.
With the mortals and the horses having worn themselves out, traveling far into the wee hours of morning, we made the decision to accept Melis’s proposal to stay in the village’s empty barn through the daylight hours so we could rest. While it was still dark, I slipped outside and used my vampire sense to verify the lack of threatening enemies in the vicinity, and verify the lack of non-retiree-age adults as well. The two adolescent girls were indeed the oldest people below the age of the grandmothers we had seen.
It bothered me that there were no grandfathers, no matter how old. It had to mean that men were taken, no matter how old. I was imagining Robert’s grandfather, barely able to walk without a cane, being forced to do labor.
Since I wanted to go have a soak somewhere anyway, I made a quick trip over the pass to check the situation in the base. I figured it would be better to confirm the situation over there.
Just as I predicted, it was indeed Arelian uniforms everywhere in the base, now. It seemed about a quarter of Rufin’s Brigade were in residence, so I deduced they were using it as a base for their bandit-sweeping patrols rather than the location further south in the original plan. It had been easy to predict that this would happen; once they took the Berado base, it simply made no sense to do things any other way.
As for the Berado troops… I couldn’t find them. I spotted a small number of fresh graves, but not enough to account for the force that had been present. The majority had either managed to escape or were being held prisoner somewhere else.
The important matter for the Gado tribe remained as predicted. They didn’t have to worry about the Berado marching over the pass once the snow cleared out.
I briefly considered dropping in to brief Prince Rufin about the situation on the other side of the mountain. He needed to know that the Berado might counterattack out of desperation to take their link to the Gado territory back. But any attack should be weeks away, considering they were still bleeding from their wounds in Greenwater Fen, so I decided to wait until we confirmed the mine.
So, instead, I returned and bathed in the duck pond I had discovered beside the village. While I was soaking, Lucy came out to keep me company. Actually, she randomly flew around. She became fascinated for a while by the little weir that was damming the stream to create the pond. Then she submerged, her faint light just barely visible as she dashed around beneath the surface. I think she may have been chasing fish.
# # #
Honestly, Tiana received considerable training in the Royal Knights for guarding things and fighting things, but for the other work that we do, especially on the law enforcement and intelligence fronts, she only received the basic legal training. Nothing on practical fieldwork.
Nevertheless, there I was, in a small copse not far from the egress of the little valley, about to infiltrate.
Dilorè cast a basic stealth screen, something that combined magic similar to [Realm of Silence] with optical camouflage, so that we could hold a last-minute huddle. Brigitte was undergoing a personality change; her usually prickly personality had become quiet, but she wasn’t withdrawing. Her whiskers and her ears were standing up higher than usual, without any sign of twitching. Because Tiana had worked with her in the past, I knew this meant that she was mentally shifting into huntress mode, although her ‘hunting’ tonight would be closer to her unconfessed side profession as a thief.
As the third and final member of this scouting party, I was probably the only nervous one. Mostly thanks to the expectations being lumped on me, courtesy of Allia’s divination.
…the celestial maiden shall lead the way. Stated as if I knew the route.
“Are we sure we want to walk up from the bottom?” Dilorè wondered. “If we give it a few more passes, we may be able to spot it from the air.”
“I’ve already made three attempts,” I answered. “And you tried, as well. Wherever that entrance is, it is hidden from the air.”
“Well,” Dilorè noted. “The divination did say rather specifically that you would lead the way from the base of the stairs. Although if we started there for the reason that the divination said so, it’s arguably a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“We have no idea exactly how far up we’re going, anyway,” I added. “If we dropped in somewhere in the middle, we might accidentally start too high and miss it. We should start from the bottom to avoid that.”
“Do you two really have to come along?” Brigitte asked. “I would feel more comfortable on my own.”
“I would rather go by myself, as well,” I told her. “I feel the most confident about my own ability to fight my way out of danger.”
But Allia had decided that Brigitte’s skills at finding hidden things and decoding traps, not to mention her skills at tracking, were vital to this mission. Frankly, as much as it chafed me, thanks to my annoying habit of trying to do everything myself, this was Brigitte’s mission. I was there to carry Brigitte out if necessary and Dilorè was there to defend us while I had my hands full of Brigitte.
We went over our basic contingency plans one last time, then slipped out of the copse and followed the stream up into the valley. Stealth was every woman for herself. I had my Vampire Cloak, Dilorè had her spells, and Brigitte…
I’ve never said much about Brigitte’s abilities, have I? I mentioned [Wall Scamper] once, her ability to climb just about any vertical surface as long as it was strong enough to hold her weight, but I think that’s it.
Brigitte is a natural-born thief. She capitalizes on her skills by working as a huntress and a scout, but any way you look at it, her skills are intended for thievery. She’s even aware of it. She jokes that her patron is Hermes, the god of thieves.
There’s no way that’s true, by the way. No Ostish temple would anoint a child in the name of any god other than the Big Three. They prohibited the direct worship of all minor gods. Even though Melione and she are best friends, devout Melione cringes whenever she hears that joke.
For the approach, Brigitte was employing her [Shadow Crawl] skill, which was an enhancement to the [Prowl] skill she possessed as a fox-kin. [Shadow Crawl] gives her some advantages that confuse even my fairy eyes. I can only keep track of her with vampire sight, because in my fairy sight she seems to teleport from dark place to dark place, becoming completely invisible between them. I know she is actually dashing at high speed using the magic of another skill, [Fleet Foot], because [Shadow Crawl] can only be mastered by first mastering that, [Prowl], and a couple other skills.
In my vampire sight, she’s just a blur between stopping points. It’s pretty amazing to watch.
Keeping my Cloak at the highest strength to muffle my footsteps, I proceeded up the path behind our scout. Dilorè was staying aloft, using the thin moonlight to power her stealth magic to preserve her reserve of Light mana until we had to go underground. Talene had loaned Dilorè her precious magic stone, but it wasn’t fully recharged yet, so she had to spend the charge in it cautiously. Her job right now was simply to track us.
The stairs came into view soon enough, as we followed an ancient path cut into the stone a few paces above the level of the stream. The ascent became too steep for a simple ramp and the steps began at a point where the water below became a cataract.
They followed around corners as the stream wound. Ahead and above, I could see them continuing where they appeared again beyond the next bend.
Brigitte had switched stealth skills, thanks to the lack of shadowed nooks appropriate to [Shadow Crawl]. She was now using [Wall Blend], slowing us down severely. I decided to slip past her and go ahead, checking around corners to look for hazards or eyes. Seeing none, I returned and uncloaked ahead of her.
“I scouted ahead,” I told her in a low voice. “It’s clear for the next hundred paces. You want to keep going like this or move ahead?”
She looked annoyed. I realized I was trampling on her professional pride a little bit. Yeah, girl, I can see through this particular skill. Sorry.
I rethought and decided I should say it out loud. “Sorry. I was thinking you shouldn’t tire yourself out where it wasn’t necessary. You should save it for when we find the mine.”
Dropping both the skill and her ears, she nodded.
I pointed at the point where the stairs became visible. “Can you see the stairs up ahead, where they appear from behind the bend?”
She nodded. “I think so. Just barely.”
“Let’s go that far without stealth. I saw and felt absolutely nobody that far. We’ll both stealth after that.”
Before moving out, she gave me a puzzled frown and a shake of the head. “I couldn’t see you at all until you dropped your stealth. You never showed any stealth skill back when you were with us before. Why not?”
With a sigh, I nodded. “I’ve always thought it was creepy. Criminal vampires use it to attack people, so I always hated it. And we had you for scouting work, so I decided to hide it.”
Her ears flicked a little, going back to neutral position. She tipped her head. “You didn’t want to do it, so you left it to me?”
“Well, you’re really good at it,” I insisted. “My ability wasn’t needed.”
With a complicated look on her face, she mused, “I don’t know whether to be mad at you for making me do the work or happy that you entrusted it to me.”
I giggled slightly. “I really did think I shouldn’t horn in on your territory. Although I will admit, it was an excuse to not use a skill I hated.”
“Huh,” she commented, her ears back to their usual proud position, then shrugged and pointed up ahead. “As far as up there?”
I wondered for a bit if I should interpret Brigitte’s ear positions using my knowledge of Genette or not. Wolves and foxes are different, after all.
We headed out again, moving up the stairs quickly to the point I had set, then resumed our stealth skills before rounding the next bend. We worked our way around another long curve of the gorge, until we reached another spot where the path disappeared around a corner.
Brigitte had gone first. I nearly ran into her as I followed, because she had frozen immediately. It was a dark spot, and she had switched from [Wall Blend] back to [Shadow Crawl].
In a very low voice, she said, “My Lady, if you can hear me, there’s a wide ledge ahead. I think this is the old monastery.”
“I hear you,” I confirmed after lowering my cloak enough to allow sound. I had slipped into the shadowed area with her, so I was right next to her. “This isn’t a ledge, it’s a grotto. I couldn’t see it from the air because of the roof.”
I had seen something like it in the past, while visiting Mesa Verde National Park. A cave-like hollow was worn into the wall of the valley, more of a gorge at this point. I’m sure the geological process had been different, but the result, a space deep and tall enough to build houses, was the same.
They must not have built the houses from stone like the inhabitants of Mesa Verde had done, because I could only see foundations left of the old monastery. But, toward the back, hidden from aerial view, I could see the gaping mouth of a tunnel, with a handful of Berado soldiers standing guard.
