Chương 76: Indy Way Pass

The workers loading cargo at the Indy Way Pass were working against the weather. For all their grumbling, they hauled extra fast this evening in the hope of getting back under cover before the rain began. Too bad the rain beat them handily, and they weren't even halfway done. They kept on working through the downpour. These supplies were critical for the defense of their home, and the job had to be done tonight. They were watched by the commander of the forward garrison, who stood in the wet with them.

The soldiers called him major, but those who'd grown up on the peninsula also knew him by the name of Miner. Troubled by something he'd noticed, Miner went over to speak with one of the knights assigned to the supply caravan.

"Is it just me, or does everyone look more worn down than usual?"

"Sir, it's been a lot of rough sleeping of late. Made it worse that the waystation bunkhouse burned down. The teamsters aren't used to sleeping outdoors like we are."

"The bunkhouse is gone?" That building had been there since before he was born. His old man had a hand in its construction, back when he wasn't so old. In fact it was one of the first jobs Dad had gotten after moving to the bay to start a new life. Miner was grateful for the move, as he couldn't imagine a life breaking rocks in the tunnels beneath Bronzo.

"I heard an adventurer was involved, sir." That would explain it. Adventurers were generally lacking in disipline and prone to showing off. They had to be, to an extent. Unlike his stable job in public service, they relied on their reputation to win them their next payday. Still, this sounded a little excessive.

"Did they have a good reason?" he asked.

"Apparently there were mucks inside, sir." So an overreaction, probably from an inexperienced bronze. The only adventurers who'd come through recently was that party of three with the cat, and the tall elf had been the only bronze among them. It was disappointing to hear because the man had such an air of competence about him. He supposed this was why you shouldn't judge people by first impressions.

"Was everyone okay?" he asked.

"No casualties is what I hear, sir." While his old man wouldn't be happy about it, Miner could already hear what he would say—buildings can be rebuilt but lives cannot.

"Well," he said to the guard, "we've got plenty of tents for everyone down in Merchant Town. Beats the outdoors, right?" With rain streaming down his helmet, the knight replied, "Right you are, sir." As the sky grew darker, the work slowed to a crawl. The torches wouldn't stay lit in the heavy rain, and they had to rely on the few knights who knew the [Light] spell. Miner was one of them, as for some reason he'd always had an aptitude for that spell—and only that spell.

It wasn't long before he was approached by one of the knights posted to the forward field office.

"Sir! You've got to come look at this! We may have a problem."

"Is it not something you can handle yourselves?" He didn't want to get pulled away when the workers were having enough trouble with the dark as it was. The knight glanced nervously around, clearly uncertain about how much to reveal in public presence. Miner caught onto this immediately and followed him without further delay. The knight led him down to Merchant Town and into the medical tent. Inside was a burly merchant's guard.

Judging by the blood on his clothes, he'd come in with injuries, but the healer had already worked her magic.

"He was up on the north beach," the knight said.

"In this weather?" Miner looked down at the man's boots for signs of decay.

"I was craving fish," the merchant's guard replied.

"The villages we passed along the way had no catch."

"You understand there's a prohibition against fishing in this area for a reason," Miner said.

"Well, no one told me I'd get smacked by a sea monster." It was only now that Miner noticed the man gripping something in his hand. Something that was still moving.

"Show the major the appendage you collected from the monster," the knight instructed. The guard opened his fist. Miner took a step back.

"No." The finger had come from a muck. It was squirming, trying to escape and return to its main body.

"What happened to the rest of it?" he demanded.

"I burned it up," the guard replied.

"Took a couple of [Firebolts], but got the job done." Miner felt himself relax. So long as it was gone. This was going to be a lot of extra paperwork, particularly with an eyewitness, but all he had to do was confiscate the sample, recite the standard cover story, and ply the man with some drink. By morning the muck would be nothing more than the invention of a drunken mind. A muck making it onto the mainland was a bit of a problem, but this wasn't the first time.

"I left my fishing rod behind," the guard said.

"Could I get some help retrieving it?" Feeling generous, Miner said, "Lieutenant, help this gentleman retrieve his rod."

"Sir?"

"We may need a few more people," the guard said.

"If the other ones wandering the beach are as tough as this one." Miner's head snapped back to the man.

"What did you just say?" Shouts rose up from outside. All four of them rushed out the flap. Several mucks had found their way into Merchant Town. A group of merchant guards had already engaged them in battle.

"Fire!" Miner roared.

"They're weak to fire!" None of the forces under his command were capable of combat magic, as all the ones who were had been called back to the bay, where they were in greater need. This hadn't been an issue as the mucks weren't supposed to get this far. And if one did happen to wash up, they'd been told to burn it with a torch. But whoever thought up that plan hadn't anticipated the heavy rain, or that there'd be a dozen of the cursed things, with more coming up from the shore.

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"To the pass!" he shouted.

"Everyone to the pass!" To his knight, he ordered, "Rally the others. We've got to protect the civilians!" Thankfully there were a couple of mages among the caravan guards, so they weren't completely helpless. Miner took up his sword and joined in the fighting. While he couldn't kill the mucks, cutting one down took the threat out of it for a few minutes. More combat-capable civilians joined the battle while the rest fled toward the Indy Way Pass.

The muck numbers began to dwindle, even with replenishments coming from the shore. But then another cry rang out.

"The south! There's more coming from the south!" Both shores? What was going on? His soldiers had arrived to reinforce. He sent them to check every tent for civilians. The muck numbers were growing fast, and he worried for the rate the mages were burning through their mana.

"All clear, sir!" his knights reported.

"We've checked every tent!"

"What about the animals?" he said.

"The civilians got them all!" At this, he ordered a full retreat. Once everyone was in the pass, the gates were closed and barred from the inside. Miner assigned soldiers to set up shelters and sent another team to check up on the civilians and perform a head count. He tasked a third team with tallying their supplies and a fourth with figuring out how to get everyone warm and dry. Then he arranged a rider to bring word back to the governor. Next he climbed atop the checkpoint wall and surveyed the situation below.

A knight who'd completed his task climbed up to join him. His [Light] couldn't shine through all the rain to Merchant Town, but he could see the mucks tearing through the field office. Watching this, the knight shook his head.

"I spent all day on that paperwork. I could have spent it fishing for the same outcome."

"You can't eat any fish you catch around here," Miner reminded him.

"I can't eat any fish I haven't caught either, sir," the knight replied. He climbed back down to see how the civilians were doing. Everyone had moved deeper into the pass, instinctively trying to put distance between themselves and the relentless pounding on the gates. Many of them were trying to soothe their animals. The civilians were looking at him expectantly, all with the same question on their minds, and it was one of the merchant guards who stepped forward.

"Commander, sir, what are those things?" None of the protocols had a cover story for this situation. He decided that after everything they'd just witnessed, these people deserved to know the truth.

"We call them mucks," he replied.

"They're the creatures that have been attacking the peninsula." This led to a round of chatter among the civilians. One of the merchants called out, "This is what the supplies are for? You've been fighting a secret war against abominable sea monsters?" Other questions came from the crowd.

"Does the crown know?"

"Why are they attacking the merchant town now?"

"Are we still getting paid?" Miner could only give vague, noncommittal answers because most were secrets above his pay grade. His job was simply to keep everyone safe and pay the vendors. A job that had suddenly become very difficult. He stopped fielding questions and began assigning more tasks. A lot of work remained to be done to get them through the night. The storm was only going to pick up, so the shelters needed to be firmly secured from the wind. This time he gave jobs to the merchants and their guards too.

Once everyone had something to do, Miner's thoughts turned toward the morning. Merchant Town was no longer viable if it was going to be attacked like this every night. But the supplies had to flow. The defense of the peninsula depended on it. The only solution he could think of was to set up a new town inside the pass itself. As for the bigger questions, he tried not to be distracted by those. Like what it meant now that the mucks had reached the mainland.

The forward garrison was only responsible for the Indy Way Pass, and that's what he was going to keep his focus on. He was approached by an elf wearing a bronze badge. He recalled him as one of the adventurers who had arrived here several days ago, the party with the tuxedo cat.

"Is there a chance I can get a look at the visitor list?" the elf asked.

"I'm afraid you're a bit late for that," he replied.

"Our field office got torn to bits. All the paperwork is gone." The elf sighed.

"It was a long shot anyway. The scholars have been giving me the run-around, so I was hoping to attack the problem from a different angle."

"That's a shame." A second later he added, "How are things holding up at the bay?"

"With my master there, I don't imagine there will be any problems." He didn't know about that. But with the company of battle mages that had recently arrived, things couldn't be going too badly. It would've been handy if they'd left some of those mages behind at Merchant Town. At that moment there was a shout from the outer checkpoint. He sprinted over and climbed the steps to the top of the gatehouse.

"Sir! There are lights approaching along the Lorelark route." He spotted the dots, hazy through the rain. There was only one reason there would be lights coming from that direction. Despite it being dark as night, it was still technically daytime. Merchant travelers were still on the road, and this one must have decided to push through the difficult weather so they could rest in Merchant Town rather than try to pitch tents on an unkept roadside.

If he remembered right, the delivery from Lorelark wasn't expected until tomorrow. But that didn't matter if they were here now. They were walking straight toward a field teeming with mucks.

"We've got to warn them," he said.

"How?" the guard asked. That was a good question. All he had at his disposal was a [Light] spell. If he could see their [Lights], they should be able to see his. If only he could use that to communicate somehow.

"Sir, why don't we use flashing [Lights] to send a message?" the guard suggested.

"We can do that?"

"My father taught me," the guard explained.

"He's a sailor, you see. I didn't want to follow in his footsteps, so I—""Just tell me how to flash, soldier."

"Right you are, sir." Together they sent a coded message with Miner's [Light] spell. Once they were done, they stood and watched anxiously to see how the travelers would respond.

"All we can do now is hope that one of them is a Saylor too," Miner said.

Wicked Ed always had the worst luck. The day he decided to rob the merchant town outside Ygg Latten Peninsula just had to be the day of a major storm. A sane man might have called it off. But a sane man wouldn't have spent ten years living in a cave, assembling the most terrible undead army the Star-Turq Kingdom would ever know. An army twenty skeletons strong, and another twenty in zombies. If you're keeping count, that's four minions a year.

If that doesn't sound like much, that's because you've never tried to dig up old bones, to polish them, to lay them out and match them up to poorly drawn anatomical diagrams. You've never known the struggle of having to determine if a fragment was a tarsal or metatarsal or white tarred soil. In other words, it only doesn't sound like much if you're sane. But for Wicked Ed it was all worth it. The undead were the ultimate minions. An army that never tired, never complained, never joined a union.

They just kept on going and going and going until they dropped deader. There was a blinking light up ahead. He could read it because his father had been a sailor and taught him the code of the seas. The light warned of an undying army. It was urging everyone in the vicinity to flee. He hurried his army forward, not wanting to allow his victims to escape. Two figures emerged from the rain. He grinned. The merchants had fled right into his forces. His zombies charged, and his skeletons followed.

There was a pitched melee that ended when his minions tore their victims apart. But he'd suffered unexpected casualties. Two of his skeletons had their arms snapped clean in half. One of his zombies lay motionless on the ground—completely unrecoverable. He worried what these casualties meant for his plan. If two knights could do this much, the merchant town might not fall as easily as he'd hoped. When he went to check on their remains, he saw that they weren't knights at all. For one, they had too many legs.

All legs, in fact. And those legs were inching their way back and reattaching to the headless torsos. The flesh was a slimy goop that should have been ill-suited to reanimation. The reformed creatures stood back up. Wicked Ed stepped away. Whatever abominable magic this was, he didn't want to be anywhere near it. He turned and ran for dear life. His minions tried to follow, but those cursed creatures were fast. As ten years of work was torn apart behind him, he considered a career change.

Maybe he should join the circus.

Seeing the lights retreated, Miner let out a sigh of relief. It looked like his message had gotten through. He went down into the pass to oversee the night's preparations, but it wasn't long before he was called back up again.

"More lights?" he asked the checkpoint guard.

"From the same direction, sir." That's odd. Was there a second merchant caravan coming tomorrow? Why didn't the first one pass on the warning to turn back? Once again they sent the light signals, and waited. This time the travelers showed no sign of stopping.

"What should we do now, sir?" What could they do? The mucks were pounding on the checkpoint gate. He couldn't send someone out. It would be suicidal. He caught a blur of motion as someone stepped past him and jumped into the horde below.

"What was that!" he cried. The guard looked at him in shock.

"I think it was an elf." The bronze-ranker? He peered down, expecting a scene of total carnage.