Chương 44: Chapter 37 — Nutter Estate

— earlier that morning, before they rose, and in a different location — The village had been quiet for an hour before the first of them came out of the trees. They moved in organized lines — not the shambling of animals, not the scatter of a raid. Deliberate. Measured. Cknolls on the left flank, goblins on the right, something larger moving between the rows that was neither. The village had no wall. It had never needed one. The forest had always been the border, and the forest had always been enough.

The forest was not enough tonight. At the edge of the treeline, where the old oaks met the first field, a figure floated in the dark. The shadows drew toward it, pooling at its edges, thickening where it rested. A barn owl called once from the upper branches. The figure's gaze turned toward the sound. A crunch and feathers wafted to the ground. The owl did not call again. It watched the lines form. The conscription had taken three days.

Not all of the cknolls had come willingly — none of them had, technically, but some had taken longer to stop resisting. The goblins had been faster. They were practical creatures, goblins, and the blood drop was a practical solution. One undead to hold the jaw. One drop. The thing behind the eyes went quiet, and what remained listened and followed and did not ask questions that the blood had answered for it. The figure gestured once. The lines moved.

Behind it, in the clearing that had been prepared over the past week, the creatures waited. Dragonflies, three dozen of them, each one carrying a disc of dried flesh pressed behind the head, the symbol drawn in blood that had been given freely — or close enough to freely that the distinction had not mattered. Giant frogs crouched in the low ground, patient as stones. Lizards, long-bodied, fast, built for the running that covered distance before anyone had time to think about what was coming.

Each one carried a disc. Each disc carried a symbol. Each symbol said the same thing, in a language that predated the kingdom by eight hundred years: mine. The village had 206 people. Farmers, mostly. A mill. A healer's post that was staffed twice a week. Three families that had been here so long their names were on the oldest markers in the burial ground at the east edge of the settlement. The figure in the dark watched the lines move in. It was not interested in the names.

It was not interested in the mill, or the healer's post, or the burial ground with its old markers. These things were surface details. Surface details fell away. What mattered was below — the network of tunnels that the settlement had been built above without knowing, the infrastructure that had been maintained through eight hundred years of careful, patient work by the few who had stayed awake to tend it. The army needed feeding. The army needed to grow. It did not need to be loud about either.

The operation took forty minutes. The lines moved through the village in the organized quiet of something that had planned this, not improvised it. No fires. No noise beyond what was necessary. The ones who came to their doors found the lines already there. The ones who didn't come to their doors were collected anyway. When the lines withdrew back to the treeline, they were longer. The figure watched them go.

Then it turned and walked back into the dark, moving between the rows of waiting creatures, each one still, each one carrying its disc, each one waiting for the next instruction. Behind it, the village was quiet. It had been quiet for a long time. It would be quiet for longer. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 4, 350 / 10, 000 If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. The rest of the journey was quiet.

Jenkins tried telling his stories twice. The first time Fenwick looked at him. The second time, Lady Nutter looked at him. After that, Jenkins drove in silence, which was perhaps the most remarkable thing that had happened in two days. Lady Nutter rode in the wagon bed with her back straight and her hands in her lap and said nothing for two hours. She was somewhere inside herself working through something, and the working was private. Max walked beside the wagon.

Once, on a long straight stretch of road where the trees opened up and the morning light came in full and even, Lady Nutter looked at him for a long moment. He was looking at the treeline — the birds moving through the upper branches, insects crossing the road, something small and quick in the underbrush that was gone before anyone else registered it. He did not look back. She looked away.

Nutter Estate announced itself before it was visible — the road improving, the verge cut back, the land on both sides managed by generations of the Nutter family. The gates were old iron, standing open. Then the drive, lined with mature oaks, and at the end of it, the house. It was substantial.

The Nutter family was rich, but they expressed that wealth in quality rather than quantity, in stone that had been here long enough to look like it belonged, in windows that caught the light correctly: a red squirrel estate, twelve generations at least of careful maintenance and careful management. Two staff members were already coming down the steps. Lady Nutter climbed down from the wagon before Jenkins had fully stopped. She did not wait for assistance.

She straightened her dress, smoothed her tail once with one hand, and turned to the staff with the natural efficiency of someone resuming a role that has been lived every day.

"Horatio and Willem are missing on the Thornwall road," she said.

"Send the farmhands out immediately. I want a search party before noon."

"Yes, my lady."

"The carriage is wrecked approximately forty minutes from the Barrow junction. The swans—" She stopped, half a second.

"The swans are there. Have them brought home."

"Yes, my lady."

"My trunks need bringing in. The second-best first — it's been through rather a lot." She turned back to Fenwick. She paid him. Precisely the agreed rate, in exact coin, produced from a small purse that had been in her pocket the entire journey. She counted it into his paw without looking at it.

"The Guild will hear a complete accounting," she said.

"You and your—" She paused.

"Your companion performed beyond the scope of the posting."

"We were glad to help," said Fenwick. She looked at him for a moment. Then she turned and went inside. Jenkins began unloading the hatbox. Fenwick stood in front of the wagon with the exact fare in his paw and thought of the last two days. The disc was still in his notes pocket, wrapped in a blank page. He could feel the weight of it, which was not a physical weight — it was too small for that — but the weight of not knowing what this meant, who was attacking people, who was controlling monsters.

Someone had made it. Someone with the knowledge and the willingness to direct twenty-three dragonflies at a road. The same someone, he suspected, who had built the cage in the Cutty Sark cave. Who had been taking people from the letters in Nibbles' office or on the guild hall walls. Who had emptied a carriage of its occupants and left the swans. He had a disc. He had notes. He did not yet have a name. She came back out six minutes later.

She had changed her dress, the burgundy silk replaced with something plainer, more practical. Her tail was still immaculate. She was carrying something small in her closed fist. She walked past Fenwick. She stopped in front of Max. Max's eyes followed her as she approached. She motioned for him to pull his hood back.

He complied, and she stared at him for a few moments, at the face that was not a living face, at the dark eyes that were present and focused, at whatever it was she had been trying to look at from the corner of her eye for two days and was now looking at directly.

"I don't know what you are," she said.

"But use this." She opened her fist. A ring. Plain band, no stone, the kind of thing that looked unremarkable until you knew what it was. She held it out. Max looked at it. Then at her. He took it.

"It will help you fit in better," she said.

"I inherited it from an aunt who had reasons to need it. I have never needed it myself." She looked at him steadily.

"Thank you once again. You saved my life." Max looked at the ring in his hand.

"Welcome," he said. Lady Nutter nodded once. She turned and went back inside. The door closed behind her with a small click.

"Well," said Jenkins, from the wagon seat, with the satisfied tone of someone completing a job well done, "that's that then. Road home's the same road we came on, so we know what we're dealing with — 'cept for that one stretch past the Barrow junction where they been doing some work on the east verge, that might slow us some depending on how far they got, but I was talking to a fella last week said they were nearly done, so it might be fine by now, hard to say really—" Fenwick climbed into the wagon.

Max turned back to the road. Lady Nutter's face appeared briefly at an upstairs window. Her tail was visible behind her. It bristled once. The window closed. [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ──────────────────────────── [Sindy — Private Log — Day 68] She gave him the ring. She said, "I don't know what you are." She gave it to him anyway. He said, "Welcome." The disc is in Fenwick's notes pocket. Necromantic origin. Someone made it. Someone who knew how. ▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ He has a magic ring.

▌ He doesn't know what it does yet.