RavensDagger

  Chapter Ten - A Pgue

  51st Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Golden EraShorefarm, Yellowfield, Draya Calyrex

  Green rose from a croud resisted the urge to wipe at her face. Her siphon slowly retracted and clicked into pce. She gnced down at her essence ter before it was locked away in her barrel chest. 298.

  The three of them had initially hesitated over the four bodies they'd left on the road. Were they to share one ead then split the third? But Blue unicated to them, with grunts aures, that they ought to partake in all four equally.

  It meant that they all had a more or less simir amount of esse the moment. Red was ahead by a few dozen points, and Blue behind by as many, but the difference was rather slight.

  It actually gddened Green's meical heart that her... rades were willing to share so easily.

  They might hat, if the st fight was anything indication of how things might go.

  Three puppets against as many peasants and a single dog, and it had felt like a close thing. Green wasn't sure that she could take on a single peasant on her own. Maybe. If she had the drop on them, hit them first. She had a on while those they'd fought were barehanded.

  What would happen if they ran inter group? Would they be outnumbered, surrounded, and massacred?

  She shuddered, which had her entire body king and g like a cheap windchime. Red turowards her and slowly tilted her head to the side like a dog asking a question. "Eh?"

  Greeured her away with a brush of her head, then made a sort of circle to enpass the eown. "Looo... loook?" She hadn't yet mastered every vowel sound, and she wasn't sure if making lots of noise now would be wise.

  Red hen gnced around. The long market street went in three dires from here. The road back to the piers was behind them, and it split to the left and right. The right seemed to lead right out of the town. There were some homes way off in the distance, up a slight rise, and past those were the hills with the lighthouse they were supposed to look into.

  The road to their left went deeper into the town. Red poihat way, and Green hough it was a little relut.

  Would they be meeting more people that way? Would they be as hostile as these three?

  Blue poio the bodies, then to the side of the street. "Hhhhide?"

  Green thought about it, then shrugged. They could hide the bodies if they wao, but there was also a lot of blood all over, including ohree of them. Using the siphons on some dead fish had felt so and easy pared to stabbing into a retly dead human.

  Red gruhen carefully put her sword into its sheath and reached down to grab the leg of the first and man. Green stumbled over to help.

  She was happy about ohing. This puppet body of hers didn't seem capable of feeling any amount of exhaustion. Her mind, however, did. She just wao sit down and stare at the sky for a moment, but there was no time for that.

  They corded the bodies o the interse, between an old cart and some crates. They wouldn't be immediately visible, but it wouldn't take much to find them.

  Crows were already cirg above, the birds eyeing them with curiosity and the corpses with hunger.

  "Go," Red said while pointing to the leftmost part of the town.

  "Ye," Green agreed, and with no protest from Blue, they toddled on deeper into the vilge.

  Shorefarm, or whatever this small offshoot of that town was called, didn't have much going for it, Green found. She wasn't sure how she khat, exactly, but she had the impression that this was just some small, poor, fishing town by the o, minding its own business most of the time.

  They reached a spot where the road widened into what was almost a vilge square. There was a wider space, with muddy ground and a rge stable in the distance. Poles stood up, evenly spaced, and long garnds hung from between them.

  In the middle of the square ile of corpses.

  It only reached hip-height freen, but it was rge enough that she couldn't begin to guess how mahere. A hundred people? More? She wasn't sure. What she knew, instinctively, was that they had been there a while. Swarms of flies hummed around the bodies and the carrion crows were idly pig at exposed flesh. All the softer flesh was long gone.

  The three puppets stood at the square's edge for a while, at least until a moan shifted their attention to the side.

  From the shadows of the nearby stable, a figure staggered into view. It was humanoid but ed, much like the peasants they had entered earlier. This one was taller, its limbs stretched unnaturally long, with patches of gold-tinged scales c its emaciated frame. Its head lolled as though the neck barely supported it, and its glowing eyes seemed unfocused, the golden light flickering like a dying dle.

  The man's robes were pin cloth, but he wore a sash around his chest embroidered with gold filigree. Something told her that this man was important, even as he shuffled out of the stables.

  And then he was joined by two more. Simple peasants, like those they'd entered. They were dragging a body behind them.

  The man stood by the heap, then raised his head to the sky, followed by his arms. "Oh, great Aurynth the Golden! Rightful ruler of the Yellowfields! The warm fire! The seeder of wheat! I, lesser servant of you my great lord, beseech you for a sign!"

  The man reached to his side and pulled out a k was golden and curved and caught the bit of sun pierg the clouds brilliantly. He shifted his robed back, exposing a scale-covered arm covered in deep cerations.

  "Take of my blood!" he screamed before cutting across his skin.

  He tucked the knife away while his blood spshed on the bodies. It seemed to glow there, sparkling and bright before he covered his arm with his robes.

  "Take of my tears!" he shouted , before wiping his fad flig wetness onto the bodies.

  The two peasants heaved, and the body they carried was tossed onto the pile.

  "Take into thee my serfs! That their nourishment may call you and yhty power bato your loyal servant of lesser noble blood!"

  The man spread his arms wide and waited.

  Blue slowly moved backwards, first oep, then anreen followed suit, moving slowly as if that wouldn't caty notice. She wao grimace at every k her metal joints made. Red g them, then the pile of bodies which glowed faintly with feverish light, then she followed them back as well.

  Something told Green that that man was beyond them. Worse, she thought she caught sight of more iables beyond.

  Her heart almost leapt out of her wheurned and noticed a dozen people shuffling towards them.

  They all froze, but the people, peasants one and all, merely walked on past them, their eyes fixed ahead. They were mutated. Some had scales ripping out of their flesh, others twisted and broken wings. All of them were thin, pale of skin, and sickly, and not a single one of them aowledged the three puppets as they stumbled into the square.

  "Go," Red said with a gesture towards the far end of the vilge.

  Green nodded. Yes, she wao get out of here. Something told her that any amount of aggression would quickly do away with whatever calm these people had. There were only perhaps two dozen of them, but that was far more than she could imagihem taking on.

  They shuffled through the vilge ued.

  As they reached the far edge, a new sound broke the silence--a rhythmiging, faint but not so distant. It was the ring of hammer oal, slow and steady, punctuated by the low hiss of steam or breath. The puppets froze for a moment, exging gnces. Green tilted her head toward the sound, and Red nodded sharply befesturing for them to follow.

  The path leaving Shorefarm curved slightly, leading to a small bcksmith's shop tucked against the rising hills. It was a modest building, with a sagging roof and a ey belg faint trails of smoke into the foggy sky. Outside, under a crude awning, stood a man at a fe. He was tall and thin, his face obscured by a cloth ed around his head and eyes. His arms were muscur but marred with burns.

  He held a hammer, raising it just a little, before it fell and ked against a glowing pieetal. His hammer strikes looked tired. As did the man. He moved with the slow, exhausted rhythm of someone pushing themselves well past their limits.

  In the fe behind him, a small brass dragohed a steady stream of fire into a bed metal bowl as long as an armspan. Some sort of artifielt steel.

  The man paused between one blow and the , and slowly raised his head. "Oh? Who goes there?" he asked. His voice was soft and whispery. "I gave unto the lord all I had. My gold and my eyes and my precious things besides. I have nothing more to give."

  Green paused, but this man... didn't seem insane. Not as much as those vilgers, in any case.

  Maybe there was finally someone who could tell them what was going on here.

  ***

  1Last chapter for today! More tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after...