Book 6: Chapter 45 - The Borderlands (RAW)

Chapter 45 - The Borderlands

“I am the chosen of the Goddess, beloved of the Mother, and the bringer of the Endtimes.”

- Gilgamesh of Uruk

It was a journey. A slow, grinding pilgrimage of assertion and consolidation as Damien fed his men dreams that went beyond the greasy coins of the Mercenaries’ Guild. Sworn to him, with the caveat that should they succeed, they would all be landed men. No more running from one end of the continent to the other for ungrateful cities that paid late and light, on the whims of petty lords who spent lives like water and never remembered names. No more being hired to gut former comrades because a contract said so. No more watching friends die so some distant princeling could add another line to his titles. 

The men were receptive. The men had hope, a rare vintage. Hope that was all wrapped in the presence that was me, a dark promise trimmed gold that assured victory before even a blade was drawn. A walking prophecy clad in midnight adamantium that could break monsters and castle gates, that had already broken both. It also helped that the greater part of them were veterans of Al-Lazar and a half-dozen other campaigns, men who knew what it meant when Damien de Savant took the field. Command under him, with me as a hammer, was a known quantity: hard, bloody, and survivable—if you listened. If you obeyed.

We moved at a good, disciplined speed, eating up the distance day after day. Boots pounded dirt to dust, iron-shod hooves upon the long road. A pace that good men could keep up nearly forever without eating up morale, but not without eating into their bodies. Feet blistered, straps flayed shoulders, the stink of sweat and leather became its own weather around us. But the men kept formation, kept silence when ordered, curses when allowed. Discipline was a shield long before steel ever left its scabbard.

It was not soon, for the movement of a thousand men and camp followers could never be soon, but it was efficient. The column stretched and contracted like some armored centipede across the land. Fires rose and vanished, latrine pits were dug and filled, wagons creaked and complained and kept moving. We had no trouble on the journey, as it would take a suicidal beast of legend or a true host to even think of challenging us. A lone bandit here or there saw our vanguard, counted the banners and the glint of steel, and thought better of their next plan of action. Carrion birds followed anyway. They always do, for I was not so quick to give up a source of experience, no matter how small.

Mountainous terrain gave way to rugged hills, then rolling hills, before softening into a gentle, forested, half-tamed valley. The air changed first—a colder bite that tasted cleaner on the tongue. The weather became cooler, the sun a little less intense from the burn of the south, losing that vindictive hammer-blow heat and settling into something merely unpleasant. It was, everyone noticed, a change. Men shrugged into cloaks at night, breath misted faintly at dawn, and the song of insects shifted pitch. The world turned, indifferent to our little army.

And of change, there was not much with my “family” and me. Routine calcified into ritual. I trained with—no, taught—Larynda what I knew about holding a weapon, how to let the weight do the work, where to put her feet so she lived longer than a heartbeat in a real fight. How to use it when the man in front of you did not want to die. In turn, she taught me a little of Enkidu’s spear. It was not the practical knowledge that I sought; I was beyond that in terms of raw skill. What I wanted was the soft ache that came when she spoke his name, the way her knuckles tightened on the shaft, the way her eyes went somewhere else for a heartbeat. It was the joy of picking at a scabbed wound you know you should let heal. Grief with teeth.

My ward spent much of her time delving into the secrets of her magic, her Maat. It was an academic process as much as it was instinctual for her. Scrolls, muttered formulae, controlled experiments behind windbreaks while the rest of the camp pretended not to watch. 

For me it was purely instinctual, a thing that answered when I called and sometimes when I didn’t. My progress was defined by simple repetition, like a craftsman honing his art by striking the same line again and again until the metal obeyed. Call, shape, release. Burn, heal, break. Each success came with the faint terror that one day it would not. Or perhaps, have a life of its own, away from my control.

Red-haired Cordelia was also a vision in the camp during the day, and she knew it. She mixed the devotion of a southern preacher who has found their god again, the quiet poison of noble cunning, my status, and the weaponization of her raw beauty to slowly increase the number of her “flock”. She whispered to caravan guards, to camp followers, to minor officers with sticky fingers and guilty consciences. She gave them meaning, called their scars holy, their sins trials. I had tried to deny my divinity on several occasions, in public, loudly, with profanity—the honest rejection of a man who knows exactly how mortal he is. But this just seemed to stoke the fires of their faith. Mortals love a reluctant god; it makes their madness feel reasonable. It was an abject lesson in futility and a hard reminder of the raw stupidity of human nature. Still, it might be useful. A man who commands swords is dangerous. A man who commands belief is something else entirely. There were worse things in life than a beautiful woman trying to deify you.

The nights were, however, a different matter. For one, they were warm in all the ways that counted. Estaza was a calming presence, a quiet harbor in the middle of marching steel and crackling fires, replacing something I thought I had lost permanently. We always think that the someone that we lost is the “one”, or never attained for that matter, and we build altars in our heads to ghosts. But I was slowly realizing there were as many “ones” as there were “zeros” and failures. People you almost had, people you ruined, people you never met in time. It was a sobering and maturing thought, and I hated it. Hated the fact that I had been forced to age mentally by decades in this world, that my heart had been hammered into something harder and less forgiving. I did not get to stay young. The world had not asked.

And now we arrived at a town, a place that belonged to no kingdom or perhaps every kingdom: Eritrea. I heard from the talk around our group that some would say it lay within the borders of Aranthia, others simply concluded that it was an independent bastion of civilization that bordered the wilds, for they paid no tax to any lord or king that anyone could name. A city of merchants, then. Stone walls patched with timber, watchtowers bristling with hired bows, gates stained with the dust of a hundred caravans. You could smell money in the air—spices, pitch, excrement, and fear, all blended into the particular perfume of trade.

It would be here that we would make a much-needed stop for resupply. Had this been my world, a world with birds of metal that could cut across the sky on roaring engines, this entire journey would have taken a matter of hours. Instead, it had taken nigh on a few months by my count. A difficult thing, for the days and nights mixed into one another, seemingly accelerating and slowing down in equal measure to my perception. There were weeks that vanished in a blur of marching and sweat, and nights that stretched like sweet, exquisite torture. It was a weird thing, time; it bent and it rushed, but it always pointed in one direction, toward a future that did not care if you were truly ready.

I made use of my seniority—or rather my presence—securing rooms at one of the inns of the town for my burgeoning household. The innkeeper saw the armor, the men outside, and named a price that would have made a lesser man choke. It was exorbitant, but at this stage in the game, gold and money were more like meaningless counters than anything with true weight. I had seen too much blood spilled over coins to pretend they mattered. The one thing that held value for me now was magical items, or things that could increase my power, my leverage. Gold, it seemed, could hardly buy these things; it was the reason such artifacts were called “priceless”. Men would trade kingdoms for them, but not sell.

There would be no such artifacts here, but an inn made for a pleasant break from the endless travel. A roof that did not flap in the wind, walls that cut out most of the camp noise, a bed that did not move every time a horse snorted. A place to restore both the spirit and the mind, to remember what it was like to be merely tired instead of exhausted.

Estaza struggled to help me out of my armor, a duty that was usually Larynda’s, but one that my ward was more than happy to relieve herself of when the opportunity arose. Heavy Adamantium plate is not forgiving; it is as solid and as cumbersome for those who possess only mortal Strength. My under armor, that artifact from that strange place from the past, was perversely clean, the dirt and grime unwilling to find home upon its surface. It was still good to be rid of it all, but a sense of vulnerability remained in such moments like this. I wondered if there would ever come a time when I would be fused to my own armor.

“It doesn’t get any lighter,” the slender woman commented, grunting with no small amount of effort. 

An old thought, worn now with light-hearted repetition as she wrestled with a particularly stubborn buckle, her hair sticking to her forehead. It still brought a smile to my face with her delivery, though. In a life measured in pain and vitriol, small, familiar jokes were a small comfort I allowed myself.

Piece by piece, the armor hit the floor with dull, heavy thuds, each impact sending a small tremor through the wooden boards. By the time she peeled the last plate away, my body felt strangely naked, too soft, too vulnerable. The room smelled of oiled metal and the faint soap from Estaza’s hands.

Next, in the steaming bath the servants had dragged up for us in sloshing copper tubs, I realized my gains in skills had been minimal—non-existent, even—just by glancing at my “Status”. It was a small, bitter comfort that my “System” only showed whole numbers and not fractions. I knew I was making progress, even if that progress was microscopic and mean. After all these months of marching, bleeding, and killing, I had clawed together a paltry two hundred points of experience. A plateau, then. But somehow, the knowledge did not worry me as much as it should have. Not here, not now, as I sank deeper into the hot water and Estaza’s fingers dug into the knots in my shoulders. It was pleasant. It was small. It was enough—for the moment.

Leaving the bath, I draped some clean robes about me. No, silk but smooth cotton, or this world’s analogue at least.

A gentle knock came at the door, followed by another, more hesitant one when I didn’t immediately answer.

“Enter,” I said.

The door creaked open, and a small procession of servants filed in—thin, dark-eyed men and women in simple but clean tunics, sleeves rolled, forearms dusted with flour and spice. They moved with that careful, practiced grace of people whose whole life had been dedicated to service. Each carried a tray, and with every step the room filled with heat and the layered scent of food—meat, herbs, roasted grain, something sharp and citrus-like cutting through the heaviness.

They set the dishes down on the low table with reverence usually reserved for icons. Brass and clay bowls, chipped but polished. Platters of dark wood scarred by years of knives.

“My lord,” the eldest of them, a woman with lines carved deep around her mouth, bowed her head slightly. “We bring the house’s best.”

She lifted the lid off the first platter. Steam surged up, smelling of roasted fat and smoke. Inside, slices of dark meat glistened in their own juices, laid over charred flatbread.

“Fire-kissed zirakh,” she said. “Goat, rubbed with rock salt and crushed leaves, laid on bread.”

The goat was rubbed in something that looked like a cousin to paprika and black pepper, laid over what my mind insisted on dubbing naan or pita. Medieval fusion, my brain thought sourly, and it could have done with some mayonnaise or ketchup. Somewhere between kebab and a simple steak on bread, if I squinted the right way.

The next servant stepped forward, presenting a deep clay bowl. Inside lay a thick stew, oil shimmering on the surface like a thin, golden skin. Chunks of pale root and darker, almost purple vegetables floated among strips of meat, speckled with green and black herbs.

The servant recited something meaningless names for the food, I simply smiled politely and enjoyed the moment. 

If I added a bit of tomato and wine and called it stew, I could have served this in half the taverns back on Earth, and no one would have questioned it.

Another dish was uncovered: a large plate of small, stuffed leaf-rolls, steamed until they glistened. The leaves were a deep, glossy green, wrapped tight around a filling of grain and minced meat flecked with herbs and bright yellow shards.

Small bowls followed: A dish of mashed pale-green paste, drizzled with dark oil and sprinkled with crushed black seeds.

“Vale wine of Eritrea, my lord. Pressed from local grapes,” another servant offered, a pretty if timid thing. 

Red wine, brutal and young if the smell was any indication. Something between a rough Italian table wine and the sort of wine that could be bought by the carton. I couldn’t tell because if I was in turn as brutally honest as the wine, I had a peasant’s palate.

I tasted each offering in turn, Estaza sitting next to me, sampling alongside me. I chewed, swallowed, listened to the murmur of the servants as they withdrew. Different world, different pointless names, same simple truths: meat, grain, salt, heat. At the end of the day, it was still the same thing humanity had always chased: Delicious food.

And gods help me, after the months we’d had, it tasted like a small victory. Yet, a tiny, treacherous part of me still yearned for a pointless life dominated by the screen and the simple pleasures of a wasted life.