- Posting Speed
- Slow As Molasses
- Writing Levels
- Give-No-Fucks
Location: The Eastern Bank of Toll | Tag: Aridam by @MiharuAya (Mentioned)
They came in a ragged column, drifting in like smoke on the wind. A scattering of families still intact despite the odds, but the majority were broken pieces of something once whole. A mother and two children. A father and his daughter. Siblings, clutching one another tight. Fragments that would never again be mended in this life. That such a wretched procession could make it through the dangers of the Maeblood was largely down to the trio that led them. Hard-faced, clad in colours that blended them into the forest gloom, walking with the practised care of veteran travellers. Practised, but not confident. Never confident.
Maeblood Rangers respected the forest too much to ever be so reckless.
Standing just beyond the eastern walls, a ring of earthworks, palisades and stone that separated Toll from the dangers outside, Baelith watched the refugees with a quiet apprehension. Something on the wind was bothering him, but he could not put his finger to it. Left with no other options, he put such worries aside. Controlled that which he could control. As the Rangers approached he turned his head to gaze down upon them, nodding a greeting. He knew each of them by name, for they were frequent travellers across his bridge. Dael was their pathfinder, one of the few mortal men who could truly claim to have explored the length and breadth of the Maeblood. His support came in the form of Tonwin, a stocky woman carrying a bow as tall as her and who could put an arrow through a man's eye faster than he could blink. The last was Kioen, their herbalist - young by Ranger standards, whose supplies of food and medicines would no doubt be stretched to breaking point by the unfortunates following behind them.
"More refugees from the east," Baelith observed, sweeping his gaze across the figures emerging from the thinning trees. Dael glanced back over his shoulder then grunted.
"Getting bad out there," he said, voice weary, "that's the second village we've found burned out."
"Bandits? There have been such attacks before." It was Kioen who spoke then.
"Not bandits. Bandits go in with a mind to take something." He shook his head. "Whoever hit these towns burned everything. Houses, food, livestock. Gods, even people. Enough supplies to last a winter, and they just torched the lot of it. Survivors don't even know what hit them. I've never seen the like."
"We cannot take them all in," Baelith informed them. "Those with kin here, perhaps. Those with the skill to contribute. But Toll is stretched thin as it is. Cruelty is not my goal, but I must attend to my people first."
"It's the way of things," Dael said, "we ask only that you let them pass through."
"You would extend your protections to them all?"
"We took them in. It's our responsibility to get them to safety." Tonwin gave a bitter laugh at that.
"Or what passes for safety in the Maeblood, these days," she remarked, "no guarantee the west will be much safer."
"Least the west isn't currently on bloody fire, girl," Dael muttered. Not wishing to witness a spat between comrades, Baelith hefted his gargantuan weapon from it's resting place in the earth before him and set it against his shoulder.
"Bring forward your charges, then. Those who wish to pass will be granted the Rangers' Exemption. Those who would stay may make their case to my people."
The feeling of unease lingered. There was something on the wind, wafting in from the east. Whether it came from the fires said to be spreading out there or from something closer Baelith could not say, but it was enough to keep him rooted in place as the refugees began to filter past. Hollow faces gazed up at him, a cavalcade of emotions writ large upon them; the various shades of fear, mostly, but his reputation had spread widely enough that a handful looked relieved at the sight of the towering Knight of Toll. Whatever danger he might potentially pose to them, they clearly felt that what they were fleeing from was far worse.
About half the refugees had made it through the gates when Baelith stirred, twisting upright on some unspoken cue. There was something in the air now, almost overpowering. The scent of cinders and ashes, as though the wind was carrying in the traces of a distant forest fire. Sweeping his gaze across the remaining figures, he fixed upon a figure clad in robes that looked like they had been half-consumed by an inferno. Singed and blackened, reeking of smoke, the scent blending into the smells emanating from the figure wearing them. The top half of his face was wrapped in a layer of bandages that hid his eyes, the bottom half hidden by a soot-blackened beard. If it was just the robes that caused the stench Baelith might be less concerned, but the rot went deeper than that. There was a taint in this figure that nothing could hide. He stank of furnaces and industry, of hungry fires and chemical burns.
As the man tried to pass, Baelith's arm stretched out to block his path.
"Hold," he ordered, and the man stiffened. The other refugees paused as well, looking on nervously as their procession came to an abrupt pause.
"...is there a problem, sir knight?" the man asked, voice crackling like an open flame.
"Your eyes. Show them to me." The man pulled at his beard.
"They were wounded in the fires, sir. A burning beam caught me as I tried to escape-"
"-that is not what I asked. Show me your eyes." Confronted, the man was attempting to back away from the towering form of the Heower.
"I wish no trouble. If there is a problem, I will leave." Before he could retreat any further, Baelith moved. Like a tree caught in a gust of wind, slow at first and then with the momentum to carry him. His arm extended to snatch the bindings at the figure's eyes, yanking them back. Pulling them free.
Light spilled out from behind them as they came away.
Baelith gazed down into the man's empty sockets, lit up like candles set into the hollow of a wall. Flames dancing where human eyes ought to be, moving in a breeze all of their own. The robed figure was grinning, an inhuman rictus. Baelith could feel the heat spreading even from two paces.
"Be cleansed!" the man spoke as though in benediction, even as his skin began to blacken and the first licks of fires pushed out from his flesh, "be cleansed in the blessed fires!" Nearby the refugees were screaming, backpedalling from the man as though he could erupt into a blaze at any second. Baelith, meanwhile, lunged forwards.
Ignoring the searing heat that immediately began seeping into his gauntlet, he lifted the smouldering man like he was a child. Swinging him upwards, southwards, sending him hurtling out towards the open water of the River Mae like an athlete throwing a stone. The man ignited in the air, a vicious bark of flame that made the people still on the bridge recoil. Then he hit the river with a gout of spray and smoke, disappearing beneath the water. Baelith watched the spot for a long moment, waiting to see if something would emerge.
Nothing did. Whatever was left him had been claimed by the undercurrent.
Silence settled in the wake of all the panic, as the Rangers lowered bows already nocked with arrows.
"Every time I think I've got a grasp on this bastard forest," Dael growled, "it goes and pulls my feet out from under me." Tonwin was watching the water still, eyes narrowed with anger.
"Aithenge's corpse, how long was he with us?"
"Since the village," Kioen confirmed, "I took him for walking wounded. I didn't think... he..." The herbalist trailed off, even as Baelith was turning back to face them.
"How many refugee groups have the Rangers helped to cross west?" he asked. Dael gave a shrug.
"A handful, had I to guess. Been a week or so since last we were at camp."
"Then more like him have crossed." Baelith turned to look down upon the cluster of refugees that were only just now creeping out from cover. "You may continue," he told them, still in that calm, soft voice. The warning scent still lingered on the air, but it was dissipating now that it's source had been claimed by the river.
"I require a service of you," Baelith informed the Rangers, even as the refugees began to funnel past once again. "A message to be carried, to the Heower known as Aridam. Tell him that safe passage through Toll will be granted in return for his... insight on matters here." There would be no further surprises hidden amongst this group of exiles. But in other packs and bands of refugees filtering out through the Maeblood there would be others, sparks floating off on a wind carrying them far and wide. They simply needed to land in a dry enough spot, and the flames would spread. Baelith needed to understand such a threat, before the fires spread to his town.
And who better to teach him than an embodiment of the inferno?