CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: MELTING POT
I have so many brothers and sisters!
For each I hold in love do I grow stronger;
for each I hold in loathing do I waste away.
-Marius Profundus, 'Reflections'
Thea awoke to jostling. There were a dozen painful spots on her body. Her hair was in her face and in her mouth. And the surface she was on was both rock-solid and slimy – not ideal. Awareness should have shot back into her like a siege arrow, but instead, it was fuzzy and grainy, her body and brain both very much wanting rest.
"Thank god," Matthias said. "Thea, are you okay?"
"What?" She struggled to sit up. Matthias did most of the work there, pulling her to a sit and propping her upright. "What happened?"
The chamber was dimly-lit and radically-changed. Slime and the remnants of dead tentacles were everywhere. Many of them were still making lazy little writhing movements as they died, but most looked like greenish-white noodles coated in slime. She'd hit the center of the creature with everything she'd had – with more than everything she had, frankly – and that had obviously done the trick. 'Kill the brain and you'll kill the beast', as the old saying went.
"I think Larian and Heath are dying," Matthias said. "They were being siphoned out of about a hundred places and, now that the tendrils are all gone, some of their wounds are still seeping out blood. Can you help?"
Thea patted at her apothecarial pouch – aside from the few fungi she'd picked up in the caverns, it was mostly empty. "If we can find Larian's pouch, maybe."
One look at Larian and Heath suggested that Matthias was probably right – they were dying, having been drained of too much blood, and still oozing blood out of a dozen holes large enough to stick a finger into. Far too much blood for a regular person, and enough that even their preternatural physiologies were taxed. Larian's normally-bronze skin had an ashen pallor, and Heath's already-pale skin was bone-white, even his normally-flush lips. They were far from the first victims of the beast, too – the chamber was littered with bones, human and animal both, most of them very old. A few of the humans had been mummified, exsanguinated over a long enough time that their whole bodies had withered about them.
Thea rifled about through the slime and the bones about them, eventually finding Larian's pouch wedged underneath her limp form. Were their roles reversed, Larian could have whipped up a remedy in no time, but Thea's own healing abilities were a lot more limited. She found deacon's lace – good for healing, but not upon bleeding wounds. Blue echinacea – good against infection and inflammation, no good for the current situation, either. And St. Sybilla's wort. That was good for anemia and metabolism. She crushed that up, added some chutes of aloe to form a paste, and applied it to their wounds. Then she mixed some of the same wort with some weir berries to ease pain symptoms and added those as oral infusions. Then she took all of the bandages from Larian's pack and methodically bandaged everything bigger than a scratch. The last few wounds, she had to borrow fabric from Larian's torn dress, as there wasn't enough bandage to go around.
"Are they... are they going to live?"
Thea shrugged – she didn't know. "We can at least get them back up to more competent hands. I imagine Clarisse knows more about herbalism than I do. Old Albard does, too."
"You looked plenty competent there. Like you knew all the right ones to use..."
"Oh!" Thea gasped. There had been a few ingredients conspicuously absent from Larian's pack – it had contained none of the glowing fungi of the underearth. Presumably, she'd stashed it elsewhere, and it could be strewn anywhere about the nearby caves. But Thea had hers. "How could I forget the moonshine creamcap? Nutritious and good for healing! I'm not sure how we get them to swallow some, though..."
They eventually managed, mashing it into a cream and applying it underneath their tongues and alongside their infusions – at least some would naturally go down with natural swallowing. That done, they undertook the hard task of getting everybody out of the underearth.
Matthias was plenty handy for the task. He was strong enough that it took him little effort to carry heath like you might carry a cord of firewood, Heath's slim, limp form draping over his outstretched arms. Thea could manage Larian, though not quite so easily despite the young woman's lesser bulk. Svilga and Maddie offered to help, but their assistance was of the dubious variety, offering to lift things that didn't really need lifting, like Larian's legs when they dragged. Eventually, they used some cloth to get Larian bound to Thea's back like a pack. Thea was tall enough that Larian's dangling feet were still six inches off the ground. And, when there was climbing to do, the girls actually did help, giggling as they pushed at Larian's rear and thighs to help get Thea up the slopes.
Whereas they'd taken perhaps an hour and a half to get out to the creature that had captured the two of them, it took several-fold longer to get back. Long enough that they encountered a very agitated Cano pacing about the big intersection with the underground aqueduct.
"Oh, thank God!" He said, rushing over to them. "Are... are they..."
"They're alive, but they need help," Thea said, gasping from the effort of having carried Larian through miles of tunnels. "You can help us get them up the shaft."
Cano took Larian from Thea, running his fingers through her hair, worry playing across his face. "She... she whispered something," he said.
"That's good!" Thea rushed over – sure enough, Larian's lips trembled, feeble sounds hissing out. "What did she say."
"She said it tastes terrible," Cano reported.
Thea laughed and did a little dance. "Tell her that's because it's strong. Come on, let's get them up."
+++++
Perhaps it was their gods-given support that helped them recover quickly, but Thea liked to think it was because of her healing touch, such as it was. Indeed, when they returned to Rouentz and got the two patients into Clarisse's care, of the dozen substances that she suggested, all of the ones from Larian's pack had been ones that Thea had identified, and of the remainder, many were ones that Thea would have identified, had they been there.
Within the day, Larian and Heath were both up and alert, though it would be at least a few days before they were better, even with their incredible rate of healing and Larian's own expert knowledge now brought to bear. Thea sat at her side, listening to her dispense apothecarial wisdom and helping her and Heath with bandages and with her various preparations. However, she couldn't spend all of her time there, as she had her Soenmen to contend with.
"I thought you said you could keep them in order," she said to her one Soenmen yeoman, Farn Surestrike.
"I am keeping 'em in order," Farn said. "They haven't killed anybody yet, have they? I'd say that's a damn admirable job, yeah?"
Admirable? Perhaps not. But it was, Thea had to admit, a lot better than the alternative. There had been a few altercations, most but not all of them being decided in favor of the Soenmen. They didn't seem to have a strong sense of individual property – not in a town that they felt was owned by their koenig and in which the locals were little more than thralls with no master. Thus, Thea assembled them in the commons yard the next morning and addressed them. She mounted Blotto and donned her Battle-Maiden armor, so as to look especially impressive, and paced before their lazy assembly in the yard.
"Master Surestrike, who shall be your yeoman, has told me that he's defused a few situations that might have turned deadly. That the townsfolk have been reluctant in yielding what's yours by right of power over to you. Would you say that's correct?"
"This town's ours," one of them said, and the rest readily agreed.
"This town is not yours. It's not mine. It isn't even Rorik Koenig's. We guard over it on behalf of those who live here – me, yourselves, and all the rest. Is it not true that a man's hearth is his own, that the koenig himself must ask for a seat at it? That, should Valkiyr herself approach, she must ask for a seat?"
"Unless she wants to claim it by combat..."
"Unless she wants to claim it by combat," Thea agreed. "So let me be very clear. Rorik turned you over to my authority because he thought you might be worthy of freeholds – and, in Master Surestrike's case, of a yeomanship. And so you shall receive them. Lands, some of them developed, some in need of repair and some that yet lay fallow. Lands enough for several families to live off of, once we develop them, and should your sons and daughters one day need to split their inheritance without quarrel. Perhaps you deserve this gift, but it's a gift nonetheless, given to you by your koenig and by your jarl – that's me, Thea Ever-Blessed. And to any man who treats the folk in this town inequitably, who takes what's theirs through force of might rather than fair negotiation, I shall take what is mine through force of might. That is to say, anything and everything you own, and I'll give the claimed property back to its original owner, and the rest I'll give to somebody who can see to their lands without attacking his neighbor. Am I clear?"
"That's not our way," Farn stated. "You cannot interfere with a man laying claim to what another cannot defend."
Thea rode up to him, looking down at the weaponsmith. He returned her gaze for an instant before looking away. "I'll not interfere," Thea stated. "They'll fight, and the Soenman will probably win. And neither will you interfere when I take whatever ought to be mine. Whatever you covet, I shall make it my business to covet it more. And whoever would disturb my peace is my enemy, and I'll not have any of my freeholders, nor yeomen as enemies to my rule. Has your jarl made herself clear?" There was mumbling amongst the men, so Thea raised her voice: "Well?!"
"Yes, jarl!" Half of the men shouted back.
"Well?!" she said, this time with a snarl.
"Yes, jarl!" all of them cried, most of them enthusiastically.
"Good," Thea said. "Now, I want to drill right here in the commons yard. We're going to show the locals our ways, and any man or woman who wishes to join, we'll teach. If we're to get this town acting and fighting like Soenmen, they'll need to learn from their betters. That is why I want you on your best behavior. Today, we are not conquerors but heroes... and tomorrow, we shall be saviors. So... raise your weapons and let me hear you shout the words of Rurik:
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
from the midnight sun, where the frost winds blow!
The chosen of the gods,
we'll set our ships to new lands,
to fight the foe, and sing and cry:
Sturmgard, I claim my prize!"
Quoting epic verse really rallied the men. They screamed and shouted and, within about thirty minutes had fifty people doing Soenmen combat drills in the commons yard, mostly young men, but older men, too, and a few young women. And Paisley Coker, who had to be about forty, but was in remarkable shape for a woman who cooked hearty meals for a living.
Thea took part in the drills, of course. Not only did it do her a lot of good skills-wise – she soaked up new information so quickly, it was practically osmosis – it did a lot of good toward ensuring the loyalty of the Soenmen. Where a man might have led them with a firm jaw and a booming voice, there was a lot of ground for Thea to make up. The Soenmen didn't have a low opinion of women – not exactly, not if they saw you as a Soenwoman – but the men certainly didn't view them as equals until you'd jumped through hoops to prove yourself. Only then might an exceptional woman garner the respect that a gruff and braid-bearded man might. After that, though, she sensed they'd be at least as loyal, if not more so, than they would be toward a man in a similar station.
Important in this, though, was that Thea didn't show off too much. She was getting to the point where it took a real expert to get the jump on her, but she noted the men grumbling when she effortlessly disarmed three opponents in a row. She might have done it all day long but, she realized, it wouldn't do to be seen effortlessly shaming and humiliating the men in combat. So she had to let herself get hit and knocked around, had to make her speed seem like less of an asset and their greater size seem like more of one, and had to, once in a while, let herself get bested. But not too often.
"I reckon you'd get me three times out of four with that one," Farn said, after Thea purposefully dodged a split second too late and let the weaponsmith sweep her to the ground.
"I'm still learning," Thea said, letting him help her to her feet. And she was – she was learning how to lead a group of people without necessarily being their goddess.
Before they could resume their practice, Thea noted some sort of commotion over at the eastern gate. The guards were gesticulating angrily, looking back toward the men drilling in the commons, and indicating that somebody ought to man the siege bows. That meant someone – most likely many someones – were at the gate, and that, given that alarms weren't being shouted and bells weren't ringing, it wasn't clear what the intentions of those someones were.
Thea jogged over to one of the siege towers, with Cano overtaking her at the last few strides – his jogging was the speed of most men's full-out sprinting. He shot up the ladder with Thea clambering up behind him. The top of the tower stood about ten yards high, three or so higher than Rouentz's palisade, so they had a good view of the gate ant the area beyond. There were about twenty people clustered around the gate with another dozen or so stumbling down the old trade road, streaming in from the path around Astorfall forest, refugees coming in from the northwest.
"There must be forty of them down there!"
"Thirty-three," Thea corrected. They looked to be refugees, some of them armed, some of them well-heeled, and some of them in shabby pauper's clothes. About half had the dark complexion and loose garb of the northern traders out of Faal-a-basqa. The rest were more local, from any of the townships and small villages around the penumbra of dead Astrillas. If Thea had to guess, they were fleeing from the destruction of Bestel Myrdon's campaign, and they might have useful information.
"I'm going to let them in," Thea decided.
"You can't," Cano stated. "For all we know, they're spies or saboteurs. Some of them are armed, and half of them are foreign."
"If they cause trouble, can you handle it?"
Cano snorted, rolling his smoke-gray eyes. "You know I can."
"Good. Then we're letting them in," Thea said. She turned back to the palisade and leaned over to make herself seen to the refugees. "Welcome to Rouentz, friends! We're a peaceful town, and you're unknown to us, so we'll ask you to hand over any weapons you've got while you're here..."
"You're going to disarm us? You're sure as hell armed, miss!" a young and obviously-armed man called back to them. "How do we know you won't just kill us, and steal our things?"
"You don't, sir, but those are the rules. You can claim your weapons when you leave or when I trust you. And if you, sir, can't trust our good intentions, perhaps you're better off looking for refuge elsewhere. I'm jarl here..."
Cano cocked his head and whispered. "Jarl? Since when?"
"Since Rorik," Thea shrugged. She turned her attention back down. "I am Jarl Thea Ever-Blessed, and if you don't like my rules, you're free to continue on your way. Keep going to the south and the east and you'll hit the wetlands – nobody but bugs and water fae will bother you there – and after that the Soenmen, who, I'm sure, will be happy to have you as their thralls. For those who wish to enter, the tavern's got six or seven rooms to spare – whoever'll sleep two to a bed will get those. The rest of you, we'll find arrangements for, though they might not have much privacy."
+++++
Four of them decided not to join the group – a quartet of well-heeled north-men who still had coin and thought to take their chances among the Soenmen to the south. That left twenty-nine refugees, marginally more manageable for their small town, but still straining their capacity, given that Thea still hadn't settled the twenty-one Soenmen, and Rorik (assuming he succeeded in his – possibly her - challenge) would be sending another eighty or ninety their way.
The gates cracked open – just enough to let the refugees in single-file. Thea wasn't about to let them rush the town, as there was no particular urgency to get them in. Cano, looking as imposing as he could manage (which was very), golden cuirass gleaming, bronzed and muscles bulging, collected the weapons. A trio of gruff Soenmen 'helped', which is to say they carried the weapons away and bickered amongst themselves about the workmanship and quality of the weapons. Clearly, they meant ot claim them as their own.
"We're giving these back," Thea told them. "Don't think about taking anything – I'm keeping track of what belongs to whom."
"But jarl, these are outsiders," one of them said.
"Outsiders," Thea agreed. "And potential allies in a time where we desperately need friends. Feel free to examine the weapons, trade with the owners if you like, but no theft and no violence. Am I understood?"
"Yes, jarl."
Thea suspected that there would be some 'trading' of the weapons, but she would deal with that when the problem presented itself. For now, she was less worried about property rights and more worried about what the refugees were running away from. She suspected she knew, but the refugees who spoke fluent Aurilic were awfully vague about it. She asked them as she arranged for quarters at Swill Bill's, and they were awfully vague about it. A huge army, fire and fury, villagers turning against one another or succumbing to sudden sickness, and half or more of whole villages dead within an hour of the invasion. Truly horrible stuff, and pretty clearly the work of Bestel Myrdon... but not much information to go on.
"They... come," one of the north-men said in halting Aurilic. "You... is safe?"
Thea sighed. "Wait here, sir," she said, and went to fetch Matthias.
The north-men had two languages – the northern trade tongue, which had a very straightforward pronunciation and was used for conversing with outsiders, and Mulahi, which was strange and complex, used in their religious texts and poetry. It was said to be the language of their One God, given to the twin prophets Suleima and Salaiha upon the great mountain – which, as far as Thea knew, was true. And those people around Faal-a-basqa even called themselves the Mulashek – the people of Mulahi. Matthias had been somewhat conversant in the trade tongue and hadn't spoken Mulahi at all, but now he was perfectly fluent in both of them.
"It's not the sort of thing that you normally notice," he said. "It's like when you learned to ride a horse, when you went from barely being in control of this great and lumbering creature to seamlessly moving around, like you and the horse are extensions of one another – you don't really notice the change until you stop to think about it."
"But you can speak it?"
"Se alwaqis, jarl sahayi…" he said with a smirk, then translating himself: "Indeed, madam jarl."
She brought him down – and, really, they did need somewhere else to stay, now that Swill Bill's was packed with refugees – and the atmosphere in the place relaxed considerably. The north-men among them were relieved to see one of their kindred in a position of authority among a town of Aurilans with a sizable Soenmen contingent. When they greeted him with the symbol of the split circle and a flurry of words in Mulahi, he responded seamlessly, even though Thea knew for a fact that he wasn't a believer.
"Translate, please," Thea said.
Matthias pursed his lips, recalling the exact phrasing. "He said, um... 'I am glad to see my brother in this distant land. I hope we can trust you to see to our fair treatment?' To which I said: 'These are good people, my friend, but if any of them seek quarrel with you, I will see it nipped in the bud.'"
"Nipped in the bud?" Thea chuckled. "That's an interesting euphemism. Can you ask him why he came to this particular town?"
Matthias did so, and relayed the conversation back and forth for a bit. The subject of their interrogation was a man, possibly a petty merchant or a poor tradesman, named Numi, who'd come along with his wife Farah and two young children – they'd had two more, an older boy and an infant daughter, but both had died in the chaos when their town fell. They were all dark-skinned, the husband slim but not quite gaunt, but with a haunted look in his dark eyes.
"We fled when the shaitan came to Buli-boul – that is... was... our town. People were killing one another. I saw my neighbor's wife, lovely Fatima, kill Jubal with her gardening shears. Just like that – she'd gone mad and killed him. Some caught the madness and some the sickness – everybody else either died or fled or threw themselves to the ground asking god for forgiveness."
"The shaitan," Thea said. "That means demon, doesn't it?"
"Loosely," Matthias confirmed. "They call foreign gods shaitan, too..."
"Yes, like an evil god," Farah said. "I never thought to see such power gone unopposed."
Thea nudged Matthias. "Ask them what power – beyond the madness and the sickness, what was there?"
"The shaitan and his bride and their great army," Numi said. "Thousands of men, a few of them lesser devils, most of them simply men in his thrall. Most fled north, but we fled this way, finding other villages fallen to his sway. We fled until we reached this spot, this first town unconquered by the horde. The others from these parts, they say that the shaitan marched an army down this way, but that he was repelled by an angel of light. He hoped it would be safe..."
"Safer than anywhere else," Thea said. "But if 'shaitan's' army marches on us, we can't defeat them. Not without Rorik's army. Do you know if they're coming this way?"
"I think it likely," Numi told her. "They fell upon us after the shaitan took Faal-a-basqa, at which point messengers from his stronghold raced out to deliver bad news to him, which is where we first heard of your town. We hoped..."
Farah cut in. "In my prayer-dream..."
Matthias butted in for clarification – Thea was starting to pick up on some of the words, but was still some time from understanding them. "She consumed the resin of the holy oak, and the One God granted her a vision of safety underground while armies marched above... she says it was upon the quarter moons..."
"That's two days from now," Thea said. "Shit. That sounds like a true dream if I ever heard one... so that's two days to figure out what to do before Bestel Myrdon marches on us with every scion at his disposal... and I imagine that's at least as many as we've got. She turned to Numi and Farah and took a hand from each of them, offering her most hopeful smile. She spoke to them in their language: thank you, Farah... thank you, Numi... I will keep safe if any safe to have..."
"She'll keep you safe if there's any safety to be had," Matthias corrected.
"Yes. I'll keep you in safety if there's any to be had. I hope it likely."
Matthias chuckled and shook his head. "That's very close. That's some skill you've got there."
+++++
In some ways, knowing that Bestel Myrdon was heading their way (and probably in two days' time) was nice. It eased Thea's gnawing dread of uncertainty and replaced it with something concrete – assuming Fara's dream was a true vision, and she strongly suspected that it was. What it replaced that dread with was, without a doubt, awful, but at least it gave her some idea of what to expect. The pertinent question, then, was what to do about it?
Knowing that Bestel Myrdon and his evil scions were coming, they could scatter and head for the wilderness and maybe reach other towns in distant countries. The survivalists among them – people like Heath's father – might live out there indefinitely... but most of them wouldn't make it very long. But for the very old and very young, that wasn't really an option, and there was no guarantee that Myrdon wouldn't set his sights further out once he'd consolidated his local nexus of power. They could hide underground, of course, but for how long? If they took as much food as they could carry and hid out near the aquifer, maybe two weeks. But if they were all suddenly gone, Myrdon would look for them, and he might well find their entrance to the underearth.
Thea brought her worries to the smartest person she knew – Larian – who happened to be in a deep slumber after a particularly strong dose of healing concoction. Fortunately, she was being cared for by the second smartest person Thea knew – Larian's mother, Clever Clarisse. She offered Thea some tea and pondered the problem over.
"We can't beat them militarily?"
Thea shook her head. "With Rorik's army and an elixir to combat Myrdon's corruptive magic, but we haven't got either. As things are, Rouentz isn't a good enough defensive position... and it would be even more suicidal to engage them in the open."
"And we can run or hide, but he'll look for us and probably find us if he knows we've run or hidden."
"Right."
Clarisse regarded Thea for a minute. If Thea had to guess, Clarisse still suspected there was a simpleton lurking somewhere within Thea's psyche, and it seemed like she was always looking for hints of it. And Thea worried that she might be right. "So... by process of deduction, we'd have to fight Myrdon somewhere that's neither here nor in the open, and he can't know that we've run or hidden."
Thea blinked. That was very obvious, but also very interesting. She tapped her fingernail against the table. "That's very interesting," she said.
Clarisse laughed. "Really?"
"It so happens that there's somewhere we can force Myrdon to fight us that's neither here nor in the open, and a scenario where he won't know that the whole village is hiding. But it's all so obvious that I completely overlooked it. But I'll need Heath's help to do it."
Then Thea outlined her plan to Clever Clarisse. Larian's mother chuckled and shook her head, not quite believing the audacity of the plan. "I still think you might be daft," she said. "But you're the cleverest daft person I've ever seen. If that works, I'll cede my clever crown to you."
"And if it doesn't work, we'll likely all be dead."
