Death's Daughter and the Ebony Blade: Volume 7 Exordium [Parts 1 to 11] by Maito Ayamine

Author:Maito Ayamine
Language: eng
Format: epub

It was just after lunch, and through the window there came a pleasant breeze. Kleric Major Ashyn was reclining in his favorite woven cane rocking chair, when the door flew open with a bang. He leapt to his feet.

“Wh-Wh-What’s the meaning of this?!” he spluttered as the soldiers who came bursting in seized him. Before he could even wipe the drool from his chin, they hauled him off to the fort walls. And the ordeal didn’t end there—next, they thrust a spyglass at him.

“Just what in the blazes is going on here?!”

“Shut up and look down there, ser!” Shelah shouted back even more loudly. Cowed despite himself, Ashyn did as he was told. The scene that appeared through the lens was as though hell itself had manifested on earth.

“What...what is that...?” he quavered.

“Don’t ask us! Right now we need your orders, ser!”

Surrounded by chaos and faced with a crowd of soldiers bearing down on him with a desperation in their eyes he had never seen before, all Ashyn could think to do was to scream furiously, “What the hell do you mean, ‘orders’?!”

“What d’you think?! Order us to flee, ser!”

His soldiers weren’t worth the rations they ate, but apparently their minds weren’t completely empty. Any soldier who fled without an express order from him would face the executioner’s block, no exceptions. With trepidation, Ashyn raised the spyglass once more.

I’m just the commander of a backwater fort! I can’t deal with that! The whole forest swarmed with the ghouls. Meanwhile, the garrison at Fort Dagon numbered only two hundred soldiers. Whether they stood and fought or not wasn’t even a question.

“Kleric Major! Give the order to fall back!”

“Shut up! I need quiet while I think!”

“Think? What’s there to think about other than running?!”

“I am commander of Fort Dagon! Not a rank-and-file nobody like you lot! I have all sorts of things to think about!”

They would run, in the end. That wasn’t up for debate. But he had to get word of the situation to the lady of the city with all haste, so in order to buy time they would need to put up some resistance. To be sure, it was not a wish to defend his country that had Ashyn thinking along these lines.

If I make a stand here, my heroism might even put me in the running for Kardenal. Now that’d be the life... All right!

Nursing his rapidly inflating ambitions, Ashwyn had just made up his mind that they would stand their ground, when on the wind, there came a cry that went through him like a blade of ice piercing his heart. He let out an incoherent whimper. It had, of course, come from one of the ghouls, and in that moment, the desire to get away from this place right now easily overtook his ambition. His terror took hold of him, and he turned on his heels.

“I’m sorry to say it, but as of this moment, I declare Fort Dagon abandoned! Now run, run ’til your feet

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