Chapter Three - The Dispossessed
They camped outside the walls that night, far enough into the dark woodlands to be spared the stink of Taalagad's muddy street and decaying port, a decision that those few locals who learned of it seemed to regard as either deeply impressive or utterly insane. As was her habit Elriza rose with the dawn, leaving G'raha tossing fitfully in the bedroll, and after a brief wash in a nearby stream set about cooking breakfast. The collapsible tools and well-preserved ingredients were a far cry from what she might have worked with at the Bismark, but she was too much of a habitual wanderer to be discouraged by such things.
They were running low on the salted meat she'd brought along from home, wrapped up neatly in Gridanian leaves and blessed for enduring freshness, but so far evidence suggested that the locals hunted the wildlife here as they did at home with roughly the same methods and expected success. With a look of cautious intent, she sprinkled a handful of local herbs across the top of the sizzling meat, curious about the taste. None were toxic, she was a fair enough botanist to be sure of that much, but that didn't mean they'd be pleasant to eat. Well, what was life without a little experimentation? Especially when you didn't have the chocobo to carry your herbology texts around with you.
The smell was good enough to draw G'raha out of the tent at least, droopy eared and shuffling, to collapse by the edge of the firepit with a yawn. Elriza smirked, shaking her head even as she sliced apart a section of the meat and set it out on a battered metal plate.
"Some Seeker you are," she murmured fondly, holding the food before him until his uncoordinated grasping finally secured a proper grip, "aren't you supposed to rise with the sun?"
"A task made much easier in a world with the normal number of moons," the Seeker in question groused back, clutching the hot breakfast close to his chest like a precious newborn, "to say nothing of the disruption caused by a hundred years of sleepless light."
Elriza chuckled, conceding the point. The Source had but one natural moon, a pattern that had otherwise held true among all their journeys thus far, and so it had been an unpleasant shock on their first night here to look up and see two glowering down at them. The green moon that the locals called Morrsleib seemed like to be the artificial one of the pair, given its erratic flight and unusual impact of the local aether, but if so, who had created it, and for what purpose? She could only hope the answer was somewhat less apocalyptic than the revelations about the Red Moon Dalamud had proven.
"I spoke with Y'shtola last night," she said instead, taking an exploratory bite of her work and nodding in satisfaction at the rich taste, "the portal is stable, and they've started bringing across supplies for a long-term base."
"Fine news – ah - indeed," G'raha muttered back, his words somewhat muffled by a mouthful of hot food, and Elriza just smiled fondly as he gasped and choked and finally forced enough of it down to speak properly. "Ah… has there been any progress on the question of purpose?"
"No," Elriza shook her head, remembering the faint irritation in their colleague's tone from the night before, "Y'shtola is convinced it has something to do with the monolith, but answers are illusive."
She'd figure it out sooner or later, Elriza was sure. There were many things one could say about Y'sthola, but a lack of commitment was far from among them. It had been the sorceress' hunger for knowledge, her disregard for what others considered impossible, that had brought them this far. Having set her mind to the question of why exactly an old temple had been built in at least three distinct architectural styles around a humming monolith that all but devoured ambient aether, success and enlightenment was now only a matter of time. Perhaps they would be fortunate, and it would come in a form that less arcane minds could approximately conceive of.
"Mm. And the locals?" G'raha asked, considerably more awake now that he had a glass of fresh water in his hands to go with the food, "Setting aside the matter of my perceived tempering, they seemed an interesting bunch."
"Not sure," Elriza replied, shaking her head, "want to see the capital first. You?"
"I'm rather concerned about the evident inequalities, myself," G'raha mused, setting down the now-empty plate and patting his belly with a contented sigh, "We've yet to find any society without some form of rich and poor, but given the apparent hostility of the world around us, one would expect there to be a touch more effort expended on seeing to people's safety and prosperity."
Elriza smiled, struck by a sudden sense of warm fondness for the miqo'te sitting opposite her. G'raha Tia had led his people through a hundred years of suffocating light, holding the Crystarium together through clever wit and unfaltering resolve even when all around him seemed doomed to despair, yet whenever he spoke of those days, it was never with pride. At least, not in himself. In his comrades and colleagues, yes, in the common people of the Crystarium who had risen to the challenge, but he never seemed to find his own performance worthy of note, much less admiration. The notion that a leader would not regard the health, safety, and prosperity of their citizens to be anything less than the bare minimum did not come naturally to him, and she loved him for it.
"Might be the war broke things," she offered at last, though privately she had her doubts, "we can ask the refugees."
"A fine idea," G'raha nodded, rising to his feet and moving to collect the tools they had finished using, "I will attend to the cleaning, if you would see to the tent?"
Elriza nodded, rising to her feet, and stretched until her joints cracked. They had a long day ahead.
-/-
Finding their destination proved simple enough, for less than half a block from the Eel the street overflowed with a milling crowd of men, women, and children, all watched over by a small band of nervous seeming militiamen. There were over a hundred of them, as the magistrate had promised, and it seemed they had already piled high most of their supplies and belongings on a series of wagons drawn by some strange four-legged beasts that burped and snorted great clouds of steam into the cold morning air. The first of them spotted Elriza the second she entered the street, and by the time she had approached within earshot most of the crowd had fallen warily silent, even the children peeking out cautiously from behind their parents' legs.
She'd opted to wear her armour for this, the heavy suit of black plate that had warded her from the blows of gods and monsters, but given the venomous looks she was receiving that might have been a mistake. There was real anger in those gazes, real fear in those strangled gasps, but why she could not say. At least the enmity did not extend to G'raha; indeed, those few glances she saw sent his way appeared to be bemused and sympathetic, likely because of the backpack larger than his torso strapped across his back.
"You the escort, then?" One of the watchmen asked, ambling over with a relieved expression on his face, and when Elriza nodded he pulled out a sealed envelope and a map rolled up inside a leather tube. "Good. This here's your writ of passage, tells anyone that asks that you're on official Talabheim business. Up to you how you go from here, but I'd recommend the north road myself. It's only a little longer, and there's word from Waldfährte of trouble with the local greenskins. Best not to give them a target, right?"
"Right," Elriza nodded briskly, though in truth she had no idea what a 'greenskin' was. It had the air of a slur to it, in the same manner of an old Limsan pirate grumbling about 'fishbacks' over ale, but until she knew more it seemed prudent to avoid the mess altogether.
"Alright you lot, listen up!" The watchman hollered out to the assembled crowd, leaping up onto a discarded crate so they could all hear him properly, "These two are your escort to Breitblatt. Follow their orders, keep your kids close, and don't let me see any of you in Taalagad again, alright?"
"Perhaps a speech would be in order?" G'raha murmured at her side, studying the crowd before them and listening to their wary murmurs, "I know you do not care for such things, but given the circumstances…"
Elriza nodded, and after a moment's thought reached up to unclip her helmet, letting the gathered crowd see her face. She had no need to stand on a box to address them, for when she stepped forward every eye in the crowd was drawn as iron to the lodestone.
"I am Sir Kurwyn, Knight of House Fortemps," she said, voice ringing back like the echo of a bell from the stone walls of the surrounding buildings, "This is G'raha Tia. We will see you safely to your homes."
She thought she heard G'raha sigh softly from somewhere behind her, while the crowd rewarded her word with confused murmurs and dubious glances. They seemed less actively hostile, at least, which was all she had really been after. People often responded better to rank and title than to simple names in situations like this, and while none present had heard of Ishgard or its High Houses, knighthood at least seemed a common enough institution. She'd probably want to do some research into the full duties and implications of the rank before claiming it in the presence of anyone highborn, but for now it served well enough.
Thankfully the refugees were well organised, or else sufficiently poor that they had little that needed taking care of before departure, and within the hour the whole convoy was lumbering its way out of Taalagad's north-eastern gate. The road beyond was broad and well-made, easy to follow even for those unused to prolonged treks, and so Elriza swiftly found herself less a guide and more a fellow traveller. With her long stride she could easily move from the front of the column to the rear and back again, keeping a careful headcount as she went, and by noon the novelty of her appearance had faded enough that a few of her charges were even willing to speak.
"My da always did say that a smith was welcome anywhere he goes," a young man by the name of Meinhard said cheerfully, resting one hand on the back of a rather surly looking mule laden with the tools of his trade, "turns out he was right. Got a house waiting for me in Breitblatt, and custom to keep me busy the rest of my days. Not terribly exciting work, of course, but after the last few years I find I don't much mind the idea of a bit of boredom."
"Nothing wrong with the basics," Elriza nodded companionably, taking one step for every two of his, "for every commission I worked, I'd do a dozen simple jobs. Nails, ingots, shaped plates…"
"You're a smith too?" Meinhard said with some surprise, before giving her a proper once over and nodding in thought, "Guess I can see it. Arms like those could swing a hammer as well as an axe."
"Learned it on the road, at first, to keep my gear in shape," Elriza chuckled, lifting one arm and flexing for a moment to the appreciative noises of her audience, "after that, to relax. That said – how do you heat the forge without crystals?"
That was one of the first things she had noticed, first at the inn and then in Taalagad; the complete absence of solidified aether. The locals had substituted other tools where possible – wheeled carts in place of carriages suspended on air, for an immediate example – but given how central such crystals were to so many trades in her homeland, a world without them seemed fantastically strange.
"Crystals? Don't rightly know how you'd use those things in a forge," Meinhard frowned, then shrugged, "We use charcoal, mostly. I hear the dwarves use coke, that they've some secret recipe for getting the good stuff out of what they dig out the ground, but Talabecland has a fair few more trees than mountains."
"Interesting," Elriza nodded thoughtfully, filing away the mention of dwarves for later consideration. She'd met people who went by that name during her adventures on the First, industrious souls with a similarly advanced grasp of mining and metallurgy, but it probably wouldn't do to make too many assumptions. This lot might not even like beer.
"You'll have to tell me about how they do things where you're from," Meinhard chattered on, swatting the mule briefly just as it began to wander off to the side, "Might not be able to chip in too much myself, but talking shop is always fun."
"When we camp, maybe," Elriza said vaguely, peering over the crowd until she spotted G'raha's cloaked form near the front third. "Excuse me."
Her companion been wanting to try speaking with a few of the local himself, to test out his growing understanding of their language, and from the spring in his step she gathered it had gone well. When she approached he looked up at her, and before she could even open her mouth he was launching into a report.
"Ah, there you are," he said, nodding happily, and Elriza just smiled and fell into step alongside him. There was no sense interjecting when he'd worked himself up like this, but she didn't mind. "I've been speaking with our new friends, and it seems we've people here from two different areas. This is Talabecland, where most have made their homes for generations, but some few of our company are from a neighbouring state called Hochland…"
He rambled on cheerfully for the next malm or so, pointing out differences in dress and mannerisms that distinguished the Hochlander minority from the rest of the locals. Both lands were heavily forested, and so had given rise to strong traditions of hunting and woodcraft, but Hochland's relative lack of other material resources and sparser population had shaped its culture in significantly divergent ways. It had also been directly in the path of the northern invasion the year before, without the shield of the Talabec river that its southern cousins relied upon and had suffered greatly for it. Those Hochlanders who travelled with their column did so because they had no home to go back to, and no hope of any living thing growing where once their homes had stood.
Quietly, Elriza turned her attention to the nearest of the Hochlander families, a man and woman with three young children all riding in a cart. The mother was smiling, putting a brave face on it all for the children, but her husband's eyes were empty, and he barely seemed to see the passing trees or hear the laughter of his kin. Judging by the faint edge of desperation in his wife's eyes, this was no passing affliction or fleeting burden, and Elriza had seen far too many with similar expressions to think it would end upon arrival at Breitblatt.
"A year earlier, and we could have stopped this," she murmured, half to herself, shaking her head, "yet now we are too late."
"A year ago we had rather larger concerns." G'raha pointed out dryly, only to wince and lift his hands in apology at the look on her face, "it is a tragedy, but one you and I have faced before all too often, my friend. We can but hope, and carry on. For those we have lost…"
"…for those we can yet save," Elriza sighed, accepting the bitter truth and all the quiet resolve that came with it.
The rest of the day proceeded smoothly enough, though Elriza had enough experience with long marches to know that the first day was always the easiest. It would be later that the real problems would start, when sore muscles and aching feet were pushed back into motion and the novelty had worn off, but they would handle such things as they arose. There was a minor incident at lunch, when they made the decision to reveal G'raha properly to the group and received the expected cries of alarm at his unusual appearance, but ultimately the same methods prevailed here as they had at the inn. The icon chosen was sacred to Taal rather than Sigmar, not that either Eorzean could reliably speak to the difference, but in the end, it was sheer exhaustion on the part of the refugees that ultimately decided it. They had lost too much already to welcome additional grief of a grudge not entirely needed, and G'raha was personable enough to smooth over what few rough spots remained.
That night Elriza drew the convoy to a halt early, taking advantage of a suitable clearing found by the road just as the sun was beginning to properly set, and by the time darkness fell they had the tents up and the fires going. Children and the elderly were given priority in the shelters, a simple watch was set up to raise hue and cry should any unexpected visitors approach, and in ones and twos the column slowly settled down for the night. Elriza had spent more than one night before sleeping beneath the open sky, and with G'raha's warmth against her side and the starry vault overhead, she could count this night a good one.
