Chương 377: An Outing

Ch. 377 - An Outing Simon continued like that, focusing largely on studying supernatural threats until his armor was done. When the smith finally pronounced it complete, he took to the practice yard to grow into it, but even on nice days, it was hard to find many takers.

"Why would I waste my time with the oldest squire in the history of the order?" was something he heard often, but he didn't let that get to him. He just stopped approaching people who had envy flashing through their aura and focused on his own drills as he tried to return his formerly fluid movements to their natural state. Exercising with thirty pounds of extra weight took its toll.

There were a few nights early on where he'd overdone it, and he even skipped reading, but after a month of building up his endurance and building up some new muscles, he was back in the library every night reading about all sorts of things. After a while, the most interesting part of that particular exercise wasn't the monsters he knew of, but those he'd never seen before. He could accept the idea of ghosts, spirits, and fae creatures, of course.

He'd summoned the dead and seen fire spirits during his volcano battles. The world was a very magical place, though it often took ideal conditions to reveal it. The interesting part was that there were so many stories by supposedly reputable knights about encountering fae in the wild places. These weren't the elves that dominated the fantasy games he'd consumed in his first life, either.

These were the trickster fae that would bewitch a man and make him fall in love with his reflection, or make him fall asleep for years. While Simon was certain that some of the stories had been invented to cover up passing out drunk and other similar derelictions of duty, he found it difficult to believe that all of them had simply been made up. However, he had no idea which one was more likely. How many mythological creatures are out there that I haven't met? He asked himself on occasion.

I mean, I've seen harpy bones, a giant spider, and what might have been dwarven ruins, and none of those are mentioned here. The closest things to dwarves in this book are kobolds, and they don't live underground; they live in the ground. Simon took it all in, but was unaffected by it. The truth was that the Unspoken only covered a couple of countries on a large continent. They barely knew who the Magi were, and almost nothing about what happened in Montain, but Simon was only in a better position by degree.

He'd seen most of the continent, but any reasonable world would have more continents. There had to be, he'd seen trade routes that extended out past Ionia, and others that terminated in Abresse. He just hadn't been there yet. There might be a Rome or an Africa out there waiting for him. Granted, at this point, he couldn't remember if Africa was the continent with the lions or the kangaroos. Either way, though, it was going to be very different than Brin.

He stayed busy, but the whole time, he expected a mission of some sort to come down with his name on it. Still, it took longer than Simon would have thought for the Unspoken to send him beyond the walls of the Broken Tower. He could almost hear the arguments about him taking place in dark rooms, and dearly wished he had the resources to scry on such occasions. He was given no such insight.

Instead, one day out of the blue, when he was finishing up at the library to go to dinner, Sir Kulthen cornered him, and after quizzing him on the difference between demons and devils, the most common signs that werewolves were plaguing a community, and where an ogre was likely to create a lair, he ordered him to meet with someone.

"Ask for Sir Rozman," the old knight said.

"He's assembling a small team for, well, I'll let him tell you. I expect you'll be in the field for some time." Simon considered asking for more information, but knew he wouldn't get it after that response. Sir Kulthen enjoyed feeling high-handed too much to help him out, so rather than give the man the chance, Simon saluted and thanked the man, then hurried to the mess hall.

Sir Rozman wasn't a name that he recognized, but after obtaining a thick slice of pork roast and boiled potatoes half drowned in brown gravy and a length of crusty bread, he asked around until he found him. He was instantly relieved to see the redheaded knight wasn't one of the men who had been giving him a hard time. He was dismayed only slightly when he sat down at the table and realized that several of the other men there were.

There was nothing for it, though, so rather than stress it, Simon introduced himself and extended his hand as soon as he'd set down his meal. The man shook it without hesitation, but answered.

"Oh, I think everyone knows who you are by now. The prodigy, or the prodigal, depending on who's doing the talking." There were a few snickers at that, which made Simon feel like the butt of a joke he didn't understand. Rather than dwell on it, he shrugged it off and said, "I'm just glad to be getting out there and doing some good. Where are we going, and what are we taking care of?" while he picked up his knife and fork and dug into his meal.

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"Well, the where is easy enough," the knight answered.

"The town's name is Daramoore. It's a smallish settlement toward the center of the kingdom, a few days ride from here, just off the main trade road." Simon had never been there, but he'd been near it enough times, and it was on his map, since he'd copied many other sources onto it. While he couldn't say precisely what they did, he suspected woodcraft and farming more than herding, giving the lay of the land. It could just as easily be mining or trade, depending on a number of factors.

Still, he'd heard no evil rumors about the place, so he wasn't expecting much, which turned out to be wrong.

"As to why, well, I can't tell you," he continued. Simon thought this was going to be the opportunity to give him a hard time that he'd been waiting for, but that wasn't the case. Instead, he leaned in and said, "Because everyone who was supposed to be there simply disappeared." As Simon took that in, someone else at the table said, "You're the smart one in the library to all hours, why don't you tell the rest of us who the most likely culprit is?"

While Sir Rozman hadn't been trying to be rude, this was certainly a jab, but that didn't make the question any less valid. Still, he didn't rise to the bait.

"That depends entirely on the evidence left behind," Simon answered.

"How did we find out about this? How long ago did it happen? What else did they mention about the situation besides the missing people?" It wasn't a good situation in any sense, of course, but such a mystery could have been caused by goblins or zombies as much as by a witch. For a moment, a memory of all those merchant caravans being dragged away into the dark by the necromancer's undead minions so they could spend the rest of their unnatural existence mining for gold surfaced, but he pushed it off with a shiver.

There was silence then, even from the ginger knight in charge of the group. It took Simon a moment to realize that the lack of explanation wasn't just a lull in the conversation while people ate.

"There weren't any other signs reported, were there?" he said, making the man in charge smile wider. He turned to the dark-haired knight on his left and said, "And you thought this one would be slow, Harvin. Look at him, he already has the situation well in hand." Simon didn't smile. He waited for the man to turn back toward him. Sir Rozman continued.

"The first man to find the town empty was a tinkerer who claims to have been through there only a few weeks before. I expect he and his kind have half looted the place of anything valuable, so by the time we get there, there really might be nothing. Still, he said there wasn't a soul to speak of, or any evidence of violence, which rules out a lot."

"It does," Simon agreed, extending a finger each time he named a possibility he was no longer considering.

"I doubt we'll find bandits, orcs, zombies, goblins, or any other kind of monster."

"I didn't ask what it was that didn't do it," the knight that had been harassing him earlier sneered.

"I ask what you think did." A number of options flashed through his mind before he retorted, "Witchcraft. As unnatural as this sounds, it's the only answer." The response was met with quiet ridicule and muffled laughter by some. Sir Rozman kept it more professional.

"While that is certainly a possibility, Enis," he agreed, "Something this mysterious, in such a heavily wooded area, points to the fae as the most likely culprit." Simon nodded as if he agreed, even though he didn't. He let the other men explain to him how he was wrong. They brought up a number of stories, like the Watcher in the Wood and the Bucket Full of Echoes, but even so, Simon wasn't convinced. He'd never run into a fae spirit before, and wasn't even sure how they'd fit into his magical paradigm.

Magic run amok was much more likely. Right or wrong, this wasn't a question they could answer from the Broken Tower, and eventually their leader told them all to go to bed.

"We leave tomorrow at first light," he ordered.

"Be ready or explain to the Grandmaster why you were left behind." The following morning, the group met at first light, and Simon joined to find that nearly all of the logistics for their mission had already been handled. That didn't surprise him. The Unspoken had substantial resources, and beyond asking the stablemaster for a mount, Simon had to do very little before they were on their way. The group was larger than he was used to traveling with.

They made five knights, three squires, and four teamsters and porters to help the rest travel quickly and comfortably. Riding across the plains away from the Broken Tower was a lot more comfortable than his half-delirious walk to the place with Sir Derinholt's corpse. After sitting around for so long, it was a nice change of pace, but even as their mounts ate up the miles and he endured the occasional muffled joke from someone nearby, the question of what it was they were riding toward haunted him.

At least once a day, he tried to calm his soul enough that the thread showing him where his current destiny lay might offer him some clues, but that did no good. The line that should have pointed to the city he was definitely going to next kept pointing randomly to other locations on either side of their route, like a broken compass needle. Just how many of me are running around in the world at the same time right now? He wondered.

Those experiments gave him more patience for the men he rode beside than he'd had at the start. Presumably, every single one could see his snarled, twisting aura, and that probably wasn't a comfortable view that any of them were used to seeing. In such a large group, no one troubled them, and except for one rainy day, they made good time. When they arrived, days later, Simon was unsurprised to find that the town was exactly as described. It had once been a community of several hundred souls.

Now it was entirely empty, and other than the mess that had been made of someone looting the first home he peeked inside, it would have been easy to believe.

"Alright, everyone," Sir Rozman called out, dismounting and tying off his horse's reins to a hitching post, "Spread out and find me an answer. I want to be out of here well before dark, just in case." Simon couldn't fault him there. Even with the sun hanging high in the sky, this place gave him the creeps, though he had yet to figure out why.