Chapter 070: The Company Will Take Care of It

One moon had already disappeared behind the Redridge Mountains, and the other was about to set. Dawn was only two or three hours away.

Jess remembered looking down from the wall last night when the sun hadn't even set.

How long had he sat here in a daze? Had the night really passed so quickly?

He couldn't tell whether the fighting had lasted longer, or whether he'd spent more time sitting there afterward.

The man questioning him was Colonel Todman. There was none of the contempt he'd shown earlier toward an inexperienced boy.

"Yes... I sent it," Jess said, nodding. "The gnolls came not long after you left. I was trapped up here."

"What did you use to send the signal?" a soldier behind the colonel asked while kicking aside pieces of gnoll corpses.

Jess froze.

Right. What did I use?

Fireballs. No, a flare gun. There aren't any flare guns here, damn it! Who has time to plan an explanation for afterward when they're about to die?

He scratched his head and glanced around.

"What are you looking for?" the soldier asked.

"I'm looking for... for..." Jess suddenly said, "Scrolls! I brought some Fireball spell scrolls from the Wizard's Sanctum. I wanted them for protection on the road because I haven't learned any magic yet. I used the scrolls to signal you. I thought I had some left, but..."

It sounded surprisingly convincing. Not one of the soldiers questioned him.

Then the colonel asked, "Did you kill all these gnolls by yourself?"

Before Jess could answer, Todman picked up the blackened sword, burned almost to the shape of a useless stick. He turned it over in his hands.

"What happened to this?"

Just looking at the blade made Jess feel unbearably cold. Even pulling his clothes tightly around himself didn't help. Not only had he used up his physical strength; that strange enchantment had drained him badly too.

He tried to answer, but the sudden chill made him shake so hard he could barely speak.

After some time, he managed, "I don't know. They're all dead. I had to... If I wanted to stay alive, I had to kill every gnoll that climbed up."

"I don't know about the sword." Jess swallowed and decided to blame the gnolls. "It just... caught fire. It had to be dark magic."

Please read this story on NovelPhoenix, where its author publishes it; this copy was taken without permission.

"He's right. It looks like the gnolls' evil magic," a soldier said, examining the sword. "I can smell the stink of shadow on it. Just like the orcs, Colonel Todman. We never found that dark mage. Maybe he used a spell to lure us away and joined the assault himself. Those savage gnolls probably realized they couldn't beat this boy with blades and decided to burn his weapon. If we'd returned any later, who knows what would have happened?"

"Look at his hand. Damn it... poor fellow."

"Mr. Jess Seso? Sir?"

Someone touched Jess's shoulder. He looked up to find Colonel Todman bending toward him.

"Do you realize you helped save Stonewatch Keep alongside the brave soldiers of our company? The men below tell me that if you hadn't used fire to draw most of the gnolls' attention up here, they might all have been killed. The enemy took the other watchtowers first. Only this one held because you fought back."

Todman looked across the bloodstained stone.

"It's much worse here than I imagined. I can hardly... I can't imagine what you went through tonight."

"We've lost good men, and many more are wounded, but Stonewatch still stands," he continued. "We must report this to King Varian."

"Go and rest, Jess Seso. Dawn is almost here. You must be completely exhausted. Your eyes are so bloodshot you look like an orc."

"His hand needs treatment. Those burns are serious."

"Find the mages and priests. Quickly."

"There are wounded everywhere. The priests may take a while to get up here. We've lost a mage too. They found his body in the forest."

"Martin Harold, Master Morgans's student. Looks like the gnolls cut off his head."

"Even a mage was killed?"

"Unbelievable. This teenager killed seven or eight gnolls on his own."

"I hear he's from Lordaeron."

"The Kingdom of Lordaeron..."

"General Turalyon is from Lordaeron too."

The soldiers' overlapping voices made Jess uneasy.

It wasn't because of the attack. After coming close to death so many times with Gred, he was much calmer about danger than he'd been before.

What worried him was the dark power he'd unleashed—and the possibility that the Stonewatch soldiers, or even people farther away, might discover his secret connection to shadow.

Truthfully, he'd rather none of this reached Stormwind. If it became a big story and someone noticed what he'd been hiding, Morgans wouldn't be the next person expelled from the city. Jess would.

And Morgans himself was another problem. As a scholar secretly studying shadow magic, might he recognize something strange about Jess?

If the news went to the king, the Wizard's Sanctum would certainly investigate an attack involving a gnoll dark mage. Morgans would almost certainly be put in charge.

What a mess. This was supposed to be a simple package delivery. How had it turned into this?

He'd survived a battle with all those gnolls. He should have been happy, yet now he had another thing to fear.

Then again, without that darkness, would he have survived at all?

"Will you tell the king my name, Colonel Todman?" Jess asked.

"Of course. You're not one of our soldiers, but we're not about to steal your credit," Todman said with a smile.

"I was wondering if you could leave me out."

Everyone turned toward him.

"Why?" Todman asked, puzzled. "The king might reward you. You could get to meet him in person. If you're lucky, he might even give you two gold coins! I don't understand. You've earned it."

At the moment, even the prospect of gold coins wasn't particularly tempting.

"To be honest, I took those scrolls without permission because I heard the road was dangerous," Jess said. "If the king hears about the signal and tells my employer, he'll know I'm just an assistant running errands, not someone who can cast spells. I'll be punished."

"I see." Todman rubbed his prickly, close-cropped head. "That does make things difficult."

"We could adjust the report a little," a soldier beside him suggested. "Say he found a dwarf-made signal gun dropped by a sentry during the fighting and kept firing it until we noticed. Same result either way."

"Good idea. You write the report, then, John," Todman said.

He patted Jess on the shoulder.

"Nothing to worry about now, little brother. Our company will take care of it."