CHAPTER 2.01 – THE IRON RAMS: I
They’ve stalled a little. The size of the Iron Rams’ fort and the huge expanse of killing field surrounding the stockade has stifled the group. They spent enough time circumnavigating the forest edges, just to get onto the correct side of the keep. The unspoken end of that thought was that when they must inevitably run, they’ll at least be fleeing forward rather than back along their tracks.
Hugo’s sitting cross-legged on the fallen log serving as their dinner table and chairs. He finished eating a while ago, an uninspiring meal of jerky and other provisions they could eat cold. No chance here of a fire going unseen. He casts his gaze across his comrades as he plucks fretfully (the weak pun does nothing to improve his mood) on his lute, fingers deadening the strings. Nobody looks particularly enthused as they discuss options. Cold food and cold comfort.
Rian seems in a state of shocked despondency. This is worrying as he is their resident expert on the forest and on the Iron Ram bandit clan specifically. The huge man’s face is mostly obscured by a shaggy mane of salt-and-pepper hair and his wild beard, rendering the degree of surprise visible on his remaining face doubly demoralising. Despite having traded with the bandits for something like a decade, his last actual visit here was similarly long ago. At which time the settlement was apparently far more manageable in scale and approachability. Hugo continues to pick quietly at the strings.
He shifts focus to his unlikely best friend, Thae. It’s not so much that the initiate of Athena is so…virtuous, nor so selfless, that makes their tight bond surprising. Thae, ever emotionally responsive, is trying to support Rian through his shock. The half-elf’s light tone is calming, but just firm enough to try to shake the wild man into a mood more useful for planning. “Well, you could not have known, Rian. Were there…any points of vulnerability when you DID know the layout, darling?” That’s new, presumably an expression of Thae’s trust in and comfort with the company.
No, Thae has many qualities that complement (or control for) Hugo’s personality. THAT makes his confidence in and admiration of the temple acolyte simple common sense. It’s sullied, however, by the fact that Hugo first met this ally, this tower of support, while planning to rob said temple. His fingers twist on the strings as he flashes back into his old mindset, where Thae’s open, agenda-free personality described a perfect patsy. A patsy on whom to hang the robbery if ever it was discovered.
The final member of the company is suddenly present over the dulled jangle of Hugo’s guilt-twisted fingers. It’s such a shame, really. The pale-skinned woman looked so peaceful in the light of the rising moon, gazing towards the walls, marking the movements of the guards. A piece of him whispers ‘So beautiful, too’. He’s been trying to strangle that part of himself since he met her. Hugo knows he hit it off all wrong with Anuk, but even though he has made steps into her good graces, his position remains tenuous.
“Hades’s tits, Hugo, d’you have to be…” While the content of the curse is surprising, the demeanour of it fits perfectly within Anuk’s wheelhouse. As would any flavour of anger, the woman seeming to eternally simmer with rage. Hugo’s equally wary of her given his discovery that her destructive powers seem gifted by some powerful magical entity. The template for such setups revolve around literal infernal bargains, so he’s happy to have her power on his side while not trusting it (her?) a single inch.
Currently, the furious look on her face is melting into confusion as she stares right past him. Her silvery-white hair is catching the moonlight filtering through the tree cover, the cold light showing off skin like porcelain. Then he jumps as her voice becomes terse surprise. “Where the fuck is Hugo?”
He feels a mad giggle bubbling up inside him, wondering what this game is, as Rian and Thae drop their halting conversation and turn in his direction. Then realisation dawns on him as the pair cast about, trying to place the position from which the chord-picking had been emanating moments earlier.
It worked! It fucking WORKED! The giggle dies as he wonders just how long ago it worked, how deep into his noodling he actually… He bolts in silence, ready to sprint across the killing ground. Then reconsiders, wheels and says to his confused group. “Wait here, please! I’ll be back within the hour.” Or not at all, he thinks, if he’s wasted time sitting invisibly…he reckons it couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes. 15 at the most. But that’s already a chunk of time lost and he has so much to do for this to be of any use.
He sprints towards the northern gate of the stockade, wishing that the supportive expressions he spotted on Rian and Thae’s faces hadn’t been contrasted with Anuk’s eye roll. More reason for him to return with good intel, he thinks. At that moment, the grey sky that’s threatened them the whole day lets loose fat blobs of rain. The kind that’s determined to soak through clothes and underclothes alike. Maybe good news for penetrating into the fortress, he thinks, but more tracks he can leave inside. He tries not to think about how he just told Anuk to wait in place in a rainstorm. Hopes that the forest canopy is shielding his friends from the worst of it.
-x-
He hugs the base of the log wall, daring himself to gasp to control his breath. As he hoped, the guards have almost disappeared from the walls, a few congregating in each tower. As an expert climber, scaling the wall at the gate’s edge was simple but doubly draining as the rain slicked every surface. And already a little information squared away for his group. They had theorised, when marching north far enough that the slope towards the coast broke line of sight from the fortress, that the road, the road all this effort was allowing them to cross, led to some docks. From the bored chat of the guards sheltering in the gate towers, a dock or smuggler’s beach was confirmed as one of the men opined nothing’ll be landing in this weather.
The other guard’s response puzzled Hugo. He had said something along the lines of “If anything’s still coming. Or Nevin’s fucked that up too…” His friend gasped audibly at that, earning a snitty “What you fucking scared of? He’s fucked off hasn’t he?” As though berating some kind of coward. From a guy happy to talk shit as long as the target seems very absent. Still, it’s news for Rian. His response to Nevin’s name being dropped has been akin to the gasping bandit’s.
As his breathing settles, Hugo anticipates his next move. He’s facing the rear of the keep, past a broad span of ground cleared for farming. There are a good number of crops growing, more than a city boy like he would anticipate, however there is an untended feel to the plants. He reasons perhaps this is simply the inattention of bandits, can’t imagine the mindset for that career overly intersects with a true son of the soil. Still, as he picks his way along grassy paths separating the plots, he notices fresh weeds and wild growth beginning to intrude among the tidily planted plots.
Less surprising to him is the pile of earth he spies in one of the fallow squares. Again, his urban life can’t determine the length of time between fresh earth being dug and the traceries of new growth establishing themselves, but he knows enough that the digging is fresh. And a roughly burial-sized plot. That style of planting’s much more in keeping with the bandit ethos, to his mind.
He casts off his distractions, focusing on the wall before him. The Rams seem to be upgrading their fortress bit-by-bit, the stone ground floor having been clad around an existing wooden structure. As a result, the upper stories project from the stone base like a torch from a sconce. Pretty handy for someone looking to scale the edifice, he thinks, certain of his intended target. The central window of the top storey is the largest he has seen on the building, located centrally along the wall. It promises to be an important room and the logical place to start his…factfinding mission? Assassination attempt? Academic, unless the opportunity presents itself.
He’s conflicted, both with the idea of murder from hiding – from invisibility, no less – and more importantly whether ending Dolf would free them of their pursuit or aggravate it. He realises his scruples aren’t SO inflexible as he imagines finding Perasta. His mind leaps to the ‘snuff’ option, no perceivable guilt. That seems fair play, though, as Hugo remembers the glee on the bastard’s face when he thought Rian was outnumbered ten to one.
The violent fantasy sustains him through the more hazardous climb towards the broad, arched window. The wooden wall presents less handholds than the stone and he worries about the noise his dagger might make if used as a mooring. At last, however, he’s hanging from a ledge just too narrow for even his small frame to stand. No matter: even with his pauper’s picks, the planner of this fort didn’t see a great need for security on the third storey. As soon as he satisfies himself that the dark space beyond the window is absent of audible noise or visible figures, the window is unlatched and he slips through.
He stands frozen for a good minute as his pulse retreats from booming in his ears, then focuses his senses to determine there’s nobody occupying the huge bed against the wall to his left. His feet have sunk into a thick rug or carpet; however the sensation feels somehow wrong. The tiny amount of light penetrating into the room makes it difficult to determine anything beyond dim outlines. He curses himself silently.
Had he known that he’d cracked the invisibility he could have prepared better, and he’s keenly aware the effect could drop any time. He feels his self-sabotage spiralling up and tries to ground himself, to stay present and ignore his own barbs. At that, he feels something he has missed before now, a sensation like the preface to a shiver. Unrecognised, he allowed this to play with his feelings, to heighten the anxieties of this untested and perilous action. As his mind plays over the feeling, he recognises it for what it really represents. It’s the magic. The invisibility itself.
Dipping into this extension of his proprioception, he becomes certain that this is his confirmation that the trick worked, the reverberation of his chord against the strings of magic. And with that sense, he is certain that half or more of his time in this state has already passed. He curses under his breath, but at least he’s decided. Straining again to perceive anyone else in the room, he prepares to become very noticeable.
He takes out Bertak’s device, twists it open in his hands, then counts to three. He channels his illumination effect into the ball moored inside the tube, twisting the slot closed as he returns to visibility. Thankfully the flash of light, secluded to the outside by the wall below the window, confirmed his solitude in this large room. Besides, the guards on the wall should be looking out, not inwards, he reckons. He breathes again, mind racing over whether he should try to re-establish his invisibility before or after tossing the room. Decides that he must know whether it was a fluke or not, and soon. It would certainly alter his approach and chances of escape.
Still uncertain of the lay of the land and how many bandits might be swarming the fortress, he reckons he’s already in the most remote part of the room. Deadening the strings, willing his fingers to pluck them as gently as possible, he tries to find his way back to the effect. His treacherous mind broadcasts his options for failure, every worst case scenario portrayed squarely as his fault. In doing so, he allows his first fear, of a guard outside this door hearing the music, to swim his senses and freeze his fingers.
This isn’t going well. He wonders how long after he’s dead his friends will wait before…what? Coming to get him? Breaching a fortress full of bandits? Or heading off and away.
Hugo attempts to remember how to breathe.
