(USFB): Twenty-Eight: The Spy

An order to follow, to track and not engage, was not in keeping with what the jackal had come to know from his master. The lives he had reaped, the dynasties ended, and other acts of skullduggery had come and gone with ease. Yet, to follow without bloodshed was a challenging task for him.

At home, in the deserts of the south or the grasslands in the north, in the dense jungles of the west, the mountainous areas that shocked down from the north through the middle of the known world, tracking was not complex. Torquarian could have meshed into the sands and dusty cliff walls to wait and then catapult ahead to watch from afar and outpace. The grasslands, so flat and dense with weeds and blades that would brush the base of your tail, were no issue to crawl through and serve as a serpent-like sentry to passersby. To do recon in the jungles was cub’s play even when Tor was only a cub himself. As for the mountains, they were an interesting obstacle; however, the innumerable passages that entered into the rocky ranges made for convenience where there should have been none. Yet, all paled in comparison to the rolling rural and forested lands of this far eastern world.

Tor was not dressed to meld into the foliage with its vibrant and multi-colored leaves. The grass did not stand tall throughout and ran dry to bare earth in spots where massive growths of ferns and bushes would block out his view entirely. There was no canopy or dense network of trees, though many of these plants served better to be concealed behind as they grew broad and robust. And there was undoubtedly no inner-earth tunnels he might use to his advantage. Instead, the jackal had to do his best to keep pace and eye out while adapting to the terrain. The task was made no easier by the speed at which his query traversed the land. 

The feathered serpent had been more of a distraction than the leading facilitator of the attack, Tor figured. Those writhing masses of blood that had shed from its length were the genuine article. They quickly made armor and shields useless as they slipped into the breaks between arms and chest and neck. Had he not been swifter, Tor figured he might have been one of those unlucky few to find themselves splintered, torn asunder, or taken over by the Goredrinker. Removing the bloody claws from the snake forced its pace back to what must have been nearly its standard. It was sleek and cut through the land like flames through the dry fields mid-summer before the floods. Before long, it deposited the two he was meant to tail at a city ringed in onyx that almost seemed to shift before the eye.

The serpent did not flee but pressed on past the village, heading south at an even more alarming rate now that it no longer carried passengers. Part of Tor was torn to follow after the snake and deal out its death before it could do any more to his own side. Had Orin insisted that the devil be brought down, the jackal would have obliged, but his master’s words were clear. He had only to follow these two, collect what information he might by tailing them, and report back. Still, dispatching them would have been preferential for him. The subtlety required for murder was far from that of a spy, and he had not even negotiated terms for the task.

Even were he to never gain his freedom, not in truth, not as his forebearers had the sense of it, to gain favor and honor and his cut was enough for Torquarian. The targets he had sought and brought down already had net him the privilege to freely move about the camp and his own tent. Had he thought of his reward instead of the request made, he might have argued for something more. There wasn’t much to be had when Orin could take anything he so chose, but the possibilities before Tor were still tempting. 

Temptation was the least thing in his mind as Tor made short work of the city wall. On the other side of the imposing structure was a world ravaged by occupation, the diminished circumstances and fear such an event causes. Children were ignored by their parents to roam in packs, mothers and wives looked sickly and underfed, and the men, where they could be found not slumbering or prepared for war, were heavily intoxicated or despondent altogether. The case could not be said to be the same for those the wolf and elk went to meet.

Inside a building carved of the same light-devouring material as the wall, gilded with silver, set in the center of town, was the congregated forces of the Cubs, the Western deserters, and those Northmen who had stayed to fight. The pyramidal structure was hardly scalable from without, but once near the pinnacle, Tor found a shaft that cast natural light in and smoke out. As he slipped down onto the rafters, he was concealed, if not by his attire, then by the beams that were almost his equal in width. If any below heard him, there was no notice paid as the collective relaunched into hurled accusations, contemptuous sarcasm, and a general sense of doom. Not even when the two missing members rejoined the group were any more calm than they had the right to be.

“Razien,” Jaium called from below, his typical frustration evaporated into a sudden mildness towards the youth, “Your arrival couldn’t have come at a better time. I need you and Greshalin at the head of this march.”

“March?”

“That’s right,” he eyed Imfay suspiciously but carried on, “We’re going to press north with all the fighting strength we have. The citizens will stay locked up in the walls until we have the Legion back across the Camora. They’ll be stuck in the roughest patch any force could attempt, Roya on one side and Black Gate on the other. They will have nowhere else to attack that won’t be a push north, and from what I gather, they’re hardly able to turn down a city set in their way, no matter the defenses.”

“Baylen, I will follow your plan, but you must know first,” Razien tried to push through his opposition, but the elk overspoke him.

Directing all eyes to the wolf, he called, “This child has fouled everything up. We were near enough to a peace declaration until he came riding in on a serpent like some wretched ghoul from a campfire fright for cubs. And I wouldn’t second guess him to be stricken with the vile blood himself.”

“What was that?” called a voice from the crowd in a reedy western voice.

Another came this northern, “Peace?”

“Vile-blood, it can’t be, but then again,” answered a last, this sounding in the dulcid tones of a fox.

Jaium searched over Razien before stepping within a paw of him, “How much of this is true, son?”

“I did attack the Legion camp, I rode a feathered serpent, and I might have even interrupted a peace talk, but I had no way of knowing what happened in that tent or even that Imfay was in there. What I know for sure is I’m not blood-cursed,” Razien sighed.

The whispers began to grow again, but Jaium paid no mind and only increased his volume, “Peace was not an option for these invaders until they saw our might. They did nothing. Came bearing war down upon us all and now only relent because they find we are a match. In the loss of this, we have still not lost anything.”

“We have lost something, Baylen,” Razien would not meet his eyes, not after Jaium had finally found length enough for slack in Razien’s name, “We’ve lost one we can not replace.”

“We’ve lost Seras, haven’t we?” his tone was grim but not without that chance to turn the tragedy into motivation.”

Shaking his head, the young wolf answered, “Greshalin. She was injured in our task to clear the city. She went down fighting, a hero, unable to surrender, and unwilling to let the Goredrinker make a puppet of her.”

Torquarian noted the name, though even among the Legion’s network of spies, he could not say it was one known to them yet. The east had been less fertile in growing the vines they would tug to climb into the creche of this new land’s social center. It had been so easy throughout the initial campaign in the western block and all the way in between. Even as a cub, Tor could see how the army took control of an area. After the scouts had sketched a rough outline of the towns they would take, spies would infiltrate and gather all the details they needed, and then the infantry would move in and lay waste to the highest priority targets they could. Cities fell when those they depended on most were cut down.

Greshalin being removed from the equation made the next step likely easier for the Legion, but Tor would be well rewarded if he could remove the buck who was making Legion attacks so tricky. He lingered in the rear of the meeting hall as though no news would bother him. Yet, he hung his head slack, his expression lost in a sea of chaos that held little relief for the deer. Tor knew if he moved quickly, struck with precision, and vanished utterly after it was done, the deed would go unnoticed by his host until it was too late. But the jackal was not the only one with eyes for Orathone in that moment.

Reaching, furtive but needing to get the young lad’s attention, the shadow self Amirot employed nudged Torqarian’s arm. At first, the contact did little but bristle against the jackal, a cold of fright that comes into every traveler’s bone on a moonless night trek. The second prodding gathered the boy’s attention, but as he turned about, the chances of a calm interluded evaporated. His golden eyes grew wide at the sight of the shivering shadow outlined in silver. Tor’s muzzle worked to form a remark, but nothing came from his throat. Instead, an ill-placed step sent him at once into a panic and then plummeting to the floor. Amirot reached out for the boy’s paw but was batted away. Just as quickly as he had come, the caribou vanished, leaving the jackal to fall.

Where there had been no sound the boy could work from his lips in the face of the ghoul in the rafters, his drop was accompanied by a sudden shriek he wasn’t sure came from him. Before he was midway through his fall, he could see that all eyes were coming to rest on him. Without question, were he to be caught, not simply killed or to break his neck on the floor, it would expose the Legion’s paw, and capture would risk even more. It wasn’t going to do any favors for their element of surprise, but he needed to escape before the worst could happen. Focusing through his fear of heights, of being compromised, of death itself, Tor made his move.

To all in attendance, what they saw was nothing short of a miracle worked on one very undeserving spy. The jackal had slipped and fallen, that was assumed, but where he was deposited, instead of shattering the table just below him and then finding himself locked in a cell, was beyond guess. As the boy fell, his body began to shift into something like a spray of sand, only the material was of nothing known to those in the chamber. Each grain and fiber of the matter seemed almost to be a color onto itself. Together, every part was its own shade of red or blue or green and so on until it was a mass that almost moved against itself, shifting and morphing in air. Before it could reach the table below, it was as though the bottom grew less dense and the higher scattering of points more so as one half rose and the other sunk quicker until they coalesced in the middle and became a blackness. The rough bar of colorless material disappeared, leaving no trace that anything or anyone had just been in its place. As the last bits of the strange effect cleared, not a single one of the assembled masses knew quite what to say or even the proper expression to share with their fellows.