16：Target: Reed Bay
That day, in the clearing of Graywater Village, Soren ran a whetstone along the edge of his blade.
Before him, thirty-seven men stood in four neat ranks, drilling forward thrusts over and over again.
Suddenly, the reed beds east of the village entrance shook violently, accompanied by the loud splashing of water. Ein parted the withered yellow stalks and scrambled ashore on his hands and knees. Algae clung to his hair, and his coarse linen clothes were soaked through, plastered flat against his skin. Three leeches clung to his calf, gorged with blood and swollen to the thickness of a man's thumb.
Ignoring the bloodsuckers on his leg, Ein sprinted over to Soren and took a massive gulp of cold water from a canteen.
"My Lord, just as you ordered, I've scouted out the intel. Twenty-five miles east-northeast of here. Reed Bay." Ein extended a finger, tracing a crooked line in the mud at Soren's feet.
"I swam over underwater, breathing through a hollow reed. The place is completely overrun by the orcs of the Blackstone Clan."
"There are about fifty regular guards, plus a dozen or so logistics goblins carrying fire oil."
Ein gritted his teeth, his voice filled with fury."The orcs sort their human captives. Anyone over fifty is eaten on the spot. Women and children under ten have their hair tied together and are locked in the bottom hold of their meat-smoking salt sheds—kept as emergency rations!"
"The remaining thirty or so able-bodied men had their left ring fingers smashed off as a mark. With rawhide ropes tied around their necks, they've been organized into a squad of slave auxiliaries."
Soren stopped scraping his whetstone against the blade, his eyes fixed on the line traced in the mud.
Ein continued his report, detailing what he had seen while lying prone in the muddy water for half the night."Those men are all veteran shallow-water fishermen. Tough bastards, strong to the bone."
"The orcs gave them wide-bladed brush-clearing machetes and force them to walk the outermost perimeter. They use their lives to clear out the poisonous Snake-snare Vines, and they're also forced to haul heavy logs on their backs to fortify the camp gates."
"When I slipped away, I heard their leader cursing up a storm behind a woodpile. Sooner or later, they'll either be worked to death or poisoned."
Soren drew his dagger and plunged it hard into the mud at the end of Ein’s drawn line, gouging out a hole.
Ein, familiar with the local terrain, had truly delivered vital intelligence. The cornerstone for expanding his territory had just been laid at his feet.
Soren pulled the dagger free and tapped the flat of the blade against his palm.
"Thirty able-bodied men raised in the swamp, plus the weapons, armor, and rations brought by fifty regular orcs." Soren turned his head, his gaze shifting toward the sulfurous geothermal spring.
The villagers had set up a makeshift blacksmith forge there. But molten iron was too scarce. They couldn't forge nearly enough arrowheads.
But if he wiped out Reed Bay, all these problems would be solved.
Throwing fifty sets of orcish black-iron chainmail into the furnace would yield enough metal for a full thousand armor-piercing arrowheads. Furthermore, while orc chainmail was too large for a human to wear, their weapons could be used by his soldiers directly.
Those thirty slave auxiliaries, men tough enough to survive the jaws of demonic crocodiles, would save him the trouble of physical screening. Hand them weapons, and they would instantly form a ready-made combat platoon.
Capturing the stationed commander would allow him to extract the Blackstone Warband’s troop distribution map for the Misty Swamp.
Eradicate the stronghold, smelt the enemy's blades, and conscript the broken captives.
With the swamp as cover, the snowball of war could finally start rolling through this dead land. Give it a year, and it would become a heavy-armored legion capable of swallowing everything in its path.
Night fell, and then retreated.
The next day, heavy morning mist pressed down on the mixed woods of Graywater Village. Soren pushed open the wooden door of his attic room.
Thirteen men were already standing outside the wooden barricade in an inverted triangle formation, exactly as dictated by the drill manual.
The twenty-five recruits from the Crimson Moon Knights tried to fall in, but Soren raised his left hand, stopping them.
"You lot stay behind. Guard the village."
Soren swept his gaze over the thirteen Graywater militia at the front, including Ein.
"You thirteen know exactly how deep the mud is in these lands. You know exactly where the magic beasts in the water are waiting to snap their jaws."
"But you still don't know what it feels like for a blade to slice open a windpipe. That's why I'm taking you to see blood today. We are going to chop through the living bones of orcs."
Soren turned, grabbed the reins of the Alpha Wolf, and vaulted onto its back.
"Grab your gear. Keep up."
The twelve militiamen remained silent. They wrapped strips of ragged cloth around their spear shafts for better grip. Ein, carrying his longbow, took the point position at the very front of the formation as the vanguard.
One by one, their silhouettes vanished into the knee-deep black swamp water.
Meanwhile, twenty-five miles away at Reed Bay.
A large, circular mud-brick silo, once used to store grain, now had half its windows sealed shut with cast iron. Outside the heavy door, the scraping sound of two crossed battleaxes dragging across the ground could be heard, along with the coughing and spitting of orcs changing shifts.
Inside the silo.
The stench alone was enough to knock a normal man unconscious. The smell of stale urine, dried blood, and festering wounds mixed into a vile cocktail.
Thirty men wearing animal-hide collars were crammed together. Their bare feet soaked in the seeping sludge. Some leaned against the walls, heads tilted back in exhaustion, while others lay flat across the rotting, foul-smelling hay.
In the corner of the silo, a fingernail-sized sliver of light leaked through the roof.
The slave captain, Kael, sat leaning against a broken wooden pillar, pressing his palm down hard.
Smack.
He crushed a hard-shelled water leech that was trying to burrow into his pant leg. He picked up the insect corpse, oozing with green fluid, and without a shred of hesitation, tossed it into his mouth. He chewed it up and swallowed.
If he didn't replenish his energy, his body wouldn't last. The orcs only gave them a single bowl of sour, rancid rice gruel a day.
Just as Kael swallowed, a lean, wiry man shuffled over next to him. This was his vice-captain, Torn.
Torn was missing his left ring finger, and on his arm was a fresh, hand-span-long gash—a laceration earned from failing to dodge a thorny poison vine.
"Kael." Torn lowered his head, his lips nearly brushing Kael’s ear."Today, Group Two went to the east mud pits to dig rocks. Three men were worked to death."
"Tomorrow, the orcs are sending our group. We can't survive this work much longer."
As Torn finished speaking, his teeth chattered faintly. He was trembling—not out of fear, but from the venom stimulating his nervous system from the gash on his arm.
Kael’s hands rested on his knees. Without looking at Torn, he kept his eyes locked on the thick, iron-plated prison door.
He fumbled in the rotten rags tied around his waist and touched something—a sharp, triangular piece of stone he’d found in the river pond and spent half the night grinding down.
Kael’s voice was barely a whisper."The greenskin at our door. I can use this to pierce the main artery in his neck."
"That's useless!" Torn suddenly raised his voice, only to shrink his neck back down in terror at the sound of heavy orc footsteps outside.
He gripped Kael’s forearm tightly."You kill one, but there are still fifty orcs out there! Their giant wolves will hunt us down in half a turn of an hourglass."
Torn stared intensely at the captain."Besides, what happens after you butcher the guard? Where are you going to lead everyone? Back north to the Silvermoon Kingdom?"
"The border watchtowers have absolute orders to bar entry to any refugees carrying the risk of plague."
"The moment we step into catapult range, those noble lords won't even bother asking questions. They’ll just bathe us in a volley of fire arrows."
"Even if we're lucky enough to survive and meet the nobles of the Council, they'd just tie us up and hand us back to the orcs as peace offerings."
"As for the Holy Halycon Empire, they're separated from us by three canyons. We could never make it on foot."
Torn bit his scabbed lip until it bled.
This was their godforsaken world. Rebel and die. Do hard labor and die. All paths to survival were completely sealed off.
If Kael hadn't been trying to protect his men, with his sheer ruthlessness—a man who dared to solo a demonic crocodile in the water with nothing but an iron pitchfork—he never would have been captured alive by a bunch of orcs who couldn't even swim.
The atmosphere dropped to the freezing point.
Torn suddenly leaned closer and spoke up again."But last night, when I was moving fodder for those greenskins, I heard the old orc leader holding a tankard of booze and complaining. I picked up a few phrases of the Orcish tongue back in the day, so I barely made out what they were saying."
Kael turned to look at him, remaining silent.
"The old orc said they lost contact with a twenty-eight-man raiding party that was supposed to deliver rations from the southwest."
Torn swallowed hard."He said that over towards Graywater Village, a human commander suddenly appeared, riding one of their Wargs, with a crimson moon insignia on his shoulder. This commander slaughtered all twenty-eight orcs and their goblin servants. Wiped them out completely."
"The old orc said that because the Blackstone Clan is currently busy with something massive, they can't spare the forces for Graywater Village right now. But in a few days, they're going to send sixty Wolf Riders over there to skin everyone in the village and hang them at the entrance."
As Kael listened, a burning, intense desire swelled in his chest.
A twenty-eight-man, fully-armed greenskin hunting party.
That was a force capable of running rampant through the Northern Reaches, strong enough to slaughter a fully manned light infantry company of the Silvermoon Kingdom.
And now, every single one of them had been wiped out.
A human. A commander. Leading an army.
If there was someone in this man-eating swamp capable of raising a banner and slaughtering those greenskin bastards, then he and his thirty men would bet their very skin and bones on him.
Kael gripped the sharpened stone tight. He squeezed so hard that the freshly honed edge sliced open his palm. But he didn't even blink.
It was a profound sense of powerlessness.
He stared at the rotting hay stacks around the silo, looking at his twenty-odd emaciated neighbors and brothers who were still groaning softly through the pain of their wounds and sickness.
There was no way out.
No horses.
Slave collars choked their necks.
How were they supposed to find a legendary man while locked inside an iron-clad prison entirely surrounded by enemies?
High above, a slight rift tore through the thick cloud cover, casting a pale, suffocating ray of light into the gloom of the mud-brick silo.