It was with great trepidation that Neia continued to move South in accordance with her mission, occasionally a rider approached with a missive bearing news, but it was routine material not meriting the risk or urgency of magical communication.
Most of the time she was mounted on a horse beside Tinamoc, but as the scouts rejoined the caravan one by one after their tasks were completed, she felt more at ease and took to riding next to a driver in a cart so she could read over reports and write instructions and replies.
"Hmmm...so three more temples under construction using undead laborers and dwarf supervisors, undead labor being rented out has generated a considerable profit, crime is down, and acceptance of the undead as a labor force has gone up. Its true what they say, familiarity breeds contempt." She said to no one in particular.
"Did you say something Pope Neia?" The driver asked curiously.
"No no, just talking to myself, I find it helps me remember more and frame ideas more clearly, pay me no mind." She replied, not looking up from her report.
"I couldn't help but overhear part of that," the driver said, "is it really possible that people will accept having skeletons working around them? I mean sure some braver folk, but the whole country?" He asked dubiously.
Neia lowered the papers into her lap and looked up from them and turned to the driver, he was a small thin man, obviously of peasant origin by his body language and clothing, most likely a man hired just to drive the cart, with no significant skills to profit him, his unshaven face did not hide the doubts he expressed, and Neia thought for a moment about how best to answer his question.
"I think so." She said at last. "Think about it, are you afraid of that man over there?" She asked, pointing to a person two carts back who was bulging with muscle that and wore a scowl that seemed to be permenantly afixed to his face.
"Well...not really, I mean if he were attackin me I think I'd piss meself but...he's not so...why would I be fearin him?" He asked.
"Precisely, but humans kill each other all the time, for any reason or no reason at all, yet we travel together, sleep side by side, work together, trade together, despite knowing that some people are dangerous and having no way to tell who is really a threat and who is not, at least not most of the time. That guy isn't under any spell, he has nobody controlling him, he can completely ignore orders, draw his sword, and attack us all right now, but we're comfortable around him, confident that he will not. Right?" She asked.
The peasant thought for a moment, then nodded, "Well...I guess that is true."
"Skeleton laborers are under control, sure without any guidance they'd be like rabid wolves, but under control they're no more aggressive than a sheep or a cow, give them direction and they'll obey perfectly. As people see that more and more often, the familiarity will breed the same contempt for any remote danger there could be, and I mean...who is afraid of their gardening tools, their bartender, their sheep?" She asked directly.
"Plus, skeletons are the weakest undead and have no intelligence to speak of, they're easily smashed if they ever did get out of line, so we get massive benefits from their use, with minimal risk that we can easily mitigate. I think within a few years, the whole country will be using them if for no other reason than that there will be no other choice, because those who don't will not keep up with those who do." Neia smiled broadly as she imagined skeletons working the fields, building homes, pulling carts, swinging picks, the living who had to suffer grime and pain and exhaustion, able to finally enjoy a rest from lives of toil, children no longer stooped over in the fields until their backs were permanently bent.
She imagined a priest of Black Justice casting a healing spell over scrapes and bruises, instead of the wounds of arrows and swords used by bandits to deprive the peasant of his living and his life. She saw death knights, unstoppable legendary monsters, patrolling the woods and driving away or putting down dangers to the innocent, and keeping nobles honest who all but starved their peasants by giving themselves over to their greed, trading a hundred poor lives for a single copper, no more were those clinking shiny coins mined from the blood of the destitute and desperate.
"If I should live to see it majesty..." She said to herself, so softly that even the man next to her did not hear. She allowed herself to get lost in her dreams as the driver went back to his task, it was a glorious moment, but as if the world wished to remind her that dreams are not reality, shouts of alarm were raised and snapped her out of the moment.
She ripped off her visor and looked to the source of the noise, a scout was charging on a hell horse, calling them to arms, "Attack! Left flank!" She looked at the wood line and saw figures emerging, and just before she could call commands, another scout on the other side shouted, "Attack! Right flank!" The warnings bought precious seconds and Neia's commands were quick in coming. "Civilians CENTER AND COVER!" And quick as they could, the noncombatant merchants, travelers, and laborers rushed to the central carts, abandoning the outer line to ensure that Black Justice and the accompanying guard had to protect as small an area as possible.
"Secure positions!" She shouted, and with the ease of countless repetitions Black Justice members leaped to the wagons, drew up long spears and jammed them into sconces fitted to the outside of the wagons, in moments the areas being secured had improvised breastworks.
"Draw!" She shouted, and from either side of the wagons she watched as enemy ranks of this unknown foe began their charge. Black Justice members had all drawn bows, rune crafted material approved especially by the Sorcerer King for their use, they gleamed like precious gems in Neia Baraja's eyes. She thought back to the days of training, of minutes that became hours standing with a two hundred pound draw, standing, kneeling, riding, gaining martial arts needed to make it possible and make her already dangerous skill, more dangerous...and which made ordinary hunter peasants into elite archers. Points were glinting brightly in the Sun, in perfect symmetry and without a waver of nervousness or bodily weakness, taught muscles of men and women held on easily, and the deadly eyes of Neia gave them a single glance of pride to the double ranks pointed in both directions of the predators that she would make into prey.
"Loose!" She shouted as her sword came down.
It was a scene out of hell, and Black Justice had become the demons who ruled over it, arrows flew out straight and true, and Neia called out, "Fire at will!" And one flight became two became three became four became five became six, six flights of arrows were launched before the first struck the oncoming ranks of their attackers.
Screams were long and loud, desperate voices calling for aid that wouldn't come as Black Justice fighters sent arrow after merciless arrow at their foes. For their part, the 'regular' mercenaries hired as guards could only watch and launch a few arrows of their own in support, as most were without bows...but whether watching or firing at their much slower pace with their much weaker equipment and without the martial arts that made Neia's band of men into the lords of war, there were expressions of awe on their faces.
Neia's narrow focused gaze was intense as she contributed to the slaughter by using the Shooting Star that the Sorcerer King had given her, it blew back men by the dozen, who in turn were thrown back so hard that each one took three more down with him, but she knew this wasn't right, this wasn't how things should be going. Bandits would have withdrawn at the first sign of overwhelming strength, bandits would not have such numbers. Bandits would not be dressed in identical clothing, this was more.
Arrows began to run out and the sound of swords being drawn could be heard as they prepared to receive the charge.
Neia picked up a horn and blew it three times, the scouts knew their orders from the noise, and rode their horses along the length of the caravan till they were wide around the enemy ranks as if they were fleeing and abandoning those on foot.
The clash was momentous, Black Justice fighters were deadly dangerous in close combat, and held the high ground from the carts, they specialized in taking away enemy weapons and using grips and throws to put challengers off balance, it was not knightly, but it was effective, and as the Sorcerer King had said, "Better a victorious warrior than a pretty corpse."
Neia's people made lots of pretty corpses, and Neia herself despite being relatively unskilled with a sword, reaped a deadly toll, with their rune crafted armor giving them enhanced energy, recovery, healing, and strength in various areas, they held all the advantages, but still the remainder of the enemy forces did not give up, they fought like zombies, without fear of death, but also without coordination or a great deal of skill, here and there one managed to clamber through a gap, only to be cut down like wheat before a scythe.
It felt less like a fight and more like farming, though some of the less well equipped mercenaries went down, and some members of Black Justice took wounds, the tide of the fight was clear, and the ranks gradually broke apart to surround the declining enemy numbers and put them down faster.
When the last man, Neia stabbed her sword into the wooden cart and leaned over to breath a sigh of relief, blood was all over the place, but as she spat out, "Status report!" she heard something unexpected, she heard the sound of applause...but not from her position, from the tree line.
"Shit." She said to herself.
"You're every bit as good as we heard Neia Baraja." An arrogant voice said to her. "Remedios wasn't lying about your skill with a bow." She looked at the speaker, he was around her age, but had skin a shade lighter than her own, and dark hair fell down to his shoulders, he wore a black and gray set of armor, and as he spoke, others dressed similarly to himself stepped from beyond the trees.
"But...even the best archer needs arrows, and it looks like you're all out, and I'll just bet we can handle you all now that you're just a little bit weakened, while we are fresh, and we've deprived you of the use of one of your best weapons."
He had a predatory grin on his face, "Gray Scripture attack!"
"Scripture!" she shouted in shock, but hate quickly replaced shock as the numbers charged from the woodline, "Black Justice! Take...them...DOWN!" She swept her sword towards the oncoming ranks, and her people followed her wild charge, scriptures were as a rule, a deadly lot. Not all were equally so, but even those who did not specialize in combat could count themselves equal to a platinum ranked adventurer or better. Further, the members of the Gray Scripture were unusual in their numbers, and roughly equalled the present members of Black Justice.
Tinamoc sat and watched the melee ensue, and he could not tear his eyes away from what he was seeing. His eyes flicked off center only at the sound of the hell horses of the scouts as the feigned retreat became a strike at the backs of the scripture after they finished their long out of sight loop.
Even with this, fighting was brutal, Neia's constant practice got her to the point where she felt she was no longer a disgrace to her mother with the weapon in hand, but nonetheless she found it far easier for her to use the grips and throws instructed to her by Sebas. A gray scripture member lunged forward with a sword, prompting her to wheel back on her heel and let it pass beside her, only to immediately move back in, striking his arm with her hip, throwing him off balance, as he stumbled, she completed her rotation on her heal, allowing him to fall forward, and from her standing position she lunged in and stabbed him through the eye and into his brain.
The one handed style her people had developed offered unique advantages in close combat, freeing a hand to grab, punch, pull, twist, or even steal from an opponent, and the gray scripture's equipment was not equal to the myriad advantages of the complete sets of runecrafted gear, as they gradually found out, and nor were they equal to hell horses, those nightmarish beasts charged into the back with such force that their numbers were temporarily diminished by the aura of fear and the simple act of being thrown out of the way by the force of the impact, and into that breach broke Black Justice fighters who were eager to exploit the opportunity. The gap at the center line resulted in their members being divided and forced to take on two, three, or even four opponents at once while the stunned or terrified recovered through martial arts, potions, or innate healing abilities.
As the combat drew on, Neia saw an opportunity, she rushed away from the line and snatched up an arrow, she stabbed her sword into the ground and pulled out her bow, it took less than a moment's concentration to pour her mana into the shot, a shot fired from a weapon given to her by Ainz Ooal Gown, a god, a father, an eternal king, and as the string grew taut, she sought the weakest point of her enemies, and then she screamed at the top of her lungs, "LEFT HIT GROUND!" They didn't even hesitate, the constant training in the following of battlefield direction made thought irrelevant, in battle they had no minds, only will and discipline, action and reaction required no reason, no understanding, it simply 'was' and when her orders hit ears, they hit the ground before the words hit their brains. Even as the order left her lips, she had already 'dropped' the arrow, letting it loose from her finger tips, and it flew like a dove, shining white and seeming to carry with it the light of the sun, a holy ray that pierced six men before exploding with enough force that members of both sides were thrown backwards. Those who had hit ground, jumped up and pressed the advantage, stabbing at the grounded gray scripture members with fury, though numerous people were injured by the the explosion to a greater or lesser degree, one thing didn't happen to Black Justice that did happen to the gray scripture, the blinding effect of the light, because of their relative positions, more Gray scripture members were temporarily blinded than Black Justice, and the combined advantages proved decisive.
The numbers might have begun roughly evenly, but the imbalance continued to pile up until Gray Scripture members found themselves facing first two at once, then three, then five, and with ever declining success, until only a handful remained, including their commander, a man who had gone from arrogant...to desperate.
"Gah!" he shrieked when he realized there was no victory to be had, when he saw Neia behind her men taking another arrow out of a corpse. "Withdraw!" He shouted, "Lightfoot!" he shouted again, and he and his remaining band turned and fled at a rapid pace. Had the arrow Neia pulled out not been broken and useless, she would have targeted them in retreat, but as it was, she sighed heavily, drew a deep breath, raised her sword, and shouted, "Justice! Justice! Justice!" A cheer echoed by her surviving members, and struck like a hammer blow at the retreating backs of the few surviving Gray Scripture members.
When the victory cry died down, Neia slashed at the air, sending blood flying from off of her sword, and she reasheathed it, an action imitated by her followers, "Check for survivors." She said as she stepped over bodies strewn about the grass, "Aid our wounded first, but do not execute any survivors among the Gray Scripture, I want to talk to any prisoners." She said ominously, and then bent down to check the form of one of her people, it was a young man, he had taken a hammer to the face with such force that Neia only knew he'd been handsome before by virtue of having met him. Now he wasn't handsome anymore. His sword was still in hand and it was a mess of blood and gore, he'd done his part, and Neia closed the one eye that survived the impact. "You did your job soldier, now rest." Fortunately, he was one of the few downed Black Justice members to have actually died, while they were not without dead, their actual numbers were permanently down only by ten, while others suffered burns, scars, and lacerations. There were still some screams and groans as wounds were treated, and some tried to move on their own. Neia approached one fallen figure and recognized her immediately, even though her face was covered in blood.
"Skana!" Neia said sharply as the woman struggled to rise, even light as the armor was, having been bruised and bloodied, she was not in the best shape to command her body to do what she wanted. As she tried to get up again, Neia pulled her body up and into her own, cradling her upper half, with her free hand she grabbed her water skin from her side, put it to her mouth, and pulled out the cork. "Here, drink." She said, and put it to Skana's bloody lips, tilting it back and letting the water flow. It was almost a full minute, after Skana sighed with relief from the drink and Neia had poured some onto her face to clean it up and look for the wound, before she realized that it wasn't that both of Skana's eyes were closed, it was that one of them was closed, and another one was missing entirely.
She wasn't going to say anything, but Skana did, "Say, I seem to have misplaced something, could you keep an eye out for it?" She grunted out through copious amounts of pain. Neia stared at her in shock at the absurdity of the statement. "You're in my arms, missing an eye after a deadly battle against Slane Theocracy scriptures...and you're making jokes?" Neia said incongruously. "Well I seem to have been blessed with two of them for JUST such an occasion." Skana said, spitting out blood with her painful laugh as she pointed to the one remaining eye.
"You didn't injure your head...did you?" Neia asked as she pulled out a healing potion and poured it over Skana's body, banishing the bruises and pain.
"No, and I know I didn't, because I know with one eye, I have an excuse to look at you twice as often and for twice as long." She grinned through cut up lips and broken teeth, that gradually began to repair themselves as the potion began to take ever faster effect.
"Flirting...now?" Neia asked.
"When better than when near death, you can't deny the dying their final pleasures." Skana said with a laugh that was suddenly much more clear and healthy. "Ah shit." Skana said as her wounds disappeared, "So much for that excuse."
Neia looked at her blankly, "Your eye..." She said. It had not come back. Skana paused, reached up, and touched the socket. "Its...not painful now...I thought it would start to grow back but...where is it?" She said in a voice that was suddenly serious.
"You won't be seeing that again." A gray clad figure spat out. "Our weapons are not the top tier stuff of adamantite adventurers, but we have some enchantments of our own, and what we take from you, you never get back, your eye is gone forever." He said, spitting blood and laughing as he managed to get the words out, "And if we have to take you all down, eyeball by eyeball, finger by finger, that is what we'll fucking do, you're all just walking corpses. You just don't know it yet!" he cackled and hacked, sending stream of blood in their direction. "And I'll be watching from the afterlife, from the glory of the gods as it happens!" he said, falling backwards as the strength to hold himself up faded away.
"Stay here." Neia said to Skana, and walked over to the fallen Gray Scripture member, she leaned in close and whispered, "Even if that happens, you won't see it, because you're about to be a walking corpse, your skeleton will be raised, still wearing your gray clothing, and you'll walk at our direction and work at our direction, and build the world we want your walking corpse to build. So...who's the walking corpse now...?" Neia said with a dark smile as she looked him in the eyes with her terrifying gaze, and held his face with both hands and forced him to look at her as she spoke, and the smile on her face prompted a growing look of horror on his own, which was the last face he made before he slipped into death.
Neia grabbed his hair and turned his face to Skana's, so that she could see that he had died in terror, prompting Skana to say congenially, "Remind me never to make you mad." She grinned for emphasis, and flooded with the relief of survival, Skana boldly reached out, and pulled Neia into an embrace, one broken by Neia only with great reluctance when someone approached and said, "We have our final count of dead and permanently injured, and we have a few prisoners." He spoke with some hesitation, as if he were uncomfortable interrupting the warm moment between the two women.
Neia looked him over, he was a young man himself, sandy hair, freckles, dark complexion, a lot of marks over his shy expression that combined told her that he had more battle of life and death experience...than actual life experience. She mentally shrugged and covertly took Skana's hand and gave it a squeeze as she spoke to him. "Thank you, then I need to go deliver my report to Tinamoc, bring me a written count while I'm speaking with him." He nodded and went to see to the task and as he retreated she said to Skana, "I'll need a report from you as well, come by my tent after dinner this evening." Skana smiled and nodded, "As my pope commands."
"You're looking well." She said to Tinamoc as she drew near and put her visor back on, keeping her voice almost light hearted to ensure her positive emotional state would radiate to others listening nearby.
"Well, I am, thanks to you." He said.
"For the moment." Neia said. "However, it appears I may become more a liability to your security soon than an asset to it. If the Slane Theocracy is targeting me for death, and is serious enough about it to send a scripture, even if it wasn't their best, well that could be a problem."
Tinamoc nodded his head gravely. "Who were these men though?" He asked, and gestured to the dead bodies near the carts, those who made up the first wave of attack.
"If I had to guess, criminals, mercenaries, bandits, basically disposables." Neia said, "Though I have no idea how they compelled them to fight so fearlessly and with such reckless disregard, I doubt they had much choice in the matter." Her voice had a serious tone as she continued, "That being said, I'm just glad they didn't send something like the Holocaust Scripture or the Black Scripture after us, we're good, and with our equipment we're even better, but all bets are off against that lot." She said with soft voiced seriousness.
Tinamoc stroked his chin in thought, "Well with the war still going on with the elves, I'd imagine they've got their hands full, but...now that you've killed one scripture, they will definitely send another. As long as you're here in the North at least, and as long as you're easy to find, which you are as long as you're with me."
"What do you suggest?" Neia asked.
"I see two possibilities." He said simply, "The first is that I discharge you from your duty so you can take your people and get back to your more serious mission, establishing the faith of the Sorcerer King and eliminating threats to it from inside and outside the Holy Kingdom." Neia wasn't sure whether to smile or frown about that, though she found she felt a little sad at the notion of leaving the pleasant, clever, and unusually ethical merchant.
"Alternatively, you can travel South with me and continue the escort status, while you're known to be in the South, its very unlikely they'll choose another strike like this, the North is chaotic, it is wild still, an attack like this can be undertaken with reasonable security. But my contacts say the South is orderly, that patrols move out reliably, that the roads are nearly clear of danger, an action like what we just saw would draw immediate response from people capable of doing so very effectively." Tinamoc finished speaking and then spread his hands in front of him.
He had a wry smile on his face, and it did not hide his relief at still being alive. "Whatever your choice, I assure you I will have only the most favorable things to relate to those I meet, if you should choose to leave, and I confess, I will rather miss your company if you leave, but as you said, when something must be done, it doesn't matter if we like it or not."
AN: Well I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you enjoyed the battle driven boldness of Skana, whom I'm privately...for now...nicknaming 'Skana the bold', I also hope you like the way I'm fleshing out her character more and the way it contrasts with Neia Baraja, and also...I hope you like cliffhangers, because I won't be writing more on this story...for two days. ;) I would, but no weekend for this writer for now, and way to much work to do. However this should satisfy everybody for the time being. In the meantime...REVIEWS PLEASE! :)
OH...and as a post script...I know some of you are wondering what kind of physical scene you can expect between Skana & Neia, and you know what...you're all perverts, that's why I love you. ;) No but seriously, I'm not telling you so don't ask, wait and see and judge for yourselves how well I can pull off a more...intricate scene.