Chapter 1333: Gifts(3)

Edric took hold of the parchment, hefting it as if it were a strange, foreign tool he had absolutely no concept how to use. His eyes scanned the ink-spotted lines. They weren’t coordinates or military orders. They were names. Rows and rows of names.

He looked up, his suspicion immediately hardening at the sight of the crooked smile lingering on Laedio’s lips. Honestly, Edric preferred it when the man was weeping over his daughter’s fruit box; at least then he was predictable and funny to look at.

"What is this?" Edric demanded, his tone flat.He hated surprises.

"Are you growing daft at your age, Legate? They are—"

"Aye, our grand strike against the Vulture Lord. I heard you the first time," Edric cut him off, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I am asking who these people are. And please, by the five gods, be quick about it. I am having the most terrible headache of my life over here. You disappear into the slums for an entire week only to resurface looking all dandy and joyous, spouting riddles about strikes and merriment.You’d do well as a jester, I say." He let out a sharp, ragged snort through his nose. "I don’t possess the marrow to play games today, Laedio. Speak plainly."

Laedio actually had the gall to look deeply disappointed, pouting like a child wondering why the world wasn’t quite as magical as he wished it to be.

"I recall a time when the bearers of good tidings were treated with a shred of grace," Laedio sighed, though he didn’t lose his momentum. He rose from his perch, sauntering around the heavy oak desk until he loomed directly over Edric’s shoulder.

He thrust a sharp, elegant finger down against the parchment, locking onto the first name on the list. As he did, his roguish smirk stretched wide, his eyes glinting with a cold, slithering malice. It was a wormy sort of smile, ugly and dark, and it made the hairs on Edric’s neck stand on end. Edric despised the expression just as much as he despised a man whispering directly into his ear, but before he could shove the commander back, the words spilled out.

"Where to start if not at the very beginning?" Laedio murmured, his voice a low, gravelly purr. "There was a hole in our perimeter. A long one. A deep one. But I wasn’t given my reputation for fucking around in taverns, old friend." The wormy smile sharpened into something bloody. "I asked the right man the right questions, and wouldn’t you know it? He sang for me like a beautifully canary."

"Who are you talking about?" Edric growled, his eyes tracking the ink.

"Some merchant-cunt."

A merchant? Edric’s brow furrowed. He had absolutely no qualms when it came to stringing up rebel bastards and desperate thieves in the alleys, but merchants were the lifelines of the occupation. They were the ones hauling the grain wagons all the way through the mountain passes to feed the legions. Start cutting them and throwing their bodies in canals, and who would dare bring food here?

Laedio must have caught the sudden, dangerous storm brewing on the Legate’s face, because he was quick to defend his work.

"Oh, he was a dirty one, Edric. Far dirtier than your usual money-pinching rogue. He was a criminal kingpin, a gold-egg-laying hen for the resistance, and above all else, he was a traitor to the crown."

"A traitor?"

"Aye. Think about it," Laedio said, leaning closer, tapping the desk rhythmically. "Didn’t you ever wonder how the fucking Vulture Lord managed to feed so many men in those woods? He has a small army out there, yet his men aren’t raiding the local villages nearly enough to sustain those kinds of numbers. And I do not think they have hit so many fucking carts to have banquets every week’s end.

And where the hell did they get all their steel? Sure, a good portion of them are pathetic deserters from the League’s old armies, but say what you will about that war, those broken cohorts weren’t equipped half as grandly as the bastards we’re fighting now.One in three did not even have a mail in them."

Edric stared at the parchment, the pieces of the puzzle rattling in his head. The fog of exhaustion in his brain began to clear, replaced by a sudden, electric spark of comprehension.

Like dead cinders suddenly breathed upon by a heavy wind, his eyes lit up.

"What do these names have to do with the supply lines then?" Edric whispered, looking up. "Who are they?"

"Oh, a great deal of the realm’s misery sits on this page," Laedio laughed softly, a dangerous, breathless sound. "This list was rather short when we first started our little interrogation. But slowly, by rising early each morning and breaking a few fingers before breakfast... well, a man learns things. Say what you want about Lucius, but the Carrion Raven knows how to train his torturers and agents, we had a real nice collaboration with them. We gave the Carrion Raven just two or three of the foundational names, and they got to work digging out the roots.The list is mostly their work"

Laedio’s finger dragged down the page, tracing the ink like a executioner marking graves. "Xanto Pig-Bone. Laslo Screw-Chin. Vati Loose-Teeth. You wouldn’t believe how deep the rot actually went under our feet. Each one with a nice name to it.

These three bastards were the greatest, most prolific smugglers in the entire Oizenian province. It was a generation’s inheritance, passed down from father to son. They knew every hidden cellar, every forgotten ditch, and every collapsed tunnel getting goods in and out of this city from underground. They delivered everything, Edric. Swords, iron shields, heavy armor, grain bags, salt-beef... everything the Vulture Lord needed to keep his rebellion breathing with us sighing behind his back.They would get the food and weapon in, and then bribe some laborers to put some crates away.Nothing big, one or two crates out of all the wares, but then repeat it this with dozens of other merchants. The smugglers would then deliver it out of the wall, right when that same merchants rolled out of the city. At the same exact time when we lost all interest on them..."

Edric let out a slow, heavy breath, his chest tightening as the sheer scope of the victory settled over him.

"Are you telling me..."

"Aye," Laedio barked, slamming his palm down onto the desk with a triumphant crack. "We didn’t just find a camp, Edric. We cut off the fucking arms that were feeding the Vulture Lord and his minions.

The tunnels are blocked, the warehouses are seized, and every smuggler who knows the routes is currently fitting for a noose. I want to see how that feathered bastard fares hiding out in his damp trees while his belly starts sticking to his spine. If the Five are good, the starving Vulture will come crawling out of the woods himself just to beg us for a piece of roast chicken."

The joke was lost on Edric. He simply stared down at the lines of names, his mind half-numb, his heart hammering a slow, heavy rhythm against his ribs.

News. Actual, undeniable good news. For the first time in two blighted months, it was almost impossible to believe.

He had felt accursed. For sixty agonizing days on this mission, he had possessed nothing but failure after failure to report back to the capital, forced to pen humiliating letters filled with begs and pleas to his king for more steel, more silver, and more meat for the crows. To a man like him, the sudden arrival of victory felt foreign. Unearned, almost.

But this wasn’t just good news; it was exceptional. It was the crack in the shield he had been breaking his knuckles against.

He looked up at Laedio, whose roguish demeanor had settled into something sharp and cold. The blue-cloaked commander probably realized he had just handed them the keys to the province, but Edric felt the need to voice it regardless.

"Thanks to you, we will finally be able to root out the bastard," Edric whispered, his fingers tightening on the edges of the desk. "We have a very long, very bloody list of debts to collect from that bird. Dozens of my finest warriors are currently enjoying the comfort of the worms because of his traps."

"We shall collect the principal and the interest in their stead," Laedio replied somberly, the humor completely draining from his eyes. He leaned closer, tapping the parchment once more. "Still... I believe we can do a great deal more than just starve them, old friend."

Edric blinked, his headache momentarily forgotten. "What do you mean? What else is there?"

"Well, we have successfully rooted out the rats inside the walls of Oizen. But the city was merely the warehouse, if you take my meaning," Laedio explained, his eyes glinting with the thrill of the hunt. "The merchant-cunts who manage the bulk supply lines don’t stay within our gates. They leave Oizen under the guise of common trade, and then they rendezvous out in the wilderness, right on the border of our prince’s future fiefdom, to gather everything the city smugglers managed to haul out through the tunnels. Only then do they deliver it directly into the Vulture Lord’s camp. We may have burnt the storehouse, Edric, but the pests are still gathering in the fields, waiting for that delivery."

"Are you certain of this?" Edric asked, a sudden rush of heat flooding his chest. He realized what lay before them. What had been a slow, agonizing death by asphyxiation for the rebellion could now become a swift, decisive decapitation.

"Our dear, stuttering merchant friend revealed that the rendezvous happens once a week, regular as a temple service," Laedio said, his crooked smile creeping back onto his face. "Which means we have exactly two days to prepare a proper Yarzat welcome."

"How are we going to manage the meeting?" Edric pressed, his military mind already shuffling cohorts and logistics. "Is the merchant even in a state to be seen? Is the bastard alive?"

"Oh, he breathes well enough, made sure of that. He’s just a few fingers short on the left hand, easily hidden beneath a thick leather riding glove. And given the winter cold, no one will think twice about a man keeping his hands covered," Laedio chuckled, "We will pack our finest legionaries into the bellies of the trade carts, hidden beneath the grain sacks. We roll right into their little market, and before the bastards can even realize the trap has sprung, they’ll have five inches of legion iron nestled against their ribs.

We capture their leaders alive, turn them over and ask about the Carrion Ravens, and by next week, we’ll have a map pointing straight to the Vulture Lord’s throat."

Edric stood up, the exhaustion lifting from his shoulders like a discarded cloak. He looked at the crackling hearth, the flickering candles, and the list of doomed men in his hand. For two months, the mud and the rain of Oizen had dictated the terms of his command. But as the firelight caught the grim determination on Laedio’s face, Edric knew the tables had finally turned. The phantom in the woods was about to learn that when you pull the feathers off a vulture, there is nothing left underneath but blood and bone.

Perhaps they would have some fucking chicken to dine on by month’s end.