Death After Death PLUS 185-186

Ch. 185 - Teach a Man to Fish

Over the next few days, Simon turned his dejected farmers into something closer to fighting men. Their abilities were entirely inferior to the fighting force he’d built to fight the centaurs, but so too was his opponent, which was good because Simon needed the practice.

“We don’t want to fight; we just want our land back” was a popular refrain, but Simon ignored it after the first ten times. He’d run out of patience for explaining why no one was going to do the right thing just because it was the right thing to do.

“If you want to leave, that’s your right,” he would answer dismissively if he even answered at all. 

No one left, though he attributed that more to fear and cowardice than men who wanted to fight for what was theirs, at least at first. Most of them knew how to use bows, though, and a couple of the farmers were even halfway decent at fletching new arrows, which was the skill that really came in handy because, after a few encounters on open ground, he steadily went the way of Robinhood. 

He didn’t fight with a bow, of course. He stuck to his sword practice whenever he could, but once the hornets' nest was riled up, small patrols were darting here and there in an effort to protect the Lord of the land from his own mistakes. 

Simon used each of these as an opportunity for his men to practice their ambush techniques. If a dozen men could all loose at once, there was no reason they couldn’t take out half that number, whether they were on horse or foot. Still, try as they might, they disappointed him on that front.

“It’s okay,” Simon assured them after survivors would ride free and escape or once he’d finished cutting down the last of the wounded. “Rebellion 101 is just taking a little longer than we thought it would.”

In the end, though, Simon decided that his chosen side quest was probably hopeless. That didn’t mean he wasn’t enjoying it, of course. Once they’d started fighting back, they were widely regarded as heroes by the other local villagers. Simon’s little band of merry men even started to get a few new recruits in time. 

They didn’t know just how poorly their local heroes were doing in most engagements, of course, but they didn’t have to. Simon certainly didn’t tell anyone. He just drank his beer and did his part to spread the legend of Ennis the Bold, which is what they’d taken to calling the imagined leader of the little rebellion. Simon absolutely refused to let the man give credit to anyone else. 

“You’re the symbol,” he’d insisted, “These people will need a leader, especially once the Viscount is gone.”

“You’ve seen us in the thick of it,” the old farmer said with a laugh. “The wicked little man is going nowhere.”

“Oh, he’s going, and soon,” Simon promised. “I have places to be, but I’ll stay here until you’re out from under the thumb of tyranny. Whatever happens then is on you.”

With every disappointing engagement, they whittled down the Lord’s men, and with every battle, Simon shook a little more of the rust off. After a month of fighting skirmishes and tending to the wounded, he actually felt like he was getting to where he needed to be, or at least he was back on the road there. 

Just because all of his men lived didn’t mean that all of his enemies died. Even after they stopped escaping, there were survivors that they didn’t just murder outright. Instead, Simon interrogated them and let those who cooperated best go with the terrible messages for their liege. 

Those interrogations told him that this couldn’t last too much longer anyway. The Viscount had started with less than fifty good men, and they’d already cut down half of them. The man’s patrols had even started to thin out as he cowered in his hall and waited for the farmer’s rebellion to come for him. 

“It’s not even a proper fortress,” Simon said with a sigh as he looked at it for the first time. “It’s just a big house.”

“The Viscount said that Bracken Hall is impenetrable,” one man volunteered.

“I’ve seen few buildings more penitrable in my time,” Simon said with a laugh.

“Well, even if someone were to take it, he could fall back to that tower there and wait it out,” another man said, pointing. “The walls are stone and stout. A few archers could hold off an army until it lost interest.”

“That’s closer to true,” Simon agreed as he studied the thing that he’d first thought was a watchtower. He could probably implode it with a single word of earth or ruin, but that was hardly a conventional siege tactic.

The longer he studied it, the more he decided that he had a better way. They didn’t move on the manor the following morning, though. Instead, they played with the man for a few more nights to try to deplete his guards that much further. Then, once they had an appropriate prisoner, Simon finally revealed the endgame to everyone else.  

. . .

On the night that Simon rode to Bracken hall, he rode with one hooded man in tow, who he swore up and down was the leader of the fearsome resistance, Ennis himself. It wasn’t Ennis, of course; it was just a captured guard with a passing resemblance, but the men at the door didn’t need to know that. Simon had bound him well and swore, “I’ve come for my reward and will not be cheated out of it. I will only deliver this man to the Viscount himself!”

The guards at the door tried to dissuade him, and once, he almost had to draw his blade, but eventually, he was allowed to proceed and present his prisoner, though they forced him to disarm first. 

Simon took his time as they went inside. The man’s home might not have been a grand castle, but it was certainly well-appointed, and the smells of dinner drifted down to him, even from the entryway. He took his time appreciating the finely made furniture and the trophies and weapons of ages past. He saw nothing obviously magical, but now that he had a better eye for such things, he vowed to make a second pass through on his way out the door and see if there were any upgrades.

In the main hall, he found what he’d expected, a small family around a large table, completely outnumbered by their own guards. The size of the man at the head of the table made it clear to Simon that he wasn’t a fighter, but some part of him still hoped for a good dual. 

“Do these people ever realize that once they need so many guards, they’ve already lost?” Simon asked the guard who was escorting them in, but his only response was to look at Simon strangely. 

“State your name and your business, and present yourself to the Lord Bracken,” the guard demanded loudly, stopping just inside the door and far from the table. 

Simon responded by yanking on the leash and pulling his prisoner forward into the room where everyone could see him clearly. “Who I am is unimportant,” Simon said. “Just as this man is. Not in the sense that all of us are unimportant, of course, but just in the sense that he’s not the person leading your little tax rebellion. For better or worse, that man is the Viscount himself. You could kill my prisoner right now, and it would solve nothing.”

“Nothing? What nonsense is it that you’re saying?” the Viscount demanded as he stood, visibly annoyed. “Did you bring me the leader of this rabble or not? Either he dies, or you do, but both of you aren’t leaving this room alive.”

“Kill him you like,” Simon answered, as he stepped forward and stole a bite of bread off the nearest guest’s plate, “But hospitality laws being what they are, I don’t think you should casually threaten those that you’ve invited into your home and allowed to dine at your table. The Gods take a dim view of those sorts of people.”

The man looked even more incensed as he strode over to Simon and drew his sword. The other guards drew their weapons as well but backed off a bit to leave their weaselly-looking master room to work. 

The man thrust his sword right through the prisoner without even looking at his face. “This is what happens to those who oppose me,” he said with a sneer as he looked at Simon, but Simon didn’t even flinch. 

Instead, he removed the man’s hood and shrugged. “Killing your own guards probably isn’t the smartest move, either. You keep it up, and soon, no one will be loyal to you at all.”

The noble looked completely unconcerned, but Simon could see the recognition and the revulsion on the faces of all the other armed men as his false Ennis fell to the ground in a pool of his own blood. It was one thing to understand that you were poorly paid and disposable. It was another to see it. 

“Why would you bring one of my…” the noble asked in confusion before a spark of recognition crossed his face.“You’re one of them!”

“I am,” Simon agreed, elbowing the man in the face as the noble tried to pull his blade free from the dying man before taking it for himself. The blow was light, but it still sent the blustering bully sprawling. “And right now, your home is surrounded by dozens of rebels. There’s no escape for anyone here!”

It was a lie, of course, but it was a useful one, and the armed guards looked to each other uncertainly. A moment ago, they’d all been about to rush Simon. Now, they were less sure. When Lord Bracken bolted from Simon like a coward, that uncertainty only grew. 

“Oh, come on,” Simon sighed. “I come into your place of power looking for a good fight, and you do this? Even Varten would fight me, and he’s the worst person I’ve ever met!”

For a moment, Simon allowed himself to hope that the Viscount was running to get a new weapon. However, when he seemed content to cower behind the two closest guards, Simon just shook his head in disbelief. 

“Are you two going to defend him? Or do you just want to walk away?” Simon asked, trying to be sporting. 

The first man said, ”He’s my Lord, and you’re just mercenary scum. Who do you think I’m siding with.” The second man wasn’t nearly so bold and just nodded in agreement with the first. 

Simon shrugged again, then took both of them out in seconds. He used a vicious, showy thrust to get them off balance, and then he used the half-hearted feint of the quiet man to shield himself from the more serious attack of the first man. These two weren’t used to fighting together, which was fortunate because they would never do it again. 

Simon’s second slash caught the bolder guard just above his breastplate at the base of his throat. Then, once he was bleeding instead of breathing, Simon batted the blade of the other man aside and ended him quickly with a thrust under the armpit. Before the second guard had even joined the first, the Viscount was already running. 

This time he’d learned that no one in this room was going to save him at least, and he was running for it, but that suited Simon fine. It was part of his plan. 

A couple of the guards looked like they might want to slow him down, but Simon said, “You can fight me and die just like your friends, or you can wait here and surrender once the Viscount is taken care of. Maybe take care of his family and make sure no accidents happen.”

He regarded them a moment longer, then set off at a jog after the waddling Viscount. He almost caught up with him just outside the back door when the man slipped and fell. Simon laughed at that and taunted. “Stop making this so easy! Just put up a fight. Something. Anything!”

Muddied and bloodied, the Viscount reached the door seconds before Simon and slammed it shut in his face. Simon didn’t gnash his teeth or threaten to break it down, though. He didn’t even use a word of force to shatter it. Instead, he smiled. 

He did that because Ennis and his own private army were already in that drum tower waiting for the man. Now, they could hash things out for themselves, or they could just kill the man and take their vengeance that way. Though Simon thought it likely that they would choose the former rather than the latter, he left that decision entirely to them. 

So, instead, he went back to the man’s main hall to have a little dinner and explain what was about to happen to Lord Bracken’s family. Once that was done, he’d pick out a better sword, take a quick swing by the kitchen for some decent food to take with him, and then he’d go to the stables to pick out a horse. He’d fought against injustice for weeks, but that was the only reward he needed. He had places to be, after all. 

Ch. 186 - Lay of the Land

Simon was gone before Ennis emerged from the tower, but he preferred it that way. He’d done a good deed, but there was no knowing how it would all play out from this point forward. The best of intentions could still have horrible effects, and Simon didn’t need all of those on his conscience. 

His only regret in all this was not finding out if the Viscount would have paid him or not. Simon would have bet not, but now he would never find out. Not that he needed the money, of course; it was just the principle of the thing. 

He had a good horse, a full purse, and overflowing saddlebags. Other than a good backpack and a book to write things down in, he was in pretty good shape. Still, the roads only got worse as he made his way to the coast, so it was good he was traveling light. 

Simon saw evidence of beastmen at one point. They were fresh enough that he shifted camping sites, but he never did encounter them. Civilization all but disappeared until he reached the coast. 

Once there, he was never out of sight of a fishing village. They dotted the coast and were never built far from the next one. Bigger cities than that took a little longer. Though it took him almost a week to reach the coast, the first town of any size, Coramin, took another three days to reach. 

Simon took that in stride and adjusted its position on his map. When he arrived, he took on the role of a trader waiting for his ship to come in. That worked well since there were always ships coming and going from its broad harbor.  Coramin wasn’t even half as nice as Ionar, but it was big enough to have a lighthouse, two markets, and even some gardens and an amphitheater.

He was in no rush here and took his time eating seafood and getting to know some of the regulars at a few of the most popular taverns over the next week. It was men like that who had what he really needed: information. 

All of it was useful, and he didn’t try to stop anyone from talking about news from abroad or even the political climate between the governors of the different cities. He even spent hours listening to someone trash talk Elthenna and what a poor job she was doing in ruling the nation. What he was really interested in, though, were the myths and legends of the region. 

Some of those people seemed inclined to talk about it. They would tell him about mortal demigods who had walked the world in ages past. Apparently, some people considered Elthenna’s grandfather, who had founded her dynasty, to be a demigod, too but made her divine in a way. That thought made him smile. 

Finding out about the curse was harder, though. There were strange superstitions around it. It was a strange cultural taboo, but in time, familiarity and enough free drinks penetrated it, and Simon found a couple willing to tell him the whole story of Andus the Undefeatable, the first king of Ionia as it was today. 

Though the thespian and the fisherman who told Simon the story disagreed on some parts, they agreed on enough that he was pretty sure he got the gist of it. 

“In the time before time, this land was almost uninhabitable,” the thespian started, playing as much into the drama as he could. “The three elements ground against each other with all the inevitability of a millstone, and the few settlements that existed between them were nothing but grist for the mill!”

It was a little over the top, but it did remind Simon that so many people bought into a strange three-element formulation of nature, like the plague doctor he’d saved so long ago. In their world, only air, metal, and water existed. Fire was just elevated air, which explained the sun and why no light from it could reach all the way to the depths of the sea. 

Simon didn’t buy into it, and neither did his magic. If anything, it implied that the world very much had 4 elements at a minimum. Really, one interpretation was that all of his words were an element, and there were dozens of them, but that was too much for him to speculate on. 

The point that both storytellers agreed on was that the region had been a very dangerous place until a hero came through and cleaned the whole place up. He slew the sirens that dragged sailors to their deaths, giving Ionia access to all the fish in the sea, and then he did likewise with the harpies, making the world safe for shepherds and their herds. He bound the hideous fire spirit Brogan to the heart of a volcano, giving the riches of the earth to his people, the basilisk, giving them back the southern plains. 

Since then, except for the basilisk, who had returned a few generations later, the rest of the monsters had stayed banished. Sailors still sometimes whispered about sirens in the sea, and shepherds occasionally vanished, but there was nothing conclusive in either case. More mundane monsters like hydras and wyverns occasionally made a nuisance of themselves, but they were dealt with by heroes or the army. 

In the end, it was less than Simon had hoped for. He’d wanted some grand curse that he might learn from. Perhaps he’d even learn some strange new magic, but he was left feeling more like he was reading the adventures of Hercules after all of this than uncovering a real mystery, which was disappointing. If he couldn’t find a way to disprove all of this before the past version of him was shanghaied, then he was going to have a much harder time explaining to Elthena that her stance was more silly superstition than it was wise sacrifice. 

“The basilisk came back because of the previous queen, right?” Simon asked. “Any idea where it came from?”

“It was vomited up from the depths of hell because the prophecy was broken,” the actor agreed with gusto. “It turned a city to stone and then devoured those stones as well.”

“But like… How was Ozioptan doing before that?” Simon asked. “Was it prosperous?”

The man just shrugged. “The prophecies don’t say. Does it matter? The Oracle warned us what would happen, and then that damn fool of a queen—”

“Oh, that’s right,” Simon asked. “There’s an Oracle, isn’t there. Where is she?”

“Where is ssshe?” the man laughed, slurring slightly. “You foreigners are ssho funny. You think you can just climb Mt. Elian and talk with a divine creature like her? You would be smote for your insolence if you even tried to do such a thing.”

Simon laughed along with the other man, but even as their conversation drifted off to other stories, he’d already decided that was exactly what he was going to do. He’d already been thinking about going into the highest parts of the mountains to see if harpies still existed, but if there was a prophet up there, too? While he might as well kill two harpies with one stone. 

The next day, it wasn’t hard to get a local to name a few of the mountains for him. Simon dutifully recorded all of them on his map, but when he asked where Mt. Elian was. They just looked at him balefully until he got the hint and moved on. 

Simon was unconcerned by that. He just went further south and repeated the same act for a few days at a time. Though no one ever pointed out the mountain in question to him, eventually, when he reached Thebian, which was the next large city on his way. There, none of the locals seemed willing to name the tallest mountain in view, even though he eventually got the names of every other one. The unmentionable one was half shrouded in clouds, too, making it even more mysterious. That was when he decided he’d found his target. 

Simon sold his horse and other things he wasn’t likely to need, and then he started walking. The road lasted longer than he thought it would have, and he almost regretted getting rid of the horse. Eventually, the mountains got wild enough that he would have been forced to abandon it. 

At the end of that road, less than halfway up the mountain, he found a monastery that had been built into the cliffside. It was populated only by old men. They offered him hospitality for the night and told him many interesting stories, including one about how basilisks roam wild beneath the earth, where they gnaw at the roots of the world and cause earthquakes. Simon doubted that was true, but he still found it interesting. 

He, in turn, told them the story of the blackheart and the haunted graveyard, though he embellished it in places to make it seem more fictional. When the time finally came for them to ask him where he was traveling to and why he was so deep in the mountains, he lied, showing some of the sketches of fishermen and landscapes that he’d done since he’d bought a journal in Coramin. “I’m an artist and an explorer. That’s all, and Ionia is not well known where I come from, so I plan to write a book on the subject.”

The sense of relief in a few of the men he was talking to was obvious, and Simon was very sure that if he’d admitted that he planned on visiting the oracle, they would poison him or murder him in his sleep. 

That didn’t happen. Instead, after they tried to convince him that the Raiden mountains were a dangerous place and that he should not trifle with them lest his body never be found, they wished him well. In the morning, he continued on his way, well-rested with a full belly. 

It wasn’t that Simon didn’t believe the monks, of course. There was a reason they built their little monastery as if it were a fortress. There were clearly monsters in these hills. He was just hoping to fight them. Fortunately, in that regard, he didn’t have to wait too long. The higher he rose on the mountain slopes, the more signs of beastmen he saw. He still hadn’t seen a single harpy, though a couple of times when he saw vultures or condors, he thought that perhaps he had. On his third night past the monastery, the goat-men attacked him for the first time. 

He was lucky in that the wind shifted just before they attacked, and he smelled their foul musk only half a minute before they charged out of the night, screaming and braying. They had spears, but Simon very quickly realized they weren’t trying to kill him with them or even fight him in hand-to-hand combat if they didn’t have to. Instead, they were trying to herd him off of one of the nearby cliffs so that he would dash his own skull on the rocks before. 

That’s a very interesting hunting tactic, Simon told himself when he figured it out, but he had no interest in obliging them. Instead, he slew two with his sword and then used a word of force when another six tried to charge him in mass, blasting them all sideways. The beastmen had an impossible sense of balance, but even they weren’t prepared to be slammed past Simon, and right over the edge by enemies that weren’t there. 

He enjoyed that fight, which was good because it was repeated every couple of nights after that. He never found anything resembling a village where the beasts were coming from, but he did occasionally find bloody altars decorated with the corpses of men and, more occasionally, goblins. Once, as he rose above the tree line, he even found an altar with the remains of what had to be a harpy on it. That made him smile, and he spent his few remaining hours of daylight trying to sketch it so that he would have a better idea of what it looked like. 

When he was done, they looked like a real horror show in his mind, but he didn’t think they’d be so tough. Even an eight-foot tall wingspan and vicious hooked claws didn’t mean much when you had hollow bones and couldn’t have weighed more than thirty or forty pounds. 

“Well, that’s one mystery solved,” he said as he set off on the ridgeline, looking for a defensible place to camp. “Endangered, yes. Extinct, probably not.”

As the sun set, Simon still couldn’t see the peak of the mountain he was climbing. That was frustrating, but not entirely unexpected. It didn’t matter. He had to be more than halfway, and soon enough, he would answer a completely different question.