Chương 44: Silencing the Threat

Jack was sitting perfectly still in his high-backed chair, his eyes closed. But his mind was miles away, deep in the freezing, snow-covered forest. He was looking through the dead eyes of Elias Varna. A few moments ago, Jack had seen the human weapons embedded in the poached snow boars. He had realized the bandit remnants were still alive and operating right on the edge of his territory.

"Track them," Jack commanded down the thin mental thread. What happened next deeply fascinated Jack. If he had given that command to Bones or Rusty, the skeletons would have simply started walking in a straight line, looking blindly in all directions until they bumped into an enemy. They had no brain, and therefore, no problem-solving skills. Elias was entirely different. The dead mage did not just start walking. He crouched down beside the massive boar carcasses.

His muscle memory and years of elite combat training took over automatically. Elias reached out with a hand and brushed the loose snow away from the edge of the clearing. Jack watched through Elias's vision as the dead man found exactly what he was looking for. There were deep, clumsy footprints leading away from the kill site. The bandits had taken the best cuts of meat and dragged them away. Furthermore, there were faint drops of blood scattered across the white snow, marking their path.

Elias stood up and began to follow the trail. He moved with a silent grace. He did not trudge heavily through the knee-deep snow like a peasant. He stepped carefully, placing his boots in the tracks already left by the bandits, minimizing his own noise. He kept close to the thick trunks of the trees, using the shadows to hide his approach. Back in the castle, Jack let out a slow breath. He leaned his head against the back of his chair, evaluating the physical toll of his magic.

The mental cost was practically non-existent. Jack was merely a passenger in Elias's mind. He didn't have to think about lifting Elias's legs, or balancing his weight, or scanning the tree line for movement. The preserved brain of the mage handled all the complex physical tasks autonomously. The "thin thread" from Jack simply provided the overarching goal. However, the magical cost was a completely different story.

Forcing mana down the tether to keep Elias's preserved muscles moving and his joints from freezing was a constant, demanding drain on Jack's Iron Core. It felt like holding a heavy bucket of water with one arm; it wasn't complicated, but his energy was steadily leaking away, causing a deep exhaustion to settle into his own core. Because Elias was drawing so much of Jack's raw mana just to operate, Jack knew he could not freely command his other skeletons while the mage was deployed.

The Night Shift would have to remain completely dormant until Elias returned. For nearly an hour, Elias followed the winding trail of blood and disturbed snow. The path led away from the village, moving higher up the rocky, treacherous slopes of the mountains. Suddenly, Elias stopped moving. He pressed his back flat against a large boulder. The thin thread in Jack's mind gave a gentle pulse. It was a signal. Jack focused his attention fully. Through Elias's eyes, he looked around the edge of the boulder.

A few dozen yards away, tucked beneath an overhang of jagged rock, was a partially collapsed cave system. A faint, weak orange glow flickered from within the entrance. A small fire. Elias crept closer, moving from boulder to boulder without making a single sound. As he neared the cave entrance, the smell of roasting meat became distinct. Jack ordered Elias to peek inside. The cave was shallow and damp. Huddled around a smoky, pathetic fire were twelve men. They looked absolutely miserable.

Their clothes were little more than filthy rags held together with bits of twine. Their faces were hollow and gaunt from months of starvation. Several of them were missing fingers to frostbite. Jack listened closely through Elias's ears.

"It's not enough," one of the bandits rasped, tearing a small chunk of tough, half-cooked boar meat with his dirty teeth.

"We killed three boars, and we only managed to drag back one leg before the cold nearly took our toes. We can't survive out here much longer."

"I curse the day we ever followed Kael," a third bandit spat, clutching a ruined cloak around his thin shoulders. He stared bitterly into the weak fire.

"He swaggered into our camp, claiming he used to be an Iron Core mage from some grand noble family. He promised us easy plunder and warm beds. And what happened? We got our teeth kicked in by peasants! We had to run for our lives from a sickly boy-lord and his two silent mages."

"I hope the beasts ate Kael," the shivering man muttered.

"We should just go back south. Try to make it through the mountain pass."

"You idiot, the pass is still blocked by tens of feet of snow," a larger man snapped. He had a deep scar across his cheek and seemed to be the leader of these survivors.

"We go south, we freeze and die on the road. The only way we survive the spring is the village." Jack's grip on his chair tightened.

"The village?" the shivering man asked, looking terrified.

"You saw what happened last time! They slaughtered half our crew in minutes."

"That was weeks ago," the scarred leader argued, pointing a dirty finger toward the valley.

"I've been watching from the ridge. Have you seen any armored mages patrolling their walls lately? No. I've only seen peasants chopping wood. I bet those two warriors were just hired mercenaries, and the boy lord couldn't afford to keep them." The leader grabbed another piece of meat from the fire, his eyes filling with desperate greed.

"And look at the village now. They have a massive wooden wall. They have endless coal. And the smoke, lads. Did you smell the smoke today? They are curing meat. They have sheds full of it. They have enough food to last years." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. The other bandits stopped chewing, their hungry eyes turning toward their leader.

"They are just weak peasants hiding behind a wooden fence," the leader said, standing up and grabbing an iron broadsword leaning against the cave wall.

"We wait a few more days. Let them finish butchering the beasts. Then, we strike the gatehouse at night. We kill the guards, open the gates, and we take the smoking sheds. We kill the boy lord, and we take his warm castle for ourselves." Back in his bedroom, Jack's expression turned incredibly cold. There was no pity in his heart for these men. They were a direct threat.

Giles, Old Miller, Karen, Barnaby—the people who had worked themselves to the bone to build the village would be slaughtered in their beds if these bandits managed to sneak past the guards. Furthermore, if the bandits escaped and spread rumors to the southern merchants about the strange, silent mages, it could bring the Holy Church directly to Jack's doorstep. Jack could not allow them to leave this mountain. He sent a cold, simple command down the thin thread to his flesh-bound mage.

"Kill them. Do it silently. Do not use your fire magic. I do not have the mana to spare." Outside the cave, Elias's frozen face did not change. He simply reached to his hip and drew the weapon Jack had equipped him with before he left the crypts—a perfectly balanced ancestral sword forged from high-quality steel. Elias stepped out from behind the boulder and walked directly into the cave entrance. The scarred leader was still talking, holding his rusted sword up.

"We just need to hit them before the spring merchants arrive, and then we—" He stopped. The firelight flickered, casting a tall, imposing shadow against the cave wall. The bandits turned around. They saw a man standing in the entrance, wearing a dark cloak. His face was pale, his eyes were dull and empty, and he held a sword that gleamed in the dim light.

"Who are you?" the leader demanded, raising his weapon.

"How did you find—" Elias did not answer. He moved with a terrifying speed that a normal human body could rarely achieve. He closed the distance to the leader in a single step. The bandit tried to swing his sword, but Elias's retained combat instincts were flawless. Elias parried the clumsy strike with a flick of his wrist, stepped inside the man's guard, and drove the ancestral sword directly through the leader's chest. The bandit gasped, dropping his weapon.

Elias violently ripped the blade out and spun, ducking under a desperate spear thrust from a second bandit. Jack watched through Elias's eyes with a sense of grim awe. When Jack commanded his regular skeletons to fight, it was a messy affair of brute force and clumsy swinging. This was entirely different. Elias fought like a master swordsman. Every step he took was calculated. Every swing of his blade found a vital point. He moved through the panicked bandits like a deadly, silent wind.

He did not use a single spark of fire magic. He simply relied on his overwhelming physical superiority and retained martial skill.

"Get him!" one bandit screamed, swinging a wood axe. Elias sidestepped the axe perfectly, brought the pommel of his sword down on the man's temple, and fluidly followed through to slice the throat of another bandit trying to run toward the cave exit. It was a slaughter. The bandits were weakened by starvation and freezing temperatures, while Elias was a tireless, preserved elite guard. Within two minutes, the cave was completely silent, save for the crackling of the small fire. Twelve bodies lay on the stone floor.

None of them had managed to escape. Jack sat in his chair, feeling a deep, heavy exhaustion settling over his body from the sustained mana drain, but his mind was sharp. The immediate threat to his village was permanently erased. The secret of his magic was safe. But Jack's mind immediately shifted away from the combat and back to the ongoing logistical crisis of his fief. He looked at the dead bandits, and then he looked at the weapons scattered across the cave floor.

Broadswords, chipped axes, a few iron daggers, and some iron belt buckles.

"Gather them," Jack commanded mentally. Elias cleaned his sword on a dead bandit's cloak and sheathed it. Then, moving with the same efficient silence, he began to gather the weapons. He took a large canvas sack from the corner of the cave and filled it with every single piece of metal he could find on the bodies. When the sack was full, Elias tied it shut, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out of the cave, heading back down the mountain toward the castle.

Jack severed the visual connection, leaving Elias on a simple homing command to return to the crypts stealthily. Jack opened his eyes and looked at the fire in his bedroom. He had solved the bandit problem, but he hoped he had also brought back enough scrap to solve the iron deficit. The next morning, the village was bustling with its usual frantic energy. Down in the square, Barnaby was hammering a massive dire wolf femur against his anvil, trying to shave it down to a sharp point for the ballista bolts.

It was slow, frustrating work. Bone, while dense, was brittle and difficult to shape compared to hot metal. Jack walked down the snowy path from the castle. He was leaning heavily on his cane, looking exhausted from the long night of channeling mana. Behind Jack walked Bones, heavily disguised in his iron armor and dark cloak. The tall skeleton was carrying a large, dirty canvas sack over his shoulder.

"Barnaby," Jack called out as he approached the forge. The blacksmith stopped hammering and wiped his brow.

"Lord Jack. Good morning. These dense bone tips are working well for the ammunition, just as you ordered, but I am entirely out of materials to build the machinery itself."

"I may have a temporary solution," Jack said. He gestured to Bones.

"Put it down." Bones stepped forward and dropped the heavy canvas sack onto the snow. It landed with a loud, metallic clatter. Barnaby's eyes widened. He immediately dropped his hammer and knelt beside the sack, pulling the canvas open. Inside was a pile of swords, wood axes, iron daggers, and metal buckles. It was dirty, low-quality steel, but to a blacksmith in a metal-starved village, it looked like a pile of gold.

"Where did you get this?" Barnaby asked, pulling a sword from the pile and inspecting the metal.

"My private mages found a bandit camp deep in the woods last night," Jack lied smoothly, his face entirely unreadable.

"The bandits did not survive the winter. I had my men bring back their weapons so we could recycle the steel." Barnaby didn't question the story. He was too focused on the metal. He began quickly sorting the weapons, mentally calculating the weight and volume of the scrap. As Barnaby sorted, Giles walked over from the nearby meat smoking sheds, looking curious.

"Iron, Barnaby?" Giles asked hopefully.

"Is it enough to build the other three ballistas?" Barnaby stopped sorting and let out a heavy sigh. He looked up at Jack, shaking his head.

"It is a blessing, Lord Jack, do not get me wrong," Barnaby said, tapping the rusted sword.

"I can melt this down and fold the good steel together. But it is just scrap. The weapons are thin, and much of the weight is just rust and ruined wood handles." Barnaby pointed toward the single wooden ballista sitting on the village wall.

"To build the tension gears, the locking winches, and the reinforced structural brackets for a new siege weapon requires massive blocks of solid iron," Barnaby explained, his voice filled with professional frustration.

"If I melt all of this bandit scrap down, it will give me exactly enough metal to forge the mechanical gears for just one more ballista. But that is it. We won't have enough for the other two watchtowers."

"Then we will build one more, and that will have to be enough," Jack said firmly.

"Continue using the dense bones for the bolt tips. Do not waste a single ounce of this iron on ammunition. Use every piece of this scrap to forge the winch and gears for a second machine."

"It will be done, Lord Jack," Barnaby nodded, grabbing the sack of weapons and hauling it toward the roaring heat of his forge. Jack turned and began the slow walk back up the mountain path to the castle. Two ballistas would help, but Jack knew it wouldn't be enough if the apex beasts came down from the peaks. He was going to have to use his flesh-bound mage in open combat. And if he did that, he needed a way to explain Elias to the villagers without triggering a panic.

He needed a cover story, and he needed to establish it immediately, before the final wave of the Beast Tide broke against their gates.