Chapter 240

My concerns yet unanswered, we continued our trip further east day by day, continuing through the Sheer Pass. There was the possibility of hunting more Nanuk for their tender, succulent flesh, but the risk was much higher than the reward, especially since we weren't at all familiar with their hunting, gathering, and traveling habits. One would have been easy enough to hunt, but even two at once would absolutely result in casualties, and that was a loss I was not at all willing to sustain for only a slightly more desirable meat.

It was unsurprising to note that Farahlia showed more active participation in the day-to-day operations of the swarm after my direct questioning, given that I'd threatened her with summary execution if I found that she was taking active steps to usurp my position as absolute Alpha of the swarm. Now, she actively found members of the core leadership and attempted to ingratiate herself however possible, and that without consciously utilizing her magic. She volunteered herself as an assistant to Sybil, to participate in hunts with Took, to talk and teach about magic control to Hala (during which she was strictly supervised by Shemira), and generally be as helpful and integrated as she could possibly become in short order. It seemed an honest enough effort, but considering her previous position had been established, maintained, and strengthened through deception and manipulation of perception and emotion, I was slow to trust.

Took was leading at least two hunts a day, but had begun taking a slightly more conservative approach since her close scrape with the Nanuk. It was helpful to the swarm as a whole, since fewer and fewer of the hunters returned with injuries while still bringing about the same amount of prey back to the swarm. The more time Took spent leading the hunts, the more she became a Huntmaster instead of a mere coordinator. Planning where each pack would go, what their prey would be, when to return, and how to support each other were just some of her regular tasks, and the longer she took charge, the more accustomed and competent she became.

As each member of the swarm became more and more acclimated to our journey and nomadic lifestyle, it seemed like the days would continue with each new day being a pantomime of the last, but as always, change came to upset the status quo.

"Alpha–Foire needs to speak with you."

Sybil called out to me one morning, and though she fought to keep herself composed and calm, I could read something in the slight twitch and twist of her tail.

"Anything you can tell me before I talk to him?"

"I think it would be better to hear from him yourself." Sybil answered, and I flared my frills in acknowledgement. Foire and Trai stood nearby, him stoic and still, the little girl hopping from foot to foot in either excitement or fear or something else.

"Alpha," Foire reported, "we were scouting out ahead, to see what we had coming up, if we would need to reroute to keep the hunt successful, and see if there was anything we needed to look out for, and–"

"We saw a big big wall! So big! And it's made of rocks, and people walk on it and its big and and and–"

"Foire." I commanded, and with a flick of his tail on her rump, Trai went silent, admonished but still excited.

"It was more than a village, from what I know of them. We aren't sure what kinds of creatures live within, but they have established walls and are in a deep valley, able to see anything that approaches or passes."

After a moment's hesitation to let what he'd said sink in, I stifled the curses that wanted to erupt. "Oh. Ok then. Let's see what we can do about this."

It was only a hurried journey of just over one hour to get to the point where we could begin to see the evidence of the village Foire was concerned about. It was small, with a moving body of water only barely qualifying to be called a creek running through it. As Foire had said, the town was found in the center of the valley that stretched between the high peaks on either side of the Sheer Pass, but this area was much more arid and lifeless than deeper within the Pass. There was no notable presence of the mountain goats we had been slaughtering left and right to sustain ourselves, and the environment didn't seem to be a good one for agricultural development. 

Going off of the amount of space the walls surrounded and the apparent lack of arable land, no more than 300 people could be sustainably living within, but I couldn't imagine living in such a cramped, miserable place packed in so uncomfortably. I estimated somewhere around 200 individuals lived within the bounds of the walls surrounding this settlement. The walls themselves were made of precisely quarried stone, to my surprise, not Called. They stood tall and, I supposed, wide, able to stave off even the most desperate and focused attacks. There was only one visible entry point, a heavy apparently stone door that was closed tight to our eyes.

Along the top of the walls were complete palisades and patrolling guardsmen, my newly improved eyes could see gleaming armor and movement along the walls, but I didn't dare to get close enough to pick out greater detail than that. There were towers about twice the height of the walls at each corner of the apparently hexagonal walls, going off of the six towers, and I could see dedicated sentinels taking their positions there on those towers.

Frankly speaking, the more I saw, the more confused I got, since this level of defenses was far beyond any military forts I'd ever heard of in stories of warlike peoples long dead, much less those of a forgettable, tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere. My only two thoughts were that either there was a High Earthspeaker who had taken up residence and was constantly expanding and improving upon the fortress's defenses while making it look naturally sourced, or this was a previous garrison that had been repaired for use by its current inhabitants. I hoped it was the second option, but I was unsure if I was willing to make a bet in either direction and risk swift retribution from a Veushten that had heard of our exploits and decided to literally drag us all down into the earth.

Would Ana have told us of this fort in advance if they would try to fight us? I'd never asked a lot of specifics of what we would find outside of the Wilds, an oversight I now regretted. As fahvalo, I was still her enemy, so could I be foolish to think that she would give us potentially helpful information?

The more I thought about it, though, the more I felt like I only had one option in the current situation. I sent Foire to get Sybil, Shemira, and Took, and he sprinted off to find and bring them to me while Trai continued fidgeting nearby. The little male whose name I'd learned was Greel stood nearby and watched Trai for her approval. In an attempt to calm them, I hummed for a time to [Nurturing Enunciation], but I stopped before I could exhaust myself and the two little ones resumed their manic pacing.

I'd made sure to leave about half my reserves available before I'd stopped using my [Skill], so I could effectuate my plan. Once I presented my plan, Shemira's flicking tail and Took's ambivalence weren't ringing endorsements, while, Sybil resorted to calling it "foolish to the absolute extreme of bullheaded straightforwardness", but the entirety of my cabinet couldn't think of a better, more workable plan, so I stood tall and began to approach the city, magic beginning to bubble in my throat.