Chapter 85: After the Night’s Work
The status screen appeared while he was still standing on the road.
[STATUS]
Name: Darion
Title: Baron of Percvale
Class: Necromancer
Rank: Acolyte
Territory: Percvale (Border Domain)
Territorial Resonance: Low (Starving-aligned — Improving)
[ATTRIBUTES]
Strength: 52 [+3]
Agility: 39 [+4]
Endurance: 45 [+3]
Vitality: 37 [+4]
Perception: 39 [+3]
Intelligence: 57 [+5]
Willpower: 44 [+2]
[Knight Undead Inventory: 30/35] — [Capacity Expanded!]
[Animal Undead Inventory: 15/15]
[Skills:
Death Perception
Distant Command]
He read through it standing in the empty road in the dark.
The knight inventory had expanded again, thirty-five slots now, five more than before, the system apparently deciding that what he had done tonight warranted the increase.
He mounted the horse and rode.
The road back was quieter than the road out had been.
Whether that was because the things that moved in these borderlands at night had were resting or whether he was simply too tired to actually notice what was around him, he couldn’t say.
He rode at speed and the dark passed on either side and the horse covered ground without complaint.
To not fall asleep, he kept his mind alive by thinking.
He thought about the bearded knight in the treeline, the spear and his wolf.
He had been a fraction of a second from dying. And this wasn’t almost dying in the abstract way that danger created the sense of near-miss in retrospect, it was actually: a spear thrown properly at fifteen feet by a trained soldier aimed at his chest.
The wolf had materialized at the exact margin. Any slower and the summoning thought would have completed after the spear had already done what spears did at fifteen feet.
He was alive because he had started summoning before the man threw it. Because he had read the intention in the man’s face before the body acted on it.
He noted that he was not invulnerable. His undead were powerful and his abilities were unusual and his planning had been good so far, but good planning and unusual abilities didn’t make you unkillable. The bearded knight had nearly proven that in under three seconds.
He rode faster.
Percvale’s walls appeared on the horizon as the sky was going from black to the deep grey that came before actual dawn.
He had been riding for hours and the horse was ready to stop, which it communicated through its gait.
Darion rode through.
The streets of Percvale at this hour were mostly empty, the way it usually was before the day had committed to starting. There were a few early risers moving, a woman carrying something from one building to another, a man crouching beside something at the edge of the road doing maintenance work that he apparently couldn’t leave until later.
In the barracks area, visible through the gap between two buildings, a small group of knights were already up and moving, the earliest risers of the morning shift starting whatever routine came first.
At the castle gate, Wulfric was doing something with a bucket near the stable entrance, the morning duties already underway before the sun had fully decided to cooperate. He greeted him.
"Morning m’lord."
"Morning Wulfric," Darion said, stopping the horse and swinging down.
Wulfric took the reins and led the horse toward the stable. Darion watched him go, then turned and went inside.
The castle was in its morning state, quiet but not fully still, the sounds of early activity coming from the kitchen, Maret and Aldra doing whatever the first hour of the day required from them. Both of them looked up when he came through.
"M’lord," Maret said.
"Morning," Darion said, already moving toward the stairs. He stopped at the bottom and looked at Aldra. "Anyone who asks, I’m back and I’m not to be disturbed."
Aldra nodded.
He went up.
He didn’t bathe. Didn’t eat too. He even barely registered the state of the room beyond the presence of the bed, which was what mattered. He pulled off the riding clothes down to the light underlayer, dropped everything else in a pile he would deal with later, locked the door, and lay down.
He was asleep before he had decided to be.
He woke up to light coming through the window at an angle that said late morning. Not the grey of early dawn but actual light, the kind that came from a sun that had been up for several hours and was getting on with things.
He lay still for a moment, ceiling above him, letting his brain settle.
Then he got up.
Downstairs, he found Aldra in the corridor and asked for a hot bath. She went to arrange it without fuss. He sat in the great hall and waited, and Maret appeared from the kitchen with a plate without being asked. It was bread, some of the preserved meat from Gonnb’s stores and a small dish of good looking soup.
He ate slowly, drank the water that came with it, and letthe hotness soothe him.
The bath was ready by the time he finished. He washed, changed, came back downstairs feeling fresh again.
He called for Aldra.
"Tell Garren I want to see him."
Garren arrived within a few minutes, bowed at the door, and came in.
"I would have knocked earlier," he said, "But I was told you weren’t to be disturbed."
"I wasn’t," Darion confirmed. "Sit down. How did yesterday go? And this morning."
Garren sat. "As normal. Seren worked another section of the farmland, we’re approaching half of the total area covered now. The knights trained through the morning. The animals are well, the females among the goats are showing early signs of pregnancy, which is ahead of the expected timeline." A brief pause. "Gregor has completed fourteen of the twenty-six worst armor sets. The others are in progress."
"Good." Darion leaned back, then told Garren about the mission.
He told Garren the relevant parts: the bats working through the barracks for an hour, the four guards bitten on their way out, the bearded knight in the treeline, the wolf, the disposal of the problem, the five pack wolves and what had come of that.
He kept it factual and relatively brief. Garren listened the same way he always listened, without interrupting.
When Darion finished, Garren was quiet for a moment.
"The knight in the treeline is a complication," he said.
"Handled," Darion said. "The body is gone. He was a known night hunter, if anyone who knew that survives the barracks, the most likely conclusion is that he met something in the woods. Which he did."
Garren accepted that. "And tomorrow?"
"Same operation and same tree. Fifteen nights total, I can’t use all as that would just be suffering myself but I go as many as I can manage." He looked at the table. "The bats make it cleaner each time. The more nights I run it, the less anyone inside that barracks is going to be thinking about a land transfer deadline. Hopefully I don’t get caught."
Garren nodded.
"Where’s Seren?" Darion asked.
"Her room, last I—"
There was footsteps on the stairs. Both of them looked up.
Seren came down, crossed the great hall and sat in one of the chairs at the table. She looked at Darion, then at Garren, then back at Darion.
"If I’m permitted," she said.
They looked at her.
"Sure," Darion said.
"I’m bored," she said. "Sitting in that room all day is becoming its own kind of imprisonment." She said it plainly, without complaint in her voice, just information being delivered. "I need something to do when I’m not at the farmland."
Darion opened his mouth, then closed it, then said: "What did you have in mind?"
She looked at him steadily.
"Do you have a bow, arrows, and a target board?"