Chapter 59: 59. High Road

Excerpt from Shem Brightstaff’s ‘The Roads of Milur: A Traveller’s Handbook.’

“If you wish to approach the capital from the direction of Aulpre, take care to visit the many old fortresses along the way—a beautiful testament to the craftsmanship of the great architectural and engineering houses, still wonderfully intact despite their age and disuse. Unless you have travelled from some particularly obscure section of the border, you will likely come across the site of General Yrkzhext’s Last Stand upon Vrulli, which is not to be confused with General Yrkzhext’s Last Stand upon Mruuma, Farfulan or Sheruum¹. One of the last fortresses built during the Aulprean expansion era, the immense crater immediately before the fortress walls highlights the enormous skill of the craftsmen in anti-siege-magic construction techniques…”

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The next few days of travel were particularly stressful for Yenna, for several reasons entirely unrelated to the ever-present threat of mortal peril.

As the group headed further into Milur, winding their way through the mountainous land by way of narrow valleys and nerve-wracking cliffside roads, the density of towns and people grew. Any flat bit of land had at least a smattering of buildings, and even some of the cliff faces and steep mountain slopes played host to fascinating structures either carved into or very carefully hanging onto the rock itself. This meant that the party drew a lot of attention, with Yenna receiving a surprisingly large share of staring eyes and awkward questions.

“Is it true that kesh eat grass for their dinner?” A squat, muscular yolm man in farmer’s overalls had called out to Yenna as they walked through town.

“W-Well, no, but–”

“Are you a wizard, miss?” From out behind the farmer came a small girl, her eyes twinkling. “Do you turn naughty kids into stone like my da’ says? Issit true?”

“A-Ah, no, not at all–”

A few more members of the town closed in, curious. Kesh were evidently a rarity this far into Milur, and mages were all but unheard of. Before Yenna knew it, she was surrounded by strangers asking her questions or gossiping about her without a hint of shame. Yenna’s eartips burned, her hooves tapping excitedly against the ground as she instinctively looked for an angle to escape from.

“Yenna!” A booming voice called from further down the road—Captain Eone waving above everyone to call her over. My saviour.

“I-I really must depart, everyone. Excuse me! N-No, please, hop out of the way–”

“C’mon, show us a spell, a’fore you go!”

“Yeah, let’s see one!”

A group of muscular women cheered Yenna on, blocking her path. In moments the small crowd took up the chant, leaving the mage little choice but to use a spell to escape. The flight reflex was hammering up against Yenna’s mental discipline techniques, and she called upon the power of witchcraft to deliver her a swift escape. Tensing up the muscles in her legs, Yenna pulled light green wisps of magic out of the air, concentrating the power in her hands and releasing a powerful burst of wind immediately below her.

The effect was immediate—the crowd was buffeted by gale-force winds, the people in the front getting knocked back safely into the arms of those behind. Meanwhile, Yenna had vanished—all eyes looked up, to see the mage arcing through the air above them.

A moment of terror and adrenaline-rich excitement coursed through Yenna’s body as she saw everything from above. The staring faces of the crowd, the caught attention of both the members of the expedition and other townsfolk who had been nearby, the houses below that suddenly looked so small. Then, gravity gently reminded Yenna that kesh were creatures of the land, and aimed to return her there as fast as possible.

Hooves and hands flailed as Yenna tumbled, her clothes and hair whipping around her as the ground rushed up. The mage had enough wherewithal to curse her failure to memorise a spell of slowed falling—when am I going to be tumbling over a cliff or leaping from somewhere high in the broad, flat plains of Aulpre? There were too many safeties in a slow-falling spell to simply make one up on the spot, in the scant few seconds of flight time she had. Yenna could never wrap her head around the complex air-braking, whiplash-cushioning controlled fall spell in time, but she could at least dull her fall.

Acting still on instinct, Yenna shot out another burst of Joyful wind—the green magic coming out dark, and worryingly thin. It barely served to slow her descent, but she did slow. Yenna braced herself for an impact she might feasibly survive, attempting to coax out more of the magic, her emotions running too wild to focus on true Joy. The mage closed her eyes and hoped the earth was soft.

The impact knocked the wind out of her, and she went tumbling along with someone else—Yenna hadn’t felt much pain from the landing, but her thoughts were consumed with the sudden horror that she had slammed into someone, injured them or worse. She opened her eyes and attempted to right herself, her legs shaky but intact. Yenna felt the warmth of another body against her underside and sprang up, mortified at what she had done. Preparing to help, she instead saw a remarkably unharmed Narasanha dusting herself off. The bodyguard looked furious, and Yenna tensed up in fear.

“Mage!” All four of the woman’s hands balled up tightly into fists as she growled a deep growl, and Yenna worried that Narasanha was going to beat her to a pulp.

“I’m so s-sorry, I-I j-just– w-wasn’t th-thinking a-and–”

“Wasn’t thinking is correct! For someone so smart, you are never thinking!” Narasanha pulled her hands up onto her hips, drew herself up tall. “Always acting first, putting yourself in danger! You are lucky as always, mage, that I am here to catch you.”

The crowd Yenna had narrowly escaped began to follow, curious to see the aftermath of Yenna’s magic—seeing from afar that no one was hurt, there were cheers and shouts erupting from them. The mage’s impulse to flee the crowd was tempered only by how much she deserved Narasanha’s temper.

“Y-Yes, you are right, very right, I never should have attempted such a spell without the appropriate safety considerations, v-very correct. I-I’m sorry for l-landing on you, I… I didn’t even see you there, and–” Yenna’s memories halted, scanned back, corrected themselves. Narasanha hadn’t been there, or even particularly close. The bodyguard must have sprinted a considerable distance to catch her, her reflexes razor-sharp.

“It is no matter. You are lighter than you look.” Narasanha’s glare moved elsewhere, as though it couldn’t be contained. Her voice fell to a low rumble. “Do not endanger yourself, mage. You are… needed.”

With that, the bodyguard stalked away—away from the crowd, away from the expedition crew, away from Yenna. The mage sighed, trotted her way over to Eone, rejoined the crew. The captain had a peculiar smirk on her face, though she didn’t elaborate.

I’ll have to repay Narasanha somehow, the mage thought to herself. A debt like that wasn’t easy to repay, and Yenna quietly wished she had simply hit the ground instead. Just how was she going to make it up to a creature such as the bodyguard?

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Despite her impromptu magic show, Yenna was able to avoid the attention of the townsfolk by sticking close to the rest of the crew. She did retain a few gawkers—bored young men on break from their work, old-timers sitting on their porches—but the mundanity of helping the crew with the constant loading and unloading that the expedition performed a bit of magic of its own, transforming Yenna into just another part of the group. Moving on, the real stress emanated from the pouch on Eone’s hip.

The entire expedition crew were made aware of the skull—told to treat it as though an enemy were listening at all times. The captain herself made a sound like a small army was marching through, and anyone she spoke to had to be carefully informed in advance to avoid any comments being made on it. Where it was impossible for Eone to guarantee that everyone would be aware enough to avoid mentioning it, Muut was entrusted with the skull. To Yenna, it was like standing around a bomb with its fuse lit—Eone and Muut treated it like just any other day.

Eone also spoke to the skull, indirectly. She would loudly discuss the obviously false plans, crooning like an amateur actor at the deep betrayal of House Stormsea, how she couldn’t wait to head over there and give them a piece of her mind. Even knowing that the captain was making an effort to sound false, Yenna couldn’t help but cringe—anyone Eone spoke to tried their best to keep up, but the captain was a master of playing the fool.

“Oh, I shall have my revenge on those dreaded House Stormsea charlatans!” Eone’s booming voice was audible over the rushing of wind of Chime’s travel.

“Yes, captain, you informed us.” Muut was already tired of the entire charade. “I too share your… deep and burning distaste for those upstarts.”

There was the crinkling of a map being drawn out, loud and clear with a few too many flaps and rustles to sound normal. Eone murmured a rather sincere-sounding, “Where were we again?”

“Here, Captain.” Muut was calm and clear, pure professionalism with a dash of the long-suffering nature of Eone’s second-in-command. “Just on our way past… Mellan.”

Yenna couldn’t quite see them, but she had heard the shift of position—Muut leaning over to speak right in the skull’s metaphorical ear. The captain’s poor map-reading skills played double-duty in selling their deception, with Muut keeping track of where they would be, had they a much larger caravan and were heading to where they said they were heading—occasionally, the Captain would just guess, woefully wrong but still selling the double-layered deception.

The actual route they were taking brought them through increasingly well-maintained and populated roads, as they left behind Milur’s thin rural extremities and passed into the major arteries of Miluran travel. After a few days of fairly oppressive views, with looming mountains and heavy forests, the ability to see clearly down a road was something of a blessing. The amount of people travelling by was not.

While on the move, it became apparent the downside of travelling on Chime’s back. They were very large, wider than a carriage and far longer, taking up a lot of room on the narrower roads that forced them to either scurry awkwardly past other travellers proceeding the opposite direction or force others to wait for the enormous silupker to pass. Almost everyone who passed by Chime was struck by their appearance, and Yenna had no doubt that a wave of gossip was rippling out alongside them—their plan to hide their location by deceiving the skull could never have worked, and Yenna quietly acknowledged the subtle genius involved.

Eone was also rather liberal with her attempts to sell the lie, in a way that only the daughter of a wealthy noble house could—whenever Chime had to stop, to let someone past or simply to rest, the captain would shove a coin into a passerby’s hands and tell them to tell all their friends about the huge silupker, and the caravan of armoured guards following it. It worried Yenna somewhat, to have absolutely no means of verifying whether their plan was working. The mage would later write in her journal one singular thought on the matter—no news is good news.

When the crew were but a day out from the capital, the roads became significantly more crowded and lively. The cacophony of people going to and fro, conducting business fair and foul right there on the paved highway, gave Yenna nostalgic memories of her first time into Aulpre’s capital. Long chains of wagons pulled by immense beasts of burden rumbled past bearing the insignia of various houses, carrying cargo across the state. Travelling salesmen shouted the nature of their wares from narrow wagons drawn by enormous dogs or tall, slender birds, offering food, drink, souvenirs for the traveller, even travel guides and charms. Yenna purchased a guide to the roads, though the vendor had gone wide-eyed to have the cheap, mass-conjured copy paid for with a leaf—Yenna’s high-value coin was replaced with nine suns and eight moons, as well as a somewhat unimpressed look from the vendor herself.

The book detailed all sorts of fascinating sites along the roads—mostly old fortresses, from the age of Aulprean expansion, the majority of which never saw action. Temples to the various deities worshipped by Miluran yolm were laid out in terms of pilgrimage routes and best seasons for travel, and Yenna wondered if she would ever get the chance to join in as a curious observer on the back of one of these holy parades.

The next day, much closer to the capital, the captain insisted they take a shortcut—a back-route towards the Deepstar estate that would shave some hours off their travel time. Yenna nearly tumbled out of her seat when, not long after they had set off for the day, Chime had screeched to a halt on an otherwise empty dirt road.

Standing up on the spot and peering over the boxes that lined Chime’s back, Yenna witnessed the most curious display—a group of extraordinarily brazen brigands had set up an extremely crude ‘gate’, nothing more than a large branch dragged across the road. It would have stopped a wagon, but Chime could have passed over it without a second thought—they only stopped to avoid crushing the young woman standing immediately behind it, a yolm who looked to thoroughly regret her life’s choices.

“We’re, uh, j-just getting this one off the road for ya, no chuckles!” A tall, thin man with a broad-headed axe waved, his voice tight with nerves. Yenna could tell this was a trap for the odd convoy in a hurry, and the expedition crew were far too big a fish for their line.

“Aren’t you going to make us pay the toll, friends?” Eone’s voice was loud and jubilant, her demeanour easy-going—yet Yenna watched as the captain’s eyes subtly scanned the area, and following it the mage spotted several hidden highwaymen who were doing their best to hide just a little bit more.

The crew of brigands gave an uneasy laugh, as though the captain had told a poor joke while holding them at sword point. A short, winged woman with a sharp beak where a yolm’s mouth and nose would be shook her head, broadly gesturing for the rest of the crew to get out of the way.

“Not us, not us,” she insisted, her voice sharp and high, gratingly similar to a screeching hawk. “No, just cleaning up the roads here, don’t want no accidents to happen. Here, milady, here, road’s all clear.”

With the branch—and more importantly, the highwaymen—out of the way, Chime proceeded forth slowly. Yenna watched the pale, terrified faces stare openly at the section immediately in front of her as she went past and, turning her eyes to see what had made them so afraid, realised that Narasanha was standing poised with all four arms extended, a weapon in each. Even from behind, the bodyguard resembled an avenging angel or some dark goddess of war etched into a forbidden tome. The brigands stood as still as statues the entire way through, and remained that way until well and truly out of sight.

When it became clear that there would be no secondary ambush or threat to face off with, Narasanha gave a small, annoyed groan, put away all of her weapons and sat down. Sitting across from her, Yenna heard Tirk laugh—followed by Hirihiri, then Eone, then the entire crew, except the surly guard.

The absurdity of the situation had Yenna laughing too—so highly strung, so well-armed, what were they even afraid of? A band of brigands who would have given a guarded caravan some trouble had graciously stepped out of the way, and Yenna suspected that if they weren’t in a hurry that the captain may have ordered them all rounded up and dragged to a cell. The mage could only imagine how much more mortified they would be, to watch the fine carriage of an exceedingly wealthy noblewoman roll by just behind them, knowing that the prize of a lifetime lay right there behind a beast greater than any could hope to survive.

Yenna simply hoped that all their remaining encounters would go this way—farcical, one-sided acquiescence, without struggle or bloodshed on either side. She hoped, of course, but knew it could not be. There would be blood—it was foretold.

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¹ - As stated previously, General Yrkzhext is an enigmatic individual, to whom countless feats are attested and rarely proven. In Milur alone, the Great General was involved in several defeats referred to as his ‘last stand,’ each with a tragic tale of the General’s untimely demise—often in ridiculous, outlandish scenarios that saved the rest of his men from an overwhelming enemy. Those who tell the tale of the General’s last stand often do so with a cautionary note to ignore all the other times the General was pronounced dead, as those were hearsay, conjecture and nonsense. It is a wonder the Great General ever managed to accomplish anything at all, given the amount of times he was rather dramatically killed—we may never know the truth.

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