II
In the United City-States of Sutherland’s Sixth City of Rue Shalla, there was an old fort named Dagon. It was the farthest north of all their military installations, built in the warlord period to keep Fernest in check. A century later, Fort Dagon continued to fulfill this same purpose—but with Fernest in decline, no one now believed they would invade Sutherland. Accordingly, the soldiers stationed at the fort were so few in number as to be little more than an afterthought.
The Walls of Fort Dagon
One never would have believed Fort Dagon lay on the border with an enemy nation, so relaxed were the soldiers who defended its walls. That day, like every other, they toiled away trying to stave off boredom. The guards on the gate at least still held their spears at their sides as they dozed; up on the wall, many had swapped spears for playing cards, chatting away without a care in the world.
“Another day of leisure, eh...” Shelah, a man of slight build, yawned widely as he dealt a hand of cards. The third-born son from a tiny farming village, he had become a soldier for the simple reason that he figured there’d always be something to eat.
“Too much leisure, and you’ll get rusty. A soldier’s got to cut a man down from time to time or you lose your touch.” Donga, who was twice Shelah’s size, stood up and began to mime swinging a sword with his cards. Shelah watched, unimpressed, as the other man’s sagging belly and chin jiggled with every stab.
“That again? You’re incorrigible. How about you get rid of that disgusting belly before you start yapping? You ain’t convincing no one like that.”
Donga, apparently unfazed by this, let out a wistful sigh. “If only Fernest would invade, then you’d see that the legend of the great hero Donga is true!”
Donga, who hailed from a larger town compared to Shelah’s, had supposedly been a renowned swordsman. Not a day went by that he didn’t tell them the great expectations the other townsfolk had for him. If he were such a man, one would have thought he’d be posted to a more important fortification than an all-but-abandoned fort, yet for some reason, Donga spent year after year adding to his record as the longest-serving soldier at Fort Dagon.
“He’s still going on. Always struck me as odd—don’t it ring a bit hollow to you?”
“Don’t even bother. That one’s got flowers growing where his brain ought to be. It all goes in one ear—hah! Take a look at that, I win again. Everything’s coming up Hahato today!” Hahato, a man bald as an egg, spread his cards before them with a flourish. Three of the five showed the Goddess Strecia.
“C’mon, no one’s that lucky...” Shelah grumbled. “You’d better not be cheating.” He pulled two copper coins from his pocket, then tossed them unceremoniously at Hahato, who snatched them smartly out of the air before cheerfully slipping them into his own pocket.
“I’m out.” Donga tossed down his cards, then slowly looked up at the sky. “Now, I don’t ask for my own Strecia. But if I only had a girl, it’d breathe some life into this humdrum existence.”
“I told you, you can think about that after you lose the belly.”
“My belly? What’s my belly got to do with it, eh?”
“It’s got everything to do with it. Unless you’re a noble, most folk judge a book by its cover. There, did I make it clear enough for even a self-titled master swordsman to catch my drift?”
“Hah! Let’s get one thing clear. Womenfolk like a strong man. Always have, always will.”
Shelah snorted. “Oh yeah? Where’s your girl, then?”
“Your theory’s full of holes!” Hahato added, and the pair fell about laughing. Donga eyed them resentfully.
The three of them went on entertaining themselves at cards until a voice called, “Oy.” All three looked around at the same time and saw Enya, who had definitely been snoring loudly until just earlier, now looking up at the sky. Automatically, the three exchanged a glance—Enya never woke up of his own accord.
“Enya woke himself up, eh? You reckon we’re in for a storm or something?” Shelah joked. He went to stand beside Enya, but the other man’s eyes stayed fixed on the sky. Shelah followed his gaze. “Hey, there something up there?”
“You haven’t noticed, Shelah?”
“Eh? Noticed what?”
“They’re gone. The death-eater birds that always fly over this time of day.”
“Death-eater birds?” Shelah looked back at the sky again and saw that indeed, there were no death-eater birds in sight. He didn’t see what it mattered, though.
“Most likely, they found a new feeding ground, no? I mean, they do get called the land’s cleaners. They must be able to sniff that much out.” He looked back at Enya, half exasperated that he’d been called over for something so pointless, only to be met with a look of even stronger exasperation.
“Once death-eater birds claim their territory, they almost never leave it. Everyone knows that.”
“I never heard that. Well then, they made an exception and moved ’cause there’s no food here. Man or bird, you can’t live without food. Territory doesn’t come into it, does it?”
“Are you stupid? We’re surrounded by woods, and you think death-eater birds can’t find a meal around here? If you’re really thinking that sort of thing, you ought to have a healer check your brain.”
There were no towns or villages in the vicinity of Fort Dagon. What land could be seen from the walls was blanketed with forest. Bored out of their minds out here in the middle of nowhere, all the soldiers had to look forward to was buying small indulgences from the merchants who visited the fort once a month.
This, Shelah told himself, was ridiculous, as he began to grow annoyed with Enya’s roundabout way of saying everything.
“All right, where’d the death-eater birds go, then?”
“How should I know?” After putting on airs as though he were an expert in death-eater birds and their habitats, Enya declared his ignorance with such confidence it made Shelah’s head spin.
“Then stop talking all significant-like. Death-eater birds are about as important as a gray rat’s arse.” Hahato and Donga gestured at him to hurry up and get back to his station. He didn’t especially care about continuing the card game, but it would be a damn sight better than carrying on with this stupid conversation.
“Well, enjoy your bird-watching anyway.” He had only taken one step toward Donga when a hand grabbed him hard by the shoulder.
“—the hell?!” Shelah let his annoyance show in a furious scowl, but Enya paid this no heed at all as he pointed mutely to the northeast. “Hey, what the hell?!” Shelah repeated. Cursing under his breath, he followed Enya’s outstretched finger and saw ash crows rising up into the sky with screeching caws. In fact, they were taking wing in a line that led toward the fort. Even Shelah had to admit it was disturbing.
Enya stared hard at the ash crows, his expression growing still graver.
“Something’s obviously scaring them. That’s the only reason for them to all let out warning calls like that.”
“Even I can see that. But what the hell is it?” Shelah’s spyglass had, like his weapons, long since ceased to be anything more than an ornament. Now, though, he pointed it at the crows. Just among those he could see, a considerable number were colliding with one another in midair. It was clear they had fallen into terrible confusion.
“Even the black-taloned eagle isn’t enough to spook them like that, and they’re natural enemies,” Enya muttered. “Something’s very wrong.”
“Just what’s going on out there...?” Shelah kept watching through his spyglass for a while longer until, before he knew it, he was staring right at the source of the crows’ terror. He flailed, toppling backward onto his bottom as beside him, Enya did the same.
“Oy, how long are you gonna keep us waiting, eh? Come on and finish the game before my luck runs out!” Hahato sidled over to them, grinning stupidly. Shelah tried to tell him what was happening, but all he managed was to frantically open and close his mouth without a sound. It took everything he had just to raise an arm toward what he had seen.
“This a new amusement, is it?” Hahato looked out over the wall. “The ash crows sure are making a racket today.”
“I wish I could fly too...” Donga added. Neither was any less untroubled. Miming frantically, Shelah tried to communicate to them to look down. They exchanged a puzzled look.
“Is he saying to point our spyglasses down there?”
“What’s gotten into him, eh?” Looking as though they really couldn’t be bothered, they took out their spyglasses. Scarcely moments later, they too fell back on their behinds.
“G-G-Ghouls?! What are those?!” Hahato wailed, his face a mask of pure fear.
Shelah struggled and finally found his voice. “The hell should I know!”
The figures were shaped like humans—except that no human kept walking without a head. Enya got back to his feet, raising his spyglass with a shaking hand.
“Just at a glance, there’s got to be fifty thousand of them...”
“Fifty thousand...?!”
Hahato let out a hollow laugh. “Y-Your time to shine, D-Donga,” he said with a rigid smile as his whole body trembled. Donga shook his head hard enough to give himself whiplash. It was a confession that all his stories were nothing but hot air, but right now Shelah didn’t have it in him to call this out.
Enya’s breathing was ragged, his spyglass still pressed to his eye. “They’re slow, but no doubt about it—they’re headed for the fort! What do we do?!”
“Do...?” Shelah repeated stupidly. “W-We gotta tell the commander! As soon as possible!”
“Him?!” Hahato snapped. “What’s that horse’s ass gonna do?! All he’s good for is sleeping and stuffing his face!”
“Like I need you to tell me that! But if we run before the commander, this here’s what we’ll have to look forward to!” Shelah drew a line across his neck with his thumb, sticking out his tongue.
“I don’t want to be beheaded!” Donga’s voice was a whine, his face the palest it had ever been as he trembled violently.
“There’s no time. We gotta move,” Shelah said. The other three nodded, then they all set off at a run for the commander’s quarters. Voices like wails and moans came to them on the wind, only serving to further stoke their fears.
It was just after lunch, and through the window there came a pleasant breeze. Kleric Major Ashyn was reclining in his favorite woven cane rocking chair when the door flew open with a bang. He leaped to his feet.
“Wh-Wh-What’s the meaning of this?!” he spluttered as the soldiers who came bursting in seized him. Before he could even wipe the drool from his chin, they hauled him off to the fort walls. And the ordeal didn’t end there—next, they thrust a spyglass at him.
“Just what in the blazes is going on here?!”
“Shut up and look down there, ser!” Shelah shouted back even more loudly. Cowed despite himself, Ashyn did as he was told. The scene that appeared through the lens was as though hell itself had manifested on earth.
“What...what is that...?” he quavered.
“Don’t ask us! Right now, we need your orders, ser!”
Surrounded by chaos and faced with a crowd of soldiers bearing down on him with a desperation in their eyes he had never seen before, all Ashyn could think to do was to scream furiously, “What the hell do you mean, ‘orders’?!”
“What d’you think?! Order us to flee, ser!”
His soldiers weren’t worth the rations they ate, but apparently their minds weren’t completely empty. Any soldier who fled without an express order from him would face the executioner’s block, no exceptions. With trepidation, Ashyn raised the spyglass once more.
I’m just the commander of a backwater fort! I can’t deal with that! The whole forest swarmed with the ghouls. Meanwhile, the garrison at Fort Dagon numbered only two hundred soldiers. Whether they stood and fought or not wasn’t even a question.
“Kleric Major! Give the order to fall back!”
“Shut up! I need quiet while I think!”
“Think? What’s there to think about other than running?!”
“I am commander of Fort Dagon! Not a rank-and-file nobody like you lot! I have all sorts of things to think about!”
They would run, in the end. That wasn’t up for debate. But he had to get word of the situation to the lady of the city with all haste, so in order to buy time, they would need to put up some resistance. To be sure, it was not a wish to defend his country that had Ashyn thinking along these lines.
If I make a stand here, my heroism might even put me in the running for Kardenal. Now that’d be the life... All right!
Nursing his rapidly inflating ambitions, Ashyn had just made up his mind that they would stand their ground when on the wind there came a cry that went through him like a blade of ice piercing his heart. He let out an incoherent whimper. It had, of course, come from one of the ghouls, and in that moment, the desire to get away from this place right now easily overtook his ambition. His terror took hold of him, and he turned on his heels.
“I’m sorry to say it, but as of this moment, I declare Fort Dagon abandoned! Now run, run ’til your feet bleed!!!”
“Ser, yes, ser!” As the soldiers shouted back, it was the first time they and Ashyn had ever felt united as one.
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