Chapter 131
They walked toward one of the small fires and sat down around it, the young woman taking a seat next to Stoneheart .
"How did you end up in such a state?" Snowcloud asked . "And where are your other recruits?"
Stoneheart let out a pained sigh . "It all began after we left the Valley . Just a few days from the border, that venomous bitch Amaya—" He paused and shot a look at Snowcloud, seemingly worried that he had offended her .
"She deserves the title," Snowcloud said . "Continue . "
"She ambushed us when we had only barely left the Valley," Stoneheart said, his expression somber . "We didn't have a chance . "
Snowcloud raised an eyebrow . "You were defeated by Amaya? For all her cunning, I never figured her for much of a fighter . How did she manage that?"
"She wasn't alone," Stoneheart replied . "There were two other novices with her, both Waning Moon scum, along with their recruits . Against three mages and near a thousand skilled fighters, it was a miracle that any of us managed to escape . "
"You seem to have managed it better than your recruits," Arran said, a hint of bitterness in his voice . He still remembered Stoneheart's ragtag army, and it seemed his misgivings about the destiny of those recruits had come to pass .
"I delayed Amaya and the other two novices as long as I could, to give my recruits a chance to escape . But I failed . " Stoneheart shook his head . "I nearly died, and even so, almost half of them lost their lives in that battle . "
"Seems like you lost a lot more than that," Arran said, glancing at the disheveled group of men and women in the camp .
When he first met Stoneheart in Hillfort, the giant novice's army had counted thousands of recruits . If these few dozen were all that was left, it meant Stoneheart's army had been wiped out almost completely .
"Amaya was only the start of our problems," Stoneheart replied, his voice grave . "After the battle, we fled west for several weeks, until we finally lost them . But when we thought we were safe…" He let out a sigh, his expression pained . "Things only got worse from there . "
"Amaya attacked again?" Snowcloud asked .
Stoneheart shook his head . "Not Amaya . Some local warlord . Calls himself the Lord of Bones . He's already killed several novices in the region . He commands an army of bandits and mercenaries, thousands of them . "
"You fought him?" Snowcloud asked with a frown . "Even after your encounter with Amaya?"
"We didn't have a choice," Stoneheart said . "He took us by surprise, and we were forced to make a stand . The man himself isn't that strong — I think I could take him, if it was just him against me . But his army… they're Body Refiners, all of them . None too strong, but against so many…"
"Body Refiners? Thousands of them?" Arran's heart almost skipped a beat when he heard this . He knew that there hadn't been time for Lord Sevaril to raise an army of Body Refiners with the food Arran sold to him, but even so, he knew of only one person with the means to hand out the means to raise such an army .
Stoneheart nodded . "More than I thought possible . Most of the recruits I had left fell in that fight before we made our escape . We've avoided their main force since then, but we've encountered several of their raiding parties . And each time we face them, more of us fall . "
"What about the villagers?" Snowcloud asked . "How did they get tangled up in all this?"
"My scouts found one of the raiding parties headed toward their village," Stoneheart said . "We couldn't fight them without losing even more people, so I took the villagers along . Better that their houses burn without them inside . "
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