The first delicate white petals of snow had begun to drift down from the gray morning sky the previous day, the sight of which lent an anxious sense of haste to the preparations for Lord Lengar’s expedition. He had opened his coffers wide and invested thousands of silvers into amassing a sufficient force of mercenaries and sellswords, and once the servants of the Lord and his Heir had seen them both properly suited in their armor, they were swift to take up their horses and ride out ahead of the pack.
Salza shifted uncomfortably in his armor. He was a man who enjoyed the rich, decadent meals his status afforded him just as much as he did training with his blade, and therefore his wider neck and frame pressed against the cold of the steel of his cuirass and gorget. In the chilly weather this caused him a not insignificant amount of discomfort, even with the additional layer of protection and warmth his clothing provided him otherwise.
I would much rather be sat in the tavern with a cracking fire at my back, a full tankard in my hand and a couple of pretty wenches at my side right now. He bemoaned internally as he rode, perfectly obedient and perfectly miserable, after his father.
Count Lengar did not speak much himself, for he appeared absorbed within a state of steely focus aimed at that most pivotal Road, which he had long considered to be his own, and which was even now being patrolled by groups of criminals and thugs conscripted from Otkorn. The very thought of this offended him so greatly that Salza knew he was likely going to maintain this miserly demeanor well after this endeavor was resolved.
Fortunately for them, the hold of Lengar Castle was but a few days' march from the Road of Benedict. Soon enough Salza began to recognize familiar terrain and landmarks of that area, which he had personally visited many times before for inspections. During each of those visits he had thought to himself ‘With our current numbers and supplies, there is not a chance that Otkorn will reclaim this Road from us!’ And then, without fail, that monster of a Countess would stalk out of the mists like an ill omen and mercilessly cut down any man or beast that was placed in her path, truly living up to her title as ‘The Reaper of the Road’. And each and every time Salza returned, oh how his father would lament his only son and heir’s incompetence, that he had lost his grasp on but a simple stretch of dirt!
Salza eyed his father’s back from where he rode just behind him. The most recent loss of the Road must have been the final straw for the old Count, for Salza had never before seen him furnished in his armor. For years its only wearer had been a mannequin, which had stood decoratively posed in the dining hall, heroically bearing its arm aloft. It was supposedly a recreation of the man himself as he achieved his final victory over the Northmen Tribes who had previously occupied the lands that had become the county of Lengar.
The old Count’s horse began to steadily slow its pace before it came to a trotting halt, with Salza’s quick to follow suit behind it. The Noble son brought up his clenched hand to signal for the rabble of sellswords at their back to halt their advance. The low murmur of their idle chattering quieted then, and despite the thick, obscuring veil of fog all of the men now peered about them with nervous anticipation, looking for any sign of a patchy Otkornian tabard.
A cold, brief wind suddenly picked up and swept through the clearing, its icy breath piercing through their meagre attempts at insulation like thousands of little needles. As they shivered and wrapped their arms around themselves to combat the chill, the fog before them abated enough that they were just able to perceive the menacing silhouettes of their enemy.
Stood at the fore were a few men in skull-cap helms, clad in shirts of chain and holding arming swords and kite shields at the ready. Then, at their backs, stepped forward a swath of rough men of varying sizes and builds, yet who had similarly unfriendly demeanors. They wore those distinctive and poorly-made cloth shirts which marked them as Otkornian, and held ready an assortment of improvised armaments, from crude clubs fashioned out of forest wood to repurposed farming tools.
“Line up!” Salza called out then, rearing back his horse as he did so in order to draw his men’s attention back to himself. “Line!”
The sellswords hastily gathered into a pair of line formations, although the lines were quite uneven and looked as if they were drawn by the shaky, drunken hand. What few crossbowmen they had were stationed behind a bulwark of many shields, for such ranged weaponry were a vital resource here on these killing fields.
For a brief, tense moment not a single soul moved nor made any sound. The freezing wind had mercifully continued on its way, and the fog thickened once more, dampening even the sound of one’s breath under its heavy, all-encompassing cloak of silence. Finally the Lengarians broke the stillness and began to slowly inch forward up the incline towards the Road, upon which those criminal conscripts awaited their approach with baited breath.
However, just as the Lengarian sellswords were about to step within striking range of the roughshod criminal horde, the small yet growing sounds of a commotion came from the right, interrupting the anticipatory silence and catching the attention of both parties involved.
All eyes turned West, their scrutinous gazes met by a darkening cloud within the fog that grew larger as the sound of many marching boots grew louder and closer. Soon the amorphous darkness became a third group of silhouettes. A few moments later, this force was revealed to be composed of men and women armed with halberds or short spears, furnished with thick leather armor and heavy quilted cloth to protect them comfortably from both blades and the elements, and over which were draped clean, new tabards made from fine black fabric. Embroidered upon each was a crest which incorporated the signature hilt of Flamberge with a red-eyed raven perched upon its crossguard, wings outstretched, and behind which hung a weathered scrawl of parchment upon which the words “custodes portarum inferi” were writ.
Both of the other factions balked and retreated a few steps at the sight of this unknown and oncoming third party. Salza shot a worried glance over towards his father, who had just lifted the visor of his hounskull helm to reveal his face, which was currently stained a blotchy beet-red due to a mixture of shocked disbelief and indignant fury.
The new company of black-clad soldiers dutifully came to a halt just beyond the edge of the fog, arranged in impeccably neat rows, and then after a beat their ranks pared from the center to allow their commander to come forward. Their figure was tall and broad, and they wore a hooded cloak over a sturdy set of armor crafted from both thick, dark leathers and newly-polished steel plates. Reaching up and pulling back the concealing fabric of the cloak’s hood, Uldred then revealed herself, both halves of her visage, beauteous and disfigured alike, were set in an expression of stony determination.
“Petrice!” Count Lengar spat when he recognized her, appearing more angered in this single moment than Salza had ever seen the man previously–and he had spent decades surviving under his father’s temper. “That covetous snake finally bares her fangs!”
The Count, a man was never more enraged than when someone acted outside of his expectations, drew his mace from his belt and raised it towards the sky in one swift and arcing motion, doing his best to reenact the triumphant cheer of victory from his own distant past; from a time when he was still youthful and strong, with a hundred times the number of men under his command, all of whom were brave and loyal, leagues apart from the hodgepodge band of poor mercenaries he lead at present.
“Kill the Otkornians! Kill the Petricians!” called the elder Lengar, his eyes glazed over with a madness born of pure malice, oblivious to the way his sellswords looked about themselves and slowly inched backwards, their eyes wide and faces etched with anxiety and desperation.
“Father, I-” Salza stammered out, his voice cracking and unsure. Immediately his faltering words were overtaken by his father’s vengeful wailing.
Meanwhile, the criminal conscripts from Otkorn had already begun deserting their posts as they fled in fear, the few true men-at-arms amongst them desperately attempting to halt their not-so-willing companions’ hobbled retreat, although their efforts were in vain.
“Charge!” Cried the maddened old Count. He kicked his horse with the spurs of his grieves, causing it to rear up on its hind legs before bolting straight towards the Petrician line! With a panicked start, Salza yelped and hastily pointed his own sword at the Petrician forces as he blurted out a command. “G-go!” At his word the surprised Lengarian men erupted into a disorderly charge, moving more in pursuit of their Lord than in a true act of aggression towards their enemy.
Despite their uniform gait and intimidating presence, in that moment the young men and women of Petrice, who mostly hailed from towns such as Tobmar or Stoppridge or various smaller villages, collectively felt their heads become white and hazy, and their blood turned to ice in their veins, as each of them truly realized that they were about to engage in their first true taste of combat. Some of them stood frozen in fear, but many shook and retched as this tumultuous avalanche of anxiety suddenly fell upon their shoulders! Many of them looked up at the reassuringly large and upright back of their Lady with pleading eyes, desperately seeking a glimmer of hope or courage in this most terrifying moment.
Uldred felt the weight of it, of a hundred and some souls turning to her with their expectations and dread, entrusting her with their very lives, settling upon her massive shoulders. She turned her head to look back towards them now, so that all they could see was the ruined side of her face stretched in its eternal, scarred grin, as she nodded once to acknowledge them. It was not enough, but she knew well that nothing she could say or do would ever be enough to prepare them for the horrors that lay ahead.
She turned to face forward once again, her keen violet gaze trained on the armor-clad man who thundered towards her upon the back of his steed, his sword arm outstretched. He was a man her equal in rank, but nothing more than that. Uldred then reached one muscled arm up towards her back, grasped the hilt of her flamberge, and began to withdraw it from its scabbard.
The final battle for the Road was about to begin.
Shink!
A sharp steel blade cleaved easily through cloth. However, this blade was not that of a soldier, or at least not the kind of soldier who wields his weapons upon a field for the sake of his Lord. No, this was the blade of a different kind of soldier, and was wielded upon a very different kind of battlefield.
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The tip of the elderly seamstress’ tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth and held one eye closed and squinted with the other as she judged the width, length, and circumference of the ragged old shirt she had just sliced into. Belfort moaned in terror, covering his face to hide from the sight yet unable to help himself from peeking through the slits between his fingers, as if he was witnessing the wilful destruction of some old and valuable family heirloom.
“Oh! You-you can’t! No, I–my Lord, is this really..? Oh!”
The old man wailed helplessly as he watched.
Meanwhile, Hemsley was just arriving on the scene with another basket of old, dirty, moth-eaten clothing clutched in his arms. At Niklas’ order he had picked at the lock of the door leading into Uldred’s quarters until the keyhole relented. That great and foreboding wooden frame swung open, revealing the most daunting lair the two had yet to clean: the final bastion of untouched darkness and grime that existed within the great Castle’s walls.
“Quit blubbering and go assist Hemsley!” Niklas barked at the old servant. “We must learn her measurements before she returns from the Road!”
Belfort looked back over his shoulder then, his face more pale and haggard than Niklas had ever seen the man before, meeting his gaze with a thousand-yard stare. “My Lord… the things she’ll do to us when she finds out what we’ve done..!”
Niklas clenched the collar of the old man’s shirt within his two hands and used it to pull him close, so close that the tips of their noses knocked against one another, and though he smiled, his eyes had a hint of madness to them. “Listen, man! We are each complicit in this scheme.! So if one of us dies, we all die together!”
“...Do you mind?” The old seamstress interrupted this exchange in a thoroughly exasperated tone.
“S-sorry, ma’am.” Niklas replied, releasing his hold on the old servant. “We’ll get out of your hair.”
The old woman huffed out a single short breath before returning to her cutting and mending. She was unused to the cold climate of the northern regions, as she had lived most of her life in the warmer climate of the capital in the southeast. She was known as a woman of great prestige in her craft, and the only reason she currently toiled in this dank, chilly backwater territory was at the request of her good friend, Lady Frith.
The sooner this affair was resolved, the sooner she would be free of the unrelenting shiver that seemed to seep into her very bones.
Niklas then grabbed ahold of Belfort’s arm and all but dragged him back out of the sitting room and into the hallway.
“Now I have one more task for you to complete. Take this and entrust it to a runner. Move quickly, man!”
Niklas then reached into the back pouch of his belt, retrieving a parcel which he handed to the elderly servant. Belfort followed suit and swiftly but carefully unfolded it and gazed down upon its contents. His eyes ran back and forth for several moments as he read, and when he reached the end of it they grew wide. He then looked up at Niklas in surprise, who grinned back down at him through a brittle and nervous film of confidence.
“My Lord, I had been worried about–I mean, I didn’t… well, this might just work!”
“Let us hope that it does, for all our sakes.” Niklas replied, maintaining his grin through pure grit.
“I shall depart at once!”
“Be sure to take this with you.” Niklas imparted one last command. Reaching into his inside pocket, he then retrieved another sort of package, which clinked slightly as he handled it, as if several pieces of metal lay nestled inside...
Salza shivered and his teeth chattered as the howling wind battered him with waves of sharp cold. He looked down at his hands, which were now bound by ropes, and grimaced from where the ice-cold metal of his armor had been pushed uncomfortably close against his skin.
“...Well if I had foreseen that this mess would turn out like this I would have just worn wool and furs!” He grumbled to himself.
He then looked up, his eyes meeting those of the man to his right, who was kneeling and whose hands were also bound. The other man was barely more than a youth, and was so young in fact that he could not yet grow a proper beard. The lad’s nervous gaze shot back down to the dirt as soon as it was caught by the Lord’s, but Salza simply grinned back at him and lifted his two bundled together, gauntleted hands so that he could land a light, encouraging smack on the boy’s shoulder.
“Ey, chin up lad! We’re in this together now, you and I.”
One of the Petrician levies who stood guard over them, an older man with a weathered face, lifted the shaft of his spear and rapped it against the back of Salza’s head.
“Quiet!” Their captor barked down at them.
Salza made a pouting face, reaching back as best he could to rub the new sore spot at the back of his head with his tied hands. Despite this, he didn’t waste a moment before he leaned in closer to his new companion, who still stared sheepishly at his knees to avoid the Nobleman’s gaze.
“First time?” He asked quietly. “Well, there’s nothin’ for you to worry about, lad. The hard part is behind us now. They’ll just squeeze us for a small ransom, and by tomorrow we’ll be walking free again by day’s end.”
The young sellsword still did not dare look back up at him, but managed to reply in a voice that trembled in equal part due to his nerves and the frigid weather. “I-I’m afraid I don’t have anything worth a ransom, my Lord. I needed this j-job to pay for my bed and food!”
Salza frowned at that, examining the young man quizzically. “Who brought you here, lad? Surely you didn’t take this job yourself..?”
The younger man gulped audibly, his eyes flicking up momentarily to take in the pyre that had been constructed on the field a few dozen meters away, which lay heaped with the bodies of their dead.
“My Uncle, he–after my parents died, and Lord Lengar took our farm and all our savings, he said he’d teach me how to fight, and to make coin for it. Alas…”
The poor lad’s eyes were so red he looked like he was about to burst into tears, causing Salza to hurriedly clap a sturdy, reassuring hand on his shoulder. “...Sorry, lad. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
But then, as the younger man sniffled audibly, forcing back a wave of tears and snot in his reddening nose, a sudden thought came to Salza’s mind. “Ey, how about you come and work for me?” He asked the younger man excitedly.
The young sellsword’s eyes shot up, properly meeting Salza’s for the first time. “W-what?” He stammered, his eyes wide and terrified.
They were then unfortunately interrupted again by another of the Petrician levies who approached them where they knelt.
“Lord Salza Lengarsson? The Countess has requested your presence. You will come with me.” She said sternly.
Salza all but leapt up to his feet! “Finally!” He cried. “My thanks, madam.”
He immediately reached down with his bound hands and grabbed his young companion under his armpit, dragging the surprised lad to his feet and forcing him to follow after him as the Petrician woman began to lead them away.
“Ransom time, lad, keep up! Ma’am, put this one on my tab as well.”
Salza rubbed his hands together grateful for the warmth of the little stove, and the bulwark from the harsh winter wind that the tent he had been led to now provided. Across from him, standing at the other side of a long wooden table was Uldred, looking down what was left of her nose with a judgemental expression aimed at her Noble captive.
“Lord Salza Lengarsson…” She said aloud, causing him to stand rigidly at attention.
“Yes ma’am–I mean My Lady!” He replied dutifully.
Uldred clicked her tongue as she swept around the side of the table so that she could stop to loom over her guest with an intimidating posture. This caused Salza to gulp audibly despite his best attempts at maintaining a pleasant smile.
“With the passing of your Father, you are now the acting Liege of the County of Lengar. As such, the responsibility for negotiations between our realms shall be passed to you. Is that acceptable?”
Salza’s memory was then carried back into the events of only a few hours earlier…
Lord Lengar, upon the back of his noble mount, had hurtled forward , charging toward the Petrician line with reckless abandon. Clad in full plate and chain, he must have felt as invincible as he had been in his youth, when he had borne the banner of Boratan and wrested these very lands from the hands of the barbarians who once held them.
“I declare war upon you, foul creature!” the aged lord had cried, raising his mace high with every confidence that he was about to bring it crashing down upon the Countess’s neck.
What followed this was indeed a gruesome clash—the sound of rending steel echoed across the road and a spray of blood dyed the snow-covered Road, some of it even reaching far enough to rain down upon Salza and the sellswords who rode alongside him at the front. But Lady Uldred was untouched, for she had leapt forward with impossible speed to meet Lengar’s attack, and with a single, legendary stroke of her massive flamberge she had cut both horse and rider in twain. With the prior momentum of their charge, both corpses tumbled for a meter or so before collapsing in a vile heap before the Petrician peasantry, many of whom fell to their knees at the sight and gave up their lunch.
“Well… I suppose the war is over.” Salza recalled muttering then to the sellsword who was standing beside him at his left. The man had only shot him a look in response—shocked by what he had just witnessed, yet also affronted by the tastelessness of his jest.
In the present, the captive Salza blinked a few times as his mind’s eye conjured up the fresh image of his Father, a man he had once looked upon as powerful and menacing, exploding into a mess of meat and gore.
“...Yes, that is most satisfactory, My Lady.” He announced in a voice that only cracked slightly, once again wearing the Noble’s mask of a pleasant smile.
“Good.” Uldred replied, turning back towards the table and the mess of missives and parchment upon it.
“Then we shall begin our negotiations at once.”
