Aldric is the first to rise and pulls two sealed letters from his jacket. “Highness, I have messages from your father.” He hands her the letters and takes a step back. “We volunteered and took responsibility for the first delivery so that His Majesty could remove himself from the matter. He has personally banished us and sent us through the portal with new supplies.” Aldric nods to the boxes and backpacks behind him.
“How is the situation?” Nara asks and her voice sounds calmer than she feels.
“Tense,” Aldric says. His tone is factual, but Nara hears the tension beneath it. “The church has announced that it will banish anyone who openly opposes it. But that seems to stir people up rather than intimidate them. It is brewing in the city, Highness and I do not know how much longer the lid will hold.”
Nara nods. “Thank you, Aldric. Stand up, all of you.”
The guards stand. Nara holds both letters in her hand and studies the group. Ten men, all in guard armor, armed and with the calm, controlled gaze of people who know what they are doing. Most appear to be in their early twenties and seem highly motivated and disciplined, and behind that Nara sees something else. Curiosity and a spirit of adventure. The kind of look people have who voluntarily sign up for something everyone else thinks is insane.
Nara takes a quick inventory. Supplies for several weeks, tools, seeds, basic medical supplies, ropes, nails, blankets, more than Nara expected. Her father was more thorough this time.
The letters go wordlessly into her jacket pocket.
She looks at the group. All have just stepped through a portal and stand on an abandoned marketplace in another world with a half-day time difference. Exhaustion will catch up with them soon, but that is dangerous.
“Follow me.”
The way to the barracks is short, no more than five minutes away. Nara leads and the group follows without comment. She opens the barracks door and steps aside. Dust, collapsed bunk beds, a broken table top, debris from the roof, but the basic structure is intact, which Nara marked just yesterday.
Nara leans against the doorframe and crosses her arms.
“By evening I want this barracks usable. Debris and broken beds out, anything else that is no good, out as well. Floor swept, weapons room cleared out. The material you brought stays here and the food supplies go to the tavern cellar.” She looks to Aldric. “Split up and no one sleeps until it is dark.”
Aldric nods immediately. “Understood, Highness.”
Nara turns to Cerena. “You are captain of the city guard, effective immediately. They answer to you.”
Cerena opens her mouth briefly, but closes it and nods.
The others take note of it as a logical conclusion. Cerena is the most senior and the only noble among them. The question has never really been in question.
Without another word Nara leaves the barracks. As she is already around the corner, she hears the group start talking behind her. Aldric distributing tasks, someone making a joke. The sound of people who know their job.
She climbs the stairs to reach the wall. The wind is weaker than in the morning, but Nara’s hair still flies in her face and she brushes it aside irritably. From up here the city looks much smaller, manageable and simple, but the forest stands on the horizon like a wall.
She pulls out the first letter and breaks the seal.
Her father writes briefly this time, but between the lines she feels the tension. He writes about the guards, that all volunteered and knew what to expect. Next, that the portal is permanently watched by the church and that it could take weeks before there are corrupt temple knights on duty simultaneously. Then, at the very end, five simple words: I rely on you.
Nara stares at the line. Five words that cause her more unease than the entire rest of the letter combined.
She folds the letter and takes the second one. The seal is the same, the handwriting on the envelope likewise. But when she unfolds it, she furrows her brow.
Letters upon letters arranged in rows. An entire page full, neatly written in her father’s handwriting, but without recognizable words, without pattern, without system. Nara turns the sheet. Looks at it from the other side and holds it up to the light. There is nothing to find.
She carefully folds the letter. Her father has encrypted it and she knows that he would not give her an unsolvable task. With that, she puts the letter back in her pocket.
Nara leans against the parapet and lets her gaze wander over the city. She sees only the problems now. The breaches, the many unusable buildings, a garden that produces nothing yet and a letter she cannot read.
She looks at the forest and the usual uneasy feeling spreads inside her.
Then she hears footsteps on the stone stairs. Cerena comes up the stairs and stands beside her, silently looking out at the forest with her.
“You promoted me to get rid of the responsibility.”
Nara does not answer. The wind tugs at her hair, but she stares dumbly at the forest.
“The guards volunteered,” Cerena continues. Her voice is calm, without reproach, but also without detours. “They knew exactly what they were risking. They did not decide for Arthengard, they decided for you.”
For me, Nara thinks. For a woman who nearly got stabbed to death by a simple goblin last night because she ran outside alone like an idiot. A truly impressive choice.
“You survived three weeks alone,” Cerena continues. “You filtered water, set up a garden, explored the city.”
Survived. The word fits. Not lived, survived. She talked to a skull because otherwise the ceiling would have come down on her head. She lay awake at night listening to sounds that were not there. That was not a plan. That was panic with a lot of luck.
Cerena says nothing more. She lets the silence stand for a while and then puts her hand on her shoulder. “We stand fully behind you. No matter what happens.” Then she turns and walks down the stairs without another word. Nara hears her footsteps on the stone steps until they fade.
Nara leans against the parapet and looks out at the forest edge again. Her thoughts go in circles and arrive nowhere. The barracks is one street over and eleven people are working there for her.
“It is your legacy,” comes a voice, soft and directly into her ear, like the first time on the marketplace.
Nara breathes out and closes her eyes briefly. “Now I am hearing voices again.” The wind whistles softly over the parapet. The blue dots on the meadow hop lazily.
“No and I will help you protect your people,” comes the voice again.
Nara turns around. The wall is empty of people.
She closes her eyes, sighs and mutters, “Damn it all.”
The fire in the fireplace casts dancing shadows across the pages of her book and Nara has been staring at the same drawing for an eternity. A slime, depicted as a round blob with a glowing point in the middle. Beside it a description: Weakness: The core. Occurrence: Plains, ruins, occasionally forest edges. Danger level: low. Two pages further on, a goblin, drawn in more detail and with a note about pack tactics. Danger level: moderate, dangerous in groups.
Nara has read the goblin page three times. Everything she could have known three nights ago. Everything that does her no good now because she learned it the hard way.
She does not turn the page. The book lies open on her knees and her thoughts wander.
Ten guards in a barracks they just cleaned up. Supplies that will not last nearly as long for twelve people as she would like. An encrypted letter in her pocket whose decryption might take years. A voice that spoke to her and which she apparently did not imagine, though she would prefer to believe she did.
A clatter behind the counter pulls her from her thoughts. One of the guards has opened the kitchen door and hit his head on the crossbeam that hangs across the frame and which Nara has not removed in all the weeks since her arrival. He rubs his forehead, cursing.
“Sorry,” Nara calls from the fireplace. “I have not gotten around to fixing up the kitchen. It was not exactly high on my list.”
The guard looks around the kitchen, sees the state it is in, and turns back to Nara. “Does not matter, Highness. Would it bother you if I prepared dinner for everyone here at the fireplace? The kitchen needs at least a day of work before anything can be cooked in there.”
“Of course, help yourself.”
He begins to gather ingredients from the supplies they brought, cuts vegetables and divides meat strips into the pot, all with a routine that immediately stands out to Nara. He has clearly done this before.
“Did you always cook in the guard?” she asks.
“When we were on patrol, yes.” He peels a potato in one long strip. “In the guard everyone does what they do best. One cooks, one checks the equipment, one knows about logistics. It cannot be any other way when you are away for weeks.”
“And who decides who does what?”
“The captain, but usually it just works out. One person is better at it than the other.” He throws the potato chunks into the pot and wipes his hands on his pants. “When I started, I wanted to do everything myself. Stand guard, cook, fix the equipment, care for the horses. After three days I was so exhausted that I could not get anything done anymore.” He looks briefly at her. “My captain back then took me aside and said, Your job is not to be able to do everything. Your job is to know who can help you.”
Nara looks at him and says nothing. The guard turns back to the pot and stirs evenly, as if he has said nothing special.
Knowing the people who can do it. Nara puts the bestiary on the table and stares at the cover. For three weeks she has tried to do everything herself. Filter water, set up a garden, explore the city and fight slimes. Not because she thought she was good at it, but because there was no one else. But now there is someone. Eleven people who know their jobs. And she treats them like spectators she has to prove the situation to.
But she does not. Never did.
She stands up and begins to push the tables to the middle of the room. One next to the other until they have one long, stitched-together table that wobbles and does not quite fit at the seams, but where everyone can sit. She sets the chairs around it and counts, adjusts one.
When the guards assemble in the tavern that evening, the table is set. Set is a generous term for wooden bowls and spoons that Nara has salvaged from the ruins, but it suffices. The guards sit and some of them move as if their limbs only function out of habit. Exhaustion is written on their faces, dark circles under their eyes, heavy eyelids, shoulders sagging forward. They have been on their feet for almost twenty-four hours, in between a barracks that they have cleaned from top to bottom. Now at the table, fatigue catches up with them.
Cerena sits beside Nara, Aldric across from her. The stew is better than anything Nara has made in recent weeks and she makes a mental note to give the kitchen more priority.
When the bowls are empty, she clears her throat.
“We need to explore the city systematically. We need shelter for the people who will come after us. We also need a sustainable food source.” She looks around the room. “I propose that we split up. One group explores the forest and hunts. The other explores the city and searches for usable buildings.”
“How many per group?” asks Aldric.
“Six each. Cerena leads the hunting group. I go with the city group.”
“Volunteers?” asks Cerena and looks around.
Hands go up, in some cases somewhat hesitantly because the arms are heavy, but they go up. The division happens without discussion. Five guards volunteer for the forest, including the cook, who apparently can hunt as well. The other five stay with Nara. Aldric volunteers for the city group.
“We start early at sunrise,” Nara says. “Cerena, take what you need. Be careful, we do not know what is out there.”
“Understood,” says Cerena.
“And now sleep,” Nara says. “You have earned it.”
No one needs to be told twice. The guards stand and some of them sway slightly on the way to the door. One leans on his neighbor’s shoulder. Their voices fade on the marketplace, quieter than in the afternoon, more tired.
Cerena lingers a moment longer and looks at Nara as if she wants to say something. Then she goes up the stairs. Nara hears the door to the adjacent room, the creak of the floorboards and then silence.
Nara gathers the bowls and sets them behind the counter. She adds one last log to the fire and goes up as well. As she lies down, her bed creaks as always. She pulls the blanket over herself and closes her eyes.
In her dream she stands at her usual place on the city wall. Nothing is as Nara knows it. The streets are paved and clean. The houses have roofs and windows with glass, smoke rises from the chimneys and the marketplace is full of stalls, voices call back and forth and the smell of fresh bread hangs in the air. The city wall is undamaged, not a crack, not a breach and the towers manned with guards.
And beyond it, where in Nara’s reality only floor plans and rubble heaps lie, a castle rises. Massive, with towers that reach into the sky and walls so thick that they seem solid even from a distance. Flags flutter on the parapets and the windows glow warm in the evening sun.
Then the sky darkens.
Nara turns around and sees on the horizon as far as the eye can reach, an army moving across the plain toward the city. Orcs, thousands of them, endless on the horizon. Their armor shimmers dark and the ground trembles beneath their steps. Before them siege machines are pushed, towers of dark wood and rams covered with iron.
And above them, in the darkening sky, small dragons. Three, four, five, Nara cannot count them all. Their wings darken the sun and when the first of them lowers its head and breathes fire, the beam hits the city wall and the stone melts like wax. So the breaches were not made by battering rams, they were burned into the wall, one after another.
The castle is hit last. The dragons circle above it like birds of prey and their fire rains down until the towers collapse and the walls crumble. The flames are so hot that the stone itself burns and the air above the ruins shimmers.
Then Nara is underground. The heat is gone and around her it is cool and dry. She stands in a room, not huge, but high enough that the vaulted ceiling above her vanishes into the darkness. Shelves stand against the walls, closely packed, filled with books and scrolls. In the middle of the room stands a table with open folios and on the walls burn blue lights in iron holders that bathe everything in a cold, even light. A library. It must be beneath the castle because above her she hears muffled the breaking of stone and the roaring of dragons.
Nara walks through the rows and lets her fingers glide over the spine of the books. The titles are in a script she cannot read, but some books bear symbols she recognizes. Runes, similar to those on her sword. She pulls one out and opens it, but the pages blur before her eyes and the letters dance before they can form.
She knows she is beneath the castle. But how deep, she cannot say. And where the entrance lies, she does not know either. Then the image fades and Nara wakes up.
She lies still in her bed and stares at the ceiling. Her heart beats fast, but not from fear. From something else. It was too real for a dream, more like a vision or a memory.
The next morning the groups split up on the marketplace.