The Silencing of Esteria

Chapter 20

Katrina's militia stood watching the forest from atop the walls. As the light died, they lit the braziers and torches, casting an orange glow down around the walls.

The men shifted nervously, scanning for any sign of movement.

Katrina sat next to Toland on a large piece of excess timber that had been left by the side of a building. She was running a whetstone along her spearhead belligerently and Toland could feel her anger like an aura around her.

"Idiots," she muttered under her breath.

"Kat, they aren't soldiers, you can't expect them to go up on the walls in the dark."

"Yes I can," Katrina replied immediately, "They are up there ruining their night vision with those damned fires. You cannot tell me that they can see all the way to the tree line."

"Even if we spotted them, there isn't much we could do about it, wolves hate fire, if they see high walls with lots of flames on top of them, they will have to retreat. We are here to survive, not to kill them."

Katrina glared at him, "I can't be on watch all the time, if they spot them early enough someone can come and wake me."

"You aren't the only one here who knows what they are doing, Herdru is out there with them and he's already killed one direwolf already, which is one more than you have."

Katrina huffed, stood up and stormed off, swinging her spear around with enough speed to make wooshing sounds in the air.

"This will end badly," she shouted back to him, "Wake me up if anyone sees anything!"

Toland sighed.

Absently he opened up the leather bag at his side, pulling out several thin pieces of wood with runes over them. He had taken to carrying at least five spells with him wherever he went, six if he could get particularly thin pieces of wood. These ones all summoned lightning and he flipped through them with practiced deftness. He also had a few small pieces of metal that would provide light for about a minute. Each set of runes had a slightly different activation rune, this one was lightning one, this was lightning two, this was glow one, etc.

He spent another few seconds going through the comforting motion of drawing out the spells and then returned his collection to his bag.

He yawned and retired to his bed.

The next few days passed in subdued anxiety, a few times the guards spotted shadows moving around in the darkness beyond the firelight but they could never be sure of what they saw. Each time someone woke Katrina and she came storming out, wielding spear and shield like some hero from a legend, and each time she returned to her bed after an hour of keeping careful vigil.

During the days, Jaran was slowly making his way along the wall, magically hardening the earth in between the wooden walls into something resembling stone.

Soon, it was his Rin's and Fel's turn to keep watch on one of the walls. Toland insisted on coming with them, armed with his bag of spells. Rin eventually allowed him to come along, but placed him in the tower so that he was another 5 feet or so above the height of the wall.

Standing next to the brazier was certainly pleasant on a cold night, however, Katrina was right, the bright light next to him made the darkness seem like a black wall only a few feet in front of him.

He had only been there a few minutes when he heard someone climbing up the ladder behind him.

"Kat?" he called down.

She climbed the last few steps and pulled herself up to meet him face to face.

"What are you doing up here?" she asked, clearly unhappy.