Downtown Druid

A soldier in gray sat in the mud as he watched the cannons get loaded. He’d seen plenty of guns on the farm, but cannons were new to him. Massive hunks of metal that needed to be dragged by several draft horses or made weightless by magic just to move them into position. He felt his teeth buzz a bit as one of the mages cast some kind of spell on the cannonball before it was dropped in, his hands glowed with intense blue light for a moment, then faded, and he moved to the next cannon where they loaded it again.

“Get the fuck up mudboot,” yelled the sergeant making him jump to his feet, barely managing to bring his spear with him to avoid a flogging.

“Yes boss, er yes sir!”

The sergeant spat on the ground.

“You’re in luck. We’ve been ordered to start burning down all the structures between us and the wall. Any valuables you find are yours to keep, any man or woman you can bring back you get a bonus for. They’re dousing torches up on the front, go get one and get ready. They’ll probably take potshots from the walls, but there’s plenty of cover… at least until we’re done.”

He nodded his head and quickly began moving for the front, putting his helmet on and strapping it under his chin as he moved. The armor was cheap, but he was grateful for it. Some of the other men had decided not to spend any of their commission on it, but he wanted to make it back. If he was lucky, he’d earn enough to buy a slave.

He met up with the rest of his squad, a ten man gang of primarily degens and city dwellers that hadn’t worked a field a day in their lives. Only two others had opted for armor, the rest only wore their gray uniforms and carried their spears and torches.

Dym handed him his torch.

“I’ve heard there’s still a few people in the houses and stuff in there,” he licked his lips, “you reckon there’s any women?”

He scoffed. “I get that, I get that, but come on, no reason we can’t have a roll or two with them first. Besides, they’ve got dwarven women, halflings, orcs. Could you imagine how good it feels to take down an orcish woman? That’ll put some hair on your chest.”

“Scouts reported mostly kobolds,” said a younger man behind them.

Dym shook his head. “Kobolds? Disgusting little vermin. I hear they eat each other. Nothing worse than that.”

The soldier broke away subtly from Dym. He didn’t want to hear anything more that he had to say.

The Sergeant appeared shortly after, and he noticed that there were a few dozen other groups of men ready with torches.

“Alright boys, when they blow the horn, burn all that shit down,” he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the small farms at the edges. “Once it’s cleared we’ll be able to start the cannon volleys on their walls.”

“Can’t they just fire the cannons now? Arch them over the structures toward the walls? Or use them to clear these buildings?”

“First of all, we don’t want our men having to charge through all these buildings to reach the gates when they’re breached, second cannonballs are more valuable than your time, third don’t ask me any more stupid fucking questions. Got it?”

“Yes Sergeant,” replied the man meekly.

There was an awkward pause while they waited for the horn to sound. Some of the men discussed strategies for what places they wanted to target first to loot. Dym and a few others continued to fantasize about what they’d do to any women they’d find. The rest stayed silent.

The soldier in gray didn’t care about any of that. Rendhold just needed to fall, and he would be part of it. All he had to do was survive.

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The horn sounded, and the men all charged. He didn’t stop at the initial buildings like the rest, instead looking for any shops he could find, he figured any of the best stuff that was left would be hidden in those. He burned down a small home as he moved, making sure the sergeant saw, then moved deeper into the cluster. As he moved he could hear screams, just a few, but enough that he started to question his decision to move ahead. He saw a sign above a building, a tailor. He kicked the door to it once, then twice, and finally broke it on the third try.

He cursed as he walked inside, it looked like it had already been cleared out. He took a moment to start a blaze inside and moved on.

He found another shop, a blacksmith’s shop. The lock on it was too thick to deal with, so he broke a window and crawled inside, damning the owner to the hells as he pulled a small piece of glass from his leg. He swept through the shop quickly, then took a breath to calm himself down, and looked around more carefully. There was a loose floorboard near one of the walls. He stuck his spear into it and pried it up. There was pouch inside. He lifted it, a wide smile going across his face as he felt coins shift inside of it. He opened it, his heartbeat speeding up as he saw the glittering of gold. He tucked it into his pocket, and held his torch against a far wall to set the shop ablaze before climbing back out the window.

He considered heading back to join with the sounds of the rest of the group. He’d already had some good luck, and there was no reason to push it, but the thought of finding more gold consumed him. He moved in deeper, finding a large cleared out area with a strange layout. There was a massive stone block that was still warm from the sun, several small shops, and a single large structure in the center of it all. He peeked in the window of the large building, but it was too dark for him to see much of anything.

He moved to the front door and pushed it open. He chuckled a little as he realized it wasn’t locked. He stepped inside, and the wooden floorboard his foot touched creaked loudly as he put his weight on it.

That sound was the last thing he heard, as an axe hanging over the front door swung downward. It hit with such force that his body was held in the doorframe, the axe that had swung toward him holding it up from how deeply it had embedded itself in him. His body was the only warning for others that the kobolds had left all of their enclaves heavily trapped.

…

Dantes watched the burning of the area outside the walls from a dozen different angles, a deep frown on his face. He sat up in his room on the edge of his bed, Sevryn sleeping soundly behind him. He’d never really considered himself a patriot, but watching the homes of fellow Rendholders, even those who lived outside the walls, filled him with rage. He considered taking action, but things weren’t ready yet. Besides which the walls themselves hadn’t even been hit yet, for now almost everyone was safe aside from those too foolish to seek refuge in the city.

He stood up and silently made his way to the garden, scratching his hounds gently enough to keep them from waking. The enemy was at the gates, and Viscent ships were on the horizon heading toward the docks. The guard had actually destroyed the docks themselves to deny the enemy easy landing on the shores, and used the dock wood to erect barriers between alleyways to reduce their mobility. That was all they had done though, with more and more defenses being focused on Uptown and the inner wall. They seemed to believe that everything outside that was already done for.

Dantes reached into the sack of tiny seeds he’d been feeding regularly with blood for the last several days. Since they were making a move, it seemed like it was the time for him to make one as well.

He walked into his tree, and stepped out into the outskirts of the city, just outside the enemy lines. He shifted into catform, making his way silently into the Frasheid camp as a dark gray tabby. At this point he was very familiar with its layout, having scouted it through the eyes of dozens of animals. He dodged between men’s legs, leapt over carts, and slipped between tents as he moved toward his target.

The kitchen tent was hot and busy when he entered. More than three dozen men were working on the meals required to keep an army fed, screaming at one another as they mixed, stirred, chopped, and poured. The tent was well lit, with several lanterns lit throughout.

The next part was tricky. Unlike Rendhold, he wouldn’t fit in amongst the mostly human cooks, so disguising himself and slipping through wasn’t possible. Instead he needed to rely on misdirection.

He sent a few rats across the feet of one cook across the tent. When he yelled and kicked at them distracting the other cooks, he shifted into himself and dropped a heavy handful of seeds into a massive pot of soup. He shifted back into a rat and climbed into the top of the tent where a lantern was hanging. He used his teeth and wooden arm to saw the rope holding it up until it fell and shattered, causing a small fire. While the cooks were distracted with that, he dropped another handful of seeds into the dough they were working. This cycle repeated about a dozen times as he put more and more blood powered seeds into the food. For the cooks, it seemed like a bad omen for the upcoming campaign, which was in no way an incorrect assessment.

Dantes encouraged those seeds to harden themselves to survive where they were placed. Many of them were already hardy, but he wanted as many of them to survive as possible. He couldn’t wait for them to bloom.