Chapter 19 - Part 3

“This place is disgusting,” Orphan whispered to Delegado.

“You noticed,” the half-orc replied sarcastically.

Festering Holt was living up to the first part of its name, the smell as they approached was that of an open sewer. This seemed to be because refuse was thrown directly in the street. There was no sewer in Festering Holt any more than there were streets or common areas. The place was a town, or a hamlet rather, only in the crudest sense of geographic proximity. The buildings, or at least the ones standing, were jumbled together in a random fashion, looking like nothing but droppings from a passing bird in the form of wood and cheap brick. Not a building in the place looked like it would withstand a sledgehammer, and not a patch of ground didn’t stink of bodily fluids. The Holt had received only a light dusting of snow as compared to the heavier accumulation some twenty miles to the southwest.

All eyes were on the three mounted riders as they came into town. The inhabitants of the town, and odd mixture of races, looked enviously at the riders. Several of them looked at the horses and licked their lips hungrily. The place stank of hunger and despair.

Thomas suddenly drew his hood back, and let his stormstalk look out. The sight of the symbiont made the few furtive inhabitants dart back into the spaces between buildings and burnt walls.

“Are these all that there are here?” Orphan asked Delegado. He saw three of them, an orc and two hobgoblins, suddenly turn on a fourth, a smaller goblin, and beat him to death. They began to tear off his clothes and cut his body up for food even before he finished kicking.

“I don’t know,” Delegado said. The usually nonplussed half-orc looked disgusted. “The better structures seem to be in the middle of town. Maybe…maybe there’s some civilization there.”

“Perhaps there is some law,” Orphan said hopefully.

“Don’t bet on it,” Delegado said, wrinkling his nose as a young shifter woman standing in a bloodstained doorway beckoned him with a filthy claw.

A zapping sound made them turn their heads. A pair of dirty humans with nail-studded clubs had started to move in behind them, and the stormstalk had whipped around and burnt the ground in front of one of them.

They rode on, watched, but unmolested. As they passed a gap of snow-dusted, rocky ground in between two groups of buildings, a man walked out from an alleyway, flanked by a pair of hobgoblins with swords. He stood in the middle of the street and raised a hand. Delegado looked at Orphan, and the warforged nodded. The half-orc took out his bow and moved his mount two steps to the right. Feather was sent up to look at the rooftops. Thomas opened his satchel of scrolls.

Orphan dismounted, truthfully happy to be off the horse and on his feet. He regarded the strange man before him. “You’d better have a good reason for stopping us,” Orphan said. He was not trying to impress the fellow, or bluff in any way. He was simply being honest.

The man could have been human, if not for his unsettling eyes, which seemed to possess a luminescent glow. Orphan also realized that the man’s shadow was not just a shadow. It was a diaphanous shape, faintly humanoid, but hollow and faceless, hiding in the man’s real shadow.

“You are new to the Holt,” the man said. “You need a guide.”

“We already have a daelkyr half-blood,” Orphan said loudly. Thomas’ head picked up and he examined the other half-daelkyr closely.

“I am King,” the half-daelkyr. “That is my name.”

“I see,” Orphan said. He realized that all eyes were on him now. The Holt’s inhabitants were peering from cracks in the wall, from windows, from around corners. They were deciding if Orphan and his friends were food.

The warforged made a decision born of necessity. He did not know if Sensei Visha would approve, but his mission was clear. Some things were unavoidable.

Orphan jumped up in the air, kicking first one hobgoblin in the forehead, then the other. Both died as their skulls fractured. Then Orphan had his hands around King’s throat, and was choking the man.

“I’m not impressed with your choice of name,” Orphan said.

The man’s shadow tried enveloping them, blocking out the light, but Orphan did not need to see someone he was holding. King struggled futilely, unable to break Orphan’s grip. Finally he died, his neck snapping, and his shadow symbiont broke free of his dead body, fleeing into a nearby alley.

Everything was hushed, and Orphan decided not loot the bodies. What he had done was horrible enough. And besides, a more practical side of his mind said. It shows more strength if I feel I can ignore their possessions.

Orphan took his horse’s reins, and started walking to the center of town. Feather flew down onto Delegado’s shoulder, and then the half-orc and half-daelkyr followed. Thomas paused long enough to spit on the other half-daelkyr’s face.

As soon as they were away, a crowd descended on the bodies and stripped them, then carried them away for food.