Chapter 513: Charred
*Warning: Intense graphic and emotional content begins in this Chapter*
The moment Christina’s voice rang out, the entire ship sprang to life.
The soldiers aboard the Raging River Legion warship may not have been in the most alert posture possible after 5 days of uneventful patrol duty, but when called up, their years of training immediately kicked in.
Within seconds, Captain Gage was on deck and shouting orders, "Full sail! Rowers, to your marks! Set course for the source of that smoke! Third Battalion, arm yourselves and prepare to land! Fire signal flares!"
220 soldiers of the Raging River Legion’s First Regiment sprang into action.
Members of the Fourth Battalion rushed to the hold, many of them still in their sleepwear, grabbed the oars, and began pulling hard to the beat of the ship’s drummers.
At the same time, the 20 regular crew of the ship hurriedly raised and adjusted the sails to steer closer to the shoreline.
The columns of smoke were still quite far away, and given that they were sailing against the current and with the wind blowing against them, Lana was tempted to land first and then proceed on foot, but after glancing at the shoreline and seeing the rough terrain, she determined it would still be faster for them to sail the rest of the way.
It would also be an advantage to actually have their ship nearby just in case they managed to catch the perpetrators of the attack, though given their luck so far, Captain Gage wasn’t holding out much hope of that.
1 red and 2 yellow flares were also shot up high to alert any nearby allies that there may be enemies nearby, though according to patrol plan, there wasn’t supposed to be any other Rockwell Kingdom ships in this vicinity.
As for the Third Battalion, which Christina had been assigned to, they did their best to stay out of the way while fastening their armour and equipping their weapons.
Since she was already fully armed and armoured, Christina moved to man the ship’s ballista. She wasn’t all too familiar with this type of siege weapon, but she at least knew how to load, aim, and fire it.
Opening a chest nearby, the princess pulled out a menacing looking iron-tipped spear and nocked it onto the string.
Before she could begin cranking it, however, someone reached over and stopped her, "Wait, there’s no enemies in sight, so there’s no need to draw it yet."
"Ah, right," realizing she had been a bit too hasty, Christina nodded and stepped back.
The princess blushed slightly but soon shook of her embarrassment. This wasn’t Christina’s first battle, but she certainly wasn’t a veteran of the battlefield either, so it was only natural that she would make a few misjudgements here and there.
A little less than 30 minutes later, the Raging River Legion ship arrived at a sandy cove where a small fishing villages was formerly situated.
’Formerly’ being the key word as most of the village was already a smouldering ruin, with only a few scattered buildings still on fire.
Even the dock and fishing boats out on the water were little more than sinking wreckage now.
Not seeing any signs of activity, civilian or otherwise, Captain Gage frowned deeply, confirming her earlier fears that it was already too late. Still, an investigation needed to be conducted, and if they were very, very lucky, they might just find some survivors or at least some clues as to who was responsible for this tragedy.
The cove was too shallow for the warship to actually dock, not that it would have been possible to do so with the small wooden pier already gone, so Lana ordered her landing troops to the rowboats.
Less than 5 minutes later, 6 smaller boats, each carrying 15 people, were in the water and the Third Battalion, under Captain Gage’s direct command, were crossing the remaining 100 or so metres gap to shore while archers covered their approach from the ship.
As soon as they hit sand, the members of the Third Battalion leapt out and assumed a defensive formation. They hadn’t spotted any enemies among the burning ruins, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any present.
Taking point, Lana and the rest of the Captains led their respective Squads into the village.
Christina was also at the head of a 10-man Squad, her eyes peeled and her hands tightly gripping her sword.
The others around her were clearly nervous as well, which was unusual for such an experienced group.
All of the soldiers of the Raging River Legion’s First Regiment’s Third Battalion were in the Seventh Step Vein Opening Realm or above and none had fewer than 5-years worth of experience. The only exception being Christina.
That said, all of them were familiar with the eerie and mysterious circumstances surrounding these village attacks that always left no survivors and no trace of the attackers, so none of these veterans was about to let their guard down.
Even the Captains in the Core Formation and Sea Establishment Realm were acting extremely cautiously, choosing to move the Battalion together as one unit rather than dispersing to cover more ground.
"Something’s off," Captain Gage muttered, her eyes sweeping her surroundings and soon realizing what was wrong, "There’s no bodies."
Frowning deeply, the rest of the Captains also scanned the area, and while they spotted traces of battle as well as what they suspected was drying blood, there really were no corpses.
Sweeping through the remains of the village, this pattern continued until they reached what everyone agreed was the central square... where they finally found the bodies of the villagers.
*hurp...*
No one knew who made that sound first, but all of them felt it in their guts, literally.
Corpses where piled up high into a mountain of scorched flesh and bone in an act that ’heinous’ didn’t even begin to described.
It would have been terrible enough if these people were simply ’cremated’ after being butchered, but it was obvious that wasn’t what happened here.
Most of the burnt corpses in this twisted pile still had charred ropes tied around their arms and legs. These ropes also seemed to have been used to tie all of them to several large stakes which had been driven into the ground at the centre of the mountain.
Even the ’smallest’ corpses, ones that could only have belonged to children and infants, were no exception, the solid ropes now loosely hanging from what was left of their blackened remains.
There was a simple truth to all of this, you don’t tie up corpses, you tie up prisoners, and that could only mean one thing, these people weren’t dead when the fire was started, they had been burned alive.
The sight.
The smell.
It was too much even for the hardened soldiers and no small number of them hurled in disgust, Christina included.
Even those who didn’t throw up had extremely ugly looks on their faces, like they were about to vomit.
That was how terrible the sight before them, and the smell which filled the air, was.
It took several minutes for the soldiers to recover, though many of them were still feeling quite queasy, but when they did, Captain Gage ordered in a solemn tone, "Split up into Squads and search the rest of the village. Turn everything upside down! Tear everything apart! Look for anything... anything that might lead us to the bastards who did this!"
Whether these people were citizens of an enemy kingdom or not didn’t matter, no one deserved to suffer such a horrific fate.