Chapter 17: Prisoners and Guards

Aven remained on quarry work for the following week. The week after, they sent him back on the hunts. And the week after that, back in the quarries.

They split the prisoners up in different ways each time, without any apparent rhyme or reason. The only constant was that they always kept him and Logash separate. Clearly, Erdrak had identified them as the ringleaders. A tactic to keep them from conspiring. Rather stupid considering they had all the time in the world together in the bottom level. Zav level was small enough that even in separate cells, they could communicate clearly. The Warden’s Eye high above threatened constant surveillance, but by this point Aven had learned the patterns.

The movements of the light were regular when it was only passively monitored, the beam of light covering the levels in slow circles. According to Esharah, there was nominally a warden watching at all times, but they couldn’t possibly monitor the entire keep at once. When the light became brighter and the movements more precise, that was when the watching took direct control. And that was the weak spot: if the attention was active elsewhere, there was an opening to communicate. Some days they were even more fortunate and Esharah herself was put on monitoring duty. Most of the time, however, they simply seized the gaps where the Eye looked elsewhere.

“How many today?” Aven asked.

“No deaths today,” Logash said. “With you gone, the guards are much more supportive.”

Over the past weeks, deaths among the voidspawn hunters had risen again, though not nearly as high as before they’d started working together. With different groups each time, they couldn’t refine their tactics the same way, but no matter the combination, they’d always managed to find some group to band together in more organized fashion.

“And the runes?” Aven asked. “How long?”

“I am getting better,” Logash said, not looking up from the work he’d been focused on for the past few hours. His back was to the bars of the cell, furry mass concealing his work. “Runecarving is a difficult practice. I am far from a master. I can’t say when they will be entirely ready.” He paused for a long while, no doubt engrossed in the task. “Among my people, they said that when one carves a rune one hundred times, they glimpse its power like a child first beginning to walk. With one thousand carvings, you are a skilled novice. Only after ten thousand carvings can you claim to be a master.”

As Logash had explained before, the creation of the runes did not require much vis power in itself. Even the slow trickle over time that the manacles permitted was enough. The process was about slowly amassing power, carving the runes into an object until the symbol of power became a part of the object itself.

“And how many have you carved?” Aven asked.

The ogre chuckled, “With these runes? Perhaps a couple hundred each. I have not counted.

The dim light of the eye returned, back to passive watching, and their conversation fell silent. With the cursed manacles, Aven couldn’t practice anything so diligently as Logash could. Real training could only come at other times.

* * *

Once again, the quarry team finished hours early with Aven’s aid. Some days, they managed the same arrangement. The leader of the quarry guards, Akra, was an eminently reasonable woman, and the guards had as little desire to fill more than their required quota as the prisoners did. Prisoners and guards alike could find common ground, at least, in doing the bare minimum.

Those times gave Aven something precious: time without the cursed manacles, where his Battle Mind was free. Heightened perception, the sense of slowed time, reading opponents...those were the chief of its powers, but not the only ones. Just as valuable, as Father had drilled into Aven over countless hours, was simulation. Instead of turning outward to perceive the world, Aven turned the Battle Mind inward. In place of reading opponents in reality, he read them in imagination.

In the hours of semi-relaxation, with half his attention on the simple games the prisoners could manage, Aven crafted dozens of scenarios. Some from memory. Some from pure imagining. Father had cycles that he drilled into Aven. First one opponent, unarmed. Then armed with a sword. Then a spear. Then two unarmed opponents. And so on.

The trick was putting enough energy into the imaginings that they became the next thing to real. Real enough that a mistake would hurt as much as failure in reality would.

“You ‘bout to shit yourself?” Shad asked.

Aven drew back from the scenario and laughed, “Oh no. Just imagining what it would feel like to be impaled.”

The others stared in response to that.

Then old Rani laughed and pulled up her loose, ragged shirt to reveal a rather hideous scar on her stomach, “Well, it ain’t fun, let me tell you! But it ain’t going in that hurts worst; it’s digging the fucker out, that’s the worst part – at least for a fisher’s harpoon.”

That prompted the whole group to share scars. Shad had one on his arm, an old burn from past days as an apprentice smith. Another prisoner in the circle had his left cheek slashed with four lines, apparently from the claws of a cat-like monster he’d faced. Boss had a burn scar one around his eye from striking a blackstone vein charged with magic. None were quite so grisly as Rani’s stomach scar - and of course her missing hand outmatched all of them by a fair margin.

“Live long as me, and you’ll get your fair share,” she cackled. She leered at Aven, “Pretty boy like you would look better with a few more good scars.” Her eyes glimmered, “I wouldn’t bet you’ll live long enough to get a collection, though.”

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Any further chance at relaxation ended when a horn sounded from Hellfrost.

The guard Akra leapt to her feet, spitting curses, “Prisoners! Back to Hellfrost! Move!”

“What’s that horn?” Aven asked as the others rushed to their feet.

“Voidspawn spotted,” Shad growled.

So close to Hellfrost? The pits weren’t for miles away. On the hunts, Aven had seen a few odd ones away from the pits, but never anywhere close to this far south.

The team leader yanked Aven forward, “Move!”

The group rushed back, climbing back up the mountainside to Hellfrost Keep. When they crested the highest point on the path, nearly as high as Hellfrost Keep’s outer walls, Aven got a good look at what the hornblower had spotted.

A small knot of figures were fleeing over the snow-covered fields. The prisoners, with the guards ahead of them. Behind, a mass of voidspawn more numerous than Aven had seen. Dozens. At least 50, probably more, though at this distance, he couldn’t identify what kinds. Just a writhing mass of monsters and black energy.

The guards were keeping well ahead of the mass. The prisoners were falling behind.

“Hells,” Shad breathed, staring at the sight. “They’re fucked.”

It looked as though a couple of guards were firing arrows as part of their retreat, but most were racing back to Hellfrost. Leaving the prisoners behind. Other figures were running back to Hellfrost too from the east, farmers who’d been grazing their livestock in the parts of the fields where hardy grasses breached the snow.

They neared the gate to the keep.

“Get inside!” Akra shouted. “Move!”

Aven paused, resisting as the group of other prisoners chained to him tried to move inside, “Unchain me!”

The guard gave him a baffled look, one that the other prisoners mirrored.

“The prisoners out there are going to die,” Aven said. “The farmers, the guards will be next. Unchain me, and let me out there.” He extended the voidhand, shaping it into a claw, “No one can fight the voidspawn better than I can.”

“You’re out of your godsdamned mind,” Akra replied. But she glanced back out to the farmers in the field with a worried look.

“Send me also!” Ouron stopped his chain team to shout out.

“And me!” Shad roared.

Aven glanced at him in surprise.

“Ko’jan’s out there,” Shad growled. “Jackass ain’t getting out of his debt by dying easy.”

Akra glanced at the gates, then out towards the fields. From here, the mass of farmers scrambling back towards Hellfrost were still visible. Her jaw set, and she shouted out, “Weapon carts! Out here now!” She turned to the gathered groups of prisoners and stepped forward to unlock Aven’s chains. “You want inside the gates, now’s your last damn chance.”

Twelve chain teams. Eighty or ninety prisoners in total. When Akra finished unchaining the volunteers, twenty remained outside. The weapon carts rolled out of the gates, and the twenty volunteers took up shields and spears.

“Been a long time since I held a beauty like this,” Rani jabbed the spear into the air experimentally, shield strapped tightly to her stumpy left arm.

“I’m surprised you stuck around,” Aven said lightly.

The old pirate gave him a snaggle-toothed grin and a wink, “If you’re dying today, boy, I want to see it up close.”

A dozen guards remained as well, Akra leading them. She looked at the twenty volunteers and shook her head. Her jaw was set, and a vein throbbed in her temple. She pointed at the approaching groups of farmers, guards, and prisoners, “We protect them until they can make it to the gate, got that?”

Aven gave a brief bow, “Your command, ma’am.”

Akra nodded, “Move! Quick march!”

* * *

They charged out into the snowy field. They came across the guards first, Erdrak at the lead.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Erdrak roared as he saw them. “Back to Hellfrost.”

“Our duty is to defend Hellfrost,” Akra thrust out her jaw in challenge. “Your duty, Captain Erdrak.”

The ogre captain growled. He spat, and then he shoved them aside and continued on. Most of his guards followed. A half-dozen stayed behind, joining with their group, along with as many frostfangs. Eighteen guards in total. Twenty prisoners. They charged onward.

As the horns of Hellfrost continued to sound, the farmers came next, only giving glances of surprise to the group as they passed, guiding oxen and sheep back to the town walls.

“Go!” Akra shouted to the civilians as they passed, “Quickly!”

One of them paused, a sandy-haired young man leading a goat, looking at Akra in horror, “Danys! What are you-”

“Go, Ciarhan! Now!” Akra snapped.

The man gave Akra a pained look and moved on.

Ahead, the prisoners approached. Some of them were running best as they could. Others, Logash most notably visible in the far back, were making a fighting retreat, stabbing and hacking away at the fastest of the voidspawn.

Closer now, Aven could see the mass of voidspawn more clearly. Closer to a hundred than the fifty he’d first thought. Dozens of types of creatures, from scuttling insects to lumbering four-legged beasts. A few speartails launching their spines from the mass. The ground rippled, and some of the smaller voidspawn collapsed into the earth as burrowers emerged beneath them.

At the back, the largest voidspawn that Aven had seen. Towering ten feet tall, even hunched over. Walking on two legs, with long arms dragging the ground as it lumbered, claws like scythes carving trails in the snow behind it. Four leathery wings on its back, though they were too covered in rips and holes to be of any use in flight. Thick, long mass of matted hair hanging from its head and body like the boughs of a willow tree. Wide mouth hanging open to display a fang-filled maw, twin black slavering tongues lolling out on either side.

Rani’s cackles echoed over the howling wind and chittering shrieks of the voidspawn, “Oh! They brought a fucking deathsinger! You’re in for a treat, boy!”

“You’ve seen monsters like that before?”

“Once!” Rani shouted happily. “Once in my twenty years! Last time one of these fuckers showed its mug, it killed thirty prisoners! You picked a hell of a time to be brave!”

The deathsinger’s mouth opened wider, and a sound emerged. Not a high-pitched shriek like so many of the other voidspawn. Instead, a deep, rumbling song. The sound reverberated in the air and through the snow itself. The song resonated into Aven’s bones. And went deeper. The void within responded to the song. Understood its meaning.

Kill, the voice sang. Rip, tear, devour. Until there is nothing left.

At the voice, the voidspawn surged. The prisoners broke from the slow retreat, running full tilt.

“Line up!” Akra shouted.

Aven and the prisoners lined up beside the guards, standing together in two rows. Shields raised and locked together, bristling with spears. The frostfang handlers held the dogs on their leashes, letting the canines bay and snap as they waited to be loosed. The guard archers who hadn’t fled to Hellfrost gave the retreating hunters covering fire, giving them enough time to fall in line as the voidspawn horde paused.

Another call from the deathsinger

Feast together.

The voidspawn at the front slowed, waiting for the larger, slower monsters to catch up.

Logash arrived last, falling into the line on Aven’s right, spear in his hands, black blood covering his fur. He breathed heavily, eyes closing and seeming to fight something within him.

“You all right?” Aven slapped the ogre on the arm with his voidhand, drawing the black blood in.. His eyes snapped open. A brief flicker of red faded from his eyes.

The ogre gave a nod and a faint smile, “You’re mad to be here.”

Aven laughed, and “Aren’t we all?”

“Spears up!” Akra shouted. “Brace!”

The line planted themselves in the ground. The deathsinger called out. The wave of voidspawn struck.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *