts repurposed into carrying the wounded and the belongings people couldn’t bear parting with. Neighbor helped neighbor when one had extra space in their cart, and the elderly were given preferential seats when the first carts started rolling south.

  The crew had stopped in the village green where a pole decorated with ribbons for the festival had been raised. Visible for all to see, Cedric had said, and still standing despite their many wounds. He’d argued their presence would lift the people’s spirits and dampen the hysteria this type of evacuation could cause. They’d be the last ones out, which wouldn’t take much longer now that most people were ready to go.

  “How long will it burn, you reckon?” asked Daven.

  “That’ll go for a whole day alright,” Bryon the blacksmith said. He’d joined them after he made sure Lanna had left with the injured, which included the mayor and Diana. “Maybe longer. By the time they can cross, we’ll be most of the way to Holdenfor.”

  The fire had grown quickly once set, until the flames roared high up in the air and the other side of the bridge could hardly be seen through the growing haze of smoke above the river.

  “And when it does burn out, they’ll have to contend with a smoldering hot, rock hard rampart.” Chewing on his leaf, the Reaper sat lackadaisically on the grass with his back to the pole. “Heat only hardens that kind of power-born clay, and I made it so it’ll last for a few days before it breaks apart.”

  “You should’ve just made it last forever if you could,” Daven said.

  “Don’t work like that, lad.”

  “Why? Is a trace like that too good to be used for the likes of us?”

  The Reaper chuckled. “Too good to be used by the likes of me, more like. If I could make my traces last forever like you want me to, then I might just be sitting in that nice villa, and with two courtesans instead of one. It takes an infinite amount of power to make a trace last infinitely. Didn’t your sister teach you that? She’s a right talent from the little I saw.”

  “She was too busy holding back a horde of Kruwal to teach me anything,” Daven spat. “Maybe she’d still be awake if you had bothered helping instead of hiding behind the barricade.”

  “I did help,” said the Reaper, unbothered. “More than I needed. Beyond the call of my duty, you might say. I’ll be billing you, by the by.” He nodded vaguely toward Byron.

  The blacksmith snorted. “Good luck with that.”

  The Reaper seemed to take it in good humour. The only one who didn't was Daven, and he went on prodding the man, but Alex tuned out the conversation. He watched the opposite bank of the river through the curling smoke for any kind of movement. It hadn’t even been ten minutes since they’d crossed the barricade. Had the Kruwals already chosen a new leader? Valerian seemed to think it would solve itself quickly enough, but that didn’t account for the other war bands closing in from the forest.

  “Will they swim for it?” Alex spoke up. They all turned to him and he gathered himself. “Once they sort themselves out, I mean. Can’t they just cross the river?”

  The reckless part of him almost wished they would try it. The Kruwal would be easy targets for him as they swam. And Daven too, now that one of the hunters had handed him a spare bow and a quiverfull of arrows. A thank you, the man had said, for taking part in the defense of the village. The archer had come out of his sullen shell after that.

  “They’d be fools to do it,” the blacksmith answered. “The Dunnser is narrower here, aye, but it runs swift and deep. The current would throw them against the rocks as the river bends south. Not a good way to die, drowning. You’d have to go a few miles upriver for calmer waters, but there the river widens too much for any cohesive force to make the swim.”

  “The Kruwal are mountain people,” Valerian added. The paladin had also been given something—a shield, to make up for the one he left at the Bedstone Inn. It wasn’t a tower shield like his original, but a smaller round one with a brass boss that reminded Alex of the stereotypical viking shield. A simple sword had been offered as well, but the paladin had denied it, preferring to keep his new pilfered great axe. His ragged breathing had not gotten better, but he’d denied being evacuated with the wounded. “They are not known for their swimming.”

  Alex nodded and let the matter die. Logically, he knew it was better that they wouldn’t be crossing. The calm that had settled after the battle on the bridge had made him too comfortable with the idea of fighting the Kruwal again. He forced himself to think of the excruciating pain of having his limbs crushed by Scarface, but that seemed like a distant, hazy memory compared to the rush he got when he leveled up.

  That felt real. Real and just around the corner once more. He could almost reach out and taste it.

  He turned to check on the last few villagers around instead, who would share the last available cart and mules amongst themselves. There was a middle aged man with glasses taking only a shoulder bag and a pair of books that he carried himself. A young husband and wife leaving their house in tears, going so far as to lock their front door, as if that’d make much of a difference if the Kruwal decided to break in. And an old grizzled woman that had refused to leave with the other elderly. She had to be carried out of her small thatch-roofed home by what looked to be her sons or grandsons, all grown men already with wives and teenage kids of their own.

  His stomach churned at the sight. Alex realized she might have been here when the village was first founded, when there were barely any families around, all just trying to make a simple living farming and living off the land.

  He knew he couldn’t blame himself for it. It would be stupid to do so. If anything, it was like the Reaper said. He’d helped. Gone above and beyond what he had to do, and all that for people he barely knew. But it wouldn’t have to happen had they been able to throw back the Kruwal. Had he been strong enough to fight the monsters that wanted to destroy what these people had built.

  He didn’t know what the Second was all about. People seemed to fear and despise the very name, and that might just be for good. Because if, despite all that, the Second was supposed to become some kind of savior, Alex was a poor offer for what this world needed.

  His sudden melancholy lasted until Daven spoke up.

  “Uh, guys,” he started, a trembling finger pointing to the water. “I don’t think they’ll have to do much swimming.”