Chapter 211 — Floor 21 - The Road to Dunadd II

Chapter 211: Chapter 211 — Floor 21 - The Road to Dunadd II

James met the rear of the convoy sword-first.

An orc came off the last wagon with a heavy chipped blade. James took the strike square on Durendal to learn something, and learned it — the S-rank blade drank the impact without a shiver. No chip. No twist in his grip.

His turn. Mana ran down the blade, even and eager, and he cut once, controlled, through the orc’s descending weapon and the armour behind it.

Both halves of the sword, and the orc that had held it, hit the road.

A wounded guard was crawling away from the wagons with an orc following him, patient. James crossed the distance and made it wrong about having time.

The body dropped in open ground — and James saw the shapes converging on it. Four goblins using the rocks for cover from Cillian’s angles. Two wolves swinging wide behind them.

He checked the arithmetic. Crawling guard: twelve meters clear, moving away. Nearest wagon: out of radius. Civilians: screened behind the wagons.

He let them gather.

[CORPSE EXPLOSION ACTIVATED]

The blast was flat and enormous. The goblins simply ceased. Both wolves went across the road like thrown sacks, and the whole exposed flank of the convoy was suddenly, ringingly empty.

The wounded guard stared at the crater, then up at James, with a face that hadn’t decided between thank you and what are you.

It ended quickly after that, the way fights end when their weight shifts.

Finn brought the ogre down in the open ground he’d walked it to — one axe through the leg it kept trusting, the other finishing it there, far from any wagon.

Ronan and the guards pushed out and swept the centre. Cillian’s last wolf died five meters short of the treeline. Goblin archers on the hillside loosed at the huddle of wounded, and the arrows rang off a dome of pale light Maeve had raised before anyone else saw the archers at all.

James and Finn cut off the six monsters leaving with the stolen medicine. The crates stayed. The monsters didn’t.

The rest broke and fled into the trees, and Team Zero let them go. Wounded on the road, a convoy still standing — nobody needed the chase.

The valley went quiet, except for the crying, which was its own kind of quiet.

[ClontarfClimber]: ALL FIVE

[ClontarfClimber]: ALL FIVE FIGHTING

[user77201]: THE CORPSE EXPLODED?????

[BladeNerd_04]: THE SWORD WENT THROUGH THE OTHER SWORD

[HealerWatch]: no circlet btw. it was never the relic

[user48291]: is the wolf ok

[MOD]: 🔨 x3. behave.

They helped without being asked — wounded moved clear of the bodies, smashed crates hauled off the road.

James carried dead guards off the roadway with the rest and laid them down straight, and did nothing else with them. Some doors stayed shut in front of strangers.

The convoy’s surviving officer came over with his sword still drawn. Forty-ish, grey at the temples, blood on him that mostly wasn’t his.

"No crest. No colours. Fighting like a royal guard company and dressed like a riddle." His eyes went over the five of them. "Who are you?"

"Foreign fighters," James said. "From over the sea, past anywhere your maps go. We came to support Prince Raymond. We’re travelling to Dunadd."

"Every spy in the kingdom says half that sentence."

"Spies don’t usually stop ogres," Cillian offered.

"The good ones might." But the sword point dropped, because the man was looking at his wagons — upright, loaded — and his wounded, breathing.

He asked his questions with his guards watching from the wagons, and gave back only what touched his mission. The wagons carried supplies Dunadd needed badly, the medicine most of all. Attacks were coming farther south than three weeks ago. Raymond had recalled commanders to Dunadd. Baldwin had declared the whole Legion rebels, and Crown forces were moving north, and Dunadd was getting ready to be squeezed from both ends.

"You’ll walk with the convoy," he decided, sheathing the sword. "Where I can see you. Consider it thanks and suspicion in one arrangement."

"Efficient," Maeve said.

What was left of the raiders had fled east, into the deep trees — away from the north road, which ran open all the way to the city. The officer weighed it anyway, then called over two riders and gave the lead one a message for the city. The wind brought pieces of it up the line. Convoy attacked... supplies saved... five foreign fighters... claim they’ve come for the prince.

The riders went off at a canter, north, keeping to the open ground.

"Raymond will know we exist before we knock," Ronan said.

"That was his plan," James said. "It’s what I’d do."

The convoy rolled on through the afternoon, and the talk got heavier, because the war had stopped being a projection.

"Baldwin’s army," Cillian said, quiet, off the general air. "When it comes north, that’s not orcs. That’s fellas like him—" a nod up the line at the officer "—wearing the other crest. And they’ll attack us."

"Probably," James said.

"So what’s the line?"

"We defend ourselves and we finish the floor. But we don’t kill anyone we don’t have to. That’s the line."

"And the whole world is watching," Maeve said. "The first time one of us kills a human soldier, that clip exists forever. Baldwin’s people will use it. Ours will too. Just — know it’s being recorded before it happens, not after."

Nobody pretended the civil war could be dodged. The road they were on led straight into it. But the line was said out loud now, and on the record they controlled.

Evening came down the valley, and Dunadd came up to meet it.

The road crested a final rise, and the city stopped being a shape and became a fact.

It was built over a high stone hill the way armour is built over a body — ring above ring of wall climbing the slopes to a final fortification at the crown, where Raymond’s banner flew huge and red-lit: the stag over crossed spears.

Below the outer wall, refugee camps spread across the flats in ordered rows, cookfires by the hundred. Soldiers drilled in yards by the gates. Damaged wagons and siege engines queued outside repair workshops. Racks of monster hide and horn stood being broken down into armour. Medical tents lined the approach — too many of them. Signal fires burned from the towers, a chain of them running north along the walls until distance drank them.

And on the southern hills, small and patient, sat riders who belonged to none of it. Watching.

"Crown scouts," Finn said. "Baldwin already has eyes on this city."

"That’s not a rebel camp," Cillian said.

"No," Ronan said. "That’s an army."

[FrontierWife]: LOOK AT THE CITY. LOOK AT IT

[user19x]: bro built minas tirith

[CrownLoyal_Kev]: those are the KING’S soldiers being hoarded up there

[TowerWatchKR]: signal fire chain along the whole wall. they knew the monsters were coming

[FinnsAxes]: the refugee camps outside the walls man

The convoy ground up to the outer gate as the sky went purple. Soldiers on the wall recognized its banners and the reinforced gate began to move — and helmeted heads turned, one after another, toward the five strangers walking beside the wagons.

Then hoofbeats, from inside.

An officer came out through the opening gate at a canter — better armour, a stag-and-spears sash, the straight-backed impatience of a man sent from somewhere high with no time allotted for questions. His eyes found the five of them immediately.

"The foreign fighters. From the convoy." Not a question. The riders’ report had beaten them by hours. "You’ll stay together. You keep your weapons, but you walk under escort."

The convoy officer stepped forward. "They’re with my wagons — the barracks—"

"The convoy goes to the barracks. Not them." The mounted officer turned his horse and looked down at James as the gates of Dunadd swung open onto torchlight and noise.

"Prince Raymond has ordered the five of you brought directly to his command hall."