Interlude I
Mistakes
"Office: Department for the Management of Extra regional Resources, Camor
To: General Markou, Estan High Command (or Current Equivalent)
Subject: No More Troops.
To Whom it May Concern,
They say the plains people of the south are the fiercest warriors in the entire world, not because they're tactical geniuses or they have superior weapons- though the near mythical status of sunless steel is well earned- it's not even that they're superior horsemen- also a reputation well earned. The strength of the plains walkers comes in their teamwork and their ability to adapt to changing situations like water flowing down an embankment.
When you ask a soldier what it's like to serve in the Forgotten Lands, he will tell you there are no words to describe it. Having served here for almost a year and having skirmished with the locals more than a few times I'll do my best to express my impressions: Insanity.
If you could only see this place, you would understand why; fissures open the ground with little warning, magic lightning storms erase entire portions of land- and everything on it- at once and creatures roam that would make even dragons seem quaint by comparison.
No amount of swords, powered armor or cannon will subdue this roiling tumult and there will be no rampart tall or thick enough to make keeping a piece of territory worth the resources to be gained from doing so. Quite simply, the land won't be tamed and neither will its people.
It is time your department rethinks its goals. This is untenable."
Sincerely,
Colonel Docia Crane
5/390
th
Rock Crusher Infantry Regiment
Felicia
The village square was chaos.
Soldiers were fighting with men in plain clothes who themselves were chasing after Sarah and Lostariel. The soldiers and what Felicia could only assume were village militiamen were arguing and chasing one party or the other in hopes of being the first to get them- Sarah and her group were running about or making vague threatening motions to would-be attackers and more than once the half-elf leveled her pistol at Lostariel.
There were no right choices in such a grand melee. There was no person that could be singled out and spared and no one would prove beyond damnation when it was all said and done. Felicia knotted the twine braid that held her horse's reigns to the hitching post in the caravan's stall. She was insane for thinking she could stop this.
CRACK
.
Sarah's pistol roared to life. Men scattered. Lostariel slipped between a pair of soldiers running at the half elf. No acrobatics, no flair or theatrics. She went straight for the jugular. A young handsome man dived in the way shoving Sarah out of the way and smashed his elbow into Lostariel's masked face. She tumbled backwards with it into the widening circle around the four and for a moment Felicia lost track of her.
Sarah and her companions scooted backwards themselves trying to get away from the press of fighting men, all the while she crammed some kind of rod down the barrel of her gun and when Lostariel made another appearance a few feet away the redhead was ready for it. She hefted her weapon and the two stared- they might have shared words for all Felicia knew.
One of the soldiers tried to catch Lostariel at her blindside. He grabbed her by the throat and she hammered his knee with her heel. In the next moment she was wheeling away with his sword. Some men went to recover their comrade and members of the militia tried to arrest them. The handsome man yanked Sarah back and scooped the elf that was with them into a jog away from the fighting. He had the best possible combat sense given the situation.
Sarah would be okay, Felicia promised herself. Still she wound the twine tight around her knuckles in worry. Lostariel was a murderer, but she was still a human being- she was still someone who'd survived the hardships of the north and didn't
deserve
to die to men like this.
Felicia glanced at her horse. There was no going back. . . .even the elder she'd met in the inn would have said the same thing. She dared touch the hilt of the kukri he'd given her. He'd given it to her with the intent it be buried like a warrior's weapon deserved, but it was needed now. . .
Not for the first time in her short life, Felicia wondered what the ancestors would think. But like so many times before, she put it out of her mind and got to work cutting the twine from the hitch so it was twice as long as her arm. She then used the remainder to tie a third length so it formed a trident shape, a quick search through the stable netted her a horse bit without a bridle and a suitably sized rock. As far as weights went they weren't ideal, but they would do.
The bit was heavy and in the ugly northern style that relied on thick rings of some kind of dense metal joined by a length of thin chain. Felicia took it back to the stall and broke it by leveraging the soon to be bola and the hook for her horse's feed pail. Once done she tied the rings to the longer lengths of rope and the rock to the center length. A quick tug assured her it was tight enough to work- even if it was probably going to be off balance.
There was no time to wonder about her own sanity any more, she was ready to accept her own diagnosis if it meant not losing one- or both- of the people she cared about. Naive. Stupid. Hopelessly lost in a 'civilized' world. . .
But she was a child of the plains, dammit. Her father couldn't take that away from her any more than these soldiers could have. Yes, this was the right thing to do; no one had to understand her choices so long as
