Heart of Dorkness

Scourge Seventeen - Distract

It doesn’t take too much effort with all of us working together to get Inigo outside. Esteban insisted that we bring him over to the carts right away, so that’s what we do, Felix and I carrying his legs and Esteban holding his torso up.

Inigo mutters and seems a little out of it the entire time we move him. I can’t make out more than one word in three, but I think he’s praying again?

“A devoted worshipper of Luto might be able to obtain Luto’s blessing to resist a poison, right?” Esme asks.

“It sounds plausible to me,” I say with a bit of effort. Inigo’s on the heavier side, what with his clunk boots and all. The smell isn’t helping any. “Luto’s domain is over grief, right? That’s the healing magic.”

“I thought he was a death god?” Felix asks. She’s not struggling quite as much as I am, so I can’t allow myself to flag here.

“Sorta. He’s the god of mourning. Funerals and stuff like that,” I say.

“Then why would he care about healing stuff?” Felix asks.

“Just because he’s the Lord of Mourning doesn’t mean he encourages mourning,” Bianca says. “His followers are often battlefield healers, or show up when there’s a plague. They heal those that can be healed, provide poppy wine to those that can’t be healed, and generally take care of the funerals that come after.”

Esteban grunts as he shifts Inigo’s weight to get a better grip. “Lots of soldiers worship Luto. Plenty of guards and mercenaries too. As far as gods to worship before a fight goes, Luto’s not a bad choice.”

Some of the other Lions see us coming, and they rush forwards to help carry Inigo. I should probably be a bit insulted that they don’t think that Felix and I can carry him the rest of the way but really, I’m just glad to be away from the stink.

Esteban lets go of the wounded guard and talks to Ran who’s quick to root around in a sack filled with vials and what looks like packets of dried herbs. He has the others lay Inigo down on the end of one of the carts and gets to tending him right away.

“You girls did alright,” Esteban says to us with one of those serious nods guys make sometimes. “Think you can find anything else in there?”

“No harm in looking,” I say. “Felix is the one with the good ears though.”

“Lots of practice,” Felix says with a quick grin.

“Did you find anything in the main building?” I ask Esteban.

“Just paperwork, nothing that would interest you,” he says

I blink. Is he underestimating us, again? What is up with the people in this country? “You do know that all of us can read, right?” I ask.

Esteban quirks an eyebrow at us. “And what makes you think you’d be able to draw anything from the reports I found?”

“Well, mostly I’m assuming that we’ll be able to figure it out because we’re smart,” I said.

“Smarter than I am?” He asks.

I shrug. “Probably, yeah.”

He sniffs. “Well, there’s no doubting your self-confidence.”

“You don’t need to worry about doubts when your confidence is backed by certainty,” I say.

Esteban laughs, then smacks me on the shoulder so hard I almost stumble off my feet. “I can see why Teo took a liking to you. I wish some of the boys had half the balls you girls have. I’ll give you the reports once I’m done with them. Go scout around some more. As a group. Don’t need to lose anyone in there. And don’t eat anything. There might be poison in the meals they left behind.”

“Got it,” I say as I rub my shoulder. I’m sure that’ll leave a bruise.

My friends and I leave the caravan to scout out the outpost again. We spend a good hour walking into every building, poking and prodding everything and pulling Felix away from the pantry and kitchens, just in case.

We find a whole lot of nothing.

“The armoury is nearly empty,” Esme says. “And a good portion of the food’s just gone.”

“We’re delivering food,” I point out while I look around the main courtyard of the outpost for any clues we might have missed. “It’s probably normal that they’re low on food.”

“Or they took what was left with them when they left,” Esme says. “They didn’t just leave on a whim is the point I’m trying to make here. They planned to leave, at least a little bit.”

“I don’t know enough about outposts like this to say whether or not that’s normal, but I’m leaning on all of this being kind of weird,” I say.

“It’s definitely strange,” Bianca says. “The guard might have left to support Vizeda if the city knew they were going to be attacked, but I don’t think they did. This is raising more questions than it’s answering.”

I shake my head. There’s not much more to see here. Maybe we can interview Inigo a little, get some more answers out of him. Until then we’re just going to have to guess.

Teo walks into the outpost, then jogs over to us. “We’re heading out again. There’s no point in leaving food behind if no one’s going to eat it, and we need to reach the next outpost before nightfall. That’s where we’ll be resting tonight.”

“Alright,” I say. “Come on girls, let’s head back.”

The caravan takes a minute or two to realign itself out of the outpost, then we all start to climb back down towards the main road leading out of Vizeda. The donkeys don’t like the ride down, even though gravity’s helping them along.

A few minutes after we’re on the main road and on our way to the next outpost, Esteban walks up the length of the caravan and hands me a black book filled with dog-eared pages and some sheets stuck into it. “You said you four were able readers. Maybe you can make sense of this.”

“What is it?” I ask as I take the book. I need to be careful, some of the pages are loose.

“That’s the outpost’s logbook. The captain of the guard is supposed to keep it up to date at all times. He might have let something slip that’ll tell us what happened.”

I nod. “Did you find anything?” I ask.

“I hardly have time to read and lead this caravan. Seeing as you all seem to have time to chit-chat and gossip, I might as well put you to work.”

I pout as he stops and lets the caravan move on until he rejoins one of the carts at the back. He’s so rude. We’re not chit-chatting, we’re having important discussions about our differing political ideologies and why everyone else’s opinion is wrong. “Might as well split this up,” I say.

“We each read for a bit?” Esme asks. “Why can’t just one of us read the entire thing?”

I open the book to a random page. It’s just rows of dates and times, with some notes on the side next to them in nearly illegible font. I guess the hiring process for a captain doesn’t involve having nice calligraphy. “Well, if you’re volunteering,” I say before I snap the book shut and give it to Esme.

She looks at it, pouts, then glances up at Felix. “You still need to practice your reading skills, right?”

“Nope,” Felix says. “I’m happy with how good I’ve become. No need to practice any.”

Bianca sighs. “I may as well read it myself. There might be references that you wouldn’t understand.”

Esme sniffs. “Fine, we’ll read it together. Come on, if this isn’t an excuse to sit on the cart, then nothing is.” She places the book on the back of the cart, then hops onto it and sits on the back before tapping the wood next to her. Bianca joins her, and soon the two of them are shoulder-to-shoulder, eyeing the contents of the log.

“What do you think happened?” Felix asks me.

I kick a rock off the road while folding my hands at the small of my back. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, you have to have an idea. You always have ideas.”

I roll my eyes, but I do say what’s on my mind. “I can’t help but imagine that everything’s connected. It’s probably just like, narcissism or something. Not everything’s about my business, but... yeah, I feel like things are linked.”

“I can see some of it, I guess. Someone wanted to attack the city, so they killed off the guards, or maybe bought them off? And then they created a big monster horde to attack the city. It’d even make sense with the walls. Someone had to plant something that exploded under them,” Felix says.

“Yeah, but the attack didn’t destroy the city. It feels like a lot of work not to win.”

Felix chuckles. “Maybe they didn’t want to win? Sometimes, back in Santafaria, you’d get a kid to steal something from a shop, and while the shopkeeper’s running after them, all the rest of the kids would run in and grab everything.”

“A distraction,” I say. “Yeah, that might actually make some sense. But then, what did they distract people for?”

***