Chapter 68: The trident Mark

Chapter 68: Chapter 68: The trident Mark

They left the driver and the two bound bandits at the damaged carriage under a temporary ward Lira sketched into the dirt. The rest of the group moved east through the thinning trees, the limping leader staggering ahead under Allan’s grip.

The cave mouth they had entered was only a side tunnel. When they crested the last rise, the full scale of the place opened beneath them.

A narrow valley lay cupped between steep ridges, its floor lit by dozens of torches and oil lamps. A small town of rough timber and stone buildings clung to both sides of a shallow river. Smoke rose from cook fires. Figures moved between the buildings in an easy, unhurried way.

At the far end, a larger structure of blackened timber dominated the settlement: the main house. Wagons and stripped carriages stood in open yards. The air carried the mixed smells of woodsmoke, unwashed bodies, and something sharper that made Amelia’s jaw tighten.

Allan stopped at the edge of the overlook. The wounded bandit leader sagged against him, breathing hard.

"This is no ordinary junction," Allan said quietly. "Talk. Why the nobles? You know the law. Capture by the Archduke’s men does not end in a clean hanging. It ends in public torture until the mind breaks. So why risk it?"

"Haha..." The man laughed once, wet and bitter. "Because you filthy rotten nobles have taken enough from us. No more."

Allan’s grip tightened until the bandit hissed. "Tell me. You think I won’t torture you? Tell me now. Who is leading you all? There must be someone."

The bandit hesitated, but the look in Allan’s eyes felt dangerous.

"I... I don’t know names. Orders come through the gate captain. That’s all I get to keep my tongue."

Allan held him tight once more, then let him fall to the ground.

Amelia stared down at the valley, arms folded. "This fief belongs to Archduke Poseidon. Atlantis proper. Why has he done nothing? A town of bandits operating in the open under his banner?"

Allan said nothing. The hunch that had sat in the back of his mind since the guards closed the western road sharpened into something colder. He looked at Seris.

She was already mapping routes with her eyes: side paths, blind corners, the single bridge that spanned the river near the main gate. "We cannot fight our way through. Forty visible fighters, more inside the buildings, and maybe high-level ones near the center. I’m not sure. We need a quieter door."

Allan turned to Lira. "Lira, do you still have your hex book?"

"Huh? Wh... what do you mean?"

"Come on, Lira. I know. Just tell me if you have the book. Whatever will get us inside unseen."

Lira’s expression was slightly worried, but almost expectant. "Umm... which one?"

He stared for a heartbeat. He had thought she was using only one book, but she clearly carried more than one. The difference between the hesitant girl who had first served him and the woman standing here was no longer subtle. He decided not to question it tonight.

"Anything that lets us walk through that gate without drawing eyes."

Lira smiled. With a soft snap of her fingers, five volumes appeared in the air before her: dark leather, red bindings, one the deep purple of old bruises. Her eyes darkened as she scanned them, head tilting slightly as if listening. After a few seconds, she selected the purple volume.

"Found it."

The spell unfolded without chant or gesture, as if she had complete affinity with the book. Darkness rose from the ground like water and closed around the five of them. The world outside the veil became muffled and gray. Amelia flinched once, then steadied when Lira murmured, "It only hides. We still need to walk carefully and stay as silent as possible."

Before they descended, Amelia looked at the remaining bandits who had been forced to guide them. Her eyes burned a dull red. She closed her fist. The men convulsed, blood forced from their mouths and eyes in thin streams, then collapsed without a sound. She wiped her hand on her cloak and said nothing.

Filthy animals, she thought.

They walked down the slope under the veil. No sentries challenged them. The gate itself was a simple timber arch with two bored guards leaning on spears. A third bandit was entering at the same moment, so they slipped through in his shadow, and the darkness held.

Inside the town the air was thicker. The river cut the settlement in two, spanned by a single wooden bridge near the center. Torches burned in iron brackets along the main street.

Men in mismatched armor and rough leathers moved between the buildings. Some carried crates, others laughed over dice on overturned barrels. The smell of roasting meat mixed with the sharper stink of unwashed bodies and spilled wine.

Along the street, two men were dragging a frightened girl of perhaps sixteen toward a side alley. When she tried to resist, one of them struck her. Allan forced himself to keep his eyes forward and his pace steady.

From an upper window of a nearby house came the sounds of several men shouting and a woman crying out, then falling silent.

Seris’s hand closed hard on the hilt of her blade. Lira’s aura flickered once under the veil. Amelia’s breathing had gone shallow.

Allan’s voice was barely a whisper. "We take the one at the top. The rest will fall when he does. So let’s walk with cool heads. Okay?"

Seris answered just as softly. "We cannot stay hidden and still move among them. We need their faces and their clothes."

Amelia’s eyes locked on the house where the cries had come from. "Then we go there."

Allan started to say wait, but she was already moving.

They entered the house through a side door the veil made effortless. The main room stank of sweat and cheap wine. A noblewoman lay on a low table, her clothes torn, her eyes red and distant. Five bandits were in the room, laughing and passing a bottle. She no longer had the strength to scream.

"Y... you... you animals!"

Amelia dropped the veil around herself alone. Her body became solid and visible in the torchlight. The five men froze for half a second.

"Who the hell..."

Her eyes flared full crimson. The blood inside every one of them locked. They stood rigid, mouths open, unable even to draw breath.

"Wait, Amelia!" Seris called.

But Amelia’s hand moved once, a small sideways cut through the air.

Crack.

Five bodies folded where they stood, joints inverted, blood forced outward through skin and eyes. They hit the floorboards in wet heaps. One man’s head twisted almost completely around. Another’s arms bent backward at the elbows until the bones punched through the flesh. The room went silent except for the soft drip of blood onto the boards.

Seris stepped through the dissolving darkness a moment later, blade already half-drawn. "We needed one of them talking."

Allan followed with Lira. He looked at the dead men, then at Amelia. "Forget information from these. Help the poor noblewoman. Then let’s strip the bodies. We need the clothes."

They worked quickly. The noblewoman was beyond coherent speech, her eyes tracking nothing. Amelia and Seris lifted her from the table while Lira found a clean cloak in one of the nearby closets.

They wrapped her and carried her to a side room. Lira cast a sleep charm, and the woman’s breathing slowed and her body went slack.

Allan checked the bandit corpses. The clothes were rank with sweat and old blood, but they would fit well enough once the worst stains were wiped away. Allan took the largest set, a heavy leather jerkin and patched trousers.

Seris, Lira, and Amelia took the others, faces set hard against the smell. Amelia’s hands did not shake as she pulled on the dead man’s boots.

Allan looked at them. "Ready?"

Everyone nodded.

They walked the main street under the partial cover of the same darkness, now thinned so they appeared as ordinary figures to casual eyes. No one looked twice. A pair of bandits argued over a dice game near a cook fire. Another group hauled a heavy crate toward a storehouse.

The deeper they moved toward the central house, the worse the sounds became: laughter mixed with crying, the occasional sharp order, the dull impact of fists. From one open doorway a man’s voice barked for someone to bring more wine. From another came the sound of a woman being struck into silence.

Allan’s analysis stone pulsed once against his chest. The readings climbed steadily. High levels. Multiple. They were inside the true center now. He kept his head down and his pace even.

Seris was right.

Seris walked a half-step behind him, eyes scanning rooftops and alleys. Lira stayed close, the purple volume still floating near her shoulder under the veil. Amelia’s gaze swept every doorway they passed, her jaw tight.

Near the gate of the main house, a single bandit stood watch, leaning on a long sword whose hilt carried a clear silver inlay. Amelia’s fingers closed on Allan’s sleeve.

"That emblem," she whispered. "The trident. House Poseidon. The Archduke’s personal mark."

Allan stared at the sword for a long second. The hunch that had begun on the overlook settled into certainty, and he disliked it with every part of himself that still remembered how the game’s politics had worked. An Archduke’s personal mark on a bandit’s weapon, in the middle of an open slave-and-ransom operation, meant only one of two things.

Either the mark had been stolen, which was unlikely given the quality of the silver, or the man carrying it had permission. Permission from someone high enough that the local guards closed roads and looked the other way.

"Yes," he said under his breath. "My guess is coming true. And I do not like it at all."