Chapter 134 - Company Coming

  I prepped to leave early the next morning. We had a long voyage, and I wanted to get there as quickly as possible, arrive as early in the day as possible. It was only a few miles, but if we ran into trouble that could take a lot longer than it ought to, and I couldn’t rule out trouble.

  This time, Kara wasn’t coming with me, which seemed to please Alfred, but pissed her off mightily.

  "I need someone I can trust to stay back here at the farm," I said. "While I could use your firsthand knowledge of their base, you've already been there. Some of them have seen you. I don't want to give away the fact that we've been scouting them already, at least not until I know them better."

  "Okay, I guess that makes sense. But I’m still not happy about it." Kara stood there facing me, arms crossed in front of her. "You could always take me and leave Alfred here instead. Or Farnsworth."

  "I'm already planning to leave Alfred here with you," I said. I hoped maybe leaving her fiancé here with her would take some of the sting out of it. "I want to take Master Sergeant Farnsworth with me. I have a feeling that being a young woman isn't going to impress these guys all that much. Having an older man beside me may help with that some."

  "I can see that," Kara said. "Just be careful, okay? I don't trust those guys. The whole place gave me a really bad vibe."

  While I hadn't actually been there and seen the country club base, or whatever they were calling themselves, I had definitely gotten that impression from Kara's report. Whether we managed to make some sort of alliance or peace treaty with these folks or not, they didn't sound like the sort of people we'd be able to trust easily. Still, every friendship had to start somewhere, and the last thing any of us needed were more enemies. It was worth at least giving a shot.

  "We will be very careful," I told her. "The first sign of trouble, we all leave and come home. But if we can at least get the basics of a peace negotiated, that's one less enemy we'll end up fighting on a battlefield sometime."

  We were on our way about two hours later. I rode Sue, as usual, but it was a little weird not having Kara riding beside me. I missed having her along. But all the reasons I gave were totally valid. Instead of her, I had Master Sergeant Farnsworth and a troop of six of his trainees. All of them were at least tier five. While I wanted to leave the bulk of my undead behind to continue the construction of our houses and walls, I didn't want to go without some sort of a show of force. I had left all of my tier one undead, but brought along ten of my Abominations. Each of them was tier five. Each stood about twice as tall as a human, and they were scary as hell. If anything in my arsenal ought to convince someone to not pick a fight with us, it would be Sue and the Abominations, so that's what I brought.

  Farnsworth and his men were all mounted on our limited supply of horses. We took every horse at the farm. That meant we were only slowed down by the walking pace of the Abominations. Which was fine, because we didn't want to burn the horses out. It was better to keep them walking at a slow but steady pace, rather than trying to push them hard and have them run out of steam partway there. The morning wore on as we continued our march south.

  All at once, I sensed something incredibly strong approaching.

  I knew what it was, even before it was in sight, and I cast my gaze upward to see if I could spot it before it drew too close.

  There! High in the sky, so distant that I could barely make it out, was the dragon we'd been seeing on and off for the past two weeks. So far, it hadn't attacked any of our bases. I had no idea if that was going to last or not. The creature was so strong that I couldn't detect its tier level. Since I was tier ten, I figured that meant it was at least tier thirteen or fourteen. If it decided to hit one of our Domains, I wasn't sure we had anything capable of repelling it. Even if our entire alliance brought its forces together, we might not have enough strength to stop an adversary that powerful.

  Fortunately, this time was no different from the others. The dragon continued soaring so far above us that it looked almost like a bird. It glided through the blue sky from east to west until it finally vanished from my sight. That creature was one of my bigger worries. Since it first arrived on the scene, it had me wondering what it was up to, what it wanted, and when it would decide to start coming after us. We'd been lucky so far, but I doubt that would last.

  Stolen story; please report.

  "That thing gives me the shivers every time it flies by," Farnsworth said, as he brought his horse up alongside Sue. The horses hadn't liked being near the undead at first, but they'd finally begun getting used to the idea.

  "I know what you mean," I said. "Thankfully, it looks like it’s not gonna be a problem for us today. We have enough other issues without borrowing more trouble."

  "Indeed," Farnsworth replied. "We are probably about an hour away. Do you want to send a few of our people ahead to scout?"

  I thought about it for a minute. In some cases, that might be a smart idea. But we'd already had Kara down there, scoping the place out. I wasn't sure we needed an intelligence update under these circumstances, especially since we were on our way there to announce ourselves anyway.

  "No, I don't think so. We do that and our people get caught, it could stir up some serious bad blood. I think it's better if we remain together."

  "Makes sense to me," Farnsworth replied. "Just thought I would suggest the possibility."

  "Keep doing that," I replied.

  Farnsworth was right about the time. It was only another hour before their walls came into view. And what a set of walls it was! The walls were rough-cut timbers, lashed together to form a massive palisade wall. That by itself wasn't especially impressive. After all, even the goblins had managed to toss up a quick fort by cutting down a bunch of trees and shoving one end about four feet into the dirt. But the scale of these walls was incredible! I tried to guess how much terrain they'd managed to enclose, but I couldn't guess. There was too much land—in some places, I couldn’t even see the far side of the walls. They’d managed to encircle at least a few acres of land, though. There was enough room inside that palisade for a modest city, at least by post-Event standards.

  In the distance, I thought I could make out another set of walls, too, but these looked like stone, like they had a fortified keep inside the outer walls. That made sense, too. If I remembered my history right, it wasn't weird for medieval castles to have a large outer wall and then a sort of fortress position somewhere inside of those outer walls. It was a time-honored design and one these people had clearly borrowed for their base of operations.

  I felt the barest flicker as we entered the edge of their Domain. I called out, loud enough that all the troops riding with me would hear. "We've entered their Domain now. They know we're coming. We probably ought to expect company fairly soon.”

  Whoever owned this domain would almost certainly sense an incursion of this size. What interested me, though, was that we were still a good distance away from the walls themselves. The size of the detection radius implied to me that this place was also a tier two domain. Gideon and I thought we were the only tier two domains in the area. Clearly, that wasn't the case.

  As we continued our ride toward the walls, I spotted a set of gates opening. A band of armored men mounted on horses rode through. They gathered themselves up and then moved toward us at a good clip. They weren't riding like they meant to attack—not a charge or a gallop. But they were making good time and wouldn't take long to arrive.

  "Company coming," Farnsworth said. “How do you want to handle this?”

  I eyeballed our potential opponents as they grew near. “Bring the horses back behind Sue. Be ready to break off and attack from their flanks if they're hostile. I'm moving my Abominations to our front rank. If this group decides to rush us, the Abominations will weather their charge pretty easily, and Sue can fireball them to bits."

  "You heard her! Let's move!" Farnsworth called out, shouting orders as he split his small force into two squads, one to the right and the other to the left of Sue.

  My Abominations shuffled their way past all of us, stepping down the hill a little to set themselves up as a first line of defense. The spot we were standing was at the crest of a small hill. The Abominations’ heads were slightly below Sue's, so we would have no trouble firing over them if it became necessary.

  The oncoming force continued toward us, but it slowed still further as they approached. Finally, they stopped about two hundred meters away. It was well outside of range for bow or spell, which I took as a good sign. If they wanted to attack, doing so straight away would make more sense. If they were pausing, it was probably because they wanted to talk.

  They all wore a lot of armor. Each had a helm that gleamed in the sunlight, so I was guessing those were made from metal, too. The breastplates, arm, and leg armor all shined in the same manner. It was a huge expense, and not something my force could match yet. We had some armor, mostly thanks to the smiths at the Air Guard base, but not matching sets like these folks wore.

  Each also carried a shield and a long spear, and they’d clearly been working on their horsemanship. While some of them looked like they had better mastery of their mounts than others, none of them looked like raw novices at riding.

  I held my breath as I waited to see what they’d do next. It was in their best interest to chat, rather than fight, and I kept my fingers crossed that was what they had in mind. Sure enough, just minutes after they brought the patrol to a halt, one man went riding forth toward us. In his right hand, he carried a stick with a white piece of cloth tied to the top of it. He held it high, like it was a banner.

  "Looks like they don’t want to pick a fight, either,” I said. "Let's see if we can make some new friends."