Reincarnated to the Past 30: Thracian Overture (5)

Reincarnated to the Past
Chapter 30: Thracian Overture (5)

-VB-

Now, I knew that walking into a city that was my enemy - even if most of the people in it didn’t know it - wasn’t exactly a good thing, especially after I poisoned and burned their land. Hell, if they really wanted to be picky about it, then they could declare that I was not a diplomat but an enemy general, giving them a legitimate cause to kill me and my hunters.

So I needed to show off. Make this something that would shake their resolve to continue whatever military build-up they might still have going on despite the “natural” disasters that hit them.

“What is that?”

I finished tying the loose ends of the leather string to the frame before looking up. Hoktim stared not at me but at my latest re-innovation, and then gave me a stink eye. “It’s one of your new things, isn’t it?” he asked me with mock disdain.

“What if it is?”

“Just wondering how the hell it’s going to keep the Istrians from attacking us.”

I grinned. “Are you unsure about exactly what I could do?” I asked him.

While I have been setting fire to the land and poisoning their waters, I didn’t sit around doing nothing with the hunters. I taught them the lower level warcraft that I knew about, and then trained them physically even as I trained myself. One of those training sessions involved the hunters shooting blunted arrows at me while I tried to parry, cut, or dodge them.

Suffice to say, the combination of superhuman body and superior swordsmanship ensured that I could - and did - cut arrows apart midair, dodge arrows like they were rocks being thrown by a child, and even catch multiple arrows in a single moment.

I may not have started this training with making the hunters worship me, but they were worshipping me now as a demigod of war, unfortunately for me. It got really awkward for me when some of the hunters were asking me for my blessing.

I digressed. Back to facing the Istrians and the present.

Then I reached into my backpack and pulled out a flag.

Yes, a flag.

A pair of red longsword and spear crossed in the background of black and a white eagle with its swings spread on top. It was a very Medieval Europe kind of flag in an era where flags weren’t really a thing. Hell, even the Persians wouldn’t have theirs until hundreds of years from now.

I knew that I was taking a lot of liberty with what I was doing here, designing flags and speaking on behalf of my tribe and its confederacy, but Ghigari had appointed me the leader of this campaign, so I was winging it!

Kind of. I already had this half planned out even before setting out from Lower River Kettin, which was why I had the flag ready and had just enough spare leather to make this makeshift megaphone.

“How far away is our own army?” I asked.

One of the hunters responded. “It’s a day away.”

An idea came to mind.

“Who will come with me to the gate of our enemy?”

The hunters all looked at each other before standing up as one.

I grinned. “Good, good. But before we go and do that, you all have the shit asked you to gather?”

The suddenly confused hunters nodded.

“Good, I need them placed at specific places in the field…”

-VB-

“Tyrant! There is an envoy from the Kettins on the western gate!”

Deneclae coughed. Ever since the wells had been poisoned and he’d drank its waters without realizing it, he’d become extremely ill. He could walk, but it was painful. He could talk, but it was painful. He could rule, but it was painful.

“I…” he wheezed out, pushing himself from his throne with his weak arms. His daughters quickly helped him up while his son stood at ready. “... will hear them … out… personally.”

“Father…” his son grimaced.

His boy, Denerius, wasn’t the brightest, and everyone knew that he would not be the one to inherit the Tyranny of Istria. He was a good leader with his charisma, nonetheless, and thus would keep their clan in position of power for the foreseeable future even if Deneclae himself died.

All Deneclae could do before he died was to ensure an easier future for Istria.

His men brought a litter, and he got on top of it.

He wondered how long he would live. Would he even be alive tomorrow?

As his men carried him from his palace to the gate where the envoy supposedly were, he looked out into the city. The few pedestrians on the street looked to him and grimaced, and then bowed. They respected him, so even when they knew that these disasters might have been the gods’ punishment for something he didn’t know about but did, they still bowed to show him respect, especially when he looked like he was about to die.

He wanted to thank them for that, but his throat spasmed painfully. He schooled his grimace and raised a hand to show them that he accepted their respects.

Why did it feel like a funeral?

They carried him up the stairs to the battlement of the wall, and helped him to his feet.

As he came to the edge of the wall and rested his hands on the chest-high stones keeping him from tripping over the edge, he looked down and saw a dozen warriors. One of the warriors carried some kind of a battle standard with a fearsome eagle drawn on top of a bloodied sword and spear.

He shivered a little.

Was he truly that weak physically to be intimidated by a drawing of all things?

Or maybe it was the man at the head of these warriors who exuded an unnatural aura of a predator. The warrior raised a weird thing to his mouth.

“ARE YOU THE KING OF THIS CITY?!” a loud voice, far louder than even a strongman’s voice could be, thundered out.

People around him flinched away, but he didn’t have the strength to do so.

“I am!” he shouted for the first time in weeks. His throat hurt, but he will do his duty as the Tyrant of Istria.

“I am the General of the Greater Kettin Confederacy, a gathering of tribes who had been slighted by your envoy!”

...Huh?

“My envoy told me that you struck his son!”

“His son tried to take another man’s wife!”

…

Oh.

Oh…

“You must have been the one to poison our wells,” he said quietly but loud enough for those around him to hear. “It’s starting to make sense. One disaster after another. They were all man made.” His son looked enraged, but Deneclae raised his hand to stop him. “Do not anger the warriors who snuck up on us with only a dozen men, raised our forest, poisoned our lakes, and poisoned the wells inside our own walls. I do not know what else they can do upon us nor do I want to find out. If they can sneak in to poison our wells, then they can slit our throats in the dead of the night.”

Denerius looked like he wanted to shout. His face reddened with rage. After all, one of his own friends had died from the sickness plaguing the city now.

Deneclae turned back to the Kettins. “You hurt us. You could have ended us.”

“I do not wish to hurt you more than I need to.”

“Seeding us with a plague wasn’t hurting us more than you needed to?!” he snapped. His throat clenched and his lung heaved, and he began to cough. It didn’t stop until he was nearly out of breath.

“I could have done so much worse, Oh King of Istria. It would go against my own rules, but if killing one child of your city saves one more of my tribe’s people, I would have snuck in every night to kill one child until the terror of your own child’s death would have the rest of your city flee in terror!”

Monster.

‘What did you do, old friend…?’

“What is it that you want from us?!”

“You will send tribute to my tribe, the Lower River Kettin, every year with slaves and gold! Every year, I will have a high ranking member of your government come and apologize on their knees!” the monster roared. “I will see to it that you are no longer an independent city! You will be our vassal from this point on!”

Deneclae balked at such a demand. A formal apology, he could expect, but something so humiliating every year?!

“You reach too far!” he shouted back. “Istria will not bow to a monster like you!”

The monster sighed. “So be it,” he said before he turned to one of the warriors. He said something without the weird device, so Deneclae couldn’t hear.

The warrior did something and made fire on the spot.

Then he reached behind him and placed the fire next to …

Was that rope?

Fire lit up and the rope burned.

Almost too quickly, the rope burned and … went to the fields next to them.

Deneclae’s eyes widened. “S-Shoot them! Now! They want to burn the fields!”

The archers on the walls complied and drew their bows. In a single cadence, two dozen arrows flew.

The monster jumped.

It jumped higher than any normal man could, and with a swing of his sword, all of the arrows were cut and the two arrows that were left to fly were caught by his fingers.

He landed with a deep thud, and the broken arrows cluttered to the ground.

Deneclae paled.

The fire continued to travel through the nearly harvestable wheats… and then hit something.

There was a crackle and loud thunder of fire!

The fields!

No, the fields!

The monster stood back up with a straight back, held his device back to his lips.

“Then I hope you starve to death.”

And then they walked away.

Deneclae watched in horror as his son desperately organized men to put out the fire, but it spread too quickly.

And then that horror turned into wrath.

What had his friend not told him to warrant this kind of aggression?!