Chapter 15: Enemy Sighted

Kren was perhaps starting to regret ever agreeing to train alongside the soldiers. Aki was relentless, and because Kren had unwittingly become the benchmark for the rest of the recruits, everything had gotten that much harder. Aki made sure they all understood exactly why. If they couldn’t keep pace with their future king, how could they possibly fight for him? How could they fight for themselves, or for their families?

All in all, it had been a rather brutal week. And there was still so much left to do before he had to head north to find the Storm Eagles. Which was why Kren now found himself knee-deep in muck, surveying the only rice farm within their territory.

"This is bad, Your Highness. This batch wasn’t like this yesterday, and now it’s spreading to the others. If we lose the harvest, winter is going to be brutal." Kren turned to the panicked farmers standing off to the side, Ruhu and Bernice flanking him.

"Poison. I can smell it in the soil." Kren muttered, straightening back up, his expression carefully blank. He turned to Ruhu. "Do we have anything that can counter this?"

Ruhu glanced at Bernice for a second before turning back to Kren.

Kren noticed it. There was no obvious shift in his own expression, but something tightened faintly at the corners of his eyes. It seemed Bernice was still seen as the true ruler of his people, even now, with him having assumed full control of what remained of the kingdom. He didn’t blame them for it — for the longest time, her decisions were what had kept them alive. It would be hard for some of them not to defer to her out of pure instinct. That didn’t mean he had to like it. It made him feel inadequate.

"My prince, not unless we know exactly what poison was used. I can’t search for an antidote blind." Kren shook his head and turned to Bernice.

"Can we track whoever did this? They left prints heading south, past the western banks and into the forest beyond." Bernice nodded, though she couldn’t quite hide the flicker of surprise and pride that crossed her face at how easily Kren had gathered all of that just from observing the field.

"Aki and Fima are already on it. One of them should be back within the hour with news." Kren nodded at her.

"In the meantime, I think we should cordon off the infected crops, or pull them entirely. A loss this size would set us back badly — we need to save whatever’s left." He paused and turned to Ruhu. "Do you have any contacts we could source grain from?"

The Snow Leopard-kin shook his head. "Not until the harvest comes in, a few months out, my prince. And even then, I doubt anyone would sell us enough to matter. Whispers of war are already spreading, and Selvin is amassing an army in Oro Village as we speak. Most merchants won’t want to be seen doing business with us right now, given the threats hanging over the town."

Kren grunted and turned to face the ocean. Fishing had always been central to Lasthold’s survival, but they lacked proper vessels capable of reaching the deep waters, where fish were plentiful — and where the danger was steep enough that most of the dragons who’d first landed on these shores two thousand years ago hadn’t survived the crossing. Equal parts opportunity and danger lay out there, but Kren wasn’t willing to leave everything to chance.

"There’s nothing we can do about that army yet, not without allies. Fine. Let Aki and Fima come back with what they find. If we can follow the trail, we deal with it. If not, the soldiers get their first real test today. I leave for the north by nightfall to secure the Storm Eagles’ loyalty."

Kren walked away from the farms with a heavy weight dragging at every step. It had been days, and he still hadn’t spent a single Sovereign Point — not because he couldn’t, but because he couldn’t decide where those points would do the most immediate good for his people.

Looking at the sum of everything stacked against them, Kren felt something close to overwhelmed. And the days spent waiting for his soldiers to reach even the barest competence before marching north had been maddening. It was that very waiting, he realized bitterly, that had given the enemy the room to creep up and strike like this.

He was so deep in thought that he didn’t notice someone barreling into him until they’d already bounced off and hit the ground with a gasp. Kren looked down to find a pair of cat-kin siblings scrambling to pick themselves back up.

"F-forgive us, Your Majesty." the older of the two managed, while the younger — a boy who couldn’t have been more than seven or eight — stared up at Kren like he’d just watched the stars fall from the sky.

"No need to apologize. Where are two such fearless warriors headed at this hour?" Kren asked. The children’s eyes went wide, as though they’d just remembered something urgent, and both hands shot out, pointing east, toward where the river curved back inland.

"We saw a raider camp just past the ridge! They’re getting ready to attack!"

Kren felt his blood turn to ice. He spun toward the direction they’d pointed, so fast the children swore they heard his neck crack.

"Find Bernice. Then gather the rest of the children and the elderly somewhere safe. Warn everyone as you go, but stay quiet about it. I don’t know if those raiders spotted you two, but if they haven’t, I don’t want them finding out the town’s already onto them. Can you do that for me?" Kren asked, managing a small smile. Both children nodded so hard he half worried their heads might come loose.

He watched them sprint off toward the farms, then took to his own heels. He cut back to the townhouse, grabbed his musket and a single longsword he found hanging in their meager armory, and by the time Bernice arrived, Kren was already gone — moving straight for the enemy with all the fury and recklessness of a man who felt like he’d been backed into a corner with nothing left to lose.

<<<<<>>>>>

The Snake-kin posted as sentry watched the entrance to Lasthold, straining and failing to catch any sign of movement from within. He’d stepped away only a few minutes earlier to relieve himself, and had come back just in time to see two children sprinting back toward the town. It didn’t concern him much — the whole settlement was stuffed with weaklings who hadn’t cultivated in a decade. If anything, it annoyed him that this was only meant to be a scouting run and not an extermination. That, at least, would have been simple.

Protocol demanded he report it to his captain, but the man shared his contempt for the assignment and wasn’t inclined to take unnecessary risks either way. So here he stood, back at his post on the ridge overlooking Lasthold, watching to see if a town full of weaklings would somehow scrape together the nerve to bring the fight to them. As the minutes dragged on, his opinion of the felines only curdled further.

"Bunch of pussies." the Snake-kin muttered, spitting to the side in contempt. His spit never reached the ground.

The wet slap of it landing on cloth reached his enhanced senses a half-second too late. He turned his head just in time to see a blade wrapped in a glowing coil of green wind Aura — the last thing he ever saw — as it split his skull cleanly down to the base of his neck.

Kren flicked the spit from his sleeve with a frown, already wrenching the sword free in the same motion, the blow nearly taking the Snake-kin’s head clean off in a wide arc of blood as the body crumpled to the ground with a muffled thud. He’d guessed they were likely watching the town, so he’d taken to the river instead, fighting the current the whole way to circle unseen around their position. Taking out the scout had been almost disappointingly easy.

He turned to face the rest of the camp spread below the ridge. From where he crouched, he counted nearly a dozen Snake-kin scattered among the tents. But what stopped his breath was the sight beyond them — nearly a hundred felines, shackled and bound, hidden just past the ridgeline, armed with weapons that had clearly seen far better decades. He didn’t need anyone to tell him what he was looking at.

His own people. Held in chains, about to be thrown at their own king and countrymen as cannon fodder in a war they had no stake in.

Kren’s jaw tightened. The scout had gone down easily enough. Twelve more, standing between him and a hundred captive innocents? That was going to cost him a great deal more than he had to spare. It might cost him his life.