Death After Death

Chapter 385 - Long Term Consequences

Simon had a few good weeks, playing hero in a dozen small ways. Once he was on the main trade road for the deserts and the badlands, he didn’t really leave it again. He started to get in tune with the rhythms of the winding trail as he visited the tiny communities of Gelbenval, Karlsford, and Rust. None of them had much to offer, and he could have traveled at more than double the pace, but what was the point? He was there to find trouble, not head north to Brin’s larger cities.

Along the way, he found and executed murderers and bandits. He also punished thieves and helped the sick, and always, there were more centaurs. Mostly that was in the form of old hoofprints and manure, but sometimes he would find more recent violence. This led him to practice at least a little with a lance for the first time in all of his lives. It was a weapon he largely considered useless, since he rarely had a horse, but against the hoofed menace he faced so often in this region, it was ideal.

Simon doubted that he’d ever win any tourneys with it, but after some trial and error and some instruction from a retired mercenary in an inn one night, he got to where he wouldn’t hurt himself with the thing at least. He still preferred a pike planted solidly in the earth, or a bow in hand, but shooting from horseback was much harder to learn, and he still had only a middling grasp of it.

As his days stretched on, he was grateful that he only encountered orcs on one occasion. That day, he stripped off his heavy armor and stalked them through a boulder field, killing them one by one while they hunted. There were six of them, but this time they had no warlock, and as long as he killed them one at a time, they were quite manageable.

It was the only time since he’d left the broken tower that he really felt like he was taking his life into his hands, which made it all the more thrilling. Fighting an orc wasn’t unlike butchering an ox. It was all about cutting through thick muscle and disabling it before a stray movement accidentally crushed you. It was ugly, messy work, and he stank of orc blood and entrails for two days until he found a pond to bathe in, but it was made easier with the sight. Knowing where such a monster would swing half a second before their hips even pivoted was a critical advantage.

Even in those life and death moments, he enjoyed this new life so much that he wondered why he hadn’t just spent an entire life or two doing exactly this. Maybe that’s what I’ll do when I get to level 34, he told himself. I’ll just ride around, solving problems and getting the lay of the land half a century in the future.

It was a task that was long since past doing. He knew pretty much every important event that was going to happen on this continent for the next decade or two. He should; he was involved in most of them, but what their long-term effects would be, well, that was a complete mystery, and one he desperately needed to solve.

Simon was so absorbed in planning out his next life that he was taken completely by surprise when he topped a rise and heard the distant sounds of battle. From where he sat on his saddle, he couldn’t see the source, but he didn’t need to focus on seeing the world tapestry to find the commotion, or even estimate its size. It was dozens of people at least, and they came from the far side of the next hills in the direction of the trade road.

Simon kicked his horse in the ribs then and rode hard in that direction. As he went, he gave a little thought as to who it might be. Bandits were a possibility, but in land this far from the mountains, centaurs or beastmen were far more likely than orcs.

Gnolls don’t usually fight anyone in a large enough group to defend themselves, though, he thought as he rode. However, even before he got there, he could hear the sounds of celebration replace the fighting. Simon had heard more than enough centaur war horns across his many lives to know which side had won.

Still, when he arrived, he wasn’t surprised to find the horselords crowing about a victory they had all but lost. Their dead lay thick on the ground, and arrows peppered the landscape on both sides of the fighting. Simon didn’t pause to get a lay of the land before he charged the closest group of wounded centaurs.

Most of the dead were clustered around a smouldering caravan. There were too many soldiers and too few wagons for a merchant, but he didn’t have another theory. Instead of worrying about that, he buried his lance in his first opponent even as the monster turned to flee, and then drew his sword to fight the next one. No one stayed around to give him the chance. Aside from a few half-hearted volleys that were as much shouted insults as arrows that were launched his way, the half dozen surviving monsters retreated to fight another day.

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Simon told himself that he should probably follow them and try to hit the rest of their herd while so many of their warriors had been eliminated or wounded, but he decided against it. That was both because trying to wrangle a herd without assistance was folly, and because there were hopefully survivors that needed his help among the carnage of the battlefield.

Centaurs were blood thirsty opponents that liked to maim and kill their enemies. They weren’t a fan of leaving survivors, but Simon had hoped that his quick arrival would have let him find at least a few. He was unfortunately left disappointed.

Though there were enough noises of people struggling to take their last breaths, there was no one here he could save, not without magic. One at a time, he closed the eyes of a sightless corpse or put the dying out of their misery. A few grasped at him, begging some favor he could never grant with unintelligible words.

It was an ugly, blood-soaked scene that was easily the worst massacre he’d seen in lifetimes. Unfortunately, the only solace he could offer any of them was that they’d given as good as they’d gotten. That was all you could say about a dozen dead men who'd stood their ground against a fearsome charge and left behind at least as many horselord bodies lying dead or lamed. Simon would get to those, too, eventually, but making sure monsters didn't suffer longer than they needed to was low on his priority list, no matter what terrible bellows they made as they grappled with their own mortality. First, he wanted to give every last man who was about to bleed their last a chance.

He didn’t find anyone who could be saved until he reached the lead carriage. The two wagons behind it had been toppled, and one was burning. He’d unhitched those horses before they burned at least, but if that was the most good he did amidst this slaughter, that would depress him.

Not that what he found next didn’t depress him. A mother and her baby who'd been killed with the same spear, a well-dressed man dead with three arrows in his chest, and a little boy bleeding out from a stab wound on the floorboards. It was beyond heartbreaking, and each of those sights twisted the knife more than the last.

Simon clung to that boy, though, as the only one who might survive this mess. He wrapped the wound on his chest tightly until he could start a small fire to cauterize it, and then, with boiling water and thread, he sewed the smaller wounds shut.

Through all that, the boy clung to life with a weak, thready pulse. He stirred fitfully and woke long enough to cry out at the worst pain, but he lapsed back into unconsciousness before Simon could ask his name or any details that led to the brutal attack.

Those weren’t hard to guess, of course. Centaurs didn’t need a reason beyond blood and battle. So, it was only when he was done and he was going back through the carriage for more information and supplies that he realized who he’d just saved. That stunned him so much he just sat there for several minutes in the fading light.

“Of all people…” he breathed, looking at the signet ring in his hand. He hadn’t recognized the baron as a younger man, but he recognized the Raithewait crest on the ring he wore. That wasn’t something anyone else was going to be wearing, and even if it had been stolen, he doubted it would be by someone with exactly the right number of people in their family to complete the picture.

“She was supposed to die,” Simon told himself, “Not everyone else.” Strangely, he regretted the former much more than the latter, though in fairness, she was an innocent who had never wronged him.

What this meant for this run, though, he was unsure. This was level zero, so changing it would be difficult or impossible. Would this make things worse or better for the region? Simon’s gut told him it was hard to do worse than the last baron, so that made him cautiously hopeful as he hooked a new team to the carriage and moved it away from the rest of the corpses, which were starting to attract carrion eaters.

Simon had planned to stop after a few hours and make camp, but he ended up riding very slowly for half the night with Varten lying on the buckboard beside him as he tried to decide what he should do next.

Delivering the boy back to his father’s city alone would be folly, but Simon didn’t like the only other option that sprang to mind. “Perhaps I’ll drop him off in some village and let him spend his days as a shepherd instead of a wolf,” Simon mused.

Or perhaps he won’t wake up at all, and it won't be my problem, he added silently.

Really, none of this had to be his problem. He could very easily drop the carriage off at the next village and relay what had happened to them. Then the mess would belong to whoever the next baron was going to be. Somehow, though, Simon didn’t think he was likely to do that.