The War of Transition

Chapter Three (Valeroy)

     The camp was alive with the sound of men preparing for battle.

     Valeroy trudged through the mud outside the walls of Tiempas Port with Jarold following closely behind. He couldn't remember a time when the camp had been so full of soldiers and prisoners. Caged pens lined the western section of the camp, where Valeroy could see scores of groggy men and women, old men and young children who had been taken from their hovels and burned villages under the suspicion of aiding necromancers. It's been said ten are hanged daily, but even if that were true, twenty are herded into the prisoner camps to replace them.

     Upon the Pyromancer's return from his campaign in the west, his men had set up dozens of tents and their commanders had assumed command of the encampment, making this a very strange place for Valeroy.

     "You think your book is going to matter now?" Jarold struggled to keep up with Valeroy's quick strides through the soggy earth. "You're wasting your time, my friend. The Pyromancer has already decided to search for the Black Brigade."

     "Perhaps I can change his mind," Valeroy insisted. He never sat well with the idea of butchering mystics for imagined crimes. Fanatics they may be, but Valeroy preferred letting them live in solitude with the life they've chosen rather than performing crusades to force science upon the country's citizens. "If the Myriass smugglers are bringing necromancer tomes from Jiannimar then they should be the real enemy, shouldn't they?"

     "Sometimes I think you are too noble for your own safety." Jarold grabbed Valeroy's wrist and spun him around. Their armor clashed and the two locked each other in a cold, dead stare. Somewhere, a dozen hooves splattered in mud. "You are a good man, but everyone here is not. If you give them a hard time, they will make your life hell."

     "We took our vows, you and I." Valeroy spat. Jarold had counseled him countless times in matters of honour and decency, but the man had little experience in those fields himself. "We swore we would serve the guild so long as we brought justice to those--"

     "You take your vows too seriously. You've already broken them, my friend. As have I. They're only words and what is the worth of words in a place like this?" He gestured to their surroundings. Three soldiers played a game with dice and a knife on the top of a barrel. Another one guided his horse between tents. In the distance, one of the prisoners had been dragged from his pen and was thrown on the ground to be kicked by a small group of armoured sentries. "These are all good men, but they live in a world that makes them do terrible things to keep them alive. I am one of those men, my friend." Jarold smiled and smacked Valeroy amiably on the shoulder.

     "Wait here while I speak to the Captain," Valeroy replied before leaving Jarold standing ankle deep in the mud.

     All eyes fell on him when he stepped into the tent.

     "Captain Talia," Valeroy attempted a bow, but his back ached from the weight of his armour.

     "Sergeant." Talia straightened herself and nodded. Around her stood several high ranking officers bent over a table with a map sprawled out across it. A knife stuck out just beside the icon of Tiempas Port along the eastern coast of Emmurise. To the west, south and north were tiny flags jabbed into the map's colourless surface. Valeroy recognized the villages he had visited, all burned and razed to the ground. The thickest cluster of flagged areas lay near the northwestern coast of Emmurise in the Sienna Valley, where Karden had just returned from a stellar campaign.

     The man himself stood next to the Captain. He retained his large stature from when Valeroy saw him last, galloping west with a host of ten thousand at his back, but a jungle of tangled black hair now covered his face from chin to earlobe. His mailed fists rested on the map as he was bent over it, but he still glared directly at the intruder. The Pyromancer. Valeroy shuddered at the thought of charred bodies and hair turned to ash.