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ALAS, I WAS NOT ABLE to chat with, or rather interrogate either the vampire I’d captured or the Prince’s surviving retinue men. Because they were killed soon after.
And though it was all clear from the start with the vampire, I had promised mercy to the men if they let themselves be taken. It was not an oath, just a promise, but still I did give it. Honestly though, I felt no pity for those people.
It was all over in a matter of minutes. Before I’d traded two words with the mage, I started to hear enraged outbursts from the boat they’d recently come off of. That shouting grew into a din of many voices full of fury and malice.
Being absorbed in conversation with the prisoner, I didn’t realize what was going on right away. I had to stand up and go figure it out. When I got up to the water and saw what was causing the commotion, a chill ran down my spine. There was a lavish tent on the deck of the ship, which looked to have been where the vampires stayed during the journey. After our fighters went inside, we saw them very carefully carrying out several bloodied bodies. The corpses of dead children. The oldest one looked to be seven or eight. There were four of them.
It took me a few moments to push aside the gawkers and climb up on deck. The children had been laid out on a colorful mat. Three boys and one girl. Dead pale. Emaciated. Sharp facial features, sunken eyes. I started to get the impression that they had been starved for a long time while also being forced to do heavy labor.
And give blood. Lots of blood.
“Did we do this with our arrows?” I asked a warrior staring gloomily at the unfortunate souls.
A chestnut-haired boy answered for him. The hate I saw in his blue eyes was so hot it could burn.
“No,” he said and nodded at the shore. “Those beasts did this.”
Hedgehog appeared to my right, panting. After quickly figuring out what they were talking about, he rendered his judgement:
“Looks like that guy was not carrying glasses of wine after all.”
The news of the dead children the Masters were using for their blood and discarding spread through our ranks in the blink of an eye. And in the next minute, what had to happen happened. The enraged armed mob threw itself at the only surviving vampire. And though his body had been strengthened with tablets, it was very quickly transformed into a bloody pulp. The captive retinue soldiers met the same fate as their master. In fact, they were chopped, slashed and stabbed with even greater cruelty. All that time, they knew about these evil deeds, but continued serving the beasts. And based on the quality of their gear, service to the otherworlders was good business.
A few minutes later, it was all over.
I didn’t give a crap about their lives. But it was a pity I didn’t get a chance to find out more about our enemies.
Gorgie distracted me from the bloody spectacle, giving my hand a light tap with his wet nose.
“Hrn!”
I shuddered and walked toward the dead children.
“Are you sure?” I asked, bowing over one of the boys. The youngest of them.
The harn gave a scornful snort as if to say see for yourself.
“What happened?” Hedgehog asked, worried.
“This one is still alive,” I said, hurriedly activating Forest’s Blessing and taking out a flask of satiety potion.
The warriors watching were dumbstruck. Uncorking the flask, I raised it to the boy’s bloodless pale lips. The tiny drop of the magic elixir, which had once brought even trolls of the Stone Forest to their feet, absorbed into his thin skin in a matter of moments.
Picking up the child, who was light as a feather, I set him apart from the dead bodies on some gunny sacks, then also activated lair just to be sure.
A silence hung over the longship. Everyone froze in expectation of a miracle. And they got it. It was a virtual certainty. Two spells plus that potion could put anyone back on their feet, which was to say nothing about people from this world. The lad was practically too far gone, but I managed to pull him back.
The boy’s face changed color before our very eyes. Holding him by the hand, I felt his heartbeat speed up. The “dead kid’s” first deep breath was met with a gasp from all the warriors around us.
Finally, the boy’s eyes opened. His green eyes looked at me with a hazy blank stare.
“Where am I?” he asked quietly.
“Don’t you worry,” I answered, smiling. “You’re safe. No one will hurt you anymore. Sleep.”
The boy just took me at my word somehow, breathed a sigh of relief and closed his eyes. A moment later, he was sleeping soundly.
I raised my head and glanced at Hedgehog, who was staring at me transfixed.
“He’ll be just fine,” I said. “When he wakes up, we’ll have to feed him something. Those beasts sucked him dry.”
Then I led a gaze over all the warriors on the deck. Their eyes. Something had changed. They were looking at me differently. Like I was a totally different person. I thought I knew what had happened. These people were seeing me from a new angle. Now they knew that killing was not the only thing I could do. I could also heal.
* * *
OUR VICTORY SEEMED to have triggered an invisible mechanism. My plan worked out better than I ever could have imagined. The news of the Masters’ defeat spread throughout the area as fast as the wind. It even reached the most distant corners. And now torrents of troops ready to cast off the yoke of the Prince’s rule were streaming toward us from the south, west, east and north.
Life changed quickly in these parts. The Prince’s old law was a thing of the past. The people had freedom now. And hope. In my person.
There were all kinds of rumors and tall tales about me and my powers. And for the record, they were being spread by none other than Hedgehog and his inner circle. All their old wives’ tales about a great mage and warrior were slowly spawning all kinds of unbelievable details. And the farther they went, the less plausible and more grandiose they became. It had reached the point that people were coming to us from distant settlements just to see an army of giants being led by a great sorcerer.
At first, I tried to object, but then I just gave Hedgehog’s so-called creative endeavor a hand wave. Our army was growing ― and that was what mattered. Beyond that, some intriguing rumors had reached us from the capital. They said the people there were on the verge of an uprising as well. Honestly though, I didn’t understand just how they were planning to fight the otherworlders.
Most likely, those messages were just meant to communicate that things weren’t going so swimmingly in Northolm. That most of the townsfolk had had it up to their necks with the puppet Prince’s rule. And that, perhaps, they were prepared to support us. In one way or another, this situation was fundamentally different from how it was just a few weeks before. All we had left was to figure out whether those rumors were true, or just a clever ruse by our foes.
Overall, our victory had kicked up a lot of commotion. In fact, the legends of that battle had three heroes. Not just Gorgie and I but Bream as well. He was for the record, our only soldier who had been injured that day. And his so-called injury was no less aggrandized than the hero himself ― when he tripped on the tent, he twisted his ankle.
The newcomers were told a colorful and highly detailed story about Bream draining a large barrel of wine, then heroically volunteering to distract the enemy. At the bonfires, I sometimes heard rollicking laughter and whinnying. Bream had instantly been transformed into a folk hero. He had become a symbol. A way of mocking the terrible Masters.
They all understood that, without Gorgie and me, their laughter would have ended in bloodstained tears, but still the people needed a hero like him. The kind of guy who, after many years of terror, was able to make the warriors laugh in the face of danger.
Do I even have to say that Bream had been drinking away all that time? His dream had come true. Everyone wanted to treat him to a drink. He had become a desired guest. When we stopped to take a break, he was passed around from fire to fire, where he recounted the battle and sang his famous battle march which, with his light touch, became our army’s most popular drinking song.
While I looked on, I realized that this was exactly the way legends were born. Some minstrel would come up with insightful words, set them to a fine little melody and there you go.
As for Northolm... The increasingly exaggerated rumors of the uprising in the capital turned out to be true in the end. But it was the kind of truth with a false bottom. The issue was that three days before our arrival to the city walls, a rider had come out to us from the leaders of the uprising to say Northolm had already been liberated from the Prince’s rule.
As proof of his serious intentions and our future alliance, they showed us the decapitated heads of the Prince and his court. Beyond that, we were assured that the Prince’s entire family had been wiped out and, from now on, the city would be ruled by some kind of council made up of members of the most ancient bloodlines in the Principality, as well as commanders of the civilian uprising.
We were also told that all those who had aided and abetted the so-called Masters, as well as those party to the atrocities committed against the Principality’s commoners had been executed. The Masters themselves then had fled Northolm in shame several days earlier and cowardly hidden in their castle on the Hill of the Four Winds. That was their way of assuring us that we had no more enemies in the capital of the north and the newly formed council of Northolm was in complete support of our cause.
When the envoy left the tent and went on his way, everyone looked straight at me. Because I was in no hurry to say anything, Hedgehog took the floor.
“What do you think of our new friends?” he asked with mockery in his voice. “Sat under the pews quiet as church mice, but as soon as the Masters left the city, they launched their great uprising.”
The phrase “great uprising,” Hedgehog said with his lips puckered cartoonishly. That must have been the way he saw capital-city aristocrats.
The other commanders joined in with scornful snickering.
“Greedy brutes!” shouted Moose. “While we were assembling an army, they were already splitting up the spoils!”
His words were greeted by an angry grumbling. Seemingly, not everyone thought they had been outwitted.
I took a fleeting glance at Hedgehog. My brother in arms gave a scornful grin. Well, at least someone still remembered what brought us here.
When everyone had said their fill and left the tent, Hedgehog and I were left alone.
“What do you say?” he asked with a heavy sigh. “Why did the vampires leave?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Well, it’s obvious. The Place of Power must be far away from Northolm.”
“Ah, right!” Hedgehog exclaimed, face-palming. “I’m over here wracking by brains. Something smells fishy here...”
“Without mana, they lose their main advantage,” I said.
“What about those crystals you mentioned?”
“Mana crystals?”
“Yes.”
“Based on those two, who had just five small crystals between them, those mages aren’t quite as well off as we thought. And they were being sent off to fight. In theory, they should have been given as many crystals as they could spare.”
“Maybe they thought it would be enough,” Hedgehog chuckled. “But they were wrong.”
“I’m sure they were confident they would win, but there’s gotta be something else at work here,” I rubbed my chin. “Relatively low level, not too many crystals... There has to be something else...”
“Well in any case, that’s one problem down,” said Hedgehog. “There’s no need to storm the city now. Let’s go straight to the vampire’s lair.”
“Your people do understand that will be necessary, I hope.” I said. “It seemed to me that a few of them would not mind paying a visit to Northolm first.”
“Most understand,” nodded Hedgehog. “But some won’t. We can just send them on their merry way.”
“It makes complete sense for them. After all, many of them joined us not only to fight for freedom. A lot of them are just waiting for the chance to loot and pillage. The people of Northolm understand that. I’m sure that if we march on the city walls, they will not open the gates. They are scared and have done everything they can to make us pass them by. And as for the uprising. My father once told me that as long as one person is fighting for their freedom, there will always be someone else trying to get rich off their struggle. The elite in Northolm has been overthrown by the common city dwellers. And now the new elite is sending us a message that we are not welcome. As a matter of fact, some of them, the most opportunistic, are currently gathering up what they’ve already looted and fleeing the area.”
My words made Hedgehog stare pensively at a fixed point. Then he shuddered as if he had just woken up and asked:
“What do you think...? I mean, when it’s all over... Should I try to take power in Northolm?”
I saw a look of determination in his eyes. And also a certain amount of shyness. Yesterday he was just a hunter, but now he was essentially the commander of the largest army in this region. And with the throne of Northolm vacant ― Hedgehog seemed to understand that, after such a quick rise, the subsequent fall could prove deadly. He was also grinning though. But despite that, I was completely sure that a jocular tone would offend him. So I tried to make my voice sound as serious as possible.
I didn’t say anything about the fact that we still had a battle ahead of us where we both might die. Hedgehog knew that already. He didn’t need a lecture. He needed advice.
“A tempting prospect,” I nodded. “I suspect there will be disorder in the capital. The only reason they haven’t run out to rob one another is because they know we’re near. I repeat, they have done everything they can to make us pass them by. Without a doubt, even without half of the warband under your command and without my help, you could capture that city without much trouble. But are you sure you want to?”
“Well why not?”
Seemingly, Hedgehog was asking me a series of questions he himself had failed to answer on more than one occasion.
“You’ll have to change.”
“How so? Become a mutant?”
“Among other things,” I nodded. “No matter what happens, you have to get stronger. But that wasn’t what I meant. Be prepared for the aristocrats and city elite to never accept you. A mere hunter could never be their equal. In order to take power in a city as old as Northolm, you’ll have to spill a lot of blood. If you want to make your home in a shark tank, sooner or later you’re going to have to learn to swim with the sharks. To be the most powerful and have the biggest bite. Be prepared for your mettle to be tested at every second. And sometimes it will be your closest cohorts doing the testing. Power and money change people to the point of unrecognizability. Get ready to respond harshly to betrayal. Did you see what they did to the Prince and his family? That’s the only language they understand. If you don’t want to see your whole family’s heads being presented to someone else on a silver platter one day, you’ll have to change.”
Hedgehog was listening intently. He looked sullen and concentrated. I understood that the idea of taking the capital for himself had not occurred to him alone. Even the least enterprising people in Hedgehog’s inner circle had almost certainly already talked his ear off about it. I’m not deaf. I know what the common soldiers talk about at their bonfires. Everyone is just waiting until they can enter Northolm and get fat on its riches. In fact, Hedgehog had become a de facto hostage to the desires of his own allies and troops. So most likely, I was the only person still talking to him like this.
“Well, what would you do in my place?” he asked unexpectedly.
I stroked my chin thoughtfully. Good question.
“You probably won’t believe me, but I have never seen myself in the role of ruler. I always dreamed of a peaceful life in a small town with a comfy home to go back to. And to have all my friends live on the same street so we can get together for parties. I’m just not cut out for all these wars of power and influence.”
Hedgehog’s face lit up and he smiled a good-hearted smile.
“And that’s being said by someone who can kill with just one touch. Just think!”
“I wasn’t always like this. I had to become stronger in order to survive.”
“But this is no longer self-defense,” Hedgehog chuckled. “You’re on the attack. Though I know why. You want to get rid of the threat. So your beloved won’t be in danger. Hehe! Hey, don’t look at me like that. Everyone knows how you feel about her. It’s just that...”
“What?” I frowned.
“I don’t think its gonna work out for you.”
Seeing my agitated state, Hedgehog breathed a heavy sigh. He is obviously now coming to regret starting this conversation.
“Trust me,” he continued hurriedly. “I would be the happiest man in the world if it did. I’d be sure to come visit that little town and build a house right next to yours! And we could throw parties all the time! But that’s all just dreams... Because you are who you are. Perhaps you were once different as well. But now... You see how the people look at you. How she looks at you... You’re not a normal person in our eyes. What am I saying!? Many don’t even take you for a person at all!”
“And just what do they take me for then?”
Hedgehog shrugged his shoulders uneasily.
“Most of us take you for a powerful being. And some go so far as to regard you as a young god...”
I gave a crooked smile. Now that is overkill.
“You think it’s funny,” Hedgehog continued. “But many who were on that boat and saw you bring Foxling back to life told me as much directly. I understand that, in your world, all that is normal but to us it’s a true miracle. And consider this, too. With that power, you won’t be aging any time soon. You’ll remain young for a long time. Imagine your Mink growing old while you stay forever young. What will that be like?”
I could have objected and said that Mink wouldn’t be growing old by my side any time soon. That all I’d have to do is activate Forest’s Blessing one time and she would also be young again. One look at the boy whose life I just saved was enough to see that. And recently, I had been using that spell on many people who came to me asking for help. By the end of the three-hour regeneration, the locals all improved markedly. After I miraculously brought Foxling back to life, everyone with an ailment lined up for my help. Even during this conversation, I had heard there were more people waiting for me.
So I had plenty of ways I could object, but I didn’t. Still I was grateful to him for opening my eyes. After all, up until that point, I had been forming a different picture of my position among these people.
We spent a little while in silence, each thinking about our own thing. Hedgehog was first to break the silence.
“So then, what’s the plan?”
Getting up from the stool, I adjusted my belt and Spike hanging off it, then said:
“We split up. You keep going slowly by boat toward the vampire lair, thus keeping their attention on you. Gorgie and I meanwhile will pay them a surprise visit.”
Hedgehog also got up and chuckled:
“Just make sure you leave some enemies for us. Otherwise Bream will be the only one in our ranks to get wounded in this war.”
