But, for better or ill, she’d had time to sink into work that did not leave her feeling wrung out and depressed. It felt good. The change of pace did wonders for her mood and got Dreea to bloody shut up for a time.
The weight of the mace in her hands felt excellent now that she could draw illum through it.
Healers were rarely chosen out of the more illum-sensitive children. Those often went on to become full-fledged empire mages, trained at Hoarfrost and prepared for combat. Sil was, for a healer, more powerful than most. It’s what had earned her the calling of Iluna after all, but she was still much weaker than the weakest combat channeller. Having a proper focus was a way of mitigating that.
Her new mace felt absolutely right for the role. It was impossible to keep a grin off her face.
“You’re cheerful,” Vergil said by her side. “Haven’t seen you smiling like that in a while now.”
If that wasn’t the understatement to end all understatements. The boy’s knack for these never seemed to disappoint.
“We’re in a cave assaulted by monsters at the gate after we’ve just barely survived a different cave assaulted by monsters within. Reasons to smile have been rather rare,” she said. “Also, you’re one to talk. Grin any harder and the top of your head might pop off.”
He and Arin had spent a long time talking while she’d worked. She heard them, vaguely, from the workshop and it seemed to her that they got along like a house on fire.
The boy proved to have a rather magnetic personality once he got out of his shell. First the adventurers. Now the soldiers. If she hadn’t promised him they wouldn’t leave him behind, she would consider getting Tallah to do just that if they survived this place. He could go on and live a semblance of a normal life. He wouldn’t be safe, but he would also not be wandering the wilderness with them, or risking whatever the empire at large had in store for Tallah and her friends.
Fool boy. Never say we haven’t offered you the chance to get away from us.
Arin had remained behind to rest. Fatigue dripped off him in waves by the time Sil had finished her work. It was a doctor’s order that sent the soldier to bed. She and Vergil could make their own way back to the tavern. If Tallah wasn’t done by now, then she was about to experience a rude interruption.
“We chatted,” Vergil said, bringing her back to the moment. “Arin’s a great guy. I liked talking to him. He told me stories about the Rock. About the people. Other times and fights.”
He was smiling so wide that it was adorable. His helmet clanged against his new sword, both slung at his hip.
“Anything interesting?” she asked.
He raised his hand and looked at her, almost maniacal in his excitement. “All of it! It’s fantastic how brave they all are here. There’s never just the daemons. They grow food. They trade, put on shows, teach reading and maths to kids. They live here like there’s no tomorrow, but prepare as if there was.”
He stopped in place mid-burst, at an intersection of cobbled roads, and looked about. “Argia says that way’s quicker.” He pointed down an alleyway that had sprouted flower pots. Those hadn’t been there earlier. “This way leads towards the hearth. From there it’s a straight jaunt.”
Sil took him at his word. His sense of direction was a wonder that she would love to have for herself. The boy was never lost and, the more time they spent at the Rock, the better his routes and predictions were. Uncanny didn’t begin to describe the ability.
They went down the alley, emerged onto a wide thoroughfare, and followed the new road among clusters of mushroom-like buildings. Again, the scent of fresh bread wafted on the air, so thick and delicious that it set her mouth watering from yards away.
This time, Sil stopped and bought a loaf off a baker. Everyone could only get one, rations being what they were, but a decree from the brass above allowed for celebration after every big fight.
And this had been a particularly harrowing one.
She broke the loaf in two and shared the larger part to Vergil. She’d eaten what Arin had served her and still felt quite full from that, but fresh bread could not be passed up.
Now, if she could just find somewhere that sold some sugar candy or the like, she could consider the day absolutely perfect—near-death experience, crippling wounds, scars, suffering in the ward, illum burnout, and all other assorted evils notwithstanding.
They ate as they walked towards the glow of the shard that dominated the city’s centre plaza. Everything radiated out from there, the entire settlement being half of a disc crisscrossed by various narrow streets.
Soldiers milled about on the walkways above, their numbers still strong in spite of the day’s ruckus.
It galled Sil that she thought of all the terrible excitement of the day as simple ruckus. Her scale for danger was slipping dangerously towards desensitisation. Tallah and Vergil’s cavalier attitudes for their mortality were doing nothing to temper her own self-destructive drives.
There was quite a lot of traffic at this time, people heading in the same direction as them as if congregating at the hearth. Several workers around the way put down their tools and headed away, joining up with other groups.
“Something’s happening,” Vergil said as he chewed. “Where’s everyone going?”
“We’ll see,” Sil said.
They weren’t in a hurry. Even if she had lost the track of time, she was certain there was still daylight outside the Rock. Daemons weren’t likely to show up before nightfall, and that should still be some time away.
It was hard not to notice the gallows raised in the central plaza. It was a temporary structure of a beam suspended between two supports, a couple metres off the ground. Seven people were bound and gagged in the middle of the plaza, soldiers guarding them.
A crier was belting out accusations.
“Seems like there’s going to be an execution,” Sil said, disgusted by the sight. “Of all times and places.”
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“Severin of Low House Calum,” the crier yelled and pointed to the fourth figure in the row of prisoners. “Caught looting during the recent assault. Sentenced to be hung by the neck until death, by the order of the Lord Commander of the Rock.” He moved on to the next figure, a woman. Her sin was that of cowardice, of running from the enemy and leaving her children behind. The punishment was twenty lashes. And so on.
Sil and Vergil watched, the bread growing cold in their hands, appetite lost. Four of the seven got the noose. They were lifted up in turn by the soldiers, and left to flail to the boos and jeers of the crowd. Death by suffocation. A horrid way to end.
“Bloody Ermil,” a man commented by Vergil’s side. He spat noisily. “He could’ve asked for food. We have enough to spare.”
“Stupid man,” a woman answered him. “To loot at a time like this? What did he think would happen?” There was quiet consternation in her voice, but no rancour aimed at the soldiers.
Two women were lashed until only bloody ruin remained of their backs. They cried when the whip’s tip bit into their flesh, but otherwise did not beg nor plead. The soldier administering the punishment worked quickly and efficiently, his hand steady and his strikes precise.
Castien, the blubbery girl from the ward, took care of them afterwards, applying a salve to hasten scarring and healing. They weren’t afforded accelerants or healing prayers, which made sense. Both women gathered up the ruins of their dignity, bowed to the healer, then disappeared into the crowd. It parted for their passing. Three children followed in their wake, grasping their hands.
The last man was sentenced to be a scout outside the walls. That put some things into interesting perspective.
“They are all very brave indeed,” Sil mused as they watched the last execution being carried out. “Monsters in the front. No retreat. Capital punishment for something that would be merely a lost finger in most other places.”
These were lynchings, if truth was to be told. Between the moment of the attack and these brutal punishments there had barely been bells. Due process lay dead, but that wasn’t something many of those gathered seemed to consider.
Most of the people around the two of them discussed the event with detached disinterest. They had work to do, homes to rebuild, weapons to care for. They did not resent the condemned for their actions, but for the time wasted on their deaths.
They were here out of a strange sense of communal solidarity. Sil’s interest in the culture of the Rock grew in spades, even as it horrified her.
Vergil remained silent for a time as the crowd began dispersing. Only a group of four people stayed behind aside from them, and soldiers were already approaching those.
“Why did they come to watch this?” he asked, quietly, his good cheer gone.
Sil made a face. “To check if it were any of their neighbours, maybe. Or to be here for the last moments of their fellows. Their culture is of brutal efficiency. It’s admirable, after a fashion.”
“Why? They just… killed those people.”
Sil clicked her tongue and sighed. If anyone cared about Vergil’s opinion, they didn’t show it.
“They’re under siege. We’re under siege. You, I will remind, nearly got yourself killed plugging a hole earlier today. This city is under martial law. Any act against its citizens is seen as high treason. Why do you think all those adventurers are sitting pretty in the tavern and twiddling their thumbs?”
“If they caused any trouble, they’d just get executed?” Vergil frowned, as if thinking. “They can’t run. They’re kept away from fighting. If they misbehave, they get killed. No wonder they’re drinking themselves to death.”
Sil nodded and pressed a hand to his lower back, guiding him away. “Exactly. There’s no place for proper law here, no matter how evil that may seem.”
Vergil walked in silence. He glanced back towards the swinging bodies several times, but ultimately decided against voicing anymore protests. It looked as if he was having a private conversation in his head already.
Luna, surprisingly, piped up. “Good of the many over good of the one. Humans here very much like Kin.” The spider held on to Sil’s back, all six legs wrapped around her midriff. It was becoming surprisingly easy to forget about the spider unless it demanded Sil’s attention. “Good Knowing. Good place. Maybe they can be… friends to Kin here?”
Sil shrugged, her conversation with the Mother springing back to mind.
“I doubt it,” she said.
“Why? They understand good of the many. And being friends to the Kin is for the good of the many.”
“Your kin would seem very strange to everyone here,” Sil said. “It would remind them of the monsters outside the walls.”
“We are not monsters,” Luna said, voice indignant. “We are Kin. We have Knowing. We can help protect this place.”
Sil sighed. “You are unknown, Luna. Here, the unknown is not looked upon kindly.”
That got the spider tightening its grip around her waist.
Lovely. Now she’d upset both the boy and the spider. Next, she’d need to walk in on Tallah or something, and she’d have a full set for the day.
She briefly considered heading up rather than down, to the ward. But Kor would just send her back since it was too early for her to return. She’d used all the supplies she had to spare and all of her potions were still brewing. Adella would see to them once they finished.
Moreover, Sil’s allotment was spent up to midnight, and her head was still light with the exhaustion of the day. Vergil’s drain of her, the ridiculous healing she’d needed to endure, the work itself… what she needed was to finally sleep.
Life ground on at the Rock. With the short burst of excitement done, people just returned to their lives. It had likely not been a unique sight for anyone, not during a siege this long. She expected that the brass had executed quite a number of discontents in the first days. Part resource management, part civil disobedience deterrent.
She hated that she could see things from that perspective. She wasn’t supposed to. Death was death and, once, she might have objected to its barbarous application. Death by hanging from the neck. Slow and agonising. A spectacle in terror that had its purpose. I wasn’t like they would’ve dulled a blade to just lop their heads off.
Vergil said something she didn’t quite catch.
“Pardon?” she asked.
The boy shook his head. “Horvath is having opinions. I disagree with them.”
Ah right, that. With all the excitement of the previous few days, she hadn’t had the time to even remember the ghost in the boy’s head. Using its strength had become so reliable that she often forgot Vergil had a passenger.
“What opinions?” she asked, curious of the dwarf’s input on events.
Vergil shook his head. “I’d rather not say. I don’t want to encourage him by repeating out loud his filth.” His hand trembled, but he made a fist and it stilled.
“You have a good handle on him?” she asked.
“Yeah. He’s trying to worm his way around Argia’s lockdown, but I’m pretty sure she’s got him contained tight.”
“Too bad she can’t gag him.”
“I don’t mind it,” he said, digging his fingers back into the bread to scoop out some of the soft core. “Long as I can hear him, I know what he’s doing. He can’t help but brag and try to coach me.”
If she remembered dwarf lore accurately, then this one would have suggested something absurd such as killing every man or woman over a certain age to cull the population and preserve resources. Dwarven outlook on life had been utilitarian in the extreme, where the weak had to be culled, the strong tested, and the traitors fed their feet or some other form of some-such terror. She resisted the urge to prod.
“What next?” Vergil asked, eating slowly. “If Tallah’s going over the wall, what do we do? Sit here and twiddle our thumbs?”
“We’re going to do our best, like always,” Sil answered. “We’re going to hope nothing calamitous happens in the meantime. I’ll keep the shard’s twin with me, in case she returns in tatters.”
“In case?” Vergil asked, a hint of cheer returning to his voice. “Don’t you mean when she returns in tatters?”
PATREON. Paid members get access to at least 10 chapters ahead of the RR posting schedule.