Chapter 80: Second Infiltration [1]
The barracks was visible to his left as he turned onto the road, some of the knights were already up, moving around in the early light, the sounds of morning routine carrying across the courtyard.
Someone was at the water trough. Someone else was sharpening something, the sound of it carrying a rhythm. Darion kept his eyes on the road ahead and let them get on with it.
He wasn’t sure they noticed him because if they did they would have shouted their greetings. He was moving like a assassin by the way, silent and mostly unheard.
The journey settled into itself the way long solo rides did, like when he had rode out to Valdenmoor for the first infiltration: the horse finding its pace, the road unreeling ahead, the sky lightening gradually from dark to the flat grey of early morning.
He ate on the horseback when the sun was properly up, one hand on the reins, the food from Maret’s pack better than road food had any right to be.
Past the border of Percvale’s territory the road improved, same as always. He had ridden this route twice before and the contrast was becoming a familiar irritant rather than a fresh observation.
Percvale was ’meh’ and this sights he was taking in were ’stunning’
Somewhere past the midpoint, in a stretch where the road ran close to a dense treeline on the eastern side, the horse’s ears went forward and its pace changed.
Darion had the wolf out before the first shape emerged from the treeline, something low and fast, the kind of creature that had decided the horse was a reasonable target.
He couldn’t identify what it was in the time available. He had already summoned his undead wild wolf. The act very quick like he was breathing.
The wolf came immediately and hit the creature sideways at full speed.
A second one came out and the wolf turned from the first to the second with casual efficiency. An Undead wild wolf that had no sense of proportion about the gap between threat and response.
Thirty seconds. Both down.
Darion unsummoned the wolf, checked the horse, which was unhappy but unharmed, and continued.
Two travelers in a covered cart passed him going the other direction around midday. They were a man and a woman, merchant type, the kind of people who had sort of spent their lives on roads between territories.
They looked at him with the mild curiosity that a hooded rider traveling alone attracted, the kind of look that tried to read threat level and, finding none, returned to the road ahead. He nodded. They nodded back.
They probably assumed the hood was to protect his face from the sun or something like that.
He rested twice, briefly, once to water the horse at a stream, once at the roadside to stretch legs that had been in the saddle for hours and were starting to ache him slightly.
He ate the remainder of Maret’s food at the second stop, sitting on a fallen log off the road, and watched the light go amber and then gold and then start to flatten toward evening.
He was back on the horse before dark properly settled.
The treeline outside Valdenmoor’s territory arrived in the dark, recognizable by shape rather than detail: the same density and the same gap where the road ran close to the boundary.
He left the road and moved through the trees at a walk until he found the spot he had used before: the broad trunk, the low first branch, the sightline over the open ground toward the barracks.
He tied the horse well back.
Before he climbed he ran his hands over the bark methodically, checked the underside of the first branch, worked his way up checking each branch before putting weight on it.
He had done this on the first infiltration here, even at Gonnb too. The snake memory from the forest didn’t go away. He doubted it would.
He found nothing, no snakes. So he climbed.
From fifteen feet up the perspective glass showed him the barracks clearly. Most of the lights were low, late enough that the majority of the camp was down for the night.
He saw four guards at watch.
That was kind of surprising...
The first infiltration had two visible and one absent. Tonight there were four, all of them posted around the exterior. An increase. Whether that was standard rotation or a response to something: illness in the ranks making officers nervous, a general tightening of security?, he couldn’t tell from a tree.
Two of the four were asleep on their feet. Not dramatically, just like their bodies had made the unilateral decision for them.
The other two were standing together at the far corner, talking quietly, keeping each other awake in the way night guards did when they had learned that isolation made sleeping inevitable.
None of them were near the main door.
He lowered the glass and looked at the barracks entrance. It was clear. Open ground between the treeline and the door, the torchlight at the entrance throwing a pool of orange light that the darkness beyond it made look smaller than it was.
He reached into inventory.
The nine bats appeared on the branches around him, green eyes briefly visible in the dark before they oriented. He felt the bindings, loyalty in the high sixties across all nine, the Distant Command connection clean and present.
He gave the instruction through the binding rather than voice.
Fast. Enter without being seen. Bite. Move.
They went.
Nine shapes dropping from the branches and opening wings, spreading outward across the open ground in the dark, moving fast and low. The guards at the far corner heard the sound of wings, a brief flapping, nothing dramatic, and turned. One of them raised his head and looked at the air above the entrance.
He saw Saw nothing, then said something to the other. The other looked, shrugged, turned back.
The bats were already inside.
Darion raised the perspective glass and watched the entrance while he tracked the nine connections through the binding, all of them moving, spreading through the interior of the barracks, the Distant Command registering each one as a point of awareness moving through a space he couldn’t see directly.
They had already started biting.