Rewrite That Witch
CH224 · Rewrite
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Chapter 224: Launching the Rescue Plan

Once there was something to do, the days moved faster.

Theo spent them making preparations: visits to wine estates at the city’s outskirts, planning the convoy routes, memorizing the topography around the canal pier and the city gates. The demonic plague had turned getting in and out of King’s City into an exercise in patience. All the major gates had been sealed after the Church began distributing the Holy Elixir, and once the refugees understood that treatment was available inside, they had started throwing themselves at the walls each morning, desperate to reach a church. The guards responded with crossbow bolts. By now the road in front of every gate was carpeted with corpses rotting under the sun, and the smell announced itself from a quarter-mile away.

Only one gate remained open: a side passage restricted to nobles and merchants carrying food. Theo still knew most of the guards on duty there — he was a King’s City man, recognizable from his days in the patrol — and passing through cost him nothing more than a nod.

The quarantine had one useful side effect: the inner and outer city had nearly lost contact with each other. A whole fleet of ships could pull away from the canal in broad daylight and the news might not reach the inner city for days. The upper nobility, in any case, wanted the refugees gone. They had been watching the camp with barely concealed anxiety, afraid of the moment it boiled over into something they couldn’t suppress with walls.

Theo had also worked out something His Highness probably understood better than he had put into words: these refugees had been made to feel abandoned. Abandoned by their King, abandoned by every institution that was supposed to protect them. The Church was letting them suffer precisely because the longer they suffered, the more grateful they would be when salvation finally came. But the Church had to reach them first. If Roland’s fleet arrived before the Holy Elixir did, every one of those thousands of people became Roland’s. Healed, fed, promised a home — they would remember who had come for them.

On the morning of the fourth day, the fleet appeared at the canal pier on schedule.

What he had not expected was the size of it. Three hundred soldiers of the First Army in standard uniform, armed with revolver rifles, standing with the kind of stillness that came from knowing they were enough. Even if the Church located them, Theo revised his estimate — the Church wouldn’t be able to stop the boarding. There was simply no force positioned in King’s City large enough.

“Lightning!”

Margaret’s composure went with that single word. She crossed the pier at something close to a run and pulled the small blonde girl into her arms, and Lightning, to her credit, looked merely confused rather than offended.

“This is?” Iron Axe asked.

“Margaret, owner of the Grand Chamber of Commerce.” Theo gestured. “Every ship in this operation is hers, or contracted through her. Without her, this wouldn’t be happening.”

Iron Axe took it in and gave a short nod. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“Deduct it from His Highness’s fees,” Margaret said, releasing Lightning and smoothing her coat. “But if you’re thanking me, thank Lightning too.”

Lightning tilted her head. “Why me?”

“Ahem.” Theo coughed. “Never mind that. What are we doing next?”

Iron Axe was already moving. “Set up camp in the south of the dock, secure the area, begin the rescue by afternoon. If the ships can be staged and ready by then, all the better.”

When Brian led his contingent into the refugee camp, he stopped.

It was worse than he had prepared himself for. Everywhere he looked: people lying in the sun, their skin split open in long dark lines, black blood seeping from the wounds in steady threads that brought the flies. The sick hadn’t the strength to brush them away. They lay still and let the insects feed.

He thought of the Months of Demons. The people of Border Town crowded into Longsong Stronghold’s slums, surrounded by cold and hunger and no way out. The same helplessness, the same slow dying. If the Church had engineered this, there was no word adequate for what they were.

“Call the first group,” Brian said. “Miss Echo — it’s on you.”

The danger of announcing themselves openly was obvious: five thousand people moving at once toward a dock would be a stampede, not a rescue. They had to work in batches — small groups, controlled, one wave at a time. Echo’s ability made this possible. She could send her voice only to chosen ears, threading sound to a person’s side without letting it travel anywhere else.

Brian watched her open her mouth. Heard nothing. And then, across the camp, scattered figures turned and looked.

They came at something between a stumble and a run. “Your honor — is it true? Just take the cure and we follow you west?”

“It’s true. Our ships are at the pier. Gather your family.”

Soldiers stepped out to help those too weak to walk, and the small group swelled within minutes to several hundred. Others saw the movement and followed, too tired and too desperate to wait for an explanation.

At the pier, the First Army had set up long tables lined with bags of purified water. Iron Axe stood at the gangway with a squad, letting only two people through at a time, ensuring every person boarding had drunk the water first. Beside the tables, a soldier was standing on a platform — the one Roland had written a specific speech for — his voice carrying above the crowd:

“This water is the medicine! It cures the plague! The Church has told you that only the Holy Elixir, blessed by God himself, can drive out the evil spirits — and that is a lie. They said it to put money in their pockets and gratitude in your hearts. Lord Roland’s medicine is free. Not one copper royal!”

The crowd pressed forward. The first man to drink the water stood very still for a moment, then tore open his shirt and looked down at his own chest. The dark spots were fading. He could see them fading. His voice broke open:

“It works — I’m healed — God above, I’m—”

“Me too!”

“The wounds — they’ve stopped—”

“God you say? Where? I only see a group of liars!”

“Long live His Highness Roland!”

The crowd’s noise went through a register change — not quite a roar, not quite weeping, something between. The First Army held the line with difficulty.

The propaganda soldier kept going. “His Highness needs workers — farmers, builders, road crews — he needs people willing to start again. He promises housing, food, and wages. Whatever your trade, there will be work. You don’t have to come — you’re free to stay. We’ll be here for three days, and food will be distributed at no cost regardless of your choice. But if you want a new life, the ships are ready.”

“Is there really work and a home waiting?”

“That is His Highness’s promise!”

“Let me on board — I’m willing to serve!”

“Me!”

“And me!”

“I’m a blacksmith!”

From the entire first group — hundreds of people — not one chose to stay. As each vessel filled, it cast off without a pause, Margaret running the logistics from the dock with clipped efficiency. Before it had fully left sight, another came in to take its place.

Brian kept making runs back into the camp with Echo. Three hundred, four hundred refugees each time, Echo threading her voice precisely to the farthest corners of the sprawling settlement. Between runs he watched the canal, the pier, the patient geometry of the operation.

Then, as he was returning with a fresh group, the First Army soldiers stationed in the wheat fields south of the dock began to move — fast, north toward the canal, rifles in hand.

“What happened?” he asked the nearest soldier.

“Scout Lightning spotted someone who jumped from a ship and ran,” the man said. “Might be a spy in the crowd.”

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