Chapter 235: External Pressures
Not long after first light, Ollie made his way from the castle to the sprawling collection of tents where the refugees had settled. His conversation with Thane the night before hadn’t lasted more than an hour before the former knight sent him to bed for some much needed rest.
As much as he needed sleep, however, thoughts about his new responsibilities had plagued him, leaving the young man to restlessly stew in his worries until late into the night. Once the sun broke above the hills to the east, he’d wasted little time in preparing for the day. The sooner he could take action, the better he would feel.
Trailing a few feet behind him, the horned soldier Harrod followed like a dutiful shadow. While the future knight wasn’t sure when it had happened, it was clear that someone, either Thane or perhaps Commander Bassinger, felt that it was best for Ollie to have a capable warrior at his side when he moved about the Vale of Mists.
At first, he’d thought the notion was silly. Here, behind the vale’s many layers of defensive walls, what could he possibly need to fear? Some of the refugees, however, hadn’t reacted well to finding a human waiting for them when they arrived at the place that was supposed to be a safe haven.
The refugees could accept vampires like Thane and Marcell. Vampires were no longer human, even if they retained a human appearance. Ollie, however, had too much in common with the very people who had come to destroy their homes. So far, the hostility directed at the young man had never risen above muttered words and dark looks, but if it ever did, he was glad to have Harrod along with him.
The camp where the refugees had settled sprawled over a hillside not far from where Ollie had set up his field kitchen. At first, the kitchen had been kept separate from the camp for logistical reasons. Within a few days, however, it had become necessary to station a few of Commander Bassinger’s soldiers near the kitchens to keep things orderly and prevent occasional attempts at theft.
"Sir Thane was right," Ollie said to Harrod as they entered the sprawling camp. "This can’t go on, and there are still people arriving every day. I never realized how many outlying villages there were."
Since arriving in the Vale of Mists, Ollie had become accustomed to the appearances of the Horned Clan and the Clan of the Great Claw. They no longer felt strange or threatening to him. Since contacting the outlying villages, however, he’d come face to face with even more Eldritch clans, some of whom had been the subject of his nightmares as a much younger boy.
’Spider demons’ and ’snatching demons’ who lurked so deep in the wilderness that most humans who dared to hunt them simply never returned. The legends claimed that a spider demon could envelop a grown man in a cocoon of spider silk and would slowly devour them alive, starting from the feet and using dark sorcery to keep their prey alive until they reached the heart.