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Even before I was close enough to see the battle damage, I knew I was looking at a disaster. The whole thing was of wood, the wards were... perhaps not improperly done, but certainly not made to last. Someone had started growing sylvan douseweed along the base, and it had sent roots into the ward magic to aid its own growth.

The walls rose some sixty, perhaps seventy feet sheer upward, the squared towers another twenty feet above that. But there were no machicolations, and the blind spots... were obvious. There were no mounts on the walls for heavy weapons, and those atop the towers had limited lines of sight.

It was built atop a rise on one of the river banks, but no wall came down to the river itself. It was as though someone with an idea of what a fortress was supposed to look like but who had never seen one manned had been commissioned to build it, but not permitted to view the site.

Atop each tower, the colors of the Empire flew. It made me want to cry as I approached, to see the shoddy craftsmanship, the inattention to detail. And it didn’t surprise me that this was tactically, the center of the plains.

No WONDER the war here had lasted three years. If Hortiluk still had his head, I had some choice words for him that he would never hear.

It was ... as though Hortiluk was trying to sabotage a war that he proposed starting.

Damn it, hadn’t there been enough death in the past years?

I don’t even know why it grated so on my emotions. If Hortiluk, smartest hobgoblin I knew, wanted to live as though he were stupid...

.....

But he WASN’T. He just wasn’t.

The. Damn. Traitor.

For three years, our soldiers had been in the plains, and THIS was what he had built them for their headquarters.

And I didn’t know why I CARED. Oh, I know today; I can give you a lecture on the mental philosophy of transference and delayed grieving. I can tell you of traumatic stress, and why it is only when you return to safety that it unfurls its wings and engages you in earnest. Today, I can tell you of the guilt of the survivor, of leaving the dead behind you, but still living.

Today I can, but then it seemed pointless, like something that had been done to me, some source that HAD to be from outside.

And why then? At a guess, my soul (and thus my emotions) had finally grown to rating three, or human normal, during my time in the Shining Isles; a rise in my Serenity score, of course. But also the first time I’d had to deal with normal emotions.

For all my mockery of them, humans normally had a decade or so before encountering even a fraction of the misery in my life; I was still approaching four.

Honestly, it was hunger that drove me onward, and the promise of dinner. Possibly even a dinner that I didn’t have to cook myself, but only possibly.

I wasn’t the most famous of Cooks; not by a long shot. There were far better, and with a larger reserve of recipes and magic than I had, although I confess a pronounced edge in sheer volume and variety of mana available to me. But most professional Cooks had their own kitchen, their own tools.

Traveling cooks were rare, and commanded impressive salaries. The sort of wages that the Empire couldn’t afford, not if the economy were as drained as it looked.

And I want to stress that; it wasn’t the coffers alone that were lacking. The continual drain of soldiers, of manpower... the fabric of life still spun itself, but there were thin patches, frayed holes, and if there hadn’t been any actual tears just yet, it was a small miracle.

“You! Halt there!” called a guard from one of the towers.

“Go fuck a goat!” I hollered back. “I’ve no patience for your meaningless delays.”

I gestured at my own head. “How many snake headed people are walking around, even in our empire? You may not know me, but you know of me. I’m coming in. Through the front gate if I can, but over the walls if I must.”

“Not a step farther! Our orders come from Emperor Rakkal himself.”

Oho. Was it Emperor, now? Rakkal? Rakkal, who spat on titles?

What else had changed while I was gone? Was this even the same empire I had left?

Worse, had it ever been the empire I thought it?

Even as I angled my shield to bounce the arrow off and away, I wondered what was driving me. It seemed on the surface like rage, but there was...

[You are not suffering from mana overdose.] my System told me.

When the second and third archer joined in, I engaged Fleet of Foot and began to run. Not in a straight line; my emotions weren’t that far out of control. And, finding the gate closed against me, I ducked into one of the blind spots where one of the gatehouse towers met the wall, away from the gate.

I had said the walls were sheer, which is not to say they were smooth. Needing to thrust talons into the caulk between poles, gaining only a fraction of my height with each stretch upward. How long had it been since life had been so simple? Climb or die, ignore the slap of arrows against armor, the six points of damage done by each of two yellow criticals?

When one of the soldiers above thrust at me with a spear, it was almost a disappointment. Not that I didn’t grab the thing, and use the soldier’s own grasp to anchor me as I ascended.

Bards say I flipped or rolled over the lip of that wall; the truth is that I nearly impaled myself on the points of the topmost poles, and fell not onto my feet, a sword in hand, but onto my buttocks, and nearly prone. The sword came later, from someone who carelessly tried to brain me with the pommel.

For a moment, just a moment, the press of bodies threatened to immobilize me.

One foot on someones kneecap, hand on someone else’s belt buckle, I shoved.

With a Strength sub-statistic of rating six, you can get a lot out of a simple shove.

“ENOUGH!” I shouted. “I have endured ENOUGH of this crap just getting here, and I will take NO MORE! You may be soldiers of the empire, but you will MAKE WAY!”

Yeah, three Charisma isn’t enough to make that work, or at least it wasn’t that day. Not on those soldiers, who had been standing unsheltered out in the springtime sun. Those soldiers were open to the idea of fighting, and I had been gone for three years.

Most of the tales of me were as a curiosity, as a coward with a shield. Someone who parried and parried, and NEVER struck back. In retrospect, that was my fault.

It is said that one champion is the equal of five trained warriors; that’s NOT the case if only two of them have room to approach the champion at a time, if they have to stumble over each other when they decide to withdraw.

And that was the burn of it; they held discipline, even when they couldn’t hold a line. I made slow progress toward the nearest ladder, only to find a platform under the walkway, two spearmen right there.

Damn it, FINALLY some professional, defensive thought. But a real professional would have sectioned the ladder off into parts, to prevent someone from dropping past both mouth-open guards and grabbing the rungs underneath.

It’s amazing what you can do with the combined reflexes and flexibility of a mountain goat and a cat. Catch, release, catch, release; I was halfway down the inside of the wall when the arrows began smacking into things that didn’t do any real damage to me.

[You have taken eight points of Impact damage; after ability activation, five points have been received. 52/80 health remain.]

I’d misjudged the distance to the ground, and worse, ended up in the midst of half a dozen Black Fist warriors. They had shields, and spears, and they treated me exactly as they would have a wild boar. True, I wasn’t frenzied or foolish, but a shield cannot protect from two sides at once. Armor is an object, and its protection goes down proportional with its Condition score.

It wasn’t long before their sergeant came to check why I wasn’t dead. “Not-Kobold?” he asked, without ordering his men to stop.

“Harrek.” I answered.

Harrek was one of those unfortunates; enough hobgoblin features from his mother that no Uruk would trust him; enough Uruk blood in evidence that hobgoblins presumed he had brain damage.

“Why are YOU betraying the empire?” he asked.

“I am not. I am recently returned from a diplomatic mission to the Shining Isles.” I said.

One of the Black Fist stumbled, using his spear to keep himself upright. Then he broke into hearty and unkempt laughter. “You? Diplomatic? Bwa, ha, ha! Say that again!”

I flung my arms akimbo in indignity. “I am a Truthspeaker! I literally cannot...”

One of them tackled me from behind, slammed my chest into the packed ground.