Hospitality

The barracks and mess tent were nothing more than a useless, smouldering waste - consumed by Dashiel’s flame attack. However, along ways the tents the Vanguard found a sturdy, four-wheeled supply cart stored by the mercenary vanguard, hitched to a broad, heavy-set pack horse. Dashiel brought the cart to the harvesting machine.

Dashiel quickly set to work dismantling the delicate brass framework of the compaction manifold, packing the orange pyramid securely into a padded crate. Together, Reis and Morohtar hoisted the wood-and-iron chests into the bed of the vehicle.

As Dashiel was adjusting the spacing under the heavy canvas cover to secure the ammunition, he found another chest. The iron-bound oak chest was tucked deep into the front nose of the cart. Unlike the uniform, sterile crates holding the crystals, this one was heat-branded with the standard logistical mark of Nadaran supply quartermaster.

Curious, the gnome popped the heavy brass latches and threw back the lid.

A rich, deeply savoury aroma instantly cut through the damp, alkaline mountain fog. Shierra, who had been leaning wearily against her staff blinked in surprise as Dashiel let out a low, theatrical whistle of pure ecstasy.

“By the plump grains of the southern valleys, look at this!” Dashiel shrieked, his stubby fingers immediately plunging into the crate.

Instead of the dry, tooth-shattering hardtack or the bland, salt-encrusted iron rations commoners endured on the trail, this chest was a treasure trove of high-tier hospitality; four thick slabs of maple-smoked venison, six whole foot-wheel of wax-sealed sharp, golden cheddar, a couple of burlap sacks of sun-dried figs, honeyed almonds, and dried mountain plums, four loaves of heavy Vangian waybread, and three oak casks of rich, dark clover-mead, apple cider vinegar, and spiced winter wine.

“Real food,” Shierra whispered, a genuine, radiant smile breaking across her face for the first time since leaving her grove. She stepped forward, picking up a wheel of the wax-covered cheese with an expression that bordered on reverence.

“No ash, no grit. Reis, look at this - there’s enough honeyed fruitcake here to keep us sustained for a month!”

“The Lyceum certainly believes in feeding its executioners well,” Dashiel chuckled, already sliding a flask of the clover-mead into his coat pocket with practiced efficiency. “Old Frederick would have charged an absolute fortune for just one of these venison slabs back at the Rim.”

Even Reis allowed the rigid architecture of his posture to soften for a fraction of a second. A faint, stoic smirk played on his lips as he watched the frontier survivors revel in the unexpected bounty. Good food was a vital tactical resource; a well-fed vanguard marched harder, thought faster, and held the line longer.

“Pack it securely alongside the crystals,” Reis said gently, offering Lady Hannah a quiet nod. He turned towards the rogue, “Mehr, let’s gather the horses.”

* * * *

 

Morohtar pulled the heavy, weather-beaten canvas cover over the cart's frame. He tied down the leather tethers with swift, secure knots, completely concealing both the volatile, faintly glowing munitions and the newly discovered stash of provisions from any prying eyes along the high trails. Dashiel was upfront on the driver’s bench. the pack horse’s lead rope into his hand. His mountain pony’s lead rope was tied to the cart, the gnome assumed responsibility for the logistics train.

Reis swung his massive frame back into Sabre’s leather saddle, turning his horse toward the southern boundary line.

“It’s two days’ ride to the Capital, and I will be glad to exit these hills, before any long-ranging patrols discovered what happened here. Move out.”

With Dashiel guiding the heavily laden canvas cart through the rocky shale, the vanguard pushed south into the high peaks, breaking into a rapid, urgent pace toward the heart of the realm.

* * * *

The jagged, calcified white crags of the upper Chalk Hills finally surrendered to the deep green alpine timberline. Sheltered within a dense, hidden grove of mountain pines, the vanguard made their camp.

Dashiel’s brass crucible burned with its customary smokeless amber flame, casting a warm, flickering glow across the camp. The atmosphere was thick with the rich, deeply savoury aroma of their captured provisions. For the first time in days, the harsh survival diet of the frontier was completely forgotten.

Near the edge of the hearth, Reis knelt before a clean hardwood board. Having laid aside his heavy iron gauntlets, his hands moved with surprising, rhythmic precision as he used a small, razor-sharp utility blade to slice uniform portions of the hickory-smoked beef brisket and sharp cheddar.

He selected the tenderest, prime cuts from the centre of the brisket, arranging them neatly onto a clean wooden trencher alongside a cleanly pared slice of the golden cheese and a handful of sun-dried figs.

With a slow, deliberate movement, Reis rose to his feet. His towering frame cast a long shadow across the clearing, but his posture carried a quiet, formal grace as he stepped toward the stone ledge where Lady Hannah sat. He extended the trencher toward her, his gravelly voice dropping into a low, polite cadence.

“The alpine wind is turning sharp tonight, Lady Hannah,” Reis said softly, offering a formal, gentlemanly inclination of his head. “A long day in the saddle requires solid fuel to preserve core temperature. Please, take the centre cuts. They carry the most nourishment.”

Hannah looked up from her lap, her aristocratic enunciation softening with genuine gratitude as she accepted the wooden plate. “Thank you, Sir Reis. Your courtesy on the trail is..unexpected.”

Reis offered a faint, solemn smirk, then turned back toward the fire. Carrying the large hardwood board, he circled the hearth to serve the rest of the camp. He offered a generous heap of smoked brisket to Dashiel, who took it with a jubilant grunt, and sliced a thick block of cheddar for Shierra, ensuring his companions were fully provisioned before he even considered his own ration.

As Reis stepped near the edge of the dark timberline, the shadows shifted. Morohtar smoothly materialized from the pine needles. The dark elf reached out, plucking a strip of cured venison from the board. Then, in a rare, profound display of silent solidarity, the deadly rogue extended his hand and firmly patted Reis’s, shoulder plate - a stoic gesture of absolute martial thanks from a phantom to an anvil. Reis acknowledged it with a solitary, quiet nod of his head.

* * * *

The pre-dawn alpine air was completely overpowered by the clean, sharp aroma of apricot and toasted wood. Sitting on a rolled canvas pack, Lady Hannah cradled her thin Far Eastern porcelain cup, swirling the final, precious amber drop of her imported sun tea. An hour ago, she awoke from her rest to join Dashiel who was sitting watch.

As she lowered her cup, her sharp eyes - habituated by years in the Lyceum to constantly cataloguing every variable - flicked briefly to her right.

Tucked securely into a limestone recess, Shierra was sleeping peacefully near Reis. As the half-elf turned onto her side, the heavy charcoal wool cloak slipped off her shoulder, exposing her tunic to the biting canyon wind. Moving with silent steps, Hannah knelt beside the young woman and carefully, quietly draped the cloak back over her frame, tucking the borders securely to anchor her warmth.

Hannah returned to the canvas pack beside Dashiel, retrieving her heavy vellum journal and uncapping her gold quill.

"Master Dashiel," Hannah spoke softly, her voice pitched below the wind, "did you witness the exact moment Sir Reis engaged the labour machine?"

Dashiel paused his driver, a broad, grease-stained grin spreading beneath his white moustache.

"It was a splendid spectacle, My Lady. Absolute structural violence. In all my years in the Undercity, I have never felt more scared and excited at the exact same time."

Hannah leaned forward, the gold nib of her quill hovering just above the blank vellum page.

"I am speaking specifically of the transition. The exact stance he assumed to defend the transfixed Shierra when the machine brought its pincer down."

She turned a page in her journal, revealing a complex, geometric sketch of intersecting leverage angles.

"It was an impossible move, sir. By all logic, the pincers should have crushed them both.” Hannah began. With a flick of her gold quill, a ghostly sapphire shadow of Reis deflecting the massive blow hovered in the air near them.

“During the moment of Reis’s engagement, my eyes were tracking his kinetic matrix through the Lexical Lattice," Hannah explained, her voice dropping into a sharp, clinical whisper. "I cross-referenced his physical posture against every modern fighting manual on record - from the defensive wards of the frontier foot soldiers all the way to the pristine guard stances of the Capital knights. This stance was not present."

Dashiel’s goggles clicked as he looked up from the ghostly image.

"Not present? How?"

"Because it was not engineered to counter swords or halberds," Hannah said, her dark eyes flashing with the cold thrill of an archivist. "The leverage angle and the precise drop of his centre of gravity were optimized specifically for redirecting heavy and massive kinetic assaults. The stance is ancient, Master Dashiel, hence not appearing in any training manuals. I dare say, it predates the founding of Thorreon itself."

Hannah drew a deep breath. “As such, I expanded my search into the legends of the First Age. The Age of Founding. The closest match I find was the stance specifically developed to counter the giants.”

Dashiel let out a low, whistling breath through his teeth, his hand going perfectly still on his tool case. He stared at the sleeping knight across the camp for a long moment before darting his head back to the scribe.

The gnome paused, his large eyes blinking behind his thick lenses as the scribe's previous statement finally caught up with his train of thought.

"Wait a minute..did you say, giants?" Dashiel asked, his voice pitching up an octave. "You refer to the feral, towering, man-eating giants that roamed the land before Thorreon came to be? From the stories told to children to keep them from misbehaving?"

"Yes, Master Gnome," Hannah replied, her tone dropping into the quiet, reverent cadence of a historian recounting a forbidden text.

"Long ago, before the white walls of the capital were ever raised, the frontier was untamed. A specific band of warriors waged war against the giants after their ceaseless raids on the nomad trading wagons. They were forced to develop an entirely new matrix of combat geometry - postures designed specifically to survive and redirect the sheer, crushing mass of enemies that stood twenty feet tall. It worked - the warriors did what other clans could not, and soon the giants were eradicated."

Dashiel stared at her, utterly speechless.

Hannah did not wait for the gnome to process the historical weight of it. She lifted her gold quill into the cold canyon air. With a swift, practiced flick of her wrist, she traced a series of sharp, interlocking geometric angles in the empty space between them.

"My Lady, could your Lexical Lattice cross-reference the earliest edition of the Registry of Peerage?"

Hannah did not blink. She held up the immaculate, ink-stained gold instrument.

"The human brain is fundamentally limited in its capacity to retain the sheer volume of the Lyceum’s archives. This quill is my arcane focus, much like the Sylvan orb is to Shierra. Within its matrix, I store my wealth of knowledge. I can parse the Registry, yes. But why?"

Dashiel lowered his tools, his expression turning uncharacteristically grave.

"Because the big man is an anomaly. When we were fleeing to Nadaran, a desperate man in his position should have taken the horses we needed by force and left the farmer weeping in the mud. Instead, Reis paid for them legally. And it wasn't just a handful of cheap copper - to purchase two fully-saddled, healthy frontier mounts on a whim requires serious wealth. It makes one wonder - Is he a high-born noble masquerading as a rogue wanderer? Or perhaps some disgraced scion of a wealthy merchant house who keeps a private fortune tucked away in his rather large boots?"

Dashiel shook his head, his grease-stained fingers lightly tapping the brass casing of his alchemical pack.

"I have spent the last week trying to calculate the man's origins, My Lady, and I can tell you right now that 'Alderron' doesn't exist in the municipal registries. I checked the capital manifests before we left Nadaran. In fact, he is a ghost."

From the gold nib, pale sapphire light began to seep, weaving upward into a complex, hovering grid of three-dimensional threads. The Lexical Lattice activated, turning the space above her vellum journal into a glowing, searchable index of the Lyceum's most heavily guarded aristocratic archives.

"Let us test your theory of the ghost, Master Dashiel," Hannah murmured, her dark eyes reflecting the brilliant blue geometry.

She moved the quill in the air to spell a name in perfect cursive. She willed the Lattice to query the specific surname: Alderron.

The sapphire threads spun rapidly, cross-referencing thousands of stored lineage profiles. Hannah watched the Lattice sift through the ancient registries. She checked the High Court manifests. She checked the heraldry of the Great Houses that held seats on the Sovereign Council. She adjusted the parameters, sending the spell cascading down through the Lesser Houses, the provincial barons, and every minor knightly family that had ever pledged fealty to the estates above them.

The sapphire grid glowed brightly for a moment, processing the vast imperial architecture, and then -with a soft hiss - the threads snapped back into a neutral, empty sphere.

No matches.

The name Alderron held no land, no crest, and no history within the realm of Thorreon.

Hannah slowly lowered her quill, the blue light fading from the air until only the gray dawn remained. She looked down at the blank vellum page. A thrill of genuine mystery piercing through her usual academic certainty. Dashiel had been absolutely right. The man who wielded the ancient geometry of the giant-killers, the Field Marshal who commanded the Rim War campaigns and carried a private fortune in his boots, did not officially exist.