Chapter 6 - Just a Stone's Throw Away

“And just where is that bloody Inquisitor, eh?”

Commander Peshka’s booming voice echoed in the empty hall. He took a stiff drink from his glass, the red wine dripped from the tips of his orange mustache as he swallowed. Then he continued his pacing in front of the table, his breastplate bouncing and bobbing on his belly, and waves of wine sloshing around in his cup with their own tidal force in order to keep up with his brusque gait.

He wasn’t about to let this uptight Inquisitor usurp his authority, backing of the Holy Church of Vesenia or not. He took another drink, finishing the glass, then walked over to refill it from the dented pitcher sitting on the wooden chiffonier. His mask of anger faded for a second to regret, as he wondered how long it had been since he had any decent wine to drink. Sent all the way out here in the Farlands, the bloody armpit of the Ossory Empire over a year ago for something that wasn’t even his damn fault. An illustrious military career with high marks for service, duty, and bravery, brought to a tragic end by a simple misunderstanding. Just a simple misunderstanding was all. It’s a sad fact, but you’re only as good as the last five minutes of your military service, they always say, no matter how shiny your medals are. Now, coming up on the end of his career, and forced to serve out the last remaining years at this fort in the middle of nowhere. It was more of a prison sentence than a command posting, and as the days went by, it was looking to be more of an imminent death sentence than merely exile.

Now the Inquisitor was about to take the one thing he had left away from him: the authority of his command. He couldn’t let his men down, couldn’t let the Inquisitor chip away at his authority. So many of his men killed by those bloody savages already, he hardly had any men left to let down. Lads are already scared enough as it is. They’ll be downright terrified once rumor passed around that there is an Inquisitor here. He couldn’t let that bloody butcher take command from him. That zealot wouldn’t give two shits for their lives and wouldn’t hesitate in sending them to see Vesenia. He poured himself another glass and knocked it back, nearly emptying half of it in one swallow. He knew he couldn’t be empty-handed when the Inquisitor got back.

Commander Peshka paced around the end of the table, twisting his mustache as he looked at the map hopelessly for the hundredth time tonight. He studied the terrain, the fort’s walls around them, the wooden pieces standing on the table, and the larger number of pieces surrounding them, desperately wishing more pieces would magically appear to save them. He stared and stared at it as he twisted his mustache, as if there was a self-evident answer staring back at him, just waiting for him to find it, yearning to be discovered. Yet, as usual, nothing came. No matter how many hours or days he stared at those pieces, they just continued to dwindle away. He wondered how many days they had left. How many more pieces would go before they all went at once and were overtaken by the gnolls? Would it be tomorrow? Tonight? His gaze lingered on the pile of fallen pieces on the side of the table, greater now than the ones left standing, and didn’t imagine they would be able to hold out much longer.

He sighed and went to take a drink, but then paused and raised an eyebrow. What if the requests for reinforcements had been getting through to Duke Tyebald after all, but he was ignoring them? All because of that one little incident. Just a little too much to drink was all. He hadn’t even touched her. Not that he hadn’t wanted to... But he didn’t, and that was the important thing. Never touched her. Just told the Duke’s daughter how beautiful she was. He didn’t mean for himself. Hadn’t he said that? He had meant for a future husband, not himself. Surely, she must have known what he had meant. She must have. A simple misunderstanding was all. A misunderstanding and perhaps a little bit too much to drink. He sighed and swished another swallow of wine around in his mouth. Even if he was sentenced to rot away here, there was no bloody reason to punish his men, too.

He shook his head and pushed the thought from his mind. No, no, must be the gnolls killing the messengers before they can make it out of the bloody Farlands. Peshka swirled the wine around in his cup and looked into it, scratching at his chin with his other hand. Could just be the men leaving, riding off and abandoning their posts, damning him and the rest of them to their fates. Can’t exactly say he’d blame them. He wasn’t too sure himself what he’d do himself, given the chance in that situation. He sighed, then continued to twist his mustache. “Fuck!” Several long, spindly orange hairs came off between his fingers. He threw them on the floor and went to take another drink, but growled when he saw his glass was already emptied once more. He grumbled as he walked back over to the dented tin pitcher on the cupboard.

By the gods, how he wished for something stronger than this shill that passed for wine. Wished he had some of that Baskavian brandy he got to try back on the night they promoted him to Captain after his actions in the siege of DeGaullis.

“Now there was a fine young soldier. Saved the whole bloody city... real war hero.” He muttered into his wine cup.

What a grand night that had been. Promoted from Lieutenant to Captain, and they had even thrown a ball in his honor. Oh, how he missed those rich noblemen’s daughters, wearing all their fancy dresses that probably cost more than his entire annual military allowance. But the way they looked at him in his dress uniform... He cut quite the impressive figure in his dress uniform back in his prime. Back when his name was being passed around in the circles of nobility. Lauded for his mind for strategy, for his bravery, and skill with a sword. They spoke of the bright future ahead of him, talked about the possibility of Generalship one day, perhaps even marrying into royalty...

He had saved the entire city of DeGaullis after all, dammit. It was his idea to use the sewers to sneak under the enemy lines. His idea, and he had led the bloody charge. Even got to see the Prince of Austerland at his promotion ceremony. The bloody Prince of Austerland himself, dammit!

He would have given anything for a chance for another dance at that ball, anything for another chance to be that young soldier in the Captain’s uniform. Although at this point, he would be happy just to accept another glass of that Baskavian brandy.

That would have been a godsend. A last request if anyone gave a shit enough to give him one. He wasn’t overly picky, just something strong, something that burned on the way down, reminded you that you were still alive. Funny how good those reminders felt and how sparse they were now in grim times like these. Times when the end is staring at you and it’s close enough to touch and see as your own reflection in a half-empty cup.

Pity there were no more of those spirits left they got from the dwarves either. Now those would curl your mustache hairs alright and curl just about anything else that wasn’t nailed down. Probably for the best there was none left though, not with that bloody Inquisitor here. No telling how he’d react if he found out they had been exchanging goods with sub-humans, or even worse, risked human lives to save a dwarven mining party. He doubted the Inquisition would look very kindly upon either matter in any light. He knew surer than the nine hells the Inquisitor would have some questions if he saw the dwarven-made ballista the miners had gifted them. Luckily, it was stored up in the...

By the fates, he had forgotten the bloody contraption was in the same tower he was taking the prisoner to. He started pacing faster, nearly sloshing the remaining wine from his cup from the tremor in his hands.

“No reason to go up there...” He muttered to himself, then took a deep breath. At least it was on the level above the prison cells. He swallowed nervously.

“No reason to go up there, though.” He said to himself again, a little more resolutely than before.

Commander Peshka took another swallow then went to top his cup off before that damn, cold-blooded Inquisitor got back. He picked up the pitcher, but then paused and growled, “What’sh taking that damn Inquishitor so long? Blasht it all! He’s waiting me out, dammit! Trying to rattle my nerves.”

He tipped the pitcher over his goblet, yet nothing came out. He shook it and checked inside before finally accepting it was empty. “Blasht it all!” He bellowed and threw the empty pitcher across the room, putting yet another dent in the side of it as it bounced off the stone floor.

He grunted as he bent down to reach into the shelf in the bottom of the chiffonier. He felt around in the dark, mostly vacant space for a few seconds before grabbing a bottle of wine. He sighed as he realized it was one of the last ones left. He set it on the edge of the table and walked back to close the drawer.

There was a sudden earsplitting crash and then the foundations of the building and the earth itself shook apart with the wrath of an angry god. Everything in the room rattled and clattered, and then there was a second crash as the glass bottle fell to the ground and broke, spilling its precious contents all over the floor in a disgraceful waste. Peshka didn’t even notice. He swallowed and his stomach sank as he recognized that noise, a sound he hadn’t heard since the siege of DeGaullis, and it sounded like it came from the western tower.

“What the bloody devil was that?!”

******

“It’s coming now. It’s coming. It will all be over soon. All be over...” The shrill, whining voice of the soldier in the cell next to Malfus trailed off after nearly two solid hours of feverish rambling. There were a few more muffled sobs through the stone wall, then at last, blessed silence.

Ughh... finally, time for some shuteye. I thought he would never shut up.

Malfus closed his eyes, welcoming sleep with open arms, like a long-lost lover. He sank down into the hay, waiting for exhaustion to claim him, while doing his best to ignore the occasional crawling feeling on his skin from an errant louse or other curious insect that he found himself bedfellows with. He didn’t despise them; they had to eat too, after all. He would have loved a clean, pest-free bed, but this was still several orders of magnitude better than his usual sleeping conditions on the road thus far, which had already acclimated him to sleeping amongst small, crawling things.

The various collections of pains in his body dulled their earlier roar to only a throbbing ache, and if he didn’t lie on the side of his cracked rib, it was altogether manageable. Yet as hard as he tried, he couldn’t keep his eyes shut and found they kept wandering up to the barred window high on the wall above him. It allowed only a narrow sliver of starlit sky to shine down on him. Mocking him. Making him wish he could turn into a tiny louse and scurry up the wall and right out that window.

Damn that dreadful Inquisitor.

He wondered how many more nights he had left to see starlight, even if it was just through a barred window. He doubted he would be afforded that luxury in any of the Inquisitorial prison cells once they got to Castillea. All the rumors about that horrible place were that they kept all their prisoners several stories underground, and rumors were hard to come by about a place that no one left alive from. The more he thought about it, the more he became aware of the gnawing pit of dread in his stomach, or perhaps the moldy bread he had just eaten earlier wasn’t agreeing with him. Whatever it was, he found sleep to be as elusive as his freedom. He was finally free from the Inquisitor, there was finally some silence, all the conditions were seemingly ripe and fertile for sleep, like a plowed field piled with fresh cow shit, and yet... Malfus’s mind was crawling with as many thoughts as there were things crawling in the bed.

Gods dammit.

The most persistent thought was, of course, on escaping, but that was quickly and easily dismissed. Even if he had been able to break out of the cell, managed to escape the fort, all while going completely unnoticed by all the guards standing watch along the wall, then he’d have to figure out a way to sneak through all the gnolls surrounding them, plus he was still stuck in these damn finger cuffs, and there was no way he could leave behind his spellbook, the Rod of Rammani-Thuul he had spent so much time locating, or Kaylee’s finger...

Kaylee’s finger!

By all the gods, he hoped it wasn’t rotten and decayed now. He had worked so hard to preserve it and slow the decay. For years now. Years! Now it was probably rotting away in the Inquisitor’s bags without him there to cast the necessary spells to prevent the decay and natural necrosis of dead flesh. Malfus hoped there was enough lingering magic left in the finger to prevent it from decaying. If it was rotted and decayed... Malfus didn’t know what he would do. Didn’t know what he would do to that Inquisitor. He had to save her. Had to... He tried to remember how long it had been since he last cast that incantation on the finger.

“Gahk!” Malfus gasped as electric knives stabbed into his brain. The arcanull rings around his fingers throbbed and pulsed with a buzzing energy.

“Damnable things!” Malfus pulled his hands apart as hard as he could, ripping at the chains. The metal chimed and flexed under his exertions, but it only rewarded him with pain as the metal dug into the skin of his fingers. The chains were surprisingly resilient, as thin as the links were.

Malfus sighed, his anger melting away as reality set in. There was no escape. Not without getting the key to these damn cuffs and his possessions back from the Inquisitor. He would just have to wait to see how things played out. If they managed to survive this newest debacle, then he might yet have another chance to escape on the long road between here and Castillea. Although, the closer they got to the capital of the sprawling Holy Empire and the beating heart of the Inquisition, the less likely his chances of escape became.

Why couldn’t that damnable, zealous meddler just let me be?

Malfus balked at the unfairness of it all. It had cost him a small fortune and taken him months to find the rod of the long, dead necromancer Rammani-Thuul, months in that shithole Monrovia. An even bigger, drearier dump than the Farlands here and not even a part of the Ossory Empire and certainly not in the damn Inquisitor’s jurisdiction. Had he even been doing anything so wrong? He wasn’t hurting anyone. Did that Inquisitor have any idea how hard it was to find fresh corpses without having to resort to murdering them yourself? How would a greater understanding of the necromantic arts ever be achieved if the practice was outlawed and all the practitioners of it were burnt at the stake? Not every necromancer is hellbent on world domination and a descent into lichdom.

All it takes is a few rotten necromancers to give us all a bad name.

Malfus closed his eyes. The steam of his bubbling thoughts finally died down and left enough space for sleep to claim him. Even the lice and other small, crawling things seem to have been satiated, or at least run out of their previous vigor and calmed down for bed as well. The currents of sleep flowed around him, gently lifting him up, and away in their safe embrace for a temporary reprieve from the nightmare that his waking life had become. The Inquisitor, the army of gnolls, the prison cell, they all seemed to be so very far away now... tomorrow’s problems.

BOOM!!

A deafening crash ripped him out of the clutches of sleep. Everything shook, and it sounded like the very world was being torn apart from the inside out. Sharp pain radiated from his side as shards of bricks pelted him. Malfus rolled instinctively out of bed, right as several more bricks rained down from the wall above him, crashing into the pile of hay he was just occupying and smashing innumerable lice to smithereens. Malfus scrambled to the far side of his cell, coughing uncontrollably as a cloud of choking dust filled the tower. Malfus’s ears were ringing, and it was several seconds before he could make out any other sounds than more bricks falling on top of each other. He waved his hand to clear the dust so he could breathe and try to figure out what happened.

What the bloody shite was that?!