Chapter Eleven
The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a cold, heavy silence that pressed against Siurad’s eardrums. He stood still, his breath pluming in the night air, watching the fifteen children huddled near the dying fire.
They didn't look like people. They looked like a singular, trembling organism made of rags and terror.
A cold thought struck him, sharper than the winter wind: If I hadn't been summoned... if I hadn't stumbled into this specific patch of woods... would anyone have come for them?
He looked at the empty cages. He thought of Kel being sucked into the earth. And worse, what would have happened to them once they reached Valerius?
The thought raised the fine hairs on the back of his neck. He was the only thing standing between these kids and a horror he couldn't yet name.
Behind him, the sound of tearing canvas and shattering wood broke his spiral.
Yona was dismantling the camp. It sounded less like looting and more like a high speed eviction. She moved with terrifying efficiency, darting between the tents and the supply cart, extracting value from the carnage with a surgeon's precision.
She trotted back to him a moment later, hauling a heavy, clinking sack over one shoulder and wiping blood off a coin pouch with a wicked grin.
"Payout," she announced, tossing the heavy bag at his chest. Siurad caught it with a grunt, it was dense. "Eighty gold. Split down the middle. Hazard pay."
She didn't stop there. She dropped a large bundle of rough, grey fabric at his feet.
"And the real jackpot," she said, kicking the bundle. "Wool blankets. Slavers stole 'em from a merchant caravan, looks like. They smell like wet dog, but they’re warm. We've also got three barrels of salted pork and a medical kit that actually has clean bandages."
She tapped a bundle of crumpled letters tucked into her belt. "And... I found the paperwork. Kel kept records. Names, locations, a whole list of people holding resources that don't belong to them." She fanned the pages with her thumb, and the dangerous mischief was already sparkling in her eyes. "People we could pop in and... audit."
Then she stopped on one sheet, and the sparkle went out of it.
"Huh." She read it again, slower. "This one's a manifest. Payment on delivery, fifteen head of cargo. Kel was just a middleman. The buyer's a name." She turned it toward him. "Lord Valerius. Silverspire."
Siurad's blood ran cold. The name from the empty cages. The place the children had been bound for.
"You know him," Siurad said. It wasn't quite a question. The look currently on Yona's face, wasn't quite fear, exactly, but the careful stillness of someone who had just found a bigger predator's tracks crossing her own.
"I know of him. Cattallus Valerius. Sits on the Silverspire Council." She folded the manifest along its crease, precisely, the way you put down something you don't want to be holding. "Word in the trade was textiles. Wool and dye. Respectable money, not children. People don't get that wrong about a man unless he wants them to."
The ring on Siurad’s finger flared with a sudden, intense heat against his bone.
'...THE FOX-WITCH UNDERSTANDS THE DESIGN,' ... Obi pulsed, his mental voice vibrating with cold satisfaction. '...APPROVE HER PROPOSAL. EXPAND THE DEPARTMENT.'
Siurad looked from the gleeful thief to the approving entity in the ring. "Great," he muttered, rubbing his temples. "Now there's two of you. File that under administrative nightmares for later. Right now, we have a logistics problem."
He gestured to the huddle of children. "We can't stay here. But where do we go? Back to Pine Haven? No... that's stupid. Irma isn't equipped for fifteen kids. Maybe Zeus and his family could help... but no. I’m not dragging them into this mess. If Valerius sends people looking, I won't have that on my conscience."
'...STOP OVERTHINKING,' ... Obi cut in, sharp and impatient. '...HESITATION IS INEFFICIENT. MOVE THE ASSETS.'
"You in there, big guy?" Yona asked, waving a hand in front of his face, her expression twisting into slight concern.
"Yeah. Fine. Just having a staff meeting with my roommate," Siurad sighed. "So tell me. What the hell do we do with them? Where is the nearest safe place that isn't a hole in the ground?"
Yona hummed, tapping her chin. "Well, if we just leave them by the road, I'm sure a patrol might pick them up... eventually."
Siurad shot her a look that could curdle milk.
"Kidding. Kidding," she raised her hands. "Okay. Let's see. Brookshire. It's about three days travel on foot. Not very big, but not tiny either. It's a trade hub for wool and grain. Just big enough to house some orphans without arousing too much suspicion, but tiny enough that they probably won't have too many visitors from the capital."
She paused, weighing the words. "They have a Temple of Ceuci there. Goddess of crops and homes …or corn something like that. Usually, small temples take people in. In exchange for labor, mostly."
"Labor?" Siurad’s voice dropped an octave. "We are not trading one set of chains for another, Yona. We are not making these kids slaves."
Yona sighed, the wrinkles scrunching up the bridge of her nose. "I would never do that to children, Siurad. Who do you think I am?"
"A slightly neurotic, homicidal fox lady?"
"Fair," she conceded with a shrug. "But I'm not a monster. It’s not slavery. It’s... strict. They work the fields, they get fed. It’s the best option we have. Unless you plan on breastfeeding them yourself?"
"Look," Siurad said, rubbing his eyes. "We're short on time. We go check it out. But if it’s not up to snuff, if I see one collar, one cage, or one starving kid, we boogie. And we take the temple apart. Deal?"
Yona grinned, that predatory glint returning to her eyes. "Deal."
She patted the pouch of letters at her belt. "Besides, if the paperwork I found is accurate... it just so happens there's an interesting person in town ripe for the audit regardless."
Siurad looked at the children, then back at the dark road ahead. He hefted the sack of loot.
"I got no choice anyway," Siurad said, his voice hardening into the tone of the shepherd. "Let's move the flock."
The logistics were a total nightmare.
Siurad had anticipated the fear. He hadn’t anticipated the sheer, physical clumsiness of moving fifteen exhausted children through a root snarled forest floor in the pitch black.
The camp raid had provided them with the necessities, heavy wool blankets and rations, but dragging the flock off the main roads presented a unique, ankle twisting set of challenges.
"Stay in formation," Siurad hissed, guiding a wandering child back toward the group. Yelling would carry too far in the silent woods. The children were tired, hungry, and traumatized, stumbling over every uneven patch of earth as they tried to put distance between themselves and the ruins of Kel’s camp.
'...THEY ARE INEFFICIENT VARIABLES,' ... Obi pulsed against Siurad’s finger, the mental voice vibrating with irritation. '...THE PACE IS UNACCEPTABLE.'
They are children, Obi, Siurad thought back, gritthing his teeth. Not cargo.
He jogged up to the front of the column where Yona was scouting, her silhouette barely visible against the trees.
"Yona, do you think we've gotten far enough?" he whispered. "They’re stumbling. I'm about ready to call it a night myself."
Yona didn't even break her stride. "Sure thing, big guy. When you wake up hog tied with a slaver's knife at your throat because your precious wittle feetsies were hurting, don't blame me."
Siurad stopped, letting out a long, ragged sigh. "You could have just said no," he muttered under his breath.
Yona’s ear twitched. "What was that?"
"Nothing... nothing at all."
A stifled sob broke the rhythm of the march. A small boy near the back had stopped walking, his shoulders shaking as he began to cry.
Before Siurad could react, Mara was there.
She offered no hug and no comfort. She grabbed the boy by the shoulder of his oversized tunic.
"Quiet," she said. Her voice was brittle and absolute, an authority unbecoming of her age. "Back in line. Now."
The boy sniffled, looked at her steely expression, and instantly obeyed, shuffling back into formation.
The ring on Siurad's finger hummed, a low, resonant note of approval.
'...THAT ONE IS DIFFERENT,' ... Obi pulsed, the ring humming with cold interest.
Siurad didn't have time to process the assessment. Yona, ten paces ahead, suddenly froze. She didn't turn around; she just raised a closed fist, the universal sign for stop.
The silence of the woods changed. The crickets stopped. In the quiet, a new sound emerged: a wet, rhythmic sniffing coming from the darkness to their left. It sounded like a child whimpering, but wrong, distorted, as if mimicking a sound it didn't understand.
"What is that?" Siurad whispered, his hand drifting to his hip.
The underbrush exploded.
Four creatures burst into the clearing. They were hideous, massive, pale bodies that moved with the loping grace of lionesses, but their heads were elongated, equine skulls with human like eyes and rows of jagged, donkey like teeth. Their bellies dragged low to the ground, swollen and raw.
"Grief Mares!" Yona shouted, shoving the nearest child behind her. "Defend the rear!"
Siurad reacted on instinct. He raised his hand, reaching for the Void, willing a Shadow Spike to pierce the lead beast.
Nothing happened.
A dull, hollow ache throbbed in his chest and his veins flared with heat. The well was dry. The events at the camp where he had opened the void to absorb Kel into the earth, had taken everything he had left. He squeezed his fist, but nothing happened.
Shit. Out of gas.
The beasts were closing in. Siurad grabbed the hilt of his sword, the heavy black steel blade he’d carried since Pine Haven. He drew it with a metallic scrape, the weight of it familiar now, an anchor in the chaos.
"Get back!" he roared, stepping between the monsters and the flock.
One beast lunged for Mara. Siurad swung.
It was a clumsy strike, fueled by panic rather than the leverage Zeus had taught him. The beast ducked effortlessly, snapping its jaws at his leg. Siurad stumbled, his balance gone, and slammed into the mud.
The beast was on him instantly. It was heavy, smelling of sour milk and rot. Its claws raked across his leather armor, shredding the straps.
Siurad didn't panic, not entirely. In his old life, he’d been a bouncer. He knew how to handle bodies. He knew how to wrap up a drunk who was swinging wild and pin them to the floor.
He dropped the sword and jammed his forearm into the creature's throat, treating it like an unruly patron.
But this wasn't a drunk.
The creature felt... wrong. Its skin was loose and oily, shifting over muscles that didn't connect where they were supposed to.
Human leverage doesn't work on things with too many joints, he realized with horror.
"Get... off!" he grunted, heaving upward with raw strength.
He managed to flip it, pinning it beneath his weight not with technique, but with brute force. The beast shrieked, a sound like a woman screaming, and thrashed, its claws digging into his back.
Siurad abandoned all attempts at fighting. He grabbed a jagged rock from the mud. It was rough, covered in slime, its edges biting into his palm.
He brought it down.
THWACK.
The rock connected with the creature's equine skull. The sound was the wet, dull noise of meat slapping stone. Skin burst. Black blood sprayed across Siurad’s face, hot and metallic.
The beast shrieked, thrashing harder.
Siurad hit it again.
CRUNCH.
This time, he felt the bone give. The vibration traveled up his arm, jarring his shoulder, but he didn't stop. The sharp edge of the rock sliced into his own fingers, mingling his red blood with the monster's black ichor, but the pain felt distant. Muted.
He hit it again. And again. And again.
SPLAT. CRACK. SQUELCH.
The screaming stopped, but Siurad didn't. He was panting, his breath coming in ragged gasps, but beneath the exhaustion, something else was rising.
A thrill.
With every impact, the fear in his gut dissolved, replaced by a dark, electric heat. It felt... good. It felt righteous. It felt like popping a blister, like scrubbing dirt from a floor. The wet ruin of the creature's face wasn't disgusting anymore; it was progress. It was a correction.
He raised the rock for another strike, his muscles burning, a snarl twisting his own face that felt terrifyingly natural.
"Dead," he whispered, the word tasting like copper. "Stay dead."
He brought the rock down one last time into the pulp of what used to be a head.
Silence returned to the clearing.
Siurad sat there, straddling the corpse, his chest heaving. He stared at the unrecognizable mess beneath him. He stared at his hand, the rock was still gripped tight, fused to his skin by drying blood.
The thrill faded, leaving a cold, hollow pit in his stomach.
I enjoyed that, he realized, the thought hitting him harder than the monster had. I didn't just kill it. I wanted to unmake it.
He dropped the rock. It landed with a wet plop in the mud. He scrambled backward, crab walking away from the carcass, wiping the blood from his eyes with a shaking hand.
He looked up.
Yona stood in the center of the clearing. The three mares she had engaged were scattered in pieces, frozen and shattered by her ice magic. It was clean work.
Siurad’s work was a slaughter.
Yona walked over, kicked his sword back toward him, and sheathed her own weapon with a crisp click. She looked at the pulped head of the grief mare, then at Siurad. She didn't look impressed. She looked grim.
"You fought like a drunk ox," she said, her voice devoid of humor. "You have the strength of a giant, Shepherd, but you grapple like you're trying to hug it to death. And that..." She pointed to the mess. "That's messy. That’s inefficient."
' ..AGREED,' Obi pulsed, cutting deep. '...BRUTALITY WITHOUT PRECISION IS JUST CHAOS. YOU LOST CONTROL.'
Siurad picked up his sword, his hand shaking violently not from fear of the monster, but from fear of himself. He realized then that relying on mana was a death sentence, but relying on his own rage might be worse.
"Teach me," he wheezed, looking at Yona, desperation in his eyes. "I need... I need to know how to do this right."
Yona looked him up and down, seeing the blood, the shake, and the fear behind it. She nodded, a grim smile touching her lips.
"We start tonight. Before you sleep. Now... let's move before the mother comes looking for her pack."