After making arrangements to meet again, Calvin left the mercenaries and approached one of the guards. He had a well-kept spear and a nice set of mutton chops. He stopped pacing and took a wary stance when he noticed Calvin.

  “Excuse me,” Calvin said, “but can I ask you what’s going on in this town? Why does everyone seem so afraid?”

  The guard relaxed just a bit. “You new in town? Some adventurer looking for glory?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, you won’t find it here. You oughta seek your fortune somewhere else.”

  “Thanks for the advice, but I’d prefer an answer to my question.”

  The guard snorted. “You can’t trust your own senses in this town. People see things. Hear things. Things that aren’t there. Things that scare the snot out of ‘em. And when the hallucination goes away, they find they’ve lost someone close to them. Disappeared. Never seen again by anybody.”

  Calvin nodded. This was Rikchay territory. “I’ve heard of this before.”

  “You have?” Shale asked, giving Calvin a start. He hadn’t noticed her following him. “You already know what’s going on here?”

  “Yeah,” Calvin said, relaxing. “It’s why I’m here. We’ll find the cult nearby.” He turned back to the guard. “How long has it been since the first incident?”

  The guard shook his head. “We’ve got legends stretching back decades, maybe centuries. A ghost that strikes fear and steals souls.” He shook his head again as if he’d never believed the stories. “But I’ve never known it to be this bad.”

  “Do you have people watching the walls?”

  “Of course! Always.”

  “And they haven’t seen anything? You haven’t linked the disappearances to incursions?”

  The guard frowned. “Never anything we could follow, but now you mention it, whenever someone reports a hallucination, there usually were some disturbances around the wall at about the same time.”

  “Perfect. Show me where.”

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  The design of the wall was a testament to the paranoia of the people it guarded. Twenty feet thick, its footprint alone could have comfortably fed a small village if it hadn’t already been laden by a thirty-foot-high stone wall.

  Two guards led the way up to the wall top, stopping at the part where most disturbances happened. The mercenaries peered through narrow crenels as the guards explained the last few incidents to Calvin and his men. Calvin was disappointed they couldn’t tell exactly how often they occurred, but he cut them some slack. These people were resigned with their misfortunes and didn’t have the motivation to collect such data.

  The guards left, and Calvin gestured to the ground outside. “Well, Pelias? What do you think?”

  Pelias climbed onto a crate to look over the parapet to the ground below. “There are cracks in the wall here and rubble below. It seems like the work of a trebuchet.”

  “Artillery? Wouldn’t the guards notice that?”

  “They wouldn’t expect it. The forest creeps close to the wall.” Pelias pointed. “But there's a small clearing not far away. The trebuchet might be hidden there. It seems an ideal distance to launch small rocks over the trees.”

  “Hold on,” Shale said. “Wouldn’t that give away the attacker’s position?”

  Pelias hopped down and shook his head. “They would only send one volley at a time. It’s not meant to damage the wall, but to distract the guards while they sneak in or out another way. I suspect they have similar setups at other points of the wall, too. And if guards ever went to investigate the site, the Rikchay would be more than ready to capture them.”

  “So it’s just a distraction?” Shale asked. “I thought we were tracking the abductions.”

  “We’ll find them,” Calvin said. “The trebuchet operators have to coordinate with the kidnappers somewhere. Lead the way, Pelias.”

  They left the city, and Pelias led them to the clearing he’d seen. The frame of a trebuchet stood there, disguised to look like a couple of trees, and the other components lay about the clearing, appearing to be innocent logs and rocks except for the ropes and hooks attached to them. Pelias and Shale searched the surrounding woods and found the subtle hints of a trail that had been regularly (yet carefully) trod. With both of them watching for those clues, they had little difficulty locating the local Rikchay waystop.

  A little log house sat nestled in the woods at the end of the trail. A wanderer might have thought it a charming hermitage, except perhaps for the hooded figure sitting on the front step. He was stooped forward, elbows resting on his knees. His hands dangled limply, the skin green and leathery.

  Calvin waved the group to a stop. “Hold on,” he whispered. “Things might get hairy.”

  Arg grinned. “The cultists are here? Is that one of them?”

  Calvin shook his head grimly. “No, but he’s with them. He’s an undead thrall, his personality erased by their torture rituals to make him serve them after they killed him. And where there’s one, there’s usually more.”

  “Fantastic. Aaaaaarg!” Arg raised his axe and rushed at the thrall, Julius following eagerly. The thrall stood slowly, unsurprised. He lifted his head, and a red light gleamed from where his right eye should have been. The thrall marched forward to meet the mercenaries, knife drawn.

  Calvin sighed, lamenting any sort of surprise they might have gained if they’d approached more carefully. Then he drew his sword and rushed in to help.