Chương 34: The Transfer

The eastern road did not look like a royal road. Not for long. The first miles beyond Aurelis were still clean, wide, watched over by low towers and regular patrols. Carved milestones marked the distances to relays, fortresses, military bridges. The fields were neatly aligned. The villages stood close enough to see one another. A road built to say: the kingdom still controls this. Then, little by little, the lie became less convincing. The farms grew farther apart. The trees bore old cut marks.

The ditches were deeper. The road markers became less decorative, more armored. And on the hills, some towers no longer looked as though they were there to guide travelers, but to watch the first ones die if they screamed loudly enough. Zayn watched through the narrow opening of the carriage. He had not slept much. No one had, probably. But the movement of the vehicle, the steady clatter of hooves, the dust rising behind them in ribbons, all of it gave him a strange sense of clarity. The sanctuary was behind them.

Aurelis too. Ahead, the world was gradually ceasing to need stained glass to hide its violence. The Crown representative sat across from him, upright despite the jolts. Mira kept her eyes half-closed, but Zayn knew she was not sleeping. Jonah had one hand on the hilt of his weapon and the look of a man who had already prepared six different insults for the first bandit, soldier, or noble who slowed their journey. Zayn, meanwhile, watched the numbers every time the convoy passed someone. A farmer at 11.

A milestone guard at 24. A mounted messenger at 19. A veteran driving a grain cart at 32. The entire road was alive. And every presence was now a possible piece of information. A value. A threat. A resource. He would have preferred to lie to himself more elegantly. But the more miles passed, the more he understood one simple thing: the city had restrained him mostly because it had been full of witnesses. The road, on the other hand, opened intervals. Dead zones.

Moments when a body could fall into a ditch and become a delay, not a scandal. Morality was decidedly very lucky to be supported by infrastructure. Jonah tugged the canvas curtain slightly.

"I hate carriages." The Crown representative did not move.

"You hate many things."

"Yes, but carriages have the merit of shaking me while I hate them. It's interactive." Mira finally opened her eyes.

"Would you rather walk?" Jonah looked at the road, the dust, the armed riders, the empty fields.

"No. I'd rather complain. It's more economical." The Crown woman almost smiled. Zayn looked at Jonah for a second. Survival humor. A useful reflex. Not brilliant, but useful. In another situation, he might have found it irritating. Here, it was almost restful. A world in which someone still grumbles about the quality of a carriage is a world that has not yet fully understood how badly it is going. The convoy left the main road after an hour. Voss gave the order without a long explanation.

The two vehicles took a narrower secondary route bordered by dry-stone walls and fallow fields. The ground there was less even, but the trees offered partial cover from distant eyes. A bad choice for speed. A good choice against visible scouts. A very bad choice against an ambush. Zayn did not need to be a soldier to understand that. The Crown representative understood it too.

"Captain Voss is taking a risk." Mira looked at the path.

"He thinks the main road is already being watched."

"It almost certainly is." Jonah exhaled.

"Fantastic. So we avoid the place where we know they're waiting for us in order to take the one where we hope they're waiting less. Human strategy makes me want to go back to my world." Zayn had, this time, an absurdly practical thought: If he ever became Demon King, he would have straight, well-maintained roads built, with clean ditches and ambushes regulated by prior declaration. Terror through efficiency. Maybe even tolls. No. Especially tolls. The thought was so idiotic it almost steadied him.

Then the numbers appeared in the trees. First three. 18 21 25 Then more. 14 29 17 31 Zayn straightened almost imperceptibly. Mira saw it. Of course she did. But this time, he did not wait for her to use it against him.

"Left." The word came out sharp. Jonah turned immediately.

"What?"

"In the trees." Outside, Voss shouted almost at the same moment:"Cover!" The first arrow cut through the air and drove into the flank of the lead horse. The animal collapsed with a horrible scream. The convoy broke. Not completely. Enough. The first carriage skidded. Zayn's struck the back of it while trying to veer aside. The riders of the escort scattered to break the line of fire. The College mages raised their barriers too late to stop the second volley. This story is posted elsewhere by the author.

Help them out by reading the authentic version. One guard fell from his saddle. 27. Then nothing. The value went out before his body had even fully hit the dust. Zayn saw it. And his first thought was: Wasted. His second was: It wasn't me. Only the third was: We're under attack. He did not have time to hate himself in the proper order. Jonah ripped the carriage door open and leapt out, blade already raised.

"Finally! Air and bad decisions!" Mira went out the other side. The Crown representative did not scream. She threw herself to the ground with a speed entirely unworthy of her rank and perfectly worthy of her soul strength. Zayn noted, despite himself, that this woman was probably much harder to kill than she looked. Very irritating. He climbed out behind Jonah. The road had become chaos. Arrows from the trees. Panicked horses. Mages crouched behind an incomplete barrier.

Voss barking orders while already placing his men. The first carriage tilted, Elias outside it, Lena half-pulled to safety behind him. A masked figure burst from the ditch on the right. 31. A human attacker armed with a short axe. He charged toward one of the College mages, not the heroes. Good. They knew their priorities. Elias moved to intercept. Too far. Zayn, though, was closer. He could act. Easily. One step, one angle, a dagger in the trajectory. Not necessarily kill. Just disrupt. Save the mage.

He did not move right away. Because at that same moment, a second attacker came out of the brush behind the first. 34. Denser. More dangerous. More interesting. If Zayn revealed himself too early on the first, he would lose the angle on the second. The mage raised his hands. Too slow. The 31's short axe came down on him. The mage fell, his chest split open. His value— 46 —went out. No gain. Wasted again. And while the first attacker was completing the motion, the second exposed a perfect opening. Zayn went in.

Not a grand movement. Just a dagger in the back of the knee, then the second knife under the ribs as the man buckled. The attacker tried to turn, too late. Zayn pulled him against himself to shield from a fresh arrow, felt the impact as the projectile lodged in the human body instead of his own, then slit his throat under the cover of the confusion. The system blinked. [Soul strength absorbed: +2] The heat entered him. Stronger than with the messenger. Not enough to be spectacular.

Current soul strength: 25 Twenty-five. The level of an ordinary knight. Not the skill. Not the experience. Not the honor. Just the raw density. And he had reached it by letting a mage die in order to take a better target. The calculation was exact. The result too. The remorse, meanwhile, did not come quickly enough to be convincing. An arrow struck the corpse he was still holding. Zayn let it drop. The first attacker, the one at 31, finally turned toward him. He still had the mage's blood on his axe.

Zayn saw his expression. Not fear. Confusion. He had probably thought he saw a weak, wounded boy hanging back. Not someone capable of using a living body as a shield and choosing the filthiest angle while an ally died beside him. He attacked. Zayn stepped back just enough not to take the axe full on. The blow grazed his shoulder, tore his sleeve, woke the entire wound from the day before. The pain was sharp. Good. It almost kept him from smiling. Jonah came in from the side and slammed into the attacker's shoulder.

"I'll take the guy with the ridiculous weapon!" The axe answered with a blow that forced him half a step back.

"All right, not that ridiculous. I take it back." His line settled immediately. The attacker tried to break through it and slowed just enough for Voss to drive a blade into his thigh. Elias, farther away, was already shielding Lena and the Crown representative under an improvised barrier. Arrows were ricocheting around them. Lena threw a thread toward a wounded rider. She dragged him out of the path of another volley. Elias blocked an attack that would have reached Jonah's back. 107.

Zayn saw it, even through the dust. Again. Even here. Even in an ambush. Even when Zayn had finally gained a useful threshold through something vile, Elias was still rising by saving people cleanly. The hatred that rose in him was not loud. It was almost calm. That was worse. The fight shifted toward the roadside. Mira was moving through the trees, chasing two archers. Her blades barely flashed. She was not trying to kill quickly. She was trying to cut off retreats, capture structures. Always her.

Voss dropped an attacker with a short strike. No system for Zayn. No gain. Naturally. Not his kill. The thought displeased him. The 31 facing Jonah tried to break contact and run for the trees. Zayn saw the opening. He could bury a dagger in the man's side. Maybe gain again. Maybe +2. Maybe +1. But Jonah was too close. Voss too. Too many eyes. Too many readable gestures. Not profitable. So he did something else. He threw the knife not at the heart, but at the weapon hand. The blade lodged between two fingers.

The attacker dropped the axe. Jonah struck him in the chin with his sword hilt, throwing him to the ground alive.

"This one's still breathing!" he shouted. Voss barely turned his head.

"Tie him!" Zayn watched the man on the ground. 31. Still alive. Still inaccessible. Still a value protected by the usefulness of interrogation. Very irritating. The last volley of arrows came from the top of the embankment. This time, it was aimed at the first carriage. Not at Elias. At Lena. Zayn saw three trajectories. Elias saw two.

He blocked one with his lance, took the second on a shoulder plate stripped from a dead guard, but the third was coming lower, between the wheels, toward Lena, who was still holding her thread on the wounded rider. Zayn could warn her. Too late, maybe. Could he act? No. Too far. Jonah was out of angle too. Mira was in the trees. Voss was occupied. The third arrow was going to hit. Then Lena moved. Not because of Zayn. Because of herself.

She violently broke the thread on the wounded rider, nearly dropping to her knees from the backlash, and the arrow shaved past her hair instead of her throat. The rider, meanwhile, took another arrow straight through the neck a second later. His value went out. Lena saw it. Her face emptied. Zayn saw it too. And what crossed his mind was so cold he almost wished he did not recognize it: She's learning. Not compassion. Not pain for her. An evaluation. Lena had just chosen to save herself by breaking a bond.

Maybe too late, maybe with no alternative, but she had just discovered that she could stop holding someone. Interesting. Terrible. Useful to know. Then Lena's anger rose. Not huge. Not spectacular. But real. She raised her staff, threw one thread toward Elias and another toward Jonah, then shouted,"Up there!" Her voice did not tremble. Jonah turned immediately. Elias too. Voss gave the order.

The last two archers were trapped between Mira coming back through the trees and Jonah locking down the top of the embankment. One died under Voss's blade. The other was captured. The ambush ended without truly ending. Because after violence always comes the inventory. Two guards dead. One College mage dead. One horse lost. One damaged carriage. Three attackers dead. Two captured. One route revealed, as expected. And Zayn at 25. He stood for a moment near the body of the second attacker, the one he had killed.

The corpse still had its throat open, the arrow in its back. A good improvised shield. A good gain. A good decision. A dead man. The part of him that could still name that as a horror was there, somewhere. Weak. Very weak. It spoke less loudly than the calculation. Mira came out of the trees covered in dust, a thin line of blood above one eye. Her eyes went to the dead mage, then to Zayn, then to the attacker he had killed. She reconstructed it quickly. Too quickly. Not everything, perhaps.

But enough to see that Zayn had been closer to the mage than anyone else. Lena was still kneeling beside the rider she had not been able to save. Elias placed a hand on her shoulder, without words. She was not crying. Not yet. The shock was too fresh. Jonah was binding the prisoner while muttering that ambushes ought to at least provide comfortable seating afterward. Voss came over to Zayn. His gaze dropped to the corpse. Then to him.

"You took that one?"

"Yes."

"Why him and not the first?" A simple question. A very bad one. Zayn slowly wiped his blade.

"The second was more dangerous." Voss looked at him a little longer. The man knew. Not the mechanism. But he knew how to recognize a tactically correct answer hiding a dirtier moral hierarchy.

"Maybe," he said. Then he turned away. No time. Not yet. The convoy was reorganized in less than ten minutes. The first carriage was too damaged to carry everyone. They redistributed the weight. The dead were strapped down to be brought back or buried later, depending on the decision. The prisoners were gagged, their hands sealed. The Crown representative wrote three messages in less than two minutes and handed them to a rider who immediately headed back toward Aurelis. Lena got in without speaking. Elias too.

Jonah looked at the damaged carriage, then at Voss.

"You know, in my world public transportation was less armed, but more punctual." Voss answered,"In mine, the passengers talked less."

"Superior society. I bow to it." Even Lena almost let out a breath. Almost. Then they set off again. More slowly. More tense. Closer to the truth. The road to Halbreach continued between lower hills and abandoned fields. The sun was already sinking, turning the dust a dirty orange. To the east, very far away, a dark line was beginning to cut the horizon. Walls. Not the walls of a court city. War walls. Halbreach appeared before nightfall.

A transition fortress built on a broad ridge, straddling the royal road and the military routes of the Marches. Stout towers. Dark stone. Reinforced bastions. No stained glass. No useless beauty. Portcullises, arrow slits, controlled flames on the ramparts, and above the gates an emblem of ash and steel that even Zayn recognized. Not the Circle of Ashes alone. But its presence everywhere. The moral frontier of the story had just shifted. The carriage slowed before the first barricades.

Soldiers watched them from the walls. Denser than those in Aurelis. More worn. More interested too. Zayn felt several values above 40. One at 61 near the main gate. Another at 73 in the shadow of a command balcony. The kind of people who did not look at heroes as miracles. But as weapons whose edge had to be tested. Zayn stepped down from the carriage with dried blood on his sleeve and 25 in his soul. Not strong. Not yet. But more ordinarily human than he had been that morning.

And as the gates of Halbreach opened before them, he understood one simple thing: here, no one would pretend for long. The Marches did not look like a place that asked whether someone was good. They only asked how long he remained useful before becoming dangerous.