Chương 412: 12.9

Jewel stepped through the encampment of her ally, they had been guided by another of the count's champions of Asherah in the march through the Vlach lands. Her forces had spent hours circling around the fields where Murad and his now combined army had offered and been joined in battle along the border. March Lord Sergej had seen to the encampment of her armies within a comfortable distance with the forces of the Vlach just an hour ago.

The men were still setting up tents and Dariuz was only just raising the cooking fires. The looks of hunger in the eyes of the mortal men among Tepe's army tugged at Jewel's heart. Regardless of what the monster said she would make the offer to these hollow cheeked men to share in her own force's abundance. The smell of it suggested that the rations in their cooking pots were growing thin. But there was no desperation or even despair among the men, even when she looked with the eyes of her daughter selves.

The twin's eyes were far sharper then Gem's now, not a match for her wyrm sight but still an impressive acuity. All eight of her ears perked and listened to the words, she had a passable familiarity with the local dialect, but High Magarskan was in short supply among their words, It made the words garbled and hard to measure." Gove em gud thrashing, did see look?" There was a jovial tone from a man who had a missing left arm tied off with a bandage." Ho yosh! Felled a prince night last!"

Another wounded seated across from the first with a bloody stump wrapped in cloth instead of a thigh." I wos there!" The crude sounding foreign speech was frustrating, it was almost like High Magarskan and yet also twining with sounds almost like the Ridgevaulic tongue of her mother tongue. The mangled combination making something somehow less intelligible for its familiarity." Nosint! you'd a deaded!" Incredulity to a boast however was universal among soldiers." Lost mine-arm to-a wicked fast ringer!

Was near thick with the Count himself!" Those words were softer, careful and reverent. Instead of denying his conversational partner grew hushed." Yousin fought sides the count?" Not even a hint of disbelief, just awe, joy, maybe even a hint of jealousy? Jewel was not sure, she'd only studied the Vlach's tongue lightly before this year's start, she'd not expected to have to speak the words of a land overrun with blooddrinking monsters."

Aye, only reason alive n breathin was the count himself, he took the hand ofa ringer, right afore I was good and gotted, only lost the arm!" Gem turned away from the man lifting the bandaged stump that seeped red. More words of the same were finding their way to her ears. This was not the driven slaves that her once allies in Magarska had promised Vladimer had made of his people.

There was a steel to the spines of the mortal men here, a determination, not fear, not waning desperation, not a single face showed signs of despair. The smell of still living rot on wounded wafted from many tents, many had skin colored purple and green from bruising. Others had only recently scabbed over cuts and breaks in their faces and what skin was exposed. She was seeing the wounded, the beaten, the men no longer able to stand or fight. And their spirits were so high!

She could feel it filling the air, even with how badly those still awake had been beaten, they were in good spirits! Of the life sucking monsters? They were placid, whole and flushed with life, but incredibly even they seemed to be well liked by those around them.

Many smiled and joked with the wounded men (fake as their faces were), or even helped to tend the bandages, acting like more than just commanders with their lessers, but tenders of the wounded, even spooning the thin gruel into the mouths of some of the least firm. The monsters she had expected were not feared. More than that there was an admiration and near reverence to those that spoke to them despite the seemingly demeaning acts they performed, she never saw any of them eat from any dish they carried.

It did not fit, she could feel their empty hungers roiling behind their eyes, like pits in their chests, she saw how there were subtle tremors in some of the hands offering meagre thin broth to dying men in the sunlight. Muscles that did not want to give up anything offering food to dying men. How could these monsters do such a thing?! From a mother who vowed to protect her son? That made sense, that fitted.

But what possible vow could Vladimer's Knights of Asherah be making to be able to act so against the horrible nature inside them!? It should be impossible, but that was what Jewel saw and heard and smelt.

Perhaps it was only those that were awake and about who could tend with mortals, after all far more slept, but even then they were often amongst the mortal living men, silent while others snored and breathed in their tents, resting through the heat of the day with the sleep of the utterly spent and the living corpse alike. In the daylight hours the mortals slept and at least some of the empty monsters walked the perimeter and checked on the wounded.

As her party made their way deeper into the encampment, following the silent guidance of their very own blood drinker Jewel finally saw the inner perimeter. Wooden stakes almost as big around as a man sharpened to points and pointed out in all directions, high enough even Jewel would have to shift to her hind legs to peer over it. There were guards, two more vampyres, added up to all the others Jewel had felt in the camp. If they were the feral things that had assaulted the caravan that night?

Jewel would have been confident she could have ended both in a single breath. But the Halberdieirs had considered the Knights of Asherah a far mightier foe than the starving near mindless things that had attacked her last year. She was not stopped, or even given a hint of unwelcome, long before her small entourage arrived the two vampyres shifted aside and pushed heavy wooden gates open to allow her access to the inner circle of the camp. And there revealed the 'Count of Wallachia'.

He was seated on a simple armoring stool, no ostentatious markings upon his yellow and black stained armor. Only a thin red line embellishing at the edges of each plate. A table laid out in the open sun with a rough map of what she could recognize as the local surroundings and especially the valley that her forces had been guided around. There were a few errors any Gryphon Rider could have corrected.

Jewel had heard that during the 'Wallachian Troubles' that Vladimer had put every Gryphon in the land to death and burned the eyries, but having fallen for Murad's lies before she wondered how much of that was true? On reflection it seemed a foolish thing to deny oneself of the skill and ability of Gryphon Riders if even for scouting, perhaps that had been more of Murad's lies, perhaps it had been Magarska that put the eyries to the torch to deny their enemy an advantage?

At this point she would not deny the possibility. After all there had obviously been lies about those that served the self proclaimed Count of Wallachia, the soldiers she had passed while beaten and hungry had not looked like the terrorized masses she was promised they would be all those years ago, on the contrary they seemed more willing to be here then her own Levies!

Her ears did not catch any grumbling or complaint as armies were wont to do, although perhaps it was because so many were asleep and the rest wounded but grateful to even breathe. Jewel doubted that impulse though, it felt like cowardice! She wanted to have found cruelty beyond measure but besides the hollow sucking voids wandering the camp like perfectly civil men there was nothing amiss. Their supplies were obviously strained but Jewel's own camp's stores could resolve that. And so Vladimer Tepes.

The Shining Wyrm of Viznove regarded the thing before her, the cause of so much supposed suffering, Count of the Vlach Lands, and if she could believe her ears (all eight of them) the hero of his people, her ally sworn to her in this warm, Vladimer Tepes, The Patricide. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Jewel never would have imagined to stand here, in the encampment of this horror and its armies, nor that anyone could so profusely love such a horrible thing as not just a lord but a savior! Yet she could not deny the truth of all of her eyes and ears— the People of the Vlach were Loyal to this monster. And in a horribly twisted way, like that poor girl who had traded her life and quite possibly her very soul for the sake of her son, the thing before her at least appeared like it was loyal to them.

Without introduction or any proper protocol he turned up to her.

"Murad's army has tried to claim my lands nearly every night since the start of your Grain Turn. We have held him back at every advance on this soil but the veins of the Vlach are growing thin for the blood we have spilled in your war, and now I hear you have left the majority of your men north to take garrisons and hold lines?"

The monster of Wallachia spoke Ridgevaulic with perfect diction, not the words of the High Court of Cantor Reborn, but the very words of Viznove and her mother tongue, he had no anger to his tone, nor judgement in his eyes, just a placid, attentive calm. It made the figure staring up at her seem ridiculous. The thing that was once a man's eyes were perpetually bulged out from his sockets, the cheeks hollowed out and weirdly sharp, eyes and hair deep almost black crimson, skin pale as snow.

It made the so-called Fiend of the Wallachian Troubles seem a far cry from the terror he was spoken of by the Magarskans. But for all the flatness of his apparent mood there was recrimination in his words, there was anger in the air enough from all the figures around her, both mortal and monstrous alike. He might not judge her but with his words those watching from around the camp straightened towards an eagerness for retribution. This was the heart of her ally's camp and yet she felt beset with threats.

Did she deserve it for her part in supporting Murad?

"My northern forces are all made of foreign Levy, many with dubious loyalty, and Gryphon Riders who are nothing but fodder against the war flocks of Magarska. Since I dismissed them, what had been stalemates against Murad's armies he now pays a toll of ten men to every one of mine." She spoke with all the grace and civility that befit an exchange between two leaders of men.

It did nothing to dispel the malaise of disdain from his forces around her, but the vampyre count nodded, his eyes dipping down to her foreclaws then up her neck to her snout before finally meeting her eyes with the shining crimson irises. She could feel his hunger, the bottomless pit behind those eyes and deep in his chest, but not a twitch of it was on his lips, not a flicker of it in his gaze. Not even a whisper of the hunger for life and blood could be heard in his even breaths.

His heartbeat itself was held steady, as if its rhythm was a force of will instead of the desperate gnawing thing that even the most well mannered of his vampyre champions had offered.

"So you say Countess of Viznove. Let us hope your prowess holds for you against the High King and his sorcery, he and his lords with their enchanted rings have taken the lives of hundreds of Asherah's most blessed and powerful champions. I am running short of loyal Vlach with the strength of will and character to survive the vows, let alone the arms and armor to equip them, oh Shining Wyrm, your meagre forces will bleed terribly if your prowess proves false."

Jewel considered the man, the speed she had seen the feral beasts fight at, the grace and power that had been needed to match them for mortal men.

"Yet you could fight High King Murad himself? With all his powers? I have seen for myself the speed and force his sorcery can give, he becomes quite the butcher." The Count's expression did not change as he stared up at her.

"The Vlach people and these lands are mine, and I am theirs, by my vow to Asherah herself will I hold them in safe keeping from all comers who would wish to take them. The land gives me the strength to protect her fields and all her children against despoilers. I will do whatever is necessary." There was an echo, a shining presence in the heavens' miracles rippling through his flesh. A whisper of a presence even in the full day's light. But more so was the faintest hint of an echo of the world to the man.

The land stirred ever so slightly at his promise. It was not wizardry, not the whispering voiceless commands of weirds, more of an echo of an echo of one.

"You've learned some sorcery of your own Count Tepes?" The expression did not shift, but the intensity of his focus on her eyes seemed to grow ever so slightly.

"From what practitioners and means can be found, but the Vlach are not so fortunate to host any sorcerers in our lands. We suffice with what magic we can find, for the last daughter with the gift of stormcalling to be born in the Vlach Lands was taken by Magarska's Djinn allies a century ago, and just like the men claimed for the army, she has never returned."

Jewel stared down at the thing, at the monster that every fiber of her being said was a monster that would never stop hungering to consume all the life in the world, yet had proven more honorable then the betrayer Murad who she had thought her friend. She considered the words of the wounded man who earnestly thought he had been saved by this monstrous thing. How every one of his sworn Vampyres moved with a care towards even the wounded and unfit of the Vlach.

Not to restore warriors to hold the line but seemingly just because they suffered?" Hewer of Wheat" She spoke the words, not just in voice, but in flame, in truth that echoed into the world. She called and the Weird of Farmlands heavy and in sun ripened yellow grain he arrived. Sprouting from the hard packed soil at their feet in spiraling stalks of golden yellow, which wove and wound around one another until the wide brimmed hat and straw colored clothing of the wizard had finished forming.

"I owe you a right for a heavy given wrong ya serpentine fowl, but you have no leash on me, I come cause I wish and no other reason." Jewel dipped her head to the wizard, outwardly ignoring the murmurs and whispers of dread that rose up around the watchers at the perimeter, she kept her voice the same as she had forced it so far through her meeting with her ally in war. The voice of a leader to a peer deserving respect. The army around her was bedraggled from a season of night fighting.

Her own sorcery and forces were insufficient to compensate, even good food and the Farming Weird's best bread was unlikely to fully turn the stalemate that had held here. The memory of Murad's speed, faster than she could follow, strikes before she realized they happened. This man before her had stood on even ground with that on a war footing? Her ally was potent, but he obviously needed her aid.

"Of course Hewer of Wheat, I call as a request and I beseech you now with the same, is it within your desire to offer to my ally the means of a spell or working to aid in our war effort?" The empty space beneath the wide brimmed straw hat leaned towards the Count of the Vlach Lands. The figure grew taller to peer down at the thing that was once a man, then collapsed shorter and squatted to look closely at his boots for a reason Jewel could not even guess.

Finally the wizard reached out and ignoring all propriety took Vladimer Tepes, the Patricide and so called Fiend of Wallachia's hand and turned it over one way and another, feeling and stroking the fingers with the soft lambskin gloves the Weird of farms had instead of fingers. The Vampyre simply watched without expression, although dark mutterings were building at the fringes of their meeting place among the Count's men.

"You've got the hands to work for your living, The eye to see the grain in the field, the feet to walk the earth, the nose to smell the rain, but can ya love the land?" The blood red eyes met the void beneath a straw hat, the Hewer of Wheat had matched his height and stature to the once man for that moment.

"The Vlach people and their lands are mine and I am theirs" The Weird of Farms stared back despite his lack of eyes, every fibre of straw in his body straining with the intensity of a judging glare, the stature growing ever so slightly taller as he loomed up over the Vampire." Prove it, for every acre in ten in all that you 'rule' give all the fruits of its soil to the hands that work it and no other. That is my price for the lesson of a single working of mine to you.

Swear it on that nasty business tying you to your precious star little man and I'll grant you what I can." The grasp of the vampyre's gloved palm was crushing the straw and dry grains in the glove of the Weird of Farms before Jewel could blink, the first expression she had seen on the vampyre blazing with gleaming teeth. A grin that looked more like a hound baring its teeth than any sign of joy, those eyes somehow even wider for it.

"I vow on Asherah's blessing and my soul that is sworn to her that three acres in ten of every field in the Vlach lands will feed or enrich only those who labor upon it! For this you will teach me three spells of your sorcery!" The Weird was for but a moment shocked, leaning back from the intensity of the man shaped thing before with a crack of grain seeds breaking the Vampyre's hand was further collapsed in his own clenching grip. The two men were squeezing at one another's hands, both arms starting to tremble.

Soon both had the other's hands clasped so tightly over the grinding fist of the other it looked like the most ill chosen maneuver of wrestlers. Jewel smelled baking bread and saw the wisps of flour slowly spilling from the seams of the Weird's gloves. Then suddenly as if perfectly united in purpose they stopped trying to crush the life out of each other's hands!

"Hah! Oh you shining snake! At this rate I'm going to owe you another right for how truly awful a wrong this war is shaping up to be!" For her part, she did not outwardly show any discomfort at the disturbing words passing between the two vicious monsters before her. But this was War. Her ally, the monster that she had thought one of her greatest mistakes to unleash onto the world, turned back up to gaze into her eyes, that same rictus of bared teeth pretending at joy contorting his face.

"You, Shining Wyrm of Viznove, continue to prove yourself a fine ally to the Vlach Lands. Cheers People of the Vlach! The Countess has brought us Northern Sorcery to cut down our enemies!" And all around her the people she had thought were the subjugated slaves of a horror beyond reckoning, who she now saw rallied to him as their savior against the Butcher Murad? The People of the Vlach cheered!