Chapter 221 River bank

Fragmented dead leaves were sprinkled on the water by the occasional river wind, and Jace looked across the river at the pale yellow western wilderness full of eyes, the stumpy trees that had lost their vitality, and the powerless bushes …… were finally sort of finding a little bit of what the game looked like.

The two had been walking along the river for almost an hour or so, and all the way Grid kept glancing this way.

Walking up to this, Jace looked around at a quiet nothing and just kind of couldn’t help himself.

“What are you always looking at me for.”

“I’m really not used to you wearing robes, I feel almost unrecognizable.”

Grid said as he used his stick to pluck away a patch of yellow grass in front of him.

As soon as he spoke, Jace glanced at his robes, and suddenly there was a plopping movement from the haystacks along the river in front of him, like a fish leaping out of the water and sticking back in.

Both men stared over at the same time for a moment, and Grider asked, “Is it a fish, or a frog?”

Jess looked over at him and asked, “Frogs in winter?”

“Ever heard of magic juice?” The dwarf asked.

“Amani Wiccan here turning magical frogs, are you kidding me?” Jess laughed.

The dwarf glanced up and asked, “You even know about magic juice?”

The smile on Jace’s face froze for a moment and he looked for a complement, “I’m from the north too ah know what’s strange. Go, go over and see.”

Grid nodded and took a step to paw through the grass to approach the side, when suddenly a low moan was heard.

The two men hurried over and were seeing a man covered in stab wounds collapsed on the riverbank, mumbling his lips with difficulty.

Grid picked up the water bag and tried to fill it with some water, but the man seemed to have lost his sense of drinking, his face was white as a blistered corpse, grunting as he couldn’t drink anything, just staring blankly at the sky, even when Grid shook him he didn’t really react.

“He’s dead.” Grider said as he stood up.

“Can a healing potion save it?” Jace asked.

Grid sighed and said, “No way, he’s going to die any day now, unless an elf botanist pops up here out of nowhere, he’s hopeless. The poor fellow has probably been lying here all night.”

Just then, the man suddenly stopped moving.

“Holy shit.” Grid said as he threw a rock into the river, “Might as well come a little later and see a dead guy. Maybe he just saw the two of us, got in a mood, and was able to live for another hour or two before he couldn’t hold on for a second.”

“It’s nice to suffer less.” Jace frowned and asked, “Who did this to him?”

“Who else could it be? Not just jackals?” Grider said.

“Would the Jackals let him lie here?” Jace said, “Jackals like to eat human flesh.”

“Do you remember the woman we met last time?” Grid said, “The dead woman, the Northrend, that we ran into by the river on our way to Raven’s Ridge.”

“I remember.” Jace said, “You mean the woman wasn’t eaten either? I don’t know how to examine a wound, do you know how to tell what weapon caused it?”

“Let’s see.” Grid lifted the man’s blood-stained shirt, and Jace noticed a frighteningly deep blood gash under the guy’s ribs.

“Sword stab wound, very deep …… I guess that’s what killed him.” Grid sighed.

“Do jackals hold swords and use stabs?” Jace asked.

“Maybe it will.” Grid frowned and said, “I’d really hate to think it was otherwise, Jace, damn it, why did it come to this, that we have to deal with our own people in addition to the Jackals?”

“One of our own?” Jace said, “Now we have to be wary of possible other mercenaries, in fact, we should have thought of this scenario in the first place.”

At the Western Springs Fortress, when the magistrate said, “You’re not like the other mercenaries,” Jace had a vague idea of what he’d be facing here, but he hadn’t realized it would become so naked.

Looking at the man who had just died, he felt a severe wave of revulsion, not even when faced with the living corpses that stood up in Dalaran, but this unpleasant feeling.

“I’m going to put it out, Grid.” Jace said.

“It? Who?”

Jace whispered, “Saeuno, come out and watch for us.”

So saying, the Kid immediately emerged from the warlock bag he was carrying behind his back.

Greed’s face went from shock, to disbelief, to anger as he watched this blonde ghostly head stick out and stare at him, and as he grabbed a handful of Jace’s robes, he pressed his voice and asked, “What are you doing?”

Jace explained, “It can sense enemies that may be close, especially spell casters.Grid, shouldn’t we be on the lookout for mages that may exist in the mercenaries, or even other warlocks? Not to mention, there could be warlocks in the jackals as well …… Don’t get mad yet, you’ll see it slowly, remember when we ran into that dragon in Southsea Town, it sensed it when it was far away.”

The Kid nodded vigorously.

“Well, why isn’t he talking?” Grider asked.

“I told him before we went out that he wasn’t to be allowed to talk.” Jace said, “Otherwise we’ll both go crazy, Grid, I can’t stand it anyway, he can just be a quiet scout here, we’ll go ours.”

“He’s so obedient?”

“At least on the surface.” The two men made their way south along the riverbank, under cover of the tall grass at the water’s edge, for almost two hours or so, during which time the Kid noticed no movement.

“Look at the map.” Jace said as he patted Grid on the back.

“I doubt there’s any use in looking at a map.”

Grid pulled out of his bag the map of the forest that the sheriff had lent them.

Jace took it and then flipped it back and forth to make sure it was north and south, matched the direction of the river, and then headed up the bank and through a patch of tall grass.

The forest in front of us was a bit bewildering, you couldn’t see the end of it at a glance, and the depths of the woods were eerie and a bit uncomfortable even on a sunny afternoon.

At the walking speed of the two of them, two hours felt like about four to five kilometers, which by all accounts was pretty close to the location of the jackal camp marked on the map.

“Are we lost?” Grid asked.

Jace looked back at the gentle river and said, “We haven’t left this river since we left the Western Springs Fortress, and honestly, Grid, we can’t even count on setting out, much less getting lost, until we leave this river and head into the forest. I think the map is about right, so let’s head in.”

“Then go.” Grid said.

The two of them looked around the forest for a moment to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary before heading deeper.

The Aelwyn Forest was rather more desolate in winter than in summer, but the view wasn’t cleared by the fact that a lot of leaves had fallen, and the bare branches were very shaky with all those white, blotchy tree trunks.

Just after the two had been poking around into the forest for a minute or twenty, the Kid suddenly scratched the back of Jace’s neck, causing a searing pain in his neck.

“Weird, talk.”

“It seems like there are spell casters in the distance …… and then again there aren’t.”