Chapter 202: Crossroads

Chapter 202: Crossroads

The last time Jadis had walked this road, she’d been heading in the opposite direction and had travelled the distance between the bridge and the old abandoned fort in just a couple of hours. Things had changed a lot for her in the few intervening months, gifting her with many companions and far more personal possessions than she had started with. Heavy, bulky, necessary to survival possessions. Pulling a giant wagon loaded with people and things behind her three selves meant the return trip took significantly longer. It wasn’t until late in the day that the expedition force drew up to the outer ring of cleared trees and put eyes on The Crossroads.

The structure wasn’t much different from how Jadis remembered it. A large, stone wall with crenelations along the top encircled an inner courtyard. A stone tower with a pointed roof stood in the middle of the courtyard, tall enough to give anyone who might be watching from the upper windows a clear view of the surrounding forest. There were four gates in the cardinal directions, with one road leading from each of them except the southern gate that they were facing, which had two roads leading to it. The gates stood open, just as they had been when Jadis had found the fort all those months ago. But that didn’t mean the fort had remained as empty as she’d left it.

The two forward scouts on horseback, this time Achim and Sofie, had come to a stop at the edge of the clearing. Kerr was standing with them, slightly apart and within an easy sidestep of being behind the cover of a large pine tree. They were waiting for the main wagon group and, while Jadis couldn’t yet overhear what they were saying, Jadis could sense the unease by their posture alone.

Looking at the abandoned fort, Jadis couldn’t help but feel apprehensive herself. The place had been a ghost town the last time she’d been there, nothing but bone thieves inhabiting the dilapidated structures. But as she looked at the lichen covered walls and dark tower windows, memories of the ambush back at Alawar flickered through Jadis’ mind.

Bringing the wagon to a stop, Syd strode forward with her lance in hand while Jay and Dys retrieved their weapons from the wagon. Captain Willa rode her horse forward, matching pace with Syd, and the two joined the scouts at the edge of the clearing.

“What’s the assessment?” Willa asked without preamble.

“Clear signs of recent activity,” Achim replied, pointing to the road ahead of them. “Boot prints and wagon wheels, though no sign of animal prints, auroch or otherwise.”

“There are tracks going north on the other side of the fort,” Kerr added, her tone indicating she was in business mode. “Fresh, likely from this morning at the most. And I can smell old embers on the wind. There was a fire here last night, put out before we got here but not long enough ago to erase the scent.”

“Long enough that we never spotted the smoke,” Willa said without taking her eyes off the fort.

“What about traps?” Syd asked. She couldn’t see any obvious signs, but she wasn’t the expert on such matters and the ones that had been back at the riverside cabin had been hard to spot even with them pointed out to her. “Anything around the wall or on the road?”

“I haven’t gone close enough to the wall to know for sure,” Kerr said with a slight shake of her head. “But nothing on the roads or around the outer ring of the clearing. It’s a lot of area to cover, though.”

Indeed, it was. The Crossroads fort was much larger than the temporary wooden ones that Bernd’s Blades and other mercenaries had set up along the border of the forest. This fort was probably twice again as large and the clearing around it had been cut to give hundreds of feet of clear view for the defenders. There was no sneaking up on the fort, not unless you were small enough to hide amongst the brush and pine saplings that had started to slowly take over the clearing. Anyone taller than a gnome would have a lot of trouble with that proposition.

“Based on the tracks you saw going north, how many were there?” Syd asked Kerr.

“More than the number I saw at the cabin. Two dozen, at least.”

That information hung in the air for a solid moment before anyone spoke.

“So the question is, did anyone stay behind?” Willa stated with a tap of her gauntlet against her saddle bow. “And if they didn’t, are there any other surprises waiting for us inside?”

“Only one way to find out,” Syd said with a determined set to her shoulders.

“Maybe,” Willa frowned, her expression half hidden under her helmet. “But we’d better make sure.”

Half turning in her saddle, Willa waved a hand back towards the rest of her soldiers, signaling them to come forward. All but two, Ada and Lutz, followed their captain. The remaining two soldiers stayed back to guard the wagons. Taking her cue from Willa, Jay also signaled for her companions to start moving forward.

With the main body of their forces moving in, Jadis started forward into the fort. The churned mud squelched under her boots as she scanned the surroundings. Making sure to keep an eye in every direction, she checked above and behind, seeing no one hiding on the walls behind and above her. As she marched further in, Willa, Jaxton, and Landry dismounted and moved their horses off to one side so the gate wasn’t blocked.

“We’ll leave that to you,” Dys said, motioning at the tower with her axe. “We won’t fit in there.”

“Understood,” Willa nodded before motioning the two orcs toward the building located to the right of the gate. “It’s best we clear the immediate area first, though.”

“That’s the inn,” Syd replied while pointing towards a two-story building on their left. “If I remember correctly. We’ll clear that one.”

The large inn was right next to the southern gate, the only structure between the gate and the inn a half-destroyed building that had probably been a stable once before catching fire sometime long ago. Since the insides of that ruined stable were visible, Jadis skipped it in favor of the inn. If anyone were to have set up camp in the fort, she was sure that was the place they’d choose to do so.

“If anyone’s in there, say something now,” Dys called out as she came to a stop before the large wooden door.

Well, large for a regular person. For Jadis, the top of the door didn’t reach her shoulders. Dys waited a few seconds for a response, but after getting none, Dys grabbed hold of the door handle. Giving it a push, she found that the door had been locked and wouldn’t open easily.

“Good thing I don’t give a shit about property damage,” Dys murmured.

With Jay and Syd standing to either side of her, Dys took a step back, then kicked the door with all of her considerable strength.

The door crashed open, flying off of its hinges from the force of the kick. In the same moment, even before Dys’ foot had come back down on the ground, the shuttered window on the second floor directly over the front door burst open. From the dark interior rocketed a large sack on a stick of some kind. Acting instinctively and with all the speed her high agility stat allowed, Syd grabbed hold of Dys and pulled her to the side, just barely getting her out of the way of the swinging trap. However, as Jadis quickly discovered, the sack hadn’t been designed to strike the person who triggered it.

Acting as some kind of smoke bomb, the sack exploded in a grayish powder that rapidly filled the air around Jadis’ three selves. Whatever the powder was, it was a noxious irritant, making Jadis’ eyes water and her throat itch. She couldn’t help but sneeze as her three selves blindly backed away from the inn.

“Ambush!” Jadis heard Willa shout out from somewhere nearby, along with another shout, this one from someone she didn’t recognize.

“Pull it down, boys!”

A loud cracking and snapping sound alerted Jadis to the danger. Turning towards the noise, Jadis’ three selves struggled to see through the obscuring cloud. What she did see sent a chill through her bones.

The looming central tower was leaning. No, not just leaning, falling. And it was falling directly towards her.