Chapter Twenty Nine

Storrhamarr dated back to pre-unification Selkarc. At the time the lands north of the Stryk River were under the control of the Minkyling Federation, a loose alliance of local tribes that answered to a single high king elected from among their chieftains. When the Minkylings lost control of the Stryk to their southern neighbor and failed to reclaim it they’d needed a new stronghold in the region to defend their holdings in the region.

They’d selected a steep hill roughly equidistant to several nearby cities and constructed a nigh-unassailable fortress atop it. Unfortunately it never saw combat. Only two decades after Storrhamarr Castle’s completion, Queen Ingrid I of Selkarc began her conquest of the peninsula. Within a handful of years she’d absorbed the nation south of the Federation.

When she pushed across the Stryk and witnessed the formidable defenses of Storrhamarr, Ingrid had immediately turned back without even attempting a siege. While the Minklyling tribes celebrated their apparent victory, though, Ingrid prepared her longboats. A coordinated marine assault from both coasts forced the Minkyling army to leave their protective walls behind in order to reinforce coastal cities—at which point a Selkarcian army crossed the Stryk, cut off their retreat, and annihilated the Minkylings in the field.

But Storrhamarr hadn’t been abandoned in the wake of that defeat. Its location made it well-positioned as a shipping hub between certain mines and coastal ports, particularly as the area lacked any rivers gentle enough to be used for shipping. A town sprang up around the castle’s walls to support passing caravans and over time it grew into a city. By this time Selkarc was firmly established as the only power south of the Geirarjötnas, so although the city did have outer walls, they were far shorter and less formidable than those of the inner castle, mainly intended for fending off monster attacks which had themselves plummeted in frequently due to the efforts of Selkarc’s army.

So Cinna could understand, from a certain point of view, why Count Keller would have been reluctant to make a stand on those outer walls. They were short and poorly maintained; weaker even than those of Saltrvatrmarr Fortress which had been hastily reinforced only just before they came under assault. Cinna estimated the walls to be just five or six meters tall, which made them utterly pitiful by the standards of civilizations that raised fortifications from the earth with magic instead of carting stone blocks from quarries kilometers away. That height would be sufficient against monsters but provide little defense against draugr.

Even so, Cinna couldn’t forgive the count for what he’d done.

“They had enough time to realize they’d been abandoned,” she said solemnly, stepping away from a broken shop window. The occupants had attempted to barricade themselves inside, but they hadn’t been able to scrape together enough furniture or nails to fully seal the windows. She didn’t need to climb through the shattered windows to know the people inside were long dead.

Others had been caught out in the streets and run down. The unplanned and narrow roads of Storrhamarr were too winding for her to see the periphery of the inner castle yet, but she expected she would find bodies stacked against the gates once it came into view. Based on what she’d seen so far Cinna knew her hunch had been correct. Count Keller withdrew his soldiers to the inner castle and left the townsfolk to their fates.

“What about him?” Lilia asked, pointing to an armored body left slouching against a doorframe further down the road. The door behind the fallen man had been broken off its hinges.

“Soldiers are human too. Some likely chose to fight in direct violation of their orders. Perhaps this man’s sense of duty towards the people he saw every day proved too strong, or maybe he had someone he wished to protect. I imagine the count would have quietly arranged for his soldiers’ families to be sheltered inside the keep in order to ensure their loyalty, but…this man may have also just been unwilling to abandon a friend of his,” Cinna theorized. She looked Lilia in the eyes. “Would you like to try asking?”

The necromancer looked back to the body and stared long and hard before answering.

“I don’t think so. I’m still not sure if it’s right to do that,” Lilia decided.

“If it helps you make your decision then you should know that a common duty of necromancers is the temporary resurrection of recently deceased individuals in order to say their goodbyes and make clear their final will. Bringing this man back to life, if only for a short time, could be interpreted as doing exactly that,” Cinna advised. Truthfully she would have liked to openly ask Lilia to revive the man, but she suspected that pushing her too much might only cause her to dig in her heels.

“Just because other people do it…does that mean I have to as well?” Lilia asked slowly, like a child attempting to grasp the concept of free will.

“Not at all. I believe it would be beneficial to us at the moment to do so, however,” Cinna replied hesitantly. That said, she did believe his testimony would only be of limited use. If the man knew some means of sneaking into the castle then he would have used it instead of performing a valiant last stand in the street. At most he might have some insight into what Count Keller had been thinking.

“…something tells me it would be a bad idea,” Lilia stated.

“Is that your intuition as a necromancer?”

“I think so,” Lilia answered. “I can’t see any spells on his soul, but…there’s something strange about it. It doesn’t look normal.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Cinna said, relenting. What Lilia lacked in knowledge she seemed to make up for in instincts. If she saw something wrong then Cinna felt inclined to listen. She left the soldier’s body behind, continuing towards the castle. She waved her looted hammer in front of the face of a draugr as she passed, observing its eyes carefully. “Still, whatever you’ve been doing is amazing. I expected them to simply ignore us, but it truly seems these draugr are unable to even detect us.”

“I told them not to!” Lilia declared cheerfully.

“Do you know if that applies only to their own senses or if it would prevent anyone from looking through their eyes to spot us as well?” Cinna questioned. Lilia had told her during the trip to Storrhamarr of her ability to share her senses with her familiars. For now, Cinna felt it safest to operate under the assumption that Lilia wasn’t unique in that ability.

“Well, I could test it, but…I wouldn’t be able to tell for sure if I’m replacing my own order when I share senses with one of my friends or if it didn’t work in the first place,” Lilia replied.

“Best to assume their masters can see us if we give them reason to look, then,” Cinna determined.

She resolved to remain cautious even in spite of the apparent lack of danger. Despite the fact that the crowd of draugr she and Lilia were navigating their way through were ignoring them, she couldn’t allow herself to forget that these were still hostile undead. Cinna and Lilia weren’t walking through a bustling city right now. They were sneaking into a sepulcher occupied by the restless dead.

Reminded of that fact, Cinna suddenly felt far less certain of their chances. A constant stream of undead marched down the road on every side of her, presumably on the way to replace losses suffered by the forces assaulting the castle. On the surface they looked like perfectly normal soldiers but a closer look revealed the truth. Battered armor. Dried blood. Slit throats and concave skulls. Even their armor gave away their true nature, as no real army fielded such a wild mishmash of styles side by side. There had to be equipment from at least two dozen different cultures present.

Most disconcerting of all, though, would have to be the prospect of liches mixed in among these foot soldiers. Cinna didn’t think it was likely, but the closer she and Lilia got to the fighting the more likely it became that they might encounter a lich that would be immune to Lilia’s interference.

It was a long walk from Storrhamarr’s gates to the castle at its center. Too long. Every street revealed new horrors. People murdered in their homes, in the markets, and in the streets. Here Cinna found a father run through together with his teenage son; there she spied a mother that had buried herself under a ton of ore along with several draugr just to allow her children to make it another twenty steps down the street.

At least, those were the narratives Cinna reconstructed in her head. She couldn’t truly be sure if any two of the corpses she saw were related. A great many of them were too badly mangled to even compare the faces. But the more she saw the greater her anger grew and the stronger her resolve became.

Storrhamarr was doomed. Any that made it out at this point would do so only thanks to Lilia’s miraculous control over the undead. And Cinna didn’t know how many people this one, barely trained necromancer could escort away without any liches noticing. But what Cinna could do…the only thing she could do…was to ensure Count Keller received judgement for what he’d done.

Eventually the sounds of ongoing battle began to echo through the streets as Cinna and Lilia approached the center of the city. Cinna still couldn’t see the castle over the tall buildings lining the labyrinthine roads, but all she needed to do was follow the flow of undead and the din of combat. She could have found her way even without Lilia to guide her.

Cinna set her rage aside to focus on a question she still hadn’t found an answer for. How would she and Lilia infiltrate the castle itself? If they approached from among a horde of undead they would be mistaken for part of it. Even if they established contact, though, it wasn’t as if the defenders were at liberty to open the gates and allow them in. She didn’t know Storrhamarr well enough to know of any secret escape tunnels, either.

“Huh. That’s weird,” Lilia blurted out all of a sudden.

“What?”

“C-i-n-n-a. Someone spelled your name out on the roof of one of the towers. How’d they know you were coming?”