Chilled exorcist. Александр Алексеевич Алексеенко
at everyone sitting in the hall with his penetrating eyes, but no one uttered a word.
And so the Count continued, "I wish to send my youngest daughter to Kostegrad and marry the son of the Keeper of those lands. To make the journey safe, I have asked the Order to provide fourteen brave men to clear the way of the most dangerous cold and infected creatures of the canopy."
"How much are you paying?" addressed the hunter who sat to the right of The Best-of-us. Everyone in the hall looked in his direction.
"I've already paid the Order. Didn't you receive your salary?" The Count studied the man who dared to ask the question with genuine interest. There was a royal condescension in his tone. The question itself was provocative. According to the laws of the Empire and the Order's statutes, hunters are forbidden to take more than one coin per task on pain of death.
"According to the king's decree," the mercenary tossed the gold coin carelessly onto the table, "we are entitled to this as payment for our work. Yes, it is! But it's not enough to even take a piss in your town. If that's all, you can slaughter me in the square for refusing to serve the Order and canceling my contract."
One of the hunters, tall and broad-shouldered, stood up and pounded his fist on the table. "The employer must provide his hunters with good, or even the best weapons he has. That is the law!" roared the huge man, who looked more like a bear.
The Count turned his head and leaned to the side.
"You will have a full hunter's kit. You'll get everything you need near the stalls, as well as a horse," the descendant of the Feanoth family commented disapprovingly on the assassins' performance.
"That's another matter!" The big man rejoiced and sat down at the oak chair. It rattled under such a large man. I realized why the giant had stood up. He would not let the earl say anything, such as rebuking the other hunter for insulting the dignity of his house. I don't think the Count would do that, though. Except that he doesn't blow dust off us.
The lord of the borderlands raised his face and addressed the crowd. His tone was now completely impassive, "We have held a tournament and summoned knights to fight evil. They will march ahead of you straight down the path and crush everything they see on and along the road. Your task is to go near the path and destroy all the lairs and everything that will be farther away, but represents a serious danger when moving along this path. You need to make sure the knights don't miss anything."
There was a creak in response, one of the exorcists of the chill took out a knife and scraped it across the beautiful oak table, leaving deep nicks. Then he raised his weapon and looked at its sharpness.
"You don't need to tell us how to do our job. It will be done…better. As best as it can be, after this shitty oser...." he spat out.
"If that is all, then I dare not detain you any longer." The Count's response was a mass shifting of chairs and a clamor of black robes.
Chapter 7: "The Descendant Witch"
The whisperers-in-the-night, are a strange group of people, among them are assassins and hunters, witches and enchanters. More like castes, the ruling system can't tolerate one thing: a mute-born. This girl is born every time the previous one dies. To the whisperers-in-the-night, she is an outcast that must be banished, but to the Crown of Grave Mohawk, she is a valuable advisor. Because of this, when the mute-from-birth reappears among them, she is whisked away at the age of sixteen to the Emperor's court when she finishes her training.
Back in the era of Terressia's exploration, the mute-born ordered a settlement of sisters to be established in the Dark Forest. All because of what dwelt in those forests. Kostegrad's expedition threatened to simply end up in these parts if no one could confine the monsters of the eerie thicket that stretched as far north as the mountains and swamps to the south. It was only the help of the whisperers-in-the-night that remedied this situation. The Laughing Sisters had mysteriously subdued the wild beasts that had attacked the tiny outpost of Kostegrad, a piece of land that people had clung to with their teeth.
And now we were walking with my companion of the forest huntresses through the remnants of a once great oak forest. The last green spot on the maps, north after the endless swamps. Wild stunted trees sprouting in all directions had been replaced by noble giants with spreading crowns, and gullies with broad roots. I knew from the Castle Keeper's memories that Darkwood had lost much of its lands to the north and east. It had disappeared beyond Kostegrad and near the rebel lord's fortress, losing nine-tenths of its forests. And only in this place, where the Laughing Sisters live, did the oak tree mysteriously still stand and successfully resist the infestation.
The cliff lifted the small, forgotten village above the verdant sea of forest. Perhaps it would have been utterly wild, being in the depths of the Dark Forest, were it not for the ancient stone walls and equally ancient temple buildings at the very top. There was a fire burning in the middle of it, with an old witch sitting by it. When she saw us, she broke away from the hazy brew on the fire and, splashing her hands like a kind grandmother, sat down on a small bench.
"Come, child," she beckoned closer to the girl who had brought me to this place.
"Sister Huntress, you have brought a man into our camp..... A man," the Old Witch wagged her finger. Her voice creaked at the last word, and then she laughed with recognition, and realizing who I was, she continued in a softer tone. "You have brought us a hunter of the creatures of the canopy!"
The woman looked at me eagerly and even fidgeted on her stool like a frog, preparing to spit her tongue at me.
"All the old women in the camp have exhausted their strength. I'm the last one to keep the gray land from moving south of the Dark Forest for untold years. My domain, by the way!" The witch's eyes fixed on me with greed.
"There in the north of Darkwoods, the gray earth cuts into the forest itself, and in the south before the sanctuary, the river serves as a natural barrier to the oser." The witch's unblinking eyes fixed on me. She was like a blue-barefoot, peppering the wooden beads with small fingernails. For a moment I saw her facial features grow younger, and so I turned my head slightly to the side to avoid making the connection. The witch giggled at her innocent joke; apparently she had already read my thoughts. Then she turned serious again.
The witch wiped her face with her hand, becoming old and tired again. A wrinkle creased her forehead.
"The castle, in the south. I sent my sisters there, but no one came back. That weakened me even more." She grabbed my hand, peered down and looked at my palm, studying the old scars and calluses from the crossbow. She drew my hand to hers for some reason, almost under my nose, and then let go, losing interest. "I need you to clean it completely. Only then will my children be able to read the ritual on top of it. It should help stop the sulfurization of the southern lands."
"Do you have any black arrows?" I got right to the point.
"Now you're talking!" clapped her hands and beckoned the two girls over. "Better, my dear, better! Here, back-splitting arrows!"
She pulled back the cloth, and I saw the arrows shimmering with secret incantations.
"She'd pulled forty from her stockpile, and it had been a long time since we'd had hunters." The witch's eyes lit up, or maybe it was the fire's glow from the new wood.
"I've never seen one of these before, how do you use them?" I lifted one arrow that shimmered with light.
"Have you seen Kostegrad's arrows?"
"Yes, I have seen them," I agreed.
Kostegrad is a dark city with a grim reputation. Poverty-stricken neighborhoods along the walls, fighting arenas underneath. They say they keep the spite down with the beggars' blood. And as for arrows, yes, they have a special guard that protects the Lord Protector and the Bourgeois.
"Every shot fired by Costegrad's special arrow hits its target. Then the arrow disappears and reappears in the quiver, and so three times," I voiced my knowledge.
"These arrows are better, better! Precious, where do you come from? Their wizards are no match for my skill, I am a descendant of the whisperer-in-the-night. Maybe the last true witch on the continent. My