Chapter 733: Special Guests (Part One)
At the edge of the Vale of Mists, a strange caravan made its way along the ancient roadway that, if followed to its end, would lead all the way through the High Pass before ending in High Fen City. Before anyone could enter the Vale of Mists and continue on further, they would be confronted by the Vale’s first line of defense, one of the largest walls ever built in Eldritch lands.
The Vale of Mists lay nestled in a steep-sided valley along the River Luath and when Nyrielle had retaken the Vale from Lothian hands, she looked for the most defensible position to establish the new border separating the Vale from Lothian lands. In the end, she chose a point in the mouth of the valley between two steep cliffs more than ten leagues apart and built a series of towering walls between the cliffs on either side.
The outer wall was the tallest, from its base to the top of the wall it stood nearly forty feet high and at the top of the wall, it was more than a dozen feet thick. Moreover, every thousand paces along the wall, a small tower stood, providing rallying points that would prevent attackers from easily sweeping the wall if they could climb to the top of it.
Behind the first wall, a second, shorter wall lay just far enough uphill to place the first wall within range of a strong shot from a skilled bowman. The space between the two walls was normally used for the grazing of cattle and sheep, but in times of war, it could quickly become a killing field for anyone unfortunate enough to become trapped between the two walls.
Beyond that, the Vale’s final wall stood at the top of a steep rise. Anyone charging the third wall would need to struggle uphill while defenders were free to bombard them using the piles of heavy stones or stacks of logs that were kept atop the wall, should the Vale of Mists ever find itself pushed back to the final line of defense.
Now, Sir Hugo Hanrahan and Sir Rain Aleese stared at the towering walls of the Vale with an impending sense of dread.
When they woke in the strange camp where Lady Ashlynn had left them, the first thing that struck both knights was how quiet the camp was. There were faint sounds of a few servants moving about and the shifting of horses against their harnesses, but soldiers weren’t a quiet sort, especially after a night spent in a rough camp.
By the time the knights woke, there should have been at least a few men belly-aching, whether it was about the food, the camp, or just the eerie mist that enveloped them, but they didn’t hear a peep of complaint from any of their soldiers, and when they glanced at the place where the men had bedded down the night before, they didn’t see any sign of them either.
"Where are our men?" Sir Rain demanded, his hand snatching his sword from where it lay next to him on the cold, damp ground as he scanned the eerily quiet camp.