Odrum, Irozia
Odrum had been reduced to a pile of ash and death. Caleste, Edrahn, and the knights picked their way through the wreckage of destroyed houses. The cloth masks on their faces kept the worst of the stench out. They guided their horses carefully so as to not to trod upon the charred bodies that remained intact. Edrahn was grasping her staff so tightly that Caleste was worried that it’d snap in her hand. She’d have reached over to hold Edrahn’s other hand to comfort her if she wasn’t grasping her halberd with a similar tenseness. There was no telling if whatever had attacked the village was still lurking around the thick smoke that still blanketed the town and reduced their visibility to only a few dozen feet around them. They needed both their hands free in order to react quickly to whatever threat may arise.
“What could have done this?” Emmon asked. His voice was scarce above a whisper, as if concerned about alerting an unseen enemy.
“Odrum may be a small village but they certainly would have been able to defend themselves from any bandits coming in from the Barrens,” Caleste said, “A desperate lord from the Southern Kingdom perhaps?”
Edrahn’s lips pressed into a thin line and she shook her head. She hailed from the Southern Kingdom before she had met Caleste — she knew her people, “No lord would be this ruthless, this … destructive.”
“I agree,” Emmon said, “If they were desperate for food and resources, I doubt they’d burn everything to the ground before they could loot the place. Not to mention it would be suicide to go against Irozia — especially with an act of violence as egregious as this. We may have had years of peace but the Southern King knows that Queen Venera has him outmatched.”
Caleste looked down at the ground below her and almost wished she hadn’t. A ghastly skull clad in a blackened helm stared back up at her. She flinched back and brought her horse to a sudden halt.
“What is it?” Edrahn asked and Caleste felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment and shame from being so quick to spook.
“Nothing to be frightened of,” she said and regained her composure before she dismounted next to the corpse, “Just the dead body of a soldier.”
She knelt down to examine the charred remains. The corpse was mostly buried in the rubble of a collapsed house with seemingly only its head intact. Her confusion at the situation deepened as she got a better look at the helmet clad skull. The fire damage could explain the inhuman look of the skull but the helmet itself? That didn’t look like any helmet she was familiar with. It certainly wasn’t a helmet any member of a town militia in her countship would be wearing. She surmised that the body she saw must have been one of the raiders. However that didn’t help her much with identifying who exactly it was that just destroyed one of her towns.
In fact the mystery only deepened as she stared down at the skull and the helmet it wore. Most helmets from the Southern Kingdoms were conical nasal helms with maille aventails that covered the face and neck. Bandits, or really any warrior from the Barrens, wore thick cloth as their armor and usually wore no helmets.
This helmet was made of some form of metal, though Caleste wasn’t entirely sure it was iron, and it was in the shape of a brimmed hat. Under the helmet the creature wore a maille coif made of the same blackened metal as the helmet. She placed a few fingers on the helmet, rubbing it slightly to see if it were soot that would rub off. Her hand came back only slightly darkened by soot but the metal of the helmet remained a deep, glossy black.
“This isn’t any metal I’m familiar with,” she said and looked up at Emmon who had approached to examine the skull.
He shook his head, he hadn’t seen metal like that either.
Caleste carefully lifted the helmet from the skull and she heard Emmon make a noise of shock. The man was a hardened veteran, a soldier who had fought in the queen’s army during her campaign to retake the throne. He had seen far worse than this, they both had.
The skull looked almost human to Caleste — everything seemed to be in the right place at least: Two eyes, a nose, and a ghastly gaping mouth with soot stained teeth. However there was something still unsettling about it, something that stirred a feeling deep in her veins that she was only vaguely familiar with.
She reached out to touch the maille coif and as one of her fingers brushed the skull it crumbled into a heap of ash. She drew her hand back, her finger that touched the skull tingled slightly as if it had been shocked.
“Caleste?” Edrahn asked, her voice was laced with worry.
Caleste stood up and attached the helmet to one of her saddlebags, “We can’t do anything for the poor souls here,” she said, “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Emmon asked.
“Where do you think?”
Anger and indignation had been building up in Caleste like a thunderhead on a summer’s day. Sure she felt sorry for the people who died in Odrum and the child who now sat in her castle who was likely the only survivor of the carnage. But more than that she felt pissed.
No one marched into her countship and made a mockery of her. First the terrible winter and now this … this insult. Caleste, the noble and heroic countess who couldn’t protect her own people.
She couldn’t stand by that.
She needed to find whoever did this.
They needed to pay.
“We’re going to find who’s responsible for this, and make sure they never do this to me again,” she said.
Emmon looked uncertain, “M’lady I’m not sure this is a good idea. Look at what destruction these raiders wrought — we should get reinforcements.”
“We haven’t the time,” Caleste said, “They could be marching on Caleston as we speak. Are we not the best warriors in the queendom? Did we not prove that over and over again? We can prove it once more.”
Her tone allowed for no further argument though Emmon looked as if he wanted to press the point. He sighed and gave a curt nod, “I’ll send Theran and Lovac to look for any trace of where our attackers went.”
“Good,” Caleste said, “Have them start looking to the south of the settlement.”
“You still think this is the Southern Kingdom,” Edrahn said.
Caleste looked to her wife, “Who else could it be Edrahn? They suffered through the same winter as we had. I know you don’t want to believe your people did this but who else could it have been? This doesn’t look like the work of simple bandits.”
“I think your desire to prove your worth is clouding your judgment.”
“I think your love of your people is clouding yours.”
Caleste would always marvel at how Edrahn, despite being a head shorter than her, could manage to stare down at her. She wasn’t about to back down though — she knew this had to be the Southern Kingdom. It literally couldn’t be anyone else.
Edrahn wasn’t going to yield any ground either, “So if the Southern Kingdom did attack us as you so adamantly believe — to what end? What could they possibly gain from this?”
“It’s a tactic,” Caleste said, “Encroach on my territory, raze a few villages to the ground, and burn our farmsteads … It’ll become too big of a problem for me to ignore and so they’ll force me into a battle.”
It’s what she would do. It’s what she had done.
“So you’re giving them what they want.”
“I’m putting a stop to this before it becomes a big problem.”
Caleste looked away from her wife and back over the ruins of Odrum; her mask slipped slightly and she hurriedly readjusted it. The stench of death and smoke was very familiar to her yet it still was nearly overpowering. Perhaps she had lost her touch in the years of peace.
She furrowed her brow in confusion as she retied the mask — she had smelled what she would have expected from a scene like this: the acrid scent of burnt houses and the nauseatingly sweet stench of charred flesh. However added to the smell was the pungent, nose stinging stench of sulfur.