Chapter 34.4: The Sergeant and the Scholar

Down on the forest floor and many miles to the northeast, Sergeant Ventyr paused to look back over his shoulder, toward the point in the sky where he knew the floating city of Rata Sum should be. The city hadn’t been visible since he and Scholar Yissa had left Desider Atum that morning, hidden by the steep, stone walls of the ravine that had shaded the two of them for most of the day as they continued their northward hike through Metrica Province.

Ventyr took another step, and light struck him, just beyond the northern edge of the ravine wall. Maybe he still couldn’t see Rata Sum behind them, but after several hours in the deep shade of that vine- and moss-covered trench, he had finally stepped out into the open light of the sun. Only it wasn’t the lively glow of morning; now it was the deep, rosy stain of sunset that seemed to glance off every blade of grass on the gentle slope ahead of them. There was only a thicket or two in the two-mile swath of field, but right where the landscape rose back into hills, a sharp silhouette line of trees cut into the sky: the Artergon Woods. 

“Is that it?” Yissa asked excitedly, squinting at the angular outline of a fort that peeked up above the distant trees. She stepped out of the stark shadow just behind him, squeaked something between shock and pain, and threw her hands over her eyes. “My ears! It’s like stepping out of the Central Transfer Chamber itself—or at least so I assume, having never seen our ancestral homeland for myself. I am much too young to have seen it for myself. Though given the opportunity, what fool wouldn’t take it without a millisecond’s consideration? Perhaps by dimensional weakening...”

His eyes having already adjusted, Ventyr watched the petite asura slowly pull her hands away and squint into brightly fading daylight. She was still talking.

Ventyr had realized days past that the scholar tended to speak more for her own benefit than anyone else’s. It was a fact he had missed when they’d been traveling with other people for Yissa to talk to.

“Is that it?” she repeated, pointing this time. “Its silhouette appears to fit the described distance and general form. I certainly hope it is our destination, complete with that larger sample of the jade you’ve so assiduously promised: a find unparalleled in importance since—”

“Yes,” Ventyr confirmed, shading his eyes to look up at the outline of the small haven just inside the Artergon Woods. “That should be Arterium Haven. I’ve only passed this way one other time, and we did not linger here, but it seems to match the little I remember of it.”

Yissa cheered and bounded ahead. She’d made it amply clear throughout the day that she was ready to see that stockpile of jade—she was long since ready. Really, she’d been making it clear since he’d first told her that there would be samples available to her here. Somehow each day had drawn more enthusiasm than the last, bordering at times on demand.

The two crossed the remaining distance, Yissa revisiting theories and further inquiries she’d already remarked on at length. Ventyr nodded patiently, uncertain if the scholar didn’t recall having already made each point or if she simply needed to review old suppositions before reaching new ones. He still hasn’t landed on an answer to that question. Either way, she filled nearly all available silence, only speaking more and more rapidly the nearer they got to the haven. Ventyr hoped their arrival would earn him a respite from conversation, but he doubted he would be so fortunate.

At last, they reached it, veering slightly off the packed dirt of the Lion Road and approaching the front gate of the haven.

Once again shaded from the last vestiges of light on the horizon, all that really lit them now was the dance of firelight from torches at either side of the broad, wood-and-iron gates. Above them, on the ramparts, another torch bobbed into view, held by a short, large-headed figure whose armor glistened just above the crenellations.

“Who goes there?” the person called down, raising the torch to better see them.

Ventyr drew his Vigil seal from one of the leather pockets at his belt. As he did, he remembered the other seals he’d carried to the Keep, and the lost comrade each one represented. That seemed to happen every time he reached for it now.

“Sergeant Ventyr of the Vigil,” he announced after a moment, raising the metal coin into view.

The guard rose slightly over the shadowy parapets, and Ventyr only just recognized his nod.  He turned and called down to someone inside the walls. “Unbar the gates.”

There was the heavy sound of scraping wood, followed by a rusty whine of cranks and gears, and the bulky gates began to move. Pulling in and separating, they revealed the haven’s courtyard, and a lionguard on the other side scanned them before gesturing them in.

Yissa moved first, striding inside as buoyantly as she had for the last mile. As Ventyr stepped forward, though, a breeze picked up, rustling the trees, tugging at Ventyr’s trousers, and shifting a patch of loose dirt atop a mound at the foot of the wall beside the gate.

He paused.

It was the first time he’d noticed it—noticed them. There were several: six-foot-long mounds of dirt aligned neatly between the road and the haven, headed with stones bearing chiseled words he couldn’t make out. None of the grass that covered the landscape grew on those piles, and time had yet to tamp them down. They were graves, and they were fresh.

“Sergeant,” Yissa piped, drawing his attention back toward the open gates. “Are you coming, or should I proceed without you?” She had all of her usual patience.

Ventyr took one last glance at the row of headstones. “Yes, Scholar. I’m coming.”

When he reached her, she stood wringing her hands in anticipation. The guard at their side gestured something, and the cranks groaned once more, closing the doors.

By and large, the space around them was like any other haven Ventyr had seen: thick, granite walls cornered with rounded watchtowers that loomed over an earthen courtyard, muddy and rutted from long years of traffic. A single staircase against the northern wall led up to the crenellated walks, and at the southeastern corner the courtyard was the entrance to what must have been the guard station and travellers’ quarters.

What Ventyr didn’t see, though, was a merchants’ booth, a wagon, or even a single beast of burden. As far as he could tell, there were no travellers here beside them. Everyone wore the golden armor of the Lionguard, and even they were few: maybe half a dozen. Not only was there no trade passing through this haven; it was critically understaffed.

“Sergeant, was it?” a nasal voice asked from behind them.

Ventyr snapped out of his assessment of the encampment, and both he and Yissa turned. Behind them stood a barrel-chested male asura with his hair pulled into a single, thick braid that ran from his forehead to the nape of his neck. Stripped down to an undershirt and holding a wide hoe, the only thing that marked him as a lionguard at all were the trousers and golden legguards.

He wiped his right hand clean and extended it to each of the travelers, shaking vigorously when they took it. “Lionguard Captain Vott,” he said.

“I am Sergeant Ventyr of the Vigil. And this is Scholar Yissa of the Durmand Priory.”

“Greetings to you both.” Vott nodding to each of them. “Apologies for my tactlessness, but what misfortune prompts your coming to Arterium?”

Ventyr began to respond but was interrupted by Yissa. “Misfortune? What cause would you have for concluding that only a misfortune would have been our cause for coming here?” She eyed the environment, seeming to recognize it for the first time. And yet she carried on, barely missing a breath. “Now that I inspect it, I must admit your outpost is lacking the most basic of modern technologies, particularly given its relative proximity to Rata Sum. I suppose, in some respects, difficulty has motivated us here, but challenges aside, we’ve simultaneously come in hopes of inspecting something I never, in my most audacious imaginings, would have expected to—”

Ventyr put a hand to his forehead, turning from her to the captain. It was his turn to interrupt. “Why would you assume misfortune brought us here? You did expect the Vigil to return for our holdings eventually, did you not?”

“Your holdings?” The Captain inspected the sylvari keenly.

“Yes, Captain,” Ventyr maintained an even tone despite budding concern. “Some of my comrades stationed in the Duststruck Moors should have delivered a large quantity of a kind of crystal, well over a season ago.”

Scowling in thought, the captain began to respond but was interrupted by another armored asura. Narrower than Vott but with a larger, bulbous head, the twitchy lionguard saluted, mumbling something just loud enough for Vott to hear.

“Of course I meant to have them armed!” Vott growled, rounding on him. The other asura slid back a step. “Don’t be an imbecile. They’re skritt, not destroyers. Alchemy, I wouldn’t care if they were destroyers; if they wear the gold lion, we treat them as any lionguard, which includes arming and armoring them! How would you like me disarming you for just having the IQ of a siamoth?”

Fidgeting now with a bit of tunic peeking out from beneath his breastplate, the other asura nodded submissively and backed away in the direction he’d come, mumbling something of a an apology. “Right. Yes. Excelsior, sir. I— I misspoke.”

“You undoubtedly misspoke.” The captain groaned and gestured the other lionguard away. “Return to your duties.”

As the other trudged off across the courtyard, Captain Vott returned his attention to Ventyr and Yissa, though he seemed more to address Yissa. “My team and I arrived here precisely four days ago, and the only remaining members of the previous team were a pair of skritt volunteers. As anyone with a working intelligence would anticipate, not all of my subordinates are exactly exuberant at the idea of working with them, even still. I do comprehend it—I certainly anticipated it—but it’s no less aggravating.” Grimacing, Vott shook his frustration away.

Yissa raised a finger into the air, one of many signs Ventyr had come to recognize as a signal of impending discourse. Over his time in Brisban, Ventyr had developed an appreciation of the skritt as a people, but however much he might like them, he had no time for the two asura to get into an asura-grade discussion of the race, so he turned the conversation the way he needed it to go.

“Do you know where I might find my crystals, Captain?”

The asura arched an eyebrow at him, shifting his weight uncertainly. He finally shook his head. “Apologies, but no. I received no intelligence on such a holding, and I can confirm there is no crystal anywhere in this haven.”

Ventyr scanned the courtyard again, considering the amount of interior space there must have been in that narrow tower at the back of the fort. It couldn’t have been much. Even if the haven had some underground storage, which it might, it certainly wouldn’t be large enough for a new commanding officer to have overlooked any part of it large enough to hold the jade Ventyr knew had been delivered here.

“You say you and yours haven’t been here long, Captain?” Ventyr asked. “Only four days?” That was more than enough time for Vott to have learned everything there was to know of the haven.

The asura crossed his arms, shrugging thoughtfully. “Affirmative. Five of us were reassigned from Lion’s Arch after some illogical combination of hylek and humans besieged and killed the last team to operate this haven.”

“Hylek and humans?” Yissa popped.

Ventyr leaned forward against his staff, physically inserting himself between the two before her curiosity could spawn postulations. “That,” he agreed, “is not a pair you often see operating together, is it?”

Vott shook his head. “No. Certainly aberrant. Hylek are to be expected in this region, and those corpses were incontrovertibly Cuatl. Entirely predictable. But the humans? That was anomalous. My reports of the area confirm it. Usual trade and traffic patterns considered, there was an unusually high concentration of non-Lionguard, human corpses here—just left here—both within and without the haven. Attire didn’t mark them as affiliated with any particular group, but from my observation of the remains, the clothing looked more Krytan than anything else.”

Ventyr nodded, remembering the rows of graves outside the wall.

“More importantly,” Vott went on, “the skritt survivors—as accurately as they could, anyway—affirmed our preliminary theory: human bandits of some type.”

Ventyr frowned in thought, his mind departing momentarily from the world around him. Bandits? He hadn’t given a thought to highwaymen in some time. Definitely not humans. He had been more than aware of the threat of theft through much of his westward travels through Kryta and the Shiverpeaks, and he would never forget what had befallen them in the Queen’s Forest—he would never let himself. Still, he hadn’t considered human rogues a real and present danger since then, and now had some new scoundrels found their way into his mission again? It made even less sense than it had before. There had always been rumor of bandit activity somewhere in the far north of the Brisban Wildlands, but any reports he’d ever heard put them at least seventy miles away from Arterium, much farther away than any sensible group would travel for a senseless strike on a Lionguard location. Why would anyone come all that way just to take a single haven?

Unless they came for something specific at the haven, something that was no longer here.

No.Ventyr shook his head, pushing the entirely unreasonable thought aside and returning to the conversation at hand. There had to be a logical explanation for what had happened, somewhere he could find the jade, and according to Captain Vott, there was someone there at the haven who could give it to him.

“You say the skritt were the only survivors of that attack?” Ventyr asked, burying his staff in the crook of his arm as he crossed them.

Vott nodded. He put a hand to his hip, once more assessing the sylvari and asura before him. “Let me hypothesize and save us all time,” he said, pointing at them. “You’re on the verge of asking to interview them yourselves, correct?”

Ventyr nodded, holding his expression tight. “Yes. Perhaps they can tell us something of what my brothers-in-arms left here.”

Captain Vott nodded and stepped back, exchanging the hoe for a breastplate that hung tentatively on a spear stabbed into the ground nearby. It bore some rank insignia that Ventyr assumed was specific to the Lionguard. As he stalked off toward the open door at the base of the rear tower, the asura slid into the one clasped shoulder strap before reclasping the other as well. “The one benefit of commanding a skeleton crew at a minor haven,” he said wryly, “is that finding any individual member is easier than coupling a monodirectional relay. Follow me.”

Yissa snorted a laugh, and the two of them obeyed, following the stout captain across the yard and into the lower chamber of the tower.