Chapter 24 – Last Fall Hold

  Still wary of those guns, Cole headed for the gate. The knight or castellan or whatever he was, disappeared from the ramparts. By the time they reached the gate, a pair of guards had engaged a set of gearworks that ratcheted the door open, and the man from the ramparts was waiting for them. He bowed deeply.

  “Welcome. I’m Baron Ludwig. I had the honor of serving Lord Bricker many years ago. I’ve aided his pilgrims in the years since, wherever I could. But please understand we have little to spare but camaraderie in Last Fall Hold. Ever are times hard, since the end.”

  Cole hesitated and then offered a slight bow in return. “We carry our own rations.”

  Ludwig straightened. “Before I allow you through, have any of you contracted the fungal fever? I see that one of your number is ill. I cannot risk the fever taking root within these walls.”

  Roxy stepped forward. “She’s not sick, she was in a fight and got hit with a mage’s curse, or something. Do you have anyone who knows curses?”

  The baron laughed a short, clipped laugh. “My lady, these are cursed times. But yes, we have a high-level priestess.” He squinted. “Now I look closer, is that not Dame Morgan? I did not think to ever see her laid so low. Come, come. We’ll get her to the healer.”

  He turned and waved his hand to follow. With one last look back towards the wood line where Besson was surely watching, Cole walked through the gates. The town inside the walls was cramped and claustrophobic, and square footage must have been at a premium. Most of the structures were timber with brass fixtures and small, tarnished clockwork devices automating menial tasks. There were people everywhere, wrapped in little more than rags in many cases. Baron Ludwig might have been keeping the fungal fever out, but the smell of sickness still hung in the air. Cole eyed a pair of coughing children in little better than sacks. Here and there among the adults, he spotted a GI poncho or woobie. Either taken from other Kickers by force or, more likely, donated on their way up the mountain.

  Ludwig followed his gaze. “Often, pilgrims leave something in thanks or mercy. Anything you can provide, I assure you, we will put to good use.”

  Winning hearts and minds they called it in the Army. Not that he’d ever seen it work. You could give a local kid food for a year and then still catch him at the billets collecting GPS waypoints for drone strikes. But this wasn’t Syria, and Ludwig had recognized Morganstern on sight. Not ready to throw out most of his gear out of pity, Cole was at least carrying one piece that wasn’t his. He unclipped Bart’s first aid kit from the bottom of his bag and passed it over to Ludwig. “We lost a man early. Seems like you folks could make better use of this.”

  The old baron’s eyebrows shot up. “Medical supplies?”

  Howie pulled out the remainder of his rations. He’d been eating anything and everything thanks to his survivalist class. Ludwig accepted the dense protein bars. Roxy managed to pull out her rainfly and handed it over. Everything but the first aid kit was handed off to town guards along with instructions on where to take it and who to give it to.

  They reached a squat building with a symbol on a sign that Cole recognized as a version of the DOR crest. Ludwig banged his fist on the door for a moment. “Clara! You’re needed!”

  “Coming!” came the response. An older woman in what were once probably white robes now stained brown with age and use opened the door. Seeing Morganstern, she waved them through and led them down a hall lined with rooms containing beds and patients with various injuries. Once they reached an empty room, Cole helped Roxy ease Morganstern onto a bed. The inside of the building was the only clean-smelling place in the town, as far as Cole could tell—despite seeing several sick and injured, the overpowering odor was sterile alcohol and strange, archaic medical devices filled every spare surface. Ludwig handed the first aid kit over to Clara, who took it, bowing her head toward the Kicker tryouts. She settled her hands over Morganstern and Cole felt the subtle change in pressure from ability charges being burned.

  Clara frowned. “She’s strong, so strong. You’ve done well treating her this far. But this is a withering curse and even I cannot break it. I can, however, contain it, given time, and bolster her natural resilience further.”

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  “If you can buy her a few days,” said Roxy, “We can get her home and they can fix her.”

  “Come,” said Ludwig, hand on Roxy’s shoulder. “Let her work.”

  Roxy seemed reluctant to let her patient go, but she eventually relented. They left the makeshift hospital and moved toward another building near the base of the cliff. “This place we try to keep ready for pilgrims. But few enough come by way of the Silk Forest that I’m afraid it’s fallen into some disrepair,” admitted Ludwig. "What few provisions we have are barely enough to sustain our efforts to carve out a corner of the forest for ourselves. Yet, we are still luckier than most.”

  Inside, it smelled of must and mildew. Water dripped freely in several spots, and old straw mattresses on the floor looked more bedbug than bed. A single long table sat next to a lit hearth, and Cole recognized the two figures playing cards at it. A long, two-handed sword and what looked like a pair of old army revolvers were set on the table, along with a few ration bar wrappers.

  “Han, Ken!” said Roxy. She hurried over and gave both of them a quick hug. Cole settled for a handshake.

  Ken grinned at him. “How are you doing, buddy?”

  “Well as could be expected,” said Cole, “for someone who was bit, poisoned, clawed, almost crushed, and chased by a guy in a two-ton suit of armor.”

  Ken’s smile only widened. “Well, we were promised no picnic. It sounds like you found all the troubles we missed, if that makes you feel better.”

  Han threw down his cards on the other side of the table. “I am not understanding this game!” he complained.

  “Cause I’ve been making the rules up as I go,” whispered Ken, winking.

  Cole shook his head and dropped his pack.

  Baron Ludwig eased himself down onto the bench. “Now, you wish to know what awaits you at the top of the mountain. But first, I wish to know what felled Dame Morgan. This bastion is my responsibility and my duty to protect. We offer sanctuary to pilgrims, but rely just as much on Bricker’s knights culling the greatest threats in the forest. I must know if you’re dragging trouble to my door.”

  Cole settled onto the bench opposite the baron. “Morganstern mixed it up with a pair of guys that I don’t think are from around here. There were at least two, but I killed one, a mage in a red and white mask. The one that’s left has a huge axe and wears a helmet that looks like a ram’s head.”

  Baron Ludwig frowned. “I know not such a countenance. They come as you do, then, and as Lord Bricker: from other worlds. Still, I dare-say a lone man will trouble us not. I am Lady Morgan’s equal with arquebus and sword—though perhaps not with hammer. You say the one you killed was a mage?”

  Cole nodded.

  Ludwig pulled at the corner of his mustache. “Then there is a chance that this warrior may be trapped here. Perhaps he will fall to the fungal fevers. But I would not count such fortune likely.” His brows knitted together. “Few enough of us have come to expect fortune, in these late times.” He slapped his meaty palm on the top of the table. “I know you’ve not come to hear our woes, Sir Colton. You wish to know what waits at the top of the rise. But you must understand the story of this place.”

  He considered, before continuing. “I’ve not been up there myself for many years,” he said. “Not since I attended Lord Bricker at the final battle—what we thought would be the end of the wooden devils and the fungal fever. I taught him the sword, you see, and the arquebus. And he used them to slay that mushroom-minded mage and stop his experiments. But his evil had spread too far and too thickly. Famine followed. Disease. The fungal fevers swept through farm, village, and city alike, and the dead rose to prey upon the living. Our nation began sending fewer and fewer messages. Now it’s been some years since we’ve had one at all, and I fear we are man’s last bastion in this land. What once was a desperate basecamp on the front door of the enemy has become the last hold of humanity, scraping what living we can find.”

  “Bricker won the battle, but humankind lost the war,” said Cole.

  Ludwig nodded. His eyes looked far away as his fingers drummed the tabletop. “So much we gave. Friends, family. It is not just that we should succeed in our quest, and yet have everything taken from us. Even Lord Bricker, Gods favor him. His duty was complete, and the Gods showed him the way home.”

  Got out while the gettin’ was good, thought Cole. Still, the Baron was practically an old man, despite his strength and vitality. Bricker was mid-fifties himself, so his time on Curahee must have been over thirty years ago. Cole tried to imagine a teenage Bricker swinging a sword at bark men and zombies before he was even born. And the people of this land had been slowly dying ever since. But they’d summoned him against his will in the first place. Given his disposition, he couldn’t imagine the director spent too many sleepless nights worrying about the survivors of Curahee.

  “The spore king may be dead,” said Ludwig, “But his evil lives on. It festers in the ground like a cyst, taking form and erupting into nightmarish creatures with toxic blood and breath. On occasion, they find their way down the mountain, and we put an end to them. We burn them, and anything they’ve touched. Clothing, crops, it makes no difference. We cannot allow the fevers to penetrate the walls.”

  Cole nodded along. So, bigger, nastier monsters. Remnants of this ‘spore king’ and his leftover power in the substrate of the world. Monsters at their front, homicidal maniac at their rear.

  Just another day in Curahee.