Before the World Broke — A Vegetaone Story
Two mornings later, the settlement below the channel proved smaller than Vegeta had imagined.
Six huts.
One tool shed.
A stone trough that was already half empty.
Children carried water in pots too large for their hands. Two workers waited beside a disabled lift. Someone had stretched a sail across the little garden to keep the sun from taking what the broken channel no longer gave.
The people there had not stopped working.
They had stopped expecting the work to be enough.
Hessa had brought Vegeta and Reddbull through the lower approach while the stronghold's guards assembled above. Rella stayed with Sarn to prepare the channel braces.
The settlement's foreman, an orc called Dorrak, listened to the rescue account without moving from the trough.
“How many men does Gorvek have?”
“At least twelve in the furnace yard. More above,” Reddbull said.
“You killed them?”
“We brought four people back.”
Dorrak looked toward the thinning water.
“He'll notice.”
He noticed before midday.
A rock struck the sail over the garden.
The next broke against the tool shed.
Three ogres came down the slope carrying shields made from stolen cart sides. Behind them, four raiders moved toward the lift road.
They were not bringing a full assault.
They were bringing a warning the settlement would have to live with.
Reddbull moved the children behind the trough's stone wall. Hessa took them toward the huts while Dorrak rang the little alarm bell.
Vegeta drew both swords.
Sarn had padded the new gauntlet around the dressing on his left hand. The burn pulled beneath it as Vegeta tested his grip before advancing. It hurt; it held.
There was space in the square.
There were people behind him who needed him to use it well.
He let the blades settle into a rhythm he had practiced through months of northern cold.
The first strike broke a cart shield's upper rail.
The second took the raider's weapon aside.
He turned, placing one blade where the next club would come rather than chasing the raider he had already stopped.
For six movements, the two swords belonged to the same fight.
Then he saw the raiders at the lift road.
“Reddbull!”
The Tauren was already moving.
The lift carried a platform on two ropes between the quarry road and the settlement.
It also carried the quickest way out for anyone who could not climb.
An ogre struck the outer support with a hammer.
Old wood split.
Reddbull hit him from the side and drove him away from the rope drum.
The second support shifted.
Below it, a laborer had frozen with his hands still on the winding handle.
Vegeta reached the platform as the drum began turning on its own.
He sheathed one sword and forced the remaining blade through the spokes.
The drum stopped.
For a moment.
The support dropped another inch. A loose timber caught his left leg between the drum housing and the wall.
Metal buckled against his thigh.
He could pull the sword out and let the drum turn.
The platform, crowded with three workers trying to escape the quarry, would fall.
“Get them off!” he shouted.
The laborer moved.
Reddbull planted his shield against the broken support, using its breadth to keep the timber from sliding farther.
His axe lay beyond reach.
An ogre came around the housing with a knife.
Vegeta's right hand still held the sword in the drum.
He clenched his left hand inside the new gauntlet.
He struck the ogre hard enough to drive him into the railing.
The laborer pulled the last worker across the upper lip.
“Clear!”
Reddbull shoved the timber away.
Vegeta pulled his blade free.
They fell back together as the empty platform struck the quarry floor.
The remaining raiders fled when Dorrak's workers came with bows and quarry picks.
Vegeta sat on a crate while Hessa cut away the strap around his damaged leg plate.
His thigh was bruised.
The plate had saved the bone.
It would save nothing else.
Reddbull's shield lay beside him, warped along one edge. He pressed his fingers against the bend and looked toward the workers coming out of the quarry.
Three alive.
One being carried because he had twisted an ankle when the platform lurched.
The Tauren's hands began to shake after the people had passed.
Vegeta pretended to look at his leg until the shaking stopped.
“You'll need a new shield,” he said.
“This one can be mended.”
“Sarn said something similar about mine. Less kindly.”
Reddbull let out a breath that almost became a laugh.
At the stronghold, Sarn put Vegeta's ruined leg armor beside the warped shield.
“You're expensive.”
“We prevented a much larger bill.”
“Hessa told me.”
The armorer went through his stored pieces, rejecting three before he brought out a pair of pale, heavily plated greaves that matched the new gauntlets.
Vegeta looked up.
“Those are—”
“I know what they are. You don't own them yet.”
He set them on the bench.
“Dorrak's camp has paid for escorts to get its families up here. Those who want to leave, not the workers who choose to stay. Take that work. Do it properly. Your share covers these and their fitting.”
“Two journeys?”
“Three. Slowly. With children.”
Vegeta looked at the greaves again.
Then at Reddbull's shield.
“He gets his repairs before my fitting.”
Sarn grunted.
“You can both stop deciding my work order.”
The escorts took four days.
Vegeta walked at the pace of the smallest traveler. Reddbull carried bundles until the adults stopped apologizing for handing them over.
On the second journey, a little boy asked why the Tauren's shield had a line across it.
“It held something heavy.”
“Did it win?”
Reddbull considered that.
“You are walking here. I think it did.”
Vegeta said nothing.
That evening, he wrote another letter.
Three trips. Everyone counted. Nobody left on a lift. Super will want the important details first, so there they are.
He described Reddbull and Marn. He asked whether Envy had stolen his blanket permanently.
When the final families reached the stronghold, Dorrak signed their escort payment himself.
Sarn fitted the Destroyer Greaves the next morning.
Vegeta bent each knee, took a measured step, and felt the armor move with him.
Three pieces now.
Outside, Reddbull waited beside his repaired shield.
The upper furnace still smoked.
They had people to bring down from it.
End of Chapter Four