Touch of Fate

Chapter 243: First Contact

With one last heave, Julia finally managed to fully stow the mainsail. As soon as she succeeded in tying it down with her shaking hands, she collapsed onto her knees to catch her breath.

"A fine job, girl. We'll make a sailor of you yet." Skarn complemented from his seat a little ways away. To her chagrin, he was casually drinking from his wineskin while watching her work. A casual observer might think that he was simply leering at her while she exerted herself. However, Julia had grown accustomed to the man's unusual tendencies, and knew that he was merely making conversation, infuriating though it may be.

"You know, you could have helped, instead of sitting there and drinking."

"What? You'd make a frail old man do the heavy lifting? That's some gratitude you're showing to your savior." He replied with mock indignation.

It was a familiar exchange for both parties by this point, and only served to increase her irritation. "Frail my a**! I've seen you in a fight. There isn't anything frail about you."

Skarn laughed heartily. "Ah, but if I did everything for you, how would you learn? As I've said before, everyone on this ship has to carry their own weight-"

He froze suddenly, head cocked at a slight angle as if listening to something that only he could hear. After a few seconds, he looked back at Julia. "We're getting close. Best be quiet now."

She glanced around at the almost impenetrable fog they'd been floating through for much of the last half-hour, and didn't see anything different from the last time. "How do you-"

"I have my ways." He replied curtly while standing and moving to his usual position at the rear of the ship, giving quiet orders along the way. Pretty soon, the Fireforged's oarsmen were in place, and rowing in near silence.

With no established task, Julia moved back to the rear of the ship as well. She made sure to kick her erstwhile angel companion awake, who was stretched out next to a barrel, snoring softly. Unfortunately, she forgot how sturdy Cariel was, and only succeeded in hurting herself.

While Julia was grabbing her foot, wincing in pain, the angel sat up and glanced around blearily. "Ah? What's going on-"

"Shh! Keep your voice down. We're in dangerous territory now." Skarn whispered from his position, eyes still rooted on the mist in front of them.

Cariel leaned over and whispered, "What's going on?"

Julia, finally recovering from her injury gave her a dark look. "We're almost to the rendezvous point, but there is a possibility of enemy patrols in the area, so we have to be quiet."

"Right, right...um, who are we meeting with, again?"

Burying her face in her hands, Julia resisted the urge to scream in frustration. She hissed, "The First Prince's group. Don't you remember?"

The angel tapped her chin with one hand, evidently deep in though."I think that stiff guy mentioned something about a prince..."

"That stiff guy is the noble in charge of all this. He's the one who had connections to the person you're looking for. The one you are supposed to meet. You know, the whole reason why we're stuck on this bloody ship. Why is this so hard for you?!"

"Haha, well, I've never been the best at remembering things." Cariel replied with an innocent smile. "According to the goddess, I have the memory of a gold tuna."

"...Do you mean a goldfish?"

"Yeah, that! Not really sure what that means, but it can't be too bad since it has gold in the name, right?"

Julia took several calming breaths, which gave her a chance to reexamine her poor life choices. It was a topic that she'd been revisiting quite often over the last few weeks, and she'd yet to find an answer to her burning question. What did she do to deserve this?

[Definitely should have accepted that apprenticeship at the bakery. Bakers don't have to deal with this kind of crap.]

At that moment, Skarn tapped the boards of the ship three times, which evidently was some kind of signal for the rowers, who lifted their oars out of the water and quietly stowed them. After a few seconds of silence, Julia felt the gravelly crunch of the longship running aground. As soon as it did, the rest of the crewmen lept into action, hurling themselves overboard and starting to haul the ship further onto land. To either side of the Fireforged, she could hear the other members of their small fleet doing the same.

"Come on, let's go." Julia murmured as she grabbed her weapons and moved towards the prow, hoping to avoid dropping into the water. Thankfully, Cariel had the presence of mind to follow suite, and soon they were crouched on a barren stretch of beach. They waited until they heard Skarn's soft voice in the swirling fog.

"Warriors, with me."

Julia and Cariel had the dubious honor of being in the vanguard force that had been assigned to meet with the First Prince's group and guide them back to the ships, by virtue of being two of the stronger members of the Fireforged's crew. Although this was more the case for the angel than for the beastman, it was decided that Julia needed to go along since Cariel needed a minder to keep her from doing anything stupid.

It didn't take them long to meet up with the few dozen representatives from the other ships, and after a couple short bursts of conversation they were on their moving again. Grabbing the guide rope which would help them stay together in the fog, Julia followed after them while making sure her 'charge' kept up. A difficult task since, in addition to her many other flaws, Cariel had a terrible sense of direction.

After a few minutes of traveling in near total silence, the signal for a halt was passed along the guide rope in the form of three quick tugs. They had evidently reached their destination.

[If I recall, we should be moving up to form a defensive perimeter, although I'm not sure what the point would be. This fog is so thick I can barely see my hand in front of my face.]

Nevertheless, she went along with the rest as they settled into a loose circle, with every person facing outwards. Knowing that there wasn't much else to do, Julia tried to get as comfortable as possible.

Roughly an hour later, she was squirming in place, trying to find a position that didn't cause her butt to fall asleep. Unfortunately, the patch of dirt she was forced to sit on happened to be both inexplicably cold and strangely hard.

[Ugh, when are they going to get here? I'm not sure if I can tolerate much more of this.]

As she idly played with the hilt of one of her daggers, she realized that she could see more of the ground in front of her. It looked like the fog was starting to clear up. Pretty soon she could make out the figures of the other members of the advance party, who were also looking around in mild disquiet.

[That's not good. It took the mages most of the night to conjure this fog. They said it wasn't supposed to dissipate unless there was a major storm nearby.]

Julia took a moment to make herself more inconspicuous, settling lower into the tall grass that covered much of this area of the central continent, but she was already getting an itching sensation between her shoulder blades at the thought of being so exposed. To a thief like her, who had done the majority of her fighting in the streets of a major city, this kind of terrain was alien and deeply concerning.

Thankfully, it was much longer before they heard the signal whistle, a high-pitched tone which indicated that the First Prince's troops had finally arrived. Skarn quickly answered with his own version, that sounded a little lower and more guttural.

According to the script they'd worked out through secret communications, this would be the point where a representative should have moved forward in order to discuss the gradual evacuation of the soldiers, however, something unexpected happened.

A sharp verbal command was sudden issued from the region in front of Julia, and a veritable army of humanoid figures popped into view, moving quickly in their direction. Among them were several figures on horseback that surged out of the remaining fog with distinctive purpose.

Feeling a jolt of alarm, Julia drew two of her daggers and prepared to throw them at the advancing force while mentally reviewing the short distance back to the boats.

She'd just pulled back her arm, taking aim at one of the figures in the lead, when she noticed that it didn't appear to be armed. She studied it as it got closer, eventually realizing that it was a woman wearing a ragged dress. On her back was a simple sack, and she was dragging a small child behind her. A look of terror was plastered on her face.

Julia put away one of her daggers, stood up and began waving to the woman. "Over here! This way!"

She wasn't sure what was going on, but it was clear that these weren't enemies. There was no way she could see the terrified women and children as threats, but Skarn was made of harder stuff.

"Hold it! Identify yourselves!" He yelled from his position, his staff glowing with a threatening blue light.

The civilians ground to a halt, too scared to continue. One of the horsemen moved to the front, revealing himself to be a grizzled soldier dressed in battered full plate. Even from her vantage, Julia could tell that the man was on his last legs. He was little more than a mass of injuries and dirt, and judging from the way he was tottering on top of his mount, he was close to passing out. Nevertheless, he managed to speak with a commanding voice.

"I'm Sir Eric Thorton of the Order of the Rose, and I am escorting these non-combatants. I beg you, take them to evacuation ships and prepare to leave. There are enemies in pursuit, and our liege is leading the majority of the surviving knights in a delaying action so the civilians can escape."

Skarn gave the man a hard stare, then looked around at the assembled vanguard. "Gareth, Rutgar, Hul, Julia and Cariel, you are the fastest runners we have. Follow this knight and bring back the Prince and as many of his followers as you can. The rest of you, take the civilians and fall back to the ships. Get them ready to leave."

As the raiders scrambled to follow his orders, he glanced back at Sir Thorton, "Get back here as soon as you can. My crew will lead you back to the ships."

The knight clenched his jaw, and nodded firmly, obviously too overcome to speak. He whirled his mount to face back the way he came.

"Come on," Julia sighed to Cariel, who had fallen in beside her, "looks like we'll be earning our keep this time round."

The pair broke into a easy run, moving quickly through the fleeing mass of civilians.

"Great!" The idiot angel replied, "I've been itching for a fight for awhile now...uh, by the way, what are we fighting?"

It took most of Julia's concentration not to fall on her face after that question. She knew she shouldn't be surprised, but sometimes she had to wonder if this world was going to be alright with divine beings like this.

[Maybe she really is part goldfish...]

Refraining from answering, Julia focused on chasing after the knight, who had, by this point, broken out into a gallop. Looking around at the raiders that accompanied them, she was certain that they couldn't maintain this pace for long.

Luckily, it only took them a few minutes to catch up with the rearguard. The knights under the First Prince were making a fighting retreat using hit and run tactics. Under ordinary circumstances, such offensives would serve to thrust all but the most determined enemy back and hold them in place until their charges could escape. The undead, on the other hand, were a different matter.

The pursuit force seemed to be comprised of mostly zombified infantry forces, little more than mindless walking corpses. The average knight could easily wade through them with impunity, their armor and enhanced endurance protecting them from all but the luckiest of blows. However, interspersed among the zombies were skeletal horsemen that moved with much greater vigor and skill. It was these that the rearguard were forced to deal with.

As Julia ran forward, she saw one of the Almiran knights stagger from a lance blow and fall from his saddle. Before his comrades had a chance to move to his aid, he was swarmed by the milling zombies, and buried under a mound of thrashing limbs.

Feeling a wave of revulsion at the unfortunate knight's fate, she unconsciously slowed down. This allowed Cariel to catch up and overtake her. The angel unleashed an excited battle cry and threw herself into the mound. With a few battering strikes of her shield, she smashed the majority of the undead off of the knight, giving her a chance to pull him free.

He looked as if he wanted to thank her for a second, but whatever he was going to say was lost as she continued the pulling motion, whipping the unfortunate man back behind the line of battle. Julia caught sight of his confused face before he landed in a heap a few meters away. Thankfully, knights were made of tougher stuff than most soldiers, so he staggered back to his feet after a few moments.

Not bothering to look back at the poor soul she'd rescued, Cariel drew her sword and began hacking away at the zombies with gleeful abandon. By appearances, she was trying to take on the entire army by herself.

[That idiot's going to overextend herself. I just know it.] Julia thought to herself resignedly as she moved up to support the angel. It was her job after all.