Chapter 171: Veyrhold
Chapter 171: Veyrhold
Rohan activated Molten Assimilation as hard as he dared.
Ash crawled over his palms and fused into a darker layer. The heat sank into it, still painful but bearable, and he twisted the spear with everything he had.
The skarn thrashed.
One of the smaller creatures lunged at his side.
An arrow struck it.
Rohan barely registered the blur before the creature was knocked sideways, a dark shaft buried in its shoulder. A second arrow followed almost immediately, hitting the same creature in the head. It collapsed into ash and fragments.
More arrows cut through the air.
The figures from the settlement had reached the outer trail.
Not many. Four, perhaps five, moving fast across the marked route. They wore layered coats and dull metal masks that covered their mouths and noses. Two carried bows. One held a long polearm with a hooked blade. Another carried a round shield of blackened metal nearly as tall as their torso.
Liora shouted something in a language Rohan did not recognise.
Or rather, he did not recognise it for half a heartbeat.
Then the meaning settled strangely in his mind.
"Here! Bryan is down! Sera is dead!"
Rohan didn’t have time to be disturbed by the translation effect.
The larger skarn ripped itself backward off the spear, tearing its own mouth wider in the process. Ember light spilled from the wound. It staggered, but did not fall.
The shield-bearer from Veyrhold slammed into the next smaller skarn with brutal efficiency, driving it away from Rohan. The hooked polearm wielder caught the creature’s leg and yanked, dropping it long enough for both archers to put arrows into its body.
The larger skarn hissed.
Rohan lifted the spear again, but his arms felt heavy now. Too heavy. The ash assimilation had bought him time and strength, but it had not made him tireless. The world swayed slightly at the edges of his vision.
The large creature prepared to lunge.
Then the silver pole atop the distant wall flashed again.
This time, the light did not merely reflect.
A thin beam of pale silver shot from the wall and struck the ash between Rohan and the skarn. The ground erupted in a sharp burst of white-grey powder. The skarn recoiled violently, its body smoking where the silver light had touched the ash around it.
A second beam followed.
The creature shrieked and fled.
It turned with startling speed and scrambled back toward the broken ridge, wounded but alive. The remaining smaller skarn tried to follow, only for the shield-bearer to crush it against a slab while the polearm wielder drove their hooked blade through its ember-mouth.
Silence returned in pieces.
The wind filled the gaps first.
Then came Rohan’s own breathing, harsh and uneven.
Then Liora sobbing once, sharply, before biting it down.
The Veyrhold patrol moved with practised urgency. Two went to Bryan immediately, cutting open his coat and pressing dark cloth against his wound. Another checked the dead woman near the cart, though from their expression, there was no hope there. The shield-bearer remained facing the ridge, weapon raised, while one archer approached Rohan.
The archer was a woman with narrow eyes visible above her mask. Her bow remained lowered but not relaxed. She looked him over from head to toe, taking in his unfamiliar clothes, ash-darkened arms, bleeding wound, and Hestia’s spear.
"You came from the west," she said.
Rohan understood her.
The words were not English. They were not any language from Earth that he knew. Yet the meaning arrived cleanly in his mind, as if something had quietly rearranged the world between hearing and understanding.
Hestia’s Acknowledgement?
The title had been vague. Apparently, one of its effects was preventing him from being completely useless in conversation.
Convenient.
Suspiciously convenient.
"Yes," Rohan said.
The archer’s eyes narrowed further.
"No one comes from the west."
"I noticed the welcoming atmosphere."
Her gaze flicked to his hands.
"What are you?"
That question again.
Rohan was beginning to hate that question.
"Lost," he said honestly. "Currently injured. Very tired. Also the reason Liora and Bryan aren’t dead, unless I’m misreading the situation."
The archer stared at him.
For a second, he wondered if sarcasm translated properly across whatever strange effect was helping him understand them.
Then Liora spoke from where she sat on the ground, one of the patrol members binding her leg.
"He saved us, Captain. The skarn had us pinned in the pocket. He killed four before the nest pack came."
The archer did not look away from Rohan.
"Four?"
"Badly," Rohan said. "Messily. With very little dignity."
That earned him a strange look from the shield-bearer.
The archer lowered her bow by a fraction.
"I am Captain Maerin of Veyrhold’s outer watch. You will surrender your weapon until we reach the gate."
Rohan almost laughed.
He didn’t, because that would have been stupid.
"No."
The patrol went still.
Rohan tightened his grip on the spear, then forced himself to loosen it slightly. His refusal had come out too fast, too sharp. He was exhausted, hurt, surrounded by armed strangers, and still close enough to the ridge that more skarn could appear. Starting an argument here was unwise.
But handing over his only proper weapon was worse.
He took a slow breath.
"I’m not threatening you," he said. "And I’m grateful for the help. But I don’t know you, I don’t know this place, and I’m not giving up the only thing keeping me alive while we’re still outside the walls."
Captain Maerin’s eyes remained cold.
"You expect us to bring an armed stranger into Veyrhold?"
"I expect you to understand why an armed stranger who just fought monsters to save your people might not want to become an unarmed stranger surrounded by people he doesn’t know."
The shield-bearer made a low sound.
It might have been amusement.
Maerin ignored it.
Luckily for Rohan, she still seemed to be on his side, despite the request actually being quite reasonable. After all, he was an unknown person to this human settlement, and while he wasn’t accustomed to this universes’ culture quite yet, the environment of this planet would make anybody wary.