AN:
Sorry guys. I made a small technical mistake in an earlier chapter. Knight Marshal (from Knight Marshal Crann/Knight Marshal Edgar) is not a rank in the story. It was a placeholder I didn't catch and change when I did my editing.
It should have been Knight Major (Knight Major Crann) and High Marshal (High Marshal Edgar).
You can see how I messed that up. I went back and fixed it, and that is what it will appear as going forward.
Enjoy the chapter!
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As they marched back, the men around him had an air of hard-fought victory about them as John's new five stood in the center of the formation. They had lost much. They were battered and bruised. But they had won in the end and their enemy laid dead at their feet.
As they made their way back up Clifftown, they saw a few small groups of armed misbegotten. The men didn't engage any of them because the misbegotten would always quickly run or route around, determined to avoid them.
They were nearly halfway back when John heard a faint sound between the clanking of greaves on stone of the men. It was almost impossible to hear for him even with his slightly enhanced hearing. It was the sound of a few pebbles hitting the ground off to the side of the formation.
John turned his head up and to the side to look where the pebbles had come from, only to see a red and grey mass already hurtling down towards the back of the formation from above!
There was not even enough for a gasp before the mass smashed into Andren's back with a shrieking sound of tortured metal!
The formation instantly stopped and turned to see a dire sight.
A red-maned misbegotten with copper colored flesh. They were taller than a man despite being severely hunched and held Andren impaled above their head on a great monstrosity of a sword! The sword was the size of a man's body and made dozens of swords melted together!
John instantly recognized what was in front of his eyes. The Leonine Misbegotten and the Grafted Blade Greatsword!
The leonine misbegotten stood there still for a moment holding Andren above them, almost as if posed to display what had been done. A flood of blood from Andren poured on the misbegotten as Andren weakly tried to to push against the grafted blade greatsword. John could see the mass of grafted swords coming out of Andren's front filled with meaty gore. There was more metal in Andren's chest than meat.
With an easy flourish of the massive sword, the misbegotten tossed Andren aside like he weighed nothing and held the sword with both hands in front of them in an upright stance. Andren rolled across the ground leaving a bloody streak and lay bonelessly where he stopped, not even a slight movement from him. The soldiers reacted and brandished their weapons while those closest to the Leonine Misbegotten swung their weapons.
With meaty thwacks the weapons landed on the misbegotten but came away as nothing but cat scratches and light scrapes.
With a roar the leonine misbegotten, a woman John noted from her privates, braced herself and for just a moment it seemed like the fabric of reality around her was pulled into her and a colorless and semi-transparent energy suffused her body.
This close John could see that despite the supposed name of this misbegotten and the long mane of hair, there were not actually any feline parts to this chimera, even if her silhouette fit the name.
The men beside her once again tried to attack her, but now with her flesh suffused with that colorless energy, it was so tough their weapons did not even draw blood!
As the men struck at her, the leonine misbegotten spun around swinging her greatsword in a sweeping cut that slashed through the armored men around her like they were cheese, the shriek of tearing metal resounding out. As the bisected bodies hit the ground, taking out a fifth of their remaining men, the formation was small enough that John's new fivier was cut in half at the chest.
That is when Carth reacted charging toward the threat with supernatural speed, summoning storm that howled furiously to wreathe around his entire body!
"Men, retreat! This foe is too great for you to battle! Your lives will be wasted here! I will cover your retreat!"
The men hesitated, but the misbegotten hadn't stopped moving for a moment, and cut down another five in one swing even as Carth got close enough to engage her.
Seeing the shower of gore and rain of mangled flesh from that single swing of the misbegotten, the men began retreating in a near panic!
John looked at the remaining men of his five and saw them looking around at each other indecisively at who was now in charge at their fivier's death, so he acted.
"Keep to the center of the formation!" John ordered!
As what was left of the mangled formation rushed to get away, Carth struggled to fight the misbegotten whose incredible strength, speed, skill, and unnaturally keen weapon meant Carth was dancing on a knife's edge. Instead of using the furious power of storm to land more powerful attacks, the storm pushed at Carth's back making a single step of his cover the distance of a leap.
As incredibly powerful and agile the leonine misbegotten was, Carth and his storm could cover twice the distance in the same time. He danced back and forth coming into range of the misbegotten, stepping back and avoiding their sword strikes, and then darting in to get in a strike of his own leaving a wound before retreating out of reach once again.
It was like flying buzzing around a woman's head as she futilely tried to swat it, and after a few seconds the translucent power also faded from her body, and suddenly Carth's strike sunk twice as deep.
Despite this, Carth's strikes still could not sink more than an inch into her flesh. Such wounds were minor for a being as large as her.
The leonine misbegotten was over twice the size of a man with incredibly long arms the length of an entire man's body to match, her hunched posture helping hide the sheer size and power of her body. In sheer size, she was to Carth as Carth was to John.
As John turned to start running, he saw Carth another sword strike from the leonine only to be caught by her tail swinging around to slam into him, launching him backwards into one of the buildings.
As they retreated John could no longer glance back to watch Carth's battle, even as the roaring of the storm's wind and of the frustrated pain and anger of the leonine misbegotten continued to sound out behind them.
Their retreat was barely coordinated enough to be called organized as they all struggled to move as fast as possible but not break formation.
They continued going up the destroyed Clifftown towards Castle Morne, eventually the roars of the battle raging on below were drowned out by the ocean wind. Despite that, they did not slow down to anything slower than a jog.
They kept going up, until they were approaching the half-way point. That is when another disaster struck.
As they arrived nearby the area they had first engaged the misbegotten choking their numbers using a staircase, they came to a stop as they spotted a troop of at least eighty armed misbegotten approaching them from the way they had used to make their way down through Clifftown earlier. Far more than their force of a little over twenty could handle in their current beleaguered state.
The misbegotten that approached didn't look like the barely herded, disorganized masses that they had spent most of the way down combating, but rather they looked gritty and disciplined, like the misbegotten that had been guarding their units' objective.
The fivier that had been leading the escape turned to the men.
"We can't get through nearly four times our numbers in our state! Our path is blocked! We'll instead go back down and east around them and then circle back up!" their impromptu leader informed them.
As John thought of the route in his head and remembered what he had learned of the layout of Clifftown in his stay, he realized that without the lifts, which had been destroyed, taking that path would lead to a dead end! They would be trapped, and forced to fight these misbegotten they were trying to avoid, and maybe even the leonine misbegotten would be able to catch up with them if it defeated Carth.
John looked around to see if anyone else realized it was a dead end, but as no one else objected, his confidence in his conclusion flagged.
John thought that maybe he was misremembering. These guys had lived here for much longer than him, they would probably know Clifftown better than him, right?
But with something as important as his and everyone's lives on the line, he wasn't going to let minor doubts within him win and gaslight himself into disbelieving what his eyes and memories were telling him.
"We can't go that way! It's a dead end!" John objected before the formation started to move again.
The fivier looked at John and sneered.
"Be quiet, you disgrace! I've been stationed in Castle Morne for over two centuries! I know how to get around Clifftown! Besides, why should we listen to you!?
"You showed your true colors earlier! You begged Knight Lieutenant Carth to spare those little monsters' lives, and he let you know exactly what he thought about that! Mercy for the enemy? HA! If you hadn't fought with the rest of us on the way down there and saw you cut down the bastards on the way, I would have thought you were on their side.
"As it is, it shows your judgement is shite! Now shut up and follow!" The fivier spit at John's feet and turned around.
As the fivier started moving towards his proposed route and the men began following him, John refused to give up at some mean words.
"Stop! I know what I am talking about! It's a dead end! We'll be trapped! Guys, we can't go that way! Guys-" John tried to convince them to stop. But no matter what John said, the men ignored him and followed the fivier.
John felt the temptation to just go with them. To give up and trust that he was mistaken. But in the end John ended up staying rooted to the spot as all the men left back down the cliffside to their doom, including his new five.
He was left alone except for the soldier strapped to his back who was still unconscious from his injuries.
But the misbegotten were still approaching his location at the heavily branching intersection, so John didn't have any more time to hesitate any more.
Turning around, John looked at the other routes he could go. He hadn't explored any of them, but he knew the castle was gonna be up.
John picked one of the routes leading directly away from the misbegotten and the direction the men were going and started running that way. He ran until he lost sight of the misbegotten. Then he slowed down and more carefully made his way through the ransacked Clifftown.
The confusing mess of sections cut out of the cliff face, buildings, ladders, rocky outcroppings, stairs, and fortifications all mixed up and intertwined with each other that made Clifftown so hard to navigate also made a good cover as John did his best to stay hidden from and go around any stray misbegotten as he made his way up towards Castle Morne. Being discovered by a group of even two or three would spell his doom.
As he made his way through he soon became thankful for his caution as he had to hide from an armed squad of ten misbegotten going down the road and carrying some supplies.
The next few hours were excruciating as he had to slowly sneak around lest he be found, and since he didn't know his way around he ended up in dead end after dead end.
But John did make progress, slowly. But the weight of the man he was carrying made this much harder. Every so often he had to stop to take a break to rest and recover from carrying his unconscious ally around. At every break, his body was more sore from carrying him everywhere, and John was that little bit farther up the cliffside towards Castle Morne.
As his body became more sore and exhausted, John thought about just leaving the unconscious soldier. Abandoning him. It would make the journey three times easier, and no one would ever know.
But ultimately John did not do that. He did not even seriously entertain the thought.
There were many things that people could hate or be afraid of. Many were very common. Physical danger, social isolation, putting in effort. Death.
Something that had more of an aversion to than any of those, was regret. John hated it. It was what had pushed him to ask for mercy for the misbegotten children, despite knowing that it almost certainly wouldn't work and that he would be punished or rejected for it.
So, no. He would not be leaving the man to die. Even if his body ached more with every step. Even it ultimately caused his death at the hands of the misbegotten.
Soon John reached the rough level where castle entrances were, the level that they had departed from. But after searching for nearly an hour, he couldn't find an entrance in the direction he had picked.
There was also a number of misbegotten patrols he had to avoid, so John kept going up the levels to the much more spare upper sections of cliffside, where the shops and residence buildings faded entirely and only a small number of small towers and other fortifications were built in here, and much of the area was rocky outcropping or flat cliff face.
As John kept going up, the misbegotten patrol disappeared and he no longer had to avoid the occasional misbegotten. It seemed they had no interest in the upper-most sections of Clifftown.
As that unbelievably long day was coming to a close as the sun started to approach the horizon, John reached the very the top section of Clifftown and started spotting the foundation blocks of Castle Morne itself and there were little to no building now, only the looming ramparts themselves, rocky outcroppings, and slim paths cut into the cliffside to get around to the outer sections of the ramparts.
Looking at the setting sun, John realized he would have to hide out for the night against the ramparts. He began looking around for an isolated nook between fortifications that would make a good hiding place, he found something.
As he was walking through a small grassy corner made from two of the ramparts of Castle Morne towering above him, he spotted a distinctive, strange ligneous bit of flora on the ground. One he recognized.
And right above it, as he stopped and looked hard, a barely visible golden shimmer in the air.
A Site of Grace!
John focused on the runes inside of him and thought he might have just enough to break through the resistance he had felt when he had last been at a site of grace.
A smile came over his face. This would give him just a little bit more of an edge in living through the rebellion.
Double checking the area to make sure no misbegotten would be able to see him in this nook, John took off the harness holding man he was carrying and laid him down by the wall.
John sat down and put his hand on the wisp of grace. His hand just passed the ethereal wisp, the edges slightly bent and flowed around his hand, but the main body passed directly through his hand as if it wasn't there. John kept his fisted hand inside of the floating wisp.
Focusing on himself his empty eyes staring forward, he once again summoned all the thoughts and feelings he had back at the Church of Elleh, about absolute improvement in every aspect, about himself imposing upon the world more than the world imposing on him, and once again impressed that will upon the runes resting in his gut as he channeled them into the wisp.
The mass of runes he had amassed pushed against that mysterious ethereal resistance.
John focused on channeling with all his will as the runes slammed up against the resistance and stalled for a moment, like when you begin to push against something very heavy, before suddenly the mass of runes pushed past the resistance and into the wisp!
As they did, John felt the runes almost liquefy as the separate, individual runes began flowing into one another. More and more and more runes flowed into one another as his mass of runes was rapidly consumed.
These flowing runes bent and contorted, growing and shrinking in strange, impossible ways as the letters of runes flowed and warped into an incomprehensible structure that seemed like a cursive script in the three dimensions he could feel, but John could feel they stretched out in other incomprehensible angles that his mind simply couldn't grasp, couldn't feel. As they changed, they shed their gold, becoming more white, like the color of pure light.
Then that flowing cursive script flowed back into him, back into the incorporeal core in his gut that it had come from and merged with that space in his gut, imprinted in the very core of where his runes rested, in that odd angle his mind couldn't grasp. And as that script imprinted itself in him, he realized that there was already a bit of script where it was trying to imprint!
As the new script touched the old, they merged together and a pulse of gold was released, the shed gold from the script's creation being released. It instantly rippled out from his body into the air and disappeared, leaving him with a new, more complex, bigger script.
John leaned back from the wisp, not knowing what all this meant and knowing there was no way for him to figure it out, and instead paid attention to what his senses were telling him. He could just feel that he had gotten just that small amount better. Stronger, fast, more perceptive.
Feeling the incorporeal core in his gut, most of his runes had been used in the creation of this new script. He didn't even have enough runes to match the paltry amount he had used to buy the box of drawings tucked against his chest.
John reached out again to the wisp and tried to push against whatever mysterious force was preventing him from strengthening himself with runes easily. He found the resistance was a little more than half-again as powerful as it had been before as his smattering of runes felt like they were smashing against a solid steel door.
Done with channeling runes, John stopped focusing inward, and when he looked down once again at where his hand was, he realized he could see the gold! Clearly, right in front of him, John could see the golden wisp! Where before it was the shadow of a whisper, now it was translucent like a ghost from a cartoon.
But he would now be able to actually see the wisp of grace even if he was moving or at a distance!
John looked up in the air around the site of grace, but he didn't see a trail of grace trying to guide him anywhere.
It seemed that despite his 'level-up' improving his unusual ability to see the sites of grace that guided tarnished, John didn't suddenly see the guidance of grace.
Or at least not at this site of grace. He knew that there were many sites that had no guidance in the game, like the ones underground. Which made sense because if the guidance was to become Elden Lord, then it makes sense it wouldn't send you to 'optional' areas like the underground stuff. That seemed to be how it worked.
Except Morne for some reason? He remembered the guidance would bring the Chosen Tarnished here to the misbegotten rebellion for some reason. It didn't actually lead to Great Runes or other things required to be Elden Lord like the other paths it led the Chosen Tarnished down.
But anyways, it made perfect sense to him that he wouldn't have any guidance anyway. He had just somehow hacked the ability to see these special grace sites himself instead of having been granted guidance. From what John understood, guidance was a personalized thing only given to tarnished, and John wasn't tarnished.
After a minute of just watching the golden floating wisp flutter in the air entranced by actually easily seeing something obviously, visibly magical, his excitement faded as he finally started crashing as his exhaustion from the entire day hit him.
John checked over the area once again, to make sure it was a good hiding place, and he decided it was good enough.
John carefully moved his unconscious comrade to a corner and made sure he laid as comfortably as he could. John did the same for himself and after a few minutes laying awake in paranoia, John fell asleep.
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"'EY! YOU! WAKE UP!"
John's eyes snapped open! He looked around rapidly for the voice that had woken him up, not really hearing the words spoken!
John jumped to his feet picking his halberd up from the ground! He looked around wildly to find the misbegotten who had discovered him, but he didn't see anything except a light morning fog creeping up the cliff.
"UP HERE!" The voice came from above.
John looked up and blinked as rain drops got in his eyes and held his hand above to protect from the rain. It was lightly sprinkling though with a lot of wind, and he had been so exhausted that even being completely soaked through had not woken him up. Thankfully, it was summer and still warm enough that the wind only brought a light chill to his wet form.
John saw a soldier leaning through one of the rampart's crenelations looking down at him.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING DOWN THERE!?" he yelled.
"I'M FROM ONE OF THE UNITS THAT SALLIED OUT TO ATTACK YESTERDAY!" John yelled back.
The man's face turned serious and he turned around behind him and said something that was too quiet for John to hear over the wind, his enhanced hearing picking up only muddled words. After some back and forth with whoever he was talking to, the man turned back with a rope ladder and threw it down that unraveled and swung nearby.
"QUICKLY! COME UP NOW!"
John looked over and saw his companion was still unconscious. He once again donned the harness and began struggling his way up the long rope ladder one rung at a time.
As John got to the top of the ladder and began hauling himself over the crenelation, John looked around and saw it was a five of men that had found him.
A pair of the men grabbed John's arms and helped pull them both up and over the edge and onto the battlement.
A second pair of men stepped forward and started hauling the ladder back up as the two men helped John to his feet.
Despite all of them having the same equipment, when the last man stepped forward his bearing showed he was the group's fivier.
"You are from one of the units that sallied?" the fivier asked as the other men started removing John's passenger from the cloth harness to take him, being careful not to disturb the makeshift bandages on his head as they laid him onto the ground.
"Yes," John confirmed.
The fivier looked at the other men and pointed to John's passenger.
"You two, take him to the sickroom. And you two keep your lookout here. I'll meet you all back here after I take this one to Lord Edgar to report!"
They acknowledged the fivier's order, and the fivier himself started leading John north across the battlements through the light rain.
When he turned to follow, John almost stumbled at what he saw. In the distance was a brilliant sight. Stretching high into the sky, taller than the mountains, taller than a hundred skyscrapers was a golden tree of mind boggling scale and majesty!
Before, he'd seen the grey, stony, branchless trunk stretching into the sky, but now he could see the brilliant golden bark and the ethereal branches and incorporeal leaves made of golden grace!
If there ever was proof that gods were real, and that Marika the Eternal was divine, the sight before him was it.
John followed the fivier who silently guided John across the labyrinthine battlements as John gawked at the glorious Erdtree.
Eventually the man arrived at one of the towers sparsed throughout the battlements and started heading down the stairs with John following, the tower walls hiding the Erdtree from John's sight.
After getting to the ground floor and walking down a few corridors, they arrived in front of a familiar wooden door covered with engravings of beasts and dragons. John now knew these had religious significance to the fringefolk, rather than just the neat and interesting art he had had thought it was before.
John could hear muffled voices shouting from inside.
Headless of whatever was going in the room, the fivier knocked on the door. The shouting stopped, and a few moments later the door opened.
John recognized the armored knight as Knight Major Crann from his armor.
Now that he had a closer and longer look at him, John realized that Crann was the knight he had seen at the Castletown entrance to Castle Morne at the beginning of the rebellion. The one who had called for a retreat after the other fringefolk knight was killed by the misbegotten horde and made that massive storm blade that cleared the entrance for the men.
Crann had his helmet off and John saw he had a thin face, blotchy red with anger, with brown hair and grey eyes.
Standing at the table in the center of the room was Lord Edgar, also with his helmet off and his face equally red.
"Sir Crann." The fivier saluted, John copying him. "My patrol on the southern battlements found this man and another injured soldier sleeping at the foot of the ramparts this morning. He claims to be from one of the twenties that sallied yesterday. The other man was unconscious and has been taken to the sickroom."
Crann, doing a poor job of hiding his simmering anger, turned his head and looked John up and down for a moment.
"Are you one of the volunteers?"
"Yes, sir. Kind of. I volunteered to join one of the twenties at one of the Clifftown entrances the night before Lord Edgar's speech."
Crann nodded his head and turned to the fivier. "Your dismissed." The man saluted again and left, leaving John alone with two angry commanders.
John wanted to glare at the leaving fivier for not just waiting until whatever argument they were having was resolved before knocking, but he wasn't given the opportunity.
"Come in." Crann ordered, closing the door behind John as he obeyed, and walked over to stand beside Edgar.
The room was a study, and a large one at that, with a large table and some chairs in the middle, a nice formal desk in one corner with a fancy chair, and two walls full of bookshelves. Besides the desk and desk chair, the rest of the room was of good quality but practical.
The room was mostly utilitarian rather than meant to be a display of wealth.
John steeled himself.
He was once again standing in front of two men who could easily order his death if they wished to, and they were angry at the moment. It was like standing in front of Torrin and Duran again, but worse as they were his military superiors. And also, he wasn't some potential secret spy recruit here, but instead a regular grunt soldier.
"What is you name?" asked Edgar, his face still red but his voice forcibly calm.
"John White, sir." John answered.
"Which unit were you a part of?"
John noticed something about the way Edgar asked that as he answered.
"I was part of Knight Lieutenant Carth's unit, my lord, sent down to the lower half of eastern Clifftown.
"My lord, you said 'were'. Am I the only one that made it back? Did the rest of the men not make it back yesterday evening?"
"Yes, you and the other soldier the fivier mentioned were the only men who made it back," Edgar confirmed to John's frustration.
All those men, dead for nothing because their leader was being a bone-headed idiot and they decided to be the same and follow him.
"Now report what happened when your unit sallied out to fight the menials." Edgar continued.
So John did. He told Edgar of everything of note that happened as they fulfilled their objective. From the moment Andren joined up till John was found below the ramparts. Edgar asked some clarifying questions such as the time of day at certain points or numbers of casualties from skirmishes as John went, but otherwise allowed John to give his report uninterrupted.
John was totally honest in his report except for one thing. He neglected to mention him arguing with Carth to spare the neighborhood of misbegotten children. Mentioning that would do John no good, and it wasn't like it would affect the siege at all by coming up a second time, with all the children already being dead. And him leaving that out would never be discovered as anyone who could reveal that John had done so was dead.
After John finished his report, Edgar pressed a hand to his chin in thought.
"You say the rest went to a dead end!? They died over such a simple mistake!?" Edgar asked with barely contained anger about John's parting with the men.
"Yes, my lord." John answered, the hair on his neck rising.
Edgar slammed his fist into the table, and then he instantly rounded on Crann!
"Damn it Crann! You and your foolishness! I listened to your counsel and it may have doomed us!
"A total loss and only one objective fulfilled!? A useless one at that. I should not have valued haste as you advocated and instead listened to others when they counseled me of waiting for reinforcements. Now, not only have we failed at killing the rebellion's leader and weakened ourselves, but we have strengthened him!"
"My lord," Crann interrupted Edgar's rant, "How were we to know that they had dug those tunnels before the siege had even begun? It could not have been predicted."
"Yet you cannot deny it was your foolhardy council, your false certainty, that had us dispatch the men that could have helped prevent the leader's escape."
"My informant-"
"EXACTLY! YOUR INFORMANT!" Edgar pointed angrily at Crann in accusation, "Where was the information on those tunnels if you are certain of your informant's information?"
Seeing what was happening in front of him, John made sure he was as still and blank as a statue.
Crann held his hands up in capitulation but continued defending himself.
"My lord, my informant had been right about everything so far! The rebellion, the weapons, everything. He had even warned us about their red-maned leader before we had see him. Evening warning you not to send your daughter away with an escort like you wished, saving her from suffering the same fate that our men suffered.
"He may not have given us every detail of the rebellion, but most of what he did give has proven to be accurate. If he had not been killed in the initial attack, I am sure he would have told us more."
That tickled John's brain.
Had Crann's informant read John's letter? Or was it just coincidence that the informant knew many of the same things? It was hard to tell without knowing exactly what the informant had said.
John set those thoughts aside and focused back on the argument happening in front of him.
At the mention of how useful the informant had been, Edgar backed down slightly, breathing heavily out of his nose. He took a deep breath and took a short moment to re-center himself. Afterwards, he still looked angry, but not outright hostile towards Crann. Crann himself also became less agitated in response.
"You are right. However, that doesn't absolve us of our mistakes. Your bad counsel and my own foolishness in listening to it. All of us, for underestimating the misbegotten and throwing away good sense because of our pride blinding us.
"We have lost half of the men we had after the initial attack. Combined with all those who died in the initial attack, our original garrison is down to a third of our strength. Not to mention the other things the misbegotten sabotaged or broke in their initial attack before anyone knew what was happening."
Crann did not look cowed or convinced by Edgar's words on how their situation had now become tenuous.
"There are the militia. They will double that number."
Edgar shook his head.
"They have been training for less than a week. They are barely better in a battle than the menials. One of the men of the garrison is worth three of the militia."
"They will swiftly improve." Crann defended, "The beginning of training is when the most quick improvements are made. When we have to have them engage, they will be enough."
"They will have to be, or we shall meet our fate at the end of one the menials' crude cleavers, or at the claws of the monster they call their savior. Our garrison of little over three hundred is no match for the sheer quantity of the menials, no matter how ineffective they each individually are. They still number over two thousand."
"What about tapping into the warstock?" Crann asked, tilting his head.
"I was already planning on releasing the restraints on supplies the moment I realized how grave the results of our actions were, acting as if this was just another menial rebellion despite the proof in front of our eyes. We will need to take advantage of every bit of the war stockpile if we will make it through this.
"There is also no sense in letting it fall into the hands of an organized rebellion and cause the materials meant to aid Lord Godrick to be used against him if he has to personally come and correct our mistakes here. It has been some time since Lord Godrick's last major war and we quite a bit saved up.
"With our remaining strength, we can no longer crush this rebellion. We will have to hope for reinforcements from outside the city that will have seen the flames of the city burning in the distance and decide to investigate. However it will take them some time to muster and be able to relieve us from the menial host besieging us."
"All hope is not lost then." Crann insisted as if Edgar's words proved he was right.
Edgar sighed and shook his head at this, the last of the earlier steam leaving him.
"No. Only most of it. Maybe the supplies will allow the militia to survive long enough to become useful. We have to hope so."
Edgar looked at Crann's unabashed expression and heavily frowned before he glanced at John, as if remembering that he was still here, and then focused back on Crann.
"Do you not realize that even if we survive this, even if I send our warhawk back to Stormveil bearing the message of our victory instead of our defeat, that we will still have failed in our duties Crann? That I will have failed to properly defend what I swore to? It would be merciful of Lord Godrick to only have us imprisoned for the magnitude of our negligence so far."
Seeing Crann's continued unrepentance, Edgar threw his hands in the air.
"Bah. I can see that you still refuse to see any sense, and we have already said more than we should have in front of a levy. You are dismissed for now Crann. Leave me to address him."
Crann's face reddened again at Edgar's comment, but he grit his teeth and kept his mouth shut otherwise.
"Yes, my lord."
Crann roughly put his helmet back on and stormed out of the room, not quite slamming the down behind him.
Now alone, Edgar turned to John.
"And now for you."
Edgar stared at John silently for a minute, weighing what to do about him.
"Ultimately you left the men of your unit to their death at the menials' hands instead of fighting to the end with them. Yet you tried to save them from almost certain death by arguing about the correct direction, even if none chose to believe you. I would have thought you a deserter if you had not saved the injured man you carried back to safety."
John felt sweat suddenly bead on his forehead. He hadn't even thought that his splitting from the group like that could have seen him branded a deserter. John knew some flavor of painful gruesome execution was the usual punishment for desertion in medieval societies.
Edgar continued.
"You took a very difficult and dangerous risk of carrying him back when you just could have abandoned him to his death without us knowing. You even made it back here as the only survivor of this entire disastrous operation, and have informed us that the menials do have forces that appear to be trained and disciplined within them.
"Ill news that. Just more evidence that this is not a typical menial rebellion, but still valuable information to have if we are to make it through this now. Laboring under foolish arrogance like we have so far has almost given Castle Morne over to the menials already.
"Your actions have proven your valor.
"I have already mentioned your rescue of your fellow soldier, and I know in your report you offhandedly mentioned you were a foreigner and volunteered to join Knight Lieutenant Carth's unit directly before I had the townsfolk join Castle Morne's defense as militia in my address in the courtyard.
"As a reward for your deeds, I will be raising your rank from that of a Levy, past a Companion-At-Arms, to a Corporal and place you as a fivier in one of the militia units that are being assembled as irregulars until at least the end of the siege. Know I will have my eyes on you. If you prove yourself an able commander in the irregulars, then I may let you keep your rank and promote you further.
"And when we get through this siege and your conduct continues to impress, I will take you onto my personal retinue," Edgar finished.
John recognized that this was actually pretty generous from Edgar, especially because of John's status. Offering to recruit a foreigner as one of one of his personal soldiers, one of his most trusted men, was a very generous offer.
Being part of his retinue meant a much higher chance at becoming a knight due to more easily catching his lord's eye and his already proven loyalty. Maybe even a landed knight if he did very well. But even if he never was ennobled, John would be paid very well, as medieval retinues of lord's were usually somewhere around upper middle class in terms of their pay.
But as generous as it was, it wasn't an attractive offer to John. He didn't want to join Godrick's forces at all, and he planned on following the Chosen Tarnished.
John also realized he could bring up his suspicion about Crann's informant, but he didn't see how he could prove anything to Edgar without more proof than his word. Edgar would be stupid to just blindly believe such an unlikely and suspiciously timed claim.
Maybe if John had brought up his letter before he had been told of any informant, but that ship had sailed. Right now it would seem like he was trying to lie and take credit for something he didn't do. Heck, even he wasn't sure whether or not this informant had anything to do with his letter.
He would let it lay for now and keep his eye out to see if the opportunity and circumstances aligned to confirm anything. Not that he had much hope with the informant being dead.
John turned his mind back to Edgar.
"Thank you, my lord. I am ready to begin immediately." John said, lowering his head in a light bow.
Edgar's stony face cracked with a slight grin of approval.
"Excellent. I will quickly write you a writ. The irregulars are training in the courtyard every morning. Give one of the hundriers in charge the writ and he will take care of the rest. Normally, when joining a lord's forces you'd sign a contract with me, but we are delaying such things while we focus on fighting off the menials. The proper wages and the like for the defense will be distributed after the siege is over."
Edgar quickly wrote out John writ and handed it to John. As John grabbed it, Edgar looked straight at him.
"Speak nothing of what you heard between me and Crann. High morale is critical to maintain if we wish to survive this, and we cannot have what we spoke of spreading."
John nodded.
"Yes, my lord. Understood, my lord."
"Excellent. Then you are dismissed."
John took the writ and left Edgar's study.
John had a pretty good sense of direction, so he only got lost and needed help twice as he puzzled his way through the corridors out towards the courtyard.
When John arrived, there were about five hundred men being drilled in the courtyard. They were split into groups of one hundred with a hundrier and then split further into groups of twenty with a twentier leading them.
The hundriers were overseeing their five twenties training, but were not leading a particular group. Each hundrier was a fringefolk knight, in their elaborate armor, while a couple twentiers were knights but most were the smaller, regular soldiers.
John approached the closest hundrier.
"Sir. I was told by Lord Edgar to give you this." John handed the knight the writ.
The knight read it, and a few minutes later John was placed in one of the groups doing drills as the leader of a five of irregulars. Irregulars were the volunteer militia that Edgar had raised from the townsfolk a couple days ago.
And that was the entire rest of the morning and afternoon for John. There was no time for talk or pleasantries with anyone around him. It was all business as their twentier led his five and the other three fives through drills.
Each of the men in a five all had the same weapon. John's five had their partisans, the other three fives were equipped straightswords, warpicks, and greatswords. All the men had the same armor and equipment as John besides their different weapons, minus the greatswords not being given shields. And john noticed that other irregulars didn't have a flask, so he put his own away so he wouldn't stick out.
John quickly realized that unlike the rest of the men in his twenty, all irregulars, John's twentier was the real deal. A full, seasoned, regular, with a well of experience.
The irregulars were all levies, except for John, so regulars who were at least Armsmen, the name for those who were Companions-at-Arms were all above them in rank. Their twentier was not just an Armsman though. He wasn't even a Corporal like John. He was a Sergeant. One rank below the maximum rank someone who wasn't a knight could be.
And it showed. Their twentier knew how to use each of their weapons well enough, though he personally carried a warpick. While John was ahead of the rest of the men in his twenty in martial ability besides the twentier, he was only barely competent, rather than good. Nowhere close to their twentier.
The only thing that really stood out about John as excellent was that his baseline fitness was exceptionally good, even better than their twentier in fact. Though it was more that he had much more endurance than anyone else, rather than a lot more strength.
That good baseline was further given a slight boost by his 'leveling up' with the runes. The slight advantage that gave was really noticeable when he learned things just a bit more quickly than the rest of the men while training. That his body retained the drills a bit better, reacted ever so slightly quicker, and could strike just that bit harder to give him the edge when the twentier had them do small mock fights against other twenties with blunted weapons.
It wasn't like John was being hailed as a prodigy or anything as ridiculous as that, but people around him noticed that he was 'talented'.
They drilled most of the entire day, only stopping for a few short breaks throughout the day. They had a longer break in the middle of the day when the sun, made unimpressive and less significant by the enormity and splendor of the Erdtree that dominated the skyline, reached the middle of the sky.
Besides some simple words to communicate with the men in his five, John didn't get the chance to talk to them through the day besides the occasional joke as they drilled and practiced.
Eventually their twentier called it a day.
"Alright men. Report to the mess hall for dinner, then the barracks, and be back here by first bell or you'll be given a punishment duty. You are dismissed for the rest of the day."
John and his five looked at each other and joined the rest of the men on their weary march to the mess hall.
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AN:
Guys, I'm jonesing hard for PoE 2 (the game). I'll probably cut down my writing time from 10 hours to 8 for a while when it comes out. So definitely at least 1 chapter a week still.