Lissandra did not feel very good. Something
was wrong with her. It had started the day after Longleg bit her in the arm.
The little spider had never done anything like it before. Neither did Longleg
behave in the way Liss was used to. If truth be told, Lissandra had started to
become scared of her tiny pet.
All the strange man’s gifts were poisoned.
Liss knew that now. She was back on her little hill but her house was still a
ruin from when Oga had torn it apart. The mushrooms tasted funny. And out past
the barrier where the trees could not encroach upon now everything was bloody
red as it had been before on the inside, which had shocked her so. Liss still had
to see this cursed colour every day and it hurt her eyes.
There were stretches of day Lissandra
could not remember. She would suddenly blink and be in an entirely different
spot than before. Still on her hill, of course, but just today she had been
harvesting mushrooms the one moment and stood aimlessly amidst her ruined hut
in the next. More than that, sometimes she could hear herself whisper strange
things, evil things, full of hate. And Longleg liked it.
The bite had swollen and started to itch. Then
a tingling sensation had crept up her arm, followed by a dark red line under
her skin. It was queer. Lissandra knew no potions against this particular
ailment, so she only mixed a poultice against the itching and hoped the rest
would just go away.
This proved true within a few days, but at
the same time did other symptoms occur, strange and bewildering and utterly new
to her. Next to the loss of memory she discovered that scales had started to
form on her skin where Longleg had bitten her. Then her fingers started to hurt
right under the nails. They cracked and turned yellow, then darker, and seemed
to grow both in length most of all in thickness. They were becoming round,
almost like claws.
Next, Lissandra’s hair was falling out
from her armpits and between her legs. One moment it was there, and the next
time she scratched herself her hand came back full of it. The hair on her head
felt strange too. It wasn’t falling out but it felt as though it was becoming leathery,
somehow, sticking together, and sometimes she felt like she could feel with it
as though it had become skin.
No one visited her during all this time,
though. There was no one she could have asked for advice.
Her teeth started to hurt next. There was
nothing she could do about it, it just hurt, everywhere, soon radiating into
her eyes and nose and then the rest of her skull. It wasn’t long hereafter that
she could no longer get up on account of the pain.
She was like this for a long time, lying
on her back with Longleg sitting, waiting over her on one of the few shelves
she had left.
Lissandra did not understand. She just
wanted everything back to the way it had been. But that hope seemed forlorn
now.
And when she thought she might perish from
thirst, suddenly Longleg stood over her, huge, black with her eight long legs,
and with the upper body of the most disgustingly white woman Lissandra had ever
seen.
-
Old, tall and grey, the steward of Winhall
stood. His blue eyes looked at Laura and Janna not so much with malice but
surprise. When he was told who they were, he seemed incredulous only for a
moment. Farindel explained it all away, as if nothing was impossible if one
invoked the fairy.
“She’s done you a great service,” he told
his master, Bragon Fenwasian. “But how curious that she does not allow them to
die. Does she intend to teach them a lesson? Or does she intend to use
them for her work?”
The idea was frightening to Laura. She did
not want to be used, especially not by something so weird and ominous.
Bragon Fenwasian said nothing, and neither
did any of the others speak, save a few whispers. There was a great
congregation at the castle gates of Whispermoor, the garrison, the servants,
the cooks, everyone had come. There were far more people than Laura remembered.
Of course, the last time she had come here, there had only been the Moorwatch,
a funny bunch of hard-bitten warriors who slew the red beasts that still from
time to time rose out of the bog, probably spawned by that red trickle she had
seen back then. Now, the situation had changed dramatically, with the Red Curse
back in earnest but also Bragon back with his army and Rodowan Ahawar with his
refugees.
“You sacked Winhall together,” Rodowan
addressed them calmly. “But only one of you went on to ravage the county. Which
one of you was that?”
Laura pressed her lips together and
lowered her gaze. Somehow, the way she remembered it, she had felt at the time
that it would come back to haunt her. She might be misremembering, projecting
all that now. But she did feel a sense of genuine regret over what she had
done.
Not for the people, though. She didn’t
really care about them. But she hated the consequences.
“Allow me to ask then,” the steward
continued, the corners of his mouth turning into a smile, “what did you feel
when you learned that I had saved thousands from you, leading them away from
your feet?”
It was a difficult question, Laura found,
and somehow very personal. She wondered whether she should tell the truth, or
whether she should even answer at all.
“I thought you were very clever,” she told
him reluctantly. “But then again, you saved me from having to kill even more of
your people.”
The flicker in his smile made it occur to
her that he was gloating, so she decided to be cocky.
“Even still, I’ve flattened a great number
of your folk, and eaten my fill too. Must have been some friends of yours went
through my gut.”
She pointed at her belly with her chin,
just for emphasis, while Janna stirred and kicked her against the leg. Rodowan
Ahawar did not react angrily, unlike quite a few others. Some hissed, others
cursed, and one man stepped forward and spat a thick gob of phlegm at Laura.
He missed, but his betters were on his
case at once and had him apprehended. This distraction was used by yet another
man, a simple soldier by the looks him, who sped forth with a dirk in his hand,
a mean piece of grey steel, glinting in the torchlight.
There was hardly any time to react and she
still had her hands bound in any case, so there was no stopping him when he
plunged the point of his weapon into her chest. She could tell immediately that
he had tried to ram it into her heart, but her T-shirt stopped it. It had
shrunk as well and appeared to be still as strong as it had been when it was
huge like her. In fact, it was so strong that the tip of the blade broke off,
much to the anger of her assailant.
He stared incredulous at the dirk for a
moment before ramming what was left straight through her eye. On her right ear,
Laura could hear Janna scream. On her left and a little further away, it was
Devona. She went blind and felt an incredible pain before her whole body went
numb for a moment, and then found herself with her face on the ground and the
dagger growing out of her eye. Another moment later it was as though she had never
been hit, even her eyesight unaffected.
“Fool,” Bragon Fenwasian said. “You cannot
kill them. I’ve tried. Fall back in line.”
The dishevelled murderer went unpunished
but also frightened for his life by the looks of him. The whole affair gave the
assembled garrison something to think and whisper about, like a swarm of angry flies.
“For what it’s worth,” Laura told Rodowan
Ahawar as a strong hand pulled her back to her feet, “I regret destroying your
county. All those deaths served nothing in the end.”
‘It sure as shit was fun, though.’
Being big was awesome, looking down on the
world from above, stepping on and destroying anything she liked or didn’t like.
The feeling of simply flattening people as they ran or grovelled for their
lives was a very rousing sensation. She had been like a god to them. Or even
more than that.
“Well, you haven’t destroyed all of it,”
the steward of Winhall smiled. “Thanks to me, we are able to start anew. Heh,
now I have moved everyone back north, and right under your nose, too. And here
you are now, small and at the mercy of my lord. Praise be to Farindel!”
“Praise! Praise be to her!” The men
echoed.
Then, absurdly, someone started to sing,
and they all joined in in an instant: “Mercy, mistress of the wood, we who set
in your realm our foot! Coill banríon, Coill banríon, Coill banríon, Coill
banríon! Guide us on with every breath, many soul found here their death! Coill
banríon, Coill banríon, Coill banríon, Coill banríon! Olden pact by Madalight,
we obey for so it’s right! Coill banríon, Coill banríon, Coill banríon, Coill
banríon, Coill banríon...”
It was the opposite of good, off-key, ill-tempoed
and made wholly unsalvageable by one very, very untalented flutist trying to
join in. Had Laura been big, she would have squashed everyone present just for
making her listen to it.
Perhaps the genius of Garvin Blaithin had spoiled
her, overblown her expectations. That was the reason his death made her so sad.
His singing and music had been genuinely enjoyable, which in her mind turned
him into a remarkably valuable man. There were no mp3-players or stereos
around, after all. Plus, she felt genuinely bad for his kids.
The terrible song faltered and died off
eventually, upon which Count Bragon seemed to become aware of the cold. It was
getting worse, perhaps because it was getting colder in general or just because
the night was getting darker. He ordered celebrations be had regardless, and
for Janna and Laura to be led inside.
“Have them serve you at table, My Lord!” A
man at arms suggested enthusiastically. “Show them how it feels to bow and
scrape!”
The count did not seem to think that
worthy of a reply, but Ian Fenwasian said: “Aye, just what we need, for these
unkillable monsters to get hold of a knife!”
Whispermoor
was not a particularly nice castle. It was small, crude, crammed, and not built
to accommodate so many. Everything smelled of bog and the floors were muddy.
Nevertheless was this the first time Laura got a look of a castle’s interior at
the proper proportions. Beyond the gatehouse there was a round drum tower to
the left and a pentagonal Bergfried on the opposite side, large stone buildings
that had an undeniably imposing effect on the beholder, doubly so in front of
the starlit sky. Laura was aware that every stone, every rock and every last
bit of mortar had been put there by hand, which was impressive despite
everything. The yard was filled with horses too, huddled under their blankets
for which Laura envied them.
The main house, which they entered, seemed
more like an oversized barn on the outside, with whitewashed walls that were
dirty and somewhat in disrepair and a slanted roof to run the rain off. If she
had hoped that it would be nice and warm inside, then she was wrong, for there
were hardly any fires or torches. On the other hand was the castle extremely
well stocked with food. It was virtually everywhere, hanging on the bare stone
walls instead of tapestries, barrels stacked on barrels, baskets of items such
as vegetables, berries, mushrooms and fruit, sacks of grain and flour, bushels
of straw...
Soldiers' sleeping gear littered every
corner as the small castle was so packed that nigh every inch of floor had to
be used at night. In fact, as everyone streamed inside after them, Laura soon got
the feeling of attending a house party with rather too many guests.
Laura and Janna were placed on a bench
with the wall at their backs and two spearmen watching over them while the
preparations for the late ad hoc feast commenced.
“You really gotta pay attention to what
you say,” Janna whispered as soon as they sat. “There's no need to rile them up
like that!”
Laura gave a shrug. If truth be told, she
understood the sentiment but couldn't help that being a little bit mean made
her feel better.
“What are they going to do?” She asked.
“They can't kill us.”
“Mh, they can hurt us, though,” Janna said
sourly. “I for one wouldn't like to give them a reason to torture us in
perpetuity or maybe burn us or something.”
Laura had to swallow at that. Yes, being
burned in this condition might be even worse yet than her hanging. She was
becoming tolerant towards pain rather quickly, though. It was just a feeling,
one she could force herself to ignore even if it was uncomfortable.
She changed the subject: “What are we
gonna do now, go for a knife as they said?”
They would have to lose the fetters for
that, which would require a ruse. Maybe they could ask to use the privy.
Janna shook her head: “There are too many
of them. Besides...”
“Even if we make it out, we're still
tiny,” Laura finished bitterly.
“This is normal-sized, Laura, we're simply
no longer huge!”
Of course, Janna had to be stupid and
righteous about it.
“You think Furio could turn us back?”
Laura asked. “Where is he, I mean, Devona and Ardan are here, right?”
There evidently had passed a lot of time
outside of the Farindel, even while they had been only briefly inside. Like as
not, everybody at Honingen had been celebrating nonstop that Janna and Laura
were gone, including that dozy dope head of a wizard. Laura was just curious
whether Janna was able rationalize it. But she got it all wrong.
“You’re right!” She cheered. “Furio can
help us! He'd never let us down!”
Quite what exactly the two of them had
gone through to make them so close, Laura did not know. Part of her regretted
not having squashed the wizard a while ago. He was at least partially to blame
for Laura’s Albernian campaign having become so convoluted and derailed. He had
gotten injured at the time, and Janna had to carry him back to Nostria. They
should have put him out of his misery instead.
‘One little pop.’
“He's not here, though.” She noted.
The Moorwatch would not be inclined to
help either, not after Laura's political cleansing. If memory served, she had
crushed two young Fenwasians here, just outside the gates. The fact that she
had otherwise been positively disposed to the Moorwatch changed little.
Janna remained unwavering: “He will come.”
The feast, meanwhile, was beginning to
shape up. There was scarcely more than bread on the large old table in the
hall, but the mass of men standing around heated up the air considerably and
beer was being poured liberally into each soldier's personal cup or tankard, be
it made of wood, pottery, horn or metal. There was a strong sense of communal
sharing, but also a pecking order. While manoeuvring through the crowd, men of
seniority had the right of way and received beer first, at least among commoners.
Social status seemed to regulate the rest, and men stuck to their peer groups
as much as possible.
It was also notable that everyone present
was male. It seemed that Laura, Janna and Devona were the only women in the
castle, a thing that started to become of concern given the ferocity with which
some of the men were drinking on a presumably empty stomach.
“It's a complete sausage fest,” Laura
mentioned her observation, leaving the rest implied.
She could feel Janna shiver on the bench
next to her and felt a little sick to the stomach herself at the prospect.
Laura had never experienced sexual violence, at least from the receiving
perspective. All her life she had acted mostly unconcerned among men. She had enjoyed
her fair share of boyfriends and one-night stands, even a threesome or two, but
the worst thing she had experienced this far in that department had been a
somewhat inexperienced or overeager lover.
“If someone’s gonna do something, it won't
be here,” she tried to lend Janna some confidence. “Bragon will cut their dicks
off if they try anything.”
The count of Winhall was handsome enough
but also struck Laura as cold, humourless and prude, based on what she had seen
and heard of him. How such a man could have sired a living angel like Devona was
beyond explanation.
“You sure?” Janna asked. “He didn't even
punish that guy who tried to murder you.”
Laura forced a smile: “See, that’s a
sentiment he can understand. On the other hand, you saw how rough they were
with the guy who spat at us.”
That one had been apprehended and
forcefully removed from the scene, although if there had been any punishment
after that, Laura did not know.
“Spat at you, you mean,” Janna
corrected.
Laura shook her head and wanted to say
something but ultimately let it slide. It was a shitty hill to die on.
“I'd kill for a beer,” she said instead,
watching two men quaff their tankards in competition to the merriment of
everyone around even though half of the hoppy beverage ran down from the
corners of their mouths and into their clothing.
The wastefulness of it didn't really make
sense.
“How come you are so well supplied here?”
Laura turned to the guard closest to her. “Where's all this food and drink
from?”
The man looked down at her with nothing
but disdain in his eyes: “You can't have any.”
The guard on the other side of the bench
chuckled: “Oh, ho, ho, our Lord steward outwitted you again. He took the wagons
that were meant for Honingen and used them for us instead, heh, heh, heh!”
Laura had to swallow her anger and was
left wondering whether Franka and Turon knew about this, perhaps secretly
working against her. For Franka, however, such an undertaking would likely have
been too dangerous, and of Turon's loyalty she was relatively certain.
Then again, people in societies like this
often did reckless and brazen things, not to mention treacherous ones. It was
in their primitive nature.
“Do not talk to them,” said the first
guard. “Nothing good comes of talking to prisoners!”
‘Spoken like one who has let prisoners
escape,’ Laura thought, studying the man from below.
He was short and squat and had a big jaw
with sagging jowls, making him look somewhat like an especially stupid bulldog.
“Afraid of girls, eh?” The second guard smirked.
“Well, I don't blame you. If I were as ugly as you, I'd be too.”
This one was younger, comelier and judging
by his vocabulary decidedly smarter than the other man. Laura chewed her lip
trying to figure out what to do with this information.
“You don't make me angry,” said the stupid
man, but awkwardly left it there with no rebuke following.
“I need to go to the privy!” Laura
announced quickly before their unequal fight could settle.
What she would do there, she didn't really
know yet. She didn't really have to go, either.
“Shit yourself then!” The older guard told
her, most unkindly.
If she had hoped that the other man would
jump to her rescue, she was sadly mistaken. He only laughed.
She pictured a privy as an outcrop of wall
with a wooden bench or some such seat that had a hole in it, allowing the
refuse to freely plummet to the ground. If the hole was anywhere as large as a
modern toilet seat then she could have dived in and let herself fall. It would
have hurt and she might have landed in a pile of faeces, but at least she might
have been free.
If the privy at Whispermoor truly looked
the way she imagined was little more than speculation at this point, but she
felt she had to do something.
“Men!” The voice of Rodowan Ahawar
bellowed from the other side of the hall. “Find your places now, the feast is
about to commence!”
“This is my first time I am at a feast,”
whispered the comely man. “Makes me feel like a lord!”
“You're not a lord!” hissed the other.
“We're on guard duty!”
With everyone pressing to the sides Laura
and Janna were finally afforded a much clearer view of what a medieval feast
looked like. The seats at table were reserved for important people, Count
Bragon, his steward, daughter and son in law at the elevated head of it and
knights as well as choice warriors further below. Count Bragon took a pinch of
salt with his fingers and sprinkled it over the steaming bowl in front of him,
then passing the salt to his daughter who did the same.
The food was scarce, hastily prepared and raw
or reheated far as Laura could tell. The feast was a symbolic act of
celebration rather than proper eating, and the main object of desire was liquid
and intoxicating rather than filling.
Nevertheless could she not deny how hungry
she was at this point, and thirsty too.
“Farindel has made us a great gift
tonight!” Rodowan Ahawar gestured while Laura and Janna were pulled to their
feet.
“Aye!” The men shouted and cheered, along
with a number of other calls that drowned out each other.
Laura was pushed forward by her guard,
presented for inspection like a cow upon the market and for everyone to ogle at
like she was just some thing. Hundreds of eyes were upon them and small men
stood on their toes to get a better view.
“She!” The steward had to shout to make
everyone calm down. “She has given us the giant beasts that have so ravaged our
homeland, and has shrunk them down too, to much more manageable
proportions!”
That drew laughter and more calls, which
Laura now understood were very rude and gory.
The steward spread his hands: “Alas, she
has not equipped us with the means to kill them! Why?”
“So we can torture them!” A hateful man
screamed at the top of his lungs, louder than any other suggestion.
Rodowan Ahawar laughed and spread his arms
once more: “I do not know why. It is not for us to question the mistress
of the woods! As she has done, she has done with good reason! We trust in
Farindel, and so we pray!”
It was a queer scene that unfolded next as
chairs scraped upon the stone floor and everyone stood upright. At the same
time, it became very quiet. Men folded their hands and lowered their gazes,
each mumbling their own prayers, some more enthusiastically than others. Such
was the way of religion and probably what separated it from common
superstition. The latter was generally more tightly held.
When the prayer was over, Bragon Fenwasian
was the first to sit. It was the signal for everyone to resume their boozing,
even though the space in the middle of the hall was not refilled so as not to impede
the view of those better men at table.
Platters of sausages and chunks of ham and
bacon were passed amongst the standing crowd, men grabbing what they could if
only to shove the majority of it into bags and pockets. At the table, soup was
being spooned instead of proper trenchers with meat and gravy, but Bragon
assigned different portions of meat and fish as he saw fit.
“I’m hungry,” Laura complained to her
guard as much as to Janna.
This earned her a painful clout over the
head as well as a return to the bench for both of the girls.
If truth be told, it was a form of torture
in and of itself to be sat there watching other people eat and drink to their
hearts content while being left starving. This was another thing Laura had
never really experienced herself. She hadn’t grown up in abject luxury, but not
dirt-poor either. And as a giantess she had been able to get anything she
wanted, provided it was somewhere within reach.
From the opposite end of the hall, Devona
Fenwasian suddenly looked over, touched her father on the arm and whispered
intently into his ear. His face never changed but when she was done, his eyes
sought a platter on the table before instructing one of his knights with a few
words.
The knight did not like what he heard, but
all the same he stood, took the platter and began coming over, like a common
servant. From what Laura could see, however, it seemed that the platter was
filled with sticks, thin branches of trees with the bark still on. She thought
to be the subject of some cruel jape.
But that assumption proved false. The
sticks were skewers, each impaling a thick, greasy piece of mutton.
“Drink too,” the knight grunted in disgust
while offering the food to Janna and Laura. “And if you lay a hand on them
again you'll lose a finger.”
The guard who had struck Laura gasped
stupidly, and worse yet he did not get what the knight wanted him to do.
“Their hands, oaf!” The other, already at
work on Janna's ropes, hissed. “Do you expect them to eat like pigs?”
The knight shook his head: “You lot would
have me stand here all night long, wouldn't you, like an utter fool.”
Janna thanked the guard who had unbound
her hands and soon Laura had hers back as well. They took as many skewers as
they could without dropping them, sinking their teeth into the meat at once. It
was lukewarm, very salty and not thoroughly cooked, but Laura wolfed it down
all the same.
“Heh, wouldn't you know it, they do
eat like pigs.” The knight noted. “Make due on the ale before they choke
themselves.”
Laura didn't know or particularly care whose
tankard was shoved into her hand, and she didn't care whether it was beer or
vomit in it. She washed down bite after bite, thinking in her head what a
wonderful human being Devona was.
She already felt much better.
“Being nice goes a long way,” Janna rubbed
it in between bites. “If we had treated everyone like we did Devona...”
“Too many ifs in that sentence,” Laura cut
her off without looking.
What was done was done. They couldn't very
well unsquish or uneat the tens if not hundreds of thousands they had killed. And
even if they had behaved like docile lambs from the very beginning, all that
would left them was starving.
Thinking of her gruesome achievements gave
Laura an idea, however.
“I wish to treat with Count Bragon,” She
told the knight who was turning to go. “I have an offer for him that he will
want to hear.”
The man shot her a glance over the
shoulder, sighed and moved on.
“And what might that be?” Janna asked in
English. “What do we have that he wants?”
‘Well, I could suck his dick,’ Laura
thought, imagining the scene before her inner eye.
A prude man such as him had probably never
even experienced a blowjob. But that was also why it wouldn’t work.
She ignored Janna and observed the knight
making his way back to his seat instead. Then, the moment. The knight sat and
leaned forward, talking to his liege upon which the latter looked over to meet
Laura's gaze. Bragon's face was a cold, eerie mask. He took a sip of wine
before resuming his conversation with Rodowan Ahawar.
“What’s this about?!” Janna demanded
sharply.
Laura shrugged: “Nothing. It didn't work.”
Being small was awful and miserable. There
was nothing she could do about it. Worse yet, once the mutton was eaten and the
beer drunk, Laura found herself still hungry, although her thirst had gone away
somewhat. Neither did the alcohol make the situation more bearable. She had
tasted that the beer was strong, albeit somewhat stale. But she did not feel the
slightest hint of intoxication.
She looked about the room for what felt like
the hundredth time that evening, finding that her eyes were growing heavy. The
warmth, both in terms of temperature and Devona Fenwasian's kindness, had put
her more at ease. But that didn't change her predicament.
The white-haired man sat at the table
amongst the more valuable of Bragon's pets, drinking wine. He had been
bewitched by Farindel, if his tale could be believed. Perhaps he knew a way out
of it as well.
Just now would be a good time to speak
with him, red-faced, drunk and swaying in his seat as he was. He might divulge
the most intimate secrets.
To relieve themselves, men left the hall
for a time before coming back. Maybe now that she had Devona's favour they
would allow Laura to do the same. But she had to wait for the old man's kidneys
for that to be fruitful.
“These aren’t ladies, they're monsters,”
Laura overheard a conversation nearby. “He ought to pass them around the
garrison. They can't die, aye? All the better! We can fuck them till Nameless
day!”
A deeper voice cautioned: “I’d keep my
hands off ‘em, lest ye wake up a gelding. You know how he gets with the women. It's
his sweet daughter! He's so worried about her in the clutches of that old
harridan, he sees her face in every wench.”
“The king will sort out that spinster, see
if he don't,” said a third man. “He'll come back on his white horse and set the
realm to rights!”
The first man scoffed drunkenly: “The king
who ran. Where is he? We've won his war for him, and he is nowhere to be
found!”
“He had to run,” objected the
other, “else the monsters would've crushed him like they did everyone!”
‘True,’ Laura reflected dreamily.
If she had gotten Finnian into her
clutches she would've turned him into a grease spot, provided Janna didn't get
in the way. Squashing powerful people was fun, and the things she would do to
Bragon Fenwasian, Rodowan Ahawar and a number of others made her giddy with
anticipation.
If only she could grow big again!
“Let's rather talk about something else,”
one of the men mumbled, presumably sensing that someone was eavesdropping on
them.
“Laura,” Janna touched her by the arm, and
Laura realized that Bragon had risen and was coming over.
He wore a long cloak, black as night and
immaculate, black boots, black britches, black doublet, only a golden thistle
pin lending a little bit of colour. He looked like a dark ghost the way his
long-legged strides seemed to levitate him over the distance, an evil spirit
come to haunt her.
His face was hard, handsome and
expressionless but there was something about his eyes that Laura found
unsettling. There was another kind of darkness in there, a bright kind, chaos
and madness, unwavering determination.
To encourage herself, she tried picturing
him naked, but that proved only more intimidating.
‘Tiny, though,’ she thought. ‘How absurd
if I met him while I was still large and could've shoved him up my ass.’
It just didn't seem to compute, like
dividing by zero, but then again from ninety meters tall he wouldn’t have
looked half so frightening. And she had dealt with men like him before, like when
she resolved the Hedge Feud. She didn't even recall the bad guy's name in that
instance, only the manner in which she had disposed of him. Picturing Bragon
Fenwasian as a flattened imprint of himself helped a lot.
He was flanked by his wretched steward
Rodowan Ahawar, and his daughter Devona on the other side.
“My lord!” She hailed him. “I want to make
a deal!”
His cold grey eyes studied her, no hint of
his emotions.
“Let us go, my lord,” she went on. “Help
us become big again! In exchange, I will make you king of Albernia!”
Devona gasped, Rodowan laughed heartily,
but the Count of Winhall still showed no hint of a reaction.
‘This motherfucker should try poker,’
Laura thought. ‘He'd make a fortune.’
She continued: “I will stomp your enemies
out of existence and lend my strength to whatever cause you will. I'll help you
defeat the Red Curse if you so require! On this, you have my word!”
He looked at her for a moment longer
before inclining to his steward: “Cells, I think. And chains.”
He turned to go like a black shadow, cloak
swirling, and Devona left them with an apologetic look.
“Hm,” Rodowan Ahawar chuckled. “It would
seem the issue of where to bed them is finally resolved.”
-
Boats had been made useful to Dari because
houses on riverfronts and bridges were often less well defended on the water's
side. That being so, no Garethian waterway had ever been as wild, treacherous
and miserable as this blasted river.
She had mastered Laura's test of her
skills while afraid for her life, but as she calmed and got to thinking,
contemplating the absurd complexity of her task, she grew distracted and
promptly ran her boat aground on a shallow, almost capsizing the vessel in the
process.
She was better supplied than when she set
out to kill the Chosen One. But the large bag Laura had given her would also
weigh her down once on land, and she pictured herself dragging it alone and
freezing through the thicket of Andergastian woods, just waiting to become
fodder for bears, wolves or even worse things.
To say nothing of the task itself, which
was sheer madness. In ogre-controlled lands, she had to locate Steve and
Christina, two complete strangers, fairly easy to recognize and undoubtedly
under heavy guard. She then had to free them and take them all the way back to
Honingen without getting them or herself killed.
A moneyed pepper sack had once frequented
her services as an assassin, tasking her with ending a siege that was rupturing
one of his trade routes.
‘Or was it that there was somebody who
owed him coin?’
Whatever the case, the defenders had
hostages on the besiegers, necessitating that the castle be starved out rather
than stormed. And the garrison had stores to last for years. The hostages were
a woman and her daughter in this case. Dari had slipped in during the night,
smothered first the daughter and then the mother with a pillow, cut off their
heads and impaled them on spikes over the battlements to let the besiegers
know. By noon the next day, the castle was stormed and every last occupant put
to the sword. This was the closest she ever got to rescuing hostages.
About her current, infinitely more
complicated mission, doubts and pride were at war in her chest the whole time.
A mission was a mission, which was good, and she was determined not to make
such a pig’s breakfast of it as with the Chosen One. The exact question of how
would depend upon the circumstances. It was too early to make plans now, her
knowledge too limited, the stakes too elevated for such foolery.
On the other hand did she not want to
throw away her life. She had had more brushes with death in recent times than
she cared to count. Janna wanted to kill her, which was bad enough, but Laura
showed such reckless disregard for her longevity that Dari wouldn’t be
surprised if instead of the promised freedom she would only earn a moist death
in the giantess’ cunt as a reward.
If
she survived this contract, which was more than doubtful. Like as not it would
be some ogress squashing Dari for laughs. She had killed ogresses before, but
her brief time with Nagash had already taught her what could happen if such a
large and powerful beast got hold of her.
Thus, the first day was spent weighing the
yeas and nays, as well as navigating the treacherous river. By evenfall, when
her thoughts turned to the more practical problem of where to make camp, she
was suddenly confronted with fisherfolk on the river.
They tied their boats and rafts on rocks
and other anchorage points with lines to haul in the nets and fish traps they
had set in the morning. Others were holding rods with lines in the water. She
was surprised to see them, having thought everything north of Arran wiped clean
of human life by Janna and Laura, if not by the Red Curse. Such was what people
in Honingen would have her believe, anyway.
Astoundingly, the fisherfolk seemed just
as surprised to see her. She even sensed that their first impetus was to
run, as people began looking to the banks of the river when the word spread. They
seemed to realize eventually that the fifty-odd of them had little to fear from
a single woman in a glorified skiff, and so they resumed their labour whilst
keeping an eye on her.
Fighting on water was different, but Dari
had sufficient confidence in her abilities to kill off a few opportunistic
fishermen if she had to. Nevertheless, she loosened up her hidden knives in
their sheaths and looked at every boat in search for crossbows.
When she was within shouting range, a man
in a sea-green tunic called out: “Twelve blessings to you, weary traveller! Are
you looking for Ambelmouth? Please, make rest in our town and entertain us with
your tales! Do not go on! There is nothing but death down this river!”
‘Nordmarkers,’ Dari knew at once, ‘from
the eastern bank of the Tommel.’
Nordmarken lay to her right, but she could
not see any village there, let alone a town. This roused her suspicion at once,
even though the caller clothed himself like an Efferd priest, making an ambush
unlikely.
‘What does a priest do if he gets
desperate, though.’
Then she saw it, the mouth of a smaller
river, ending into the Tommel here.
“Twelve blessings to you, as well!” She
piously hollered back. “What town is this you speak of and what is the name of
that river there?!”
The priest seemed to sense her caution and
smiled, much as though she had challenged him to a pillow fight. He was young
and handsome enough, albeit that his mouth had so many teeth missing that she
could see the gaps even from half a hundred paces.
“It’s the Ambla, of course!” He replied. “And
our town is Ambelmouth! Where is it you hope to go?”
“Do you have beds at Ambelmouth?!” She ignored
the question.
He grinned again: “Aye, and food, if you
can pay! Fish and river crab, mostly…well, only, at this time! Come by
me and I’ll a toss you a rope so we can pull you upriver!”
She thought quickly and decided that she
liked the prospect of a hot meal and a warm bed much more than sleeping outside
after a cold day on the water. And the priest was true to his word on the rope.
“Hard on the oars, boys!” He shouted from
the rudder to his two fellow men in his boat, once they had her in tow.
His rowers were spitting images of him,
sinewy lads with shocks of dirt-blond hair and bony faces. He also proved much
older than his boyish demeanour had foretold, still forty-odd perhaps, or
perhaps still in his late thirties.
“Well met!” He smiled at her from his boat.
“Ephilio Admares, men call me. I am the servant of Efferd at Ambelmouth.”
It was unmistakably not a Nordmarkian name,
Almadan, more likely, or Horasian.
She went with her second guess: “You are
Horasian?”
“Grangorian, whelped and whipped,” he
admitted. “My father took me here when I was little. It was Ansgar of Fadershill
held Ambelmouth in that day, and after him his son Wunnemar. But he died eleven
winters ago. From whence it you hail?”
The rowers laboured hard but the current
was strong, and they had to overcome two rivers here. As a result, their pace
was all but a creep, leaving plenty of time for longwinded small talk, much
more than Dari wanted.
She ignored him again, “And who rules Ambelmouth
now?”
“Why, Wunnemina, of course!” He replied
with a side glace towards the mouth of the Ambla, where they were going. “In
name, if nothing else, to hear some tell it. The truth is our town has fallen
on hard times.”
‘Of course,’ Dari thought. ‘No trade on
the river and two man-eating monsters next door.’
“Have you been hit, too,” she asked, “by
those giant women?”
He raised his brows: “Ah, so you have
heard of them! Tell me, how bad is it, truly, up that way?”
He gestured south, up the Tommel.
Dari had to tread carefully here. If the
people of Ambelmouth found out that she was with the giantesses then
they might turn hostile. They would also know the river well, so if she lied
about where she had set off they might inquire details of her that she could
not give them.
She gave him a frown: “They sit in
Honingen now, devouring more of the city every day. Thousands are dead. I saw
them make their way to the Farindel where the Red Curse is back. It’s bad. If I
were you, I would not sit so boldly on the river. If they come by here and see
you they will surely destroy you.”
He swallowed at that and his mood grew
sombre, his voice sounding older at once.
“We’ve naught but the river to feed us
now,” he said. “Our town has not suffered their footfalls yet, but every day
could be our last here. We saw them too and holed up in the castle. I watched
from the battlements and could have sworn they looked right at me. But they
didn’t cross.”
There was a small bend right at the mouth
of the Ambla, created by a spit of land overgrown with tall and beautiful willows.
The town, as it crept into view, was surrounded by a palisade with a stone
foundation and had many trees within its walls too. The castle was a little
further on, connected to the town via a wooden bridge and seated on a hill. But
it was small, hardly more than a keep, and its walls were overgrown with moss
and in dire disrepair with young trees and brush sprouting from the stonework. And
the surrounding trees were almost taller than it.
Dari nearly laughed at the thought of how
narrowly this place must have avoided a flattening.
‘Better treat me nice, Ephilio Admares,’
she thought. ‘Else I might just tell Laura she missed a spot.’
If their conversation thus far was
anything to go by, he had nothing to worry about, of course. Truth be told, she
was enjoying his company, which was more than could be said about most people
she had spoken to in recent days.
“The Twelve have held their hand over you,
I am sure,” she said a little belatedly, waiting for a question that never
came.
“Aye,” he weighed his head. “Or we just
got lucky. Much as you.”
She truly was lucky to still be alive at
this point, but the sheer extent of it could not be divulged.
“I only wanted to go back home,” she lied.
“But the Albernians would not let me go because of the war, so I became stuck.”
She anticipated the logical question of
where her home was, thinking, thinking, thinking of how to reply. Naming Gareth
would corner her. After all, if that was her destination then going further
downstream didn’t make any sense. She would have to go up the Ambla or else
continue from here on foot. Naming Andergast as her destination solved this
problem while creating an even bigger one, rather an army of problems, each
roughly the size of an ogre.
“No place like home, especially in times
like these,” he smiled apologetically at her. “Alas, I fear you have become
stuck again. There is nowhere to go from here, wherever your home is.”
Alarmed, her first thought was of
imprisonment. By now, they were close to the town, almost around it, and
downstream they had the fisherfolk at their back. She could see archers over
the palisade as well, having taken note of the new boat with a mast but no
sail.
“W-why?” She stammered, looking at the
plentiful directions she could have gone.
The priest laughed: “You’re at the
northern end of Nordmarken! Granted, we’re not the northernmost barony here, but
we might as well be, without the river. There are no roads. Up the Ambla there
is nothing but a few lonely villages. And downstream is naught but death! You
should have gone to Vairningen on the Imperial highroad, little use as that
counsel is to you now, I know. I am sorry, but you had best stay here in
Ambelmouth and wait for better times.”
It was hard to argue with.
“Is...” she started and stopped. “Truly?
You have no way of getting out?”
He shook his head: “A vast, inhospitable
wilderness surrounds us. A man who knows his way in the wild might make it,
although he’d be more like to freeze to death. In summer, aye. But not now with
winter upon us.”
He left her little choice. It was either
say Andergast now, or cut the rope and run.
“B-but Andergast is my home! I must only
follow the Tommel!”
The priest flinched: “Andergast! No, no,
no, Andergast has been overrun by the ogre! Haven’t you heard?”
‘Now, how do I explain this away without
an ogre-sized leap of faith?’
It seemed she had cornered herself after
all. The priest looked at her with big eyes, expecting an answer and it better
be a good one.
“Well…” She stammered before pressing her
lips together, every second making her trouble worse. “W-well, it happens to be
that...the ogres, they let the city folk be for the most part, much like any
lord. They don't like it, the city, I mean, because they're big and the streets
are narrow!”
“No, no, no,” he shook his head again. “We
have had word from Arraned in Nostria, where the Nabla runs into the Tommel. The
village is drowning in Andergastians, telling tales of most ogrish
horrors! They came there fleeing the war, and now cause much woe and criminality,
yet my heart bleeds for these poor souls.”
‘Arraned,’ she noted. ‘That sounds like just
the place to go next.’
They came past the town now and she saw a small
harbour with mooring places and jetties at the foot of the castle. Transport
barges and freight rafts sat there side-by-side, unused and tied up, waiting
for cargo to once again move up and down the river.
“That was during the war,” she argued.
“King Aele has been killed and Kraxl is king now, and he has married the ogre queen.
Things aren’t as bad as you have heard.”
“M-married?!”
Even more aghast, the priest almost fell
out of his boat. His knees failed him and he landed on his arse, rocking the
vessel like a cradle.
She had to stifle a laugh at his display:
“It’s true, rites and all! I hear they forced the Travia priest who did it, on
pain of death. The ogre queen has married many of her creatures to Andergastian
lords, too. Our lords, that is. They are letting them live and keep
their titles in exchange for sharing them.”
Of course, a man couldn’t have multiple
wives, so the ogres had to find and remove the lord’s former wife first, or
else they killed him too and then married one of his heirs. The Efferd priest
wouldn’t be able to stomach such gruesome details, however. He was pale as milk
now, struggling to get back up before one of his sons lent him a hand.
“And you know all this, how?” He asked
her, looking frantically between her and the harbour in front of him, both
requiring his attention.
It was an interesting question with
implications that weren’t entirely free of peril. She might end up having to
explain how and why she got to be in Honingen to see Laura and Janna arrive
there while also being in Andergast long enough to know what the ogres were
doing.
Luckily, her clothing, if not especially
feminine, allowed her to pretend to be rich.
“My family sent word,” she lied. “A
Beilunker Rider. They say it is safe to come back.”
“I pray that they are right,” the priest said
without looking while his boys gave one last stroke on their oars before
heaving the long, heavy pieces of wood into the boat with them.
They pulled up to the jetty and their
conversation was at an end.
“If I return here in the morning,” she
said while watching the priest’s sons secure her boat with ropes, “will it
still be here?”
There were plenty of other vessels she
might steal but she didn’t exactly want the hassle.
“Why, that depends,” one of the boys held
out his hand. “Have you got a silver?”
‘Thieving, conniving wretches,’ she
thought as she sat a while later, alone in the common room of the Fadershiller
Treehouse, the better of the two inns Ambelmouth had, so named because it
had a tree growing through it.
She might have given the priest and his
boys a copper or two for rowing her into town, but a silver was abject robbery,
especially without informing her beforehand.
But the times were desperate in
Ambelmouth. A bowl of river crab stew and a roasted perch, some heavily watered
wine and a room for the night were supposed to cost her half a dozen more
silvers in the Fadershiller Treehouse. Dari only managed to haggle the fat,
female innkeep down to a single silver by threatening to go to the Rejoicing
Rafter instead, similarly lacking patrons. And the food lacked salt.
The town hadn't seen a single traveller in
some time, she learned from the innkeep. First, any traffic to and from
Andergast had vanished. Then Nostria had disappeared as well. Finally, Albernia
had come under the giant monsters' heel, and Ambelmouth's catastrophe was
perfect.
If the river froze too thickly during the
winter, or if the fish didn't bite, the people would starve.
For now, it seemed they were mostly
craving coin, or perhaps distraction. A carpenter sought her out first, to
inquire if her boat needed mending. Then a seamstress to ask the same for her clothes.
A third person tried to sell her a magical amulet that he swore kept ogres and
other evil creatures at bay, while a fourth offered her a medicinal tincture
that smelled like urine.
The only thing she actually considered
buying was a sail, but that proved so extravagantly costly that she could
hardly afford it. She still had some coin from Hatchet who had not been a
niggard, and in Honingen she had thieved the purse of a man who was. But if the
prices in Andergast and Nostria were anywhere near as high as here she would
have to watch her expenditure. If not, she might be forced to steal more along
the way, thereby drawing unnecessary attention.
She had hardly come a day far on this voyage
and already it proved troublesome. This certainly spelled nothing good.
While making ready to go to bed in her
cold room – she had forgotten to haggle for firewood and the fat woman would
not budge this time – she could hear laughter and merriment across the central
square from the Rejoicing Rafter, oddly enough accompanied by strange music.
She would have liked to get drunk and
rowdy had her circumstances not loomed over her like a giant shadow.
‘But why shouldn’t I run out from under
it?’
There were Laura’s threats, aye. But she
had been under constant threat all her life. The threat of starvation when she
was little. The threat of getting caught, losing a hand or be branded, the
threat of being hanged with or without the prospect of being gruesomely
tortured beforehand.
Laura and Janna were big. But the world
was bigger. Much like there were many watchful eyes in Gareth but far, far more
people than anybody could keep an eye on.
Joy, laughter, freedom, these things could
be hers again if she ran. The problem was that there was nowhere to run to, as
the priest had pointed out. She was in the worst kind of place to make this
decision.
Back south, upstream, wasn't really an
option. She would be slow on the river, and if Laura or Janna crossed her path
again it would cost her her life.
‘Shall I stay here, in Ambelmouth?’
That sounded not much better, although it
might serve for a time if the laughter from the other inn was anything to go
by.
She missed that most of all, the levity of
an evening in a tavern, drinking, dicing, toying with men's hearts. In Gareth,
those who knew her feared and respected her a great deal, but she could still
lose herself in the city and become anyone or no one, and never face any
consequence the next day.
‘I don't want to go on like this,’ she
decided. ‘I can't. To the Netherhells with Janna and Laura. May the Nameless
take them!’
She was crying, she realized, the tears
burning on her cheeks in the cold air. It was getting colder again and a fog
hung over the town, only the lights of the Rejoicing Rafter shining through.
She could even make out the song they were
singing there, whispering it with them: “Oh, sing with me, sing with me, about
the preacher's cow Bessy. Sing with me, sing with me, about the cow Bessy!”
Her own voice sounded sad and glum in her
ears. Frustrated, she took herself to bed, only to be awoken after a dreamless
slumber before the break of dawn, the bells of a temple ringing obnoxiously and
the fat woman huffing and puffing before her door.
“Prayer time!” The innkeep banged her fist
against the wood. “Up with you, sleepy head, and take yourself to your god! Our
lady does not permit ungodliness in her town!”
The water the woman left her for washing
was cold as ice, another revenge for yesterday’s haggling. Dari splashed some
on her face and wrists and called that good enough before slipping into her
clothes.
She tried to recall the last time she had
attended morning prayers in the Church of Praios, or service to any god for
that matter. It had been a long time, to be sure.
As she walked to the Praios temple, a
relatively simple stone building with a noisy bell tower situated in the centre
of the town square with all other buildings respectfully far away, an old
children’s prayer crept into her head: ‘With Praios' Sun the year begins, Rondra
fights and Rondra wins. Efferd lets the rain fall and Peraine gives fruit to us
all. Boron's mist brings death, Firun icy breath. Tsa lets new life sprout and
Hesinde crushes doubt. Phex makes men be lucky, Travia makes family. Ingerimm's
fire melts iron in hearths, and Rahya’s fire melts hearts.’
It was a truly stupid rhyme, recited by
children to remember which of the Twelve supposedly did what. She had never
truly believed in them. But after her dream...
‘Hypocrite,’ she thought as she neared the
gates of the church. ‘You left an offering at a few altars, and then?!’
But the gods were hypocrites, too.
‘How can they demand that we worship them
when they do not so much as lift a finger against Laura and Janna?’
She slipped inside the temple, quiet as a
mouse, to avoid the congregated townsfolk staring at her and admonishing her
lateness.
Under normal circumstances she wouldn't
have bothered entering at all. It was just that she didn't want to leave ill
will behind, seeing as her mission might well necessitate stopping here again
on the way back.
On the opposite side of the heavy portal she
could see a golden sun, it’s rays elongated with light-yellow paint and
stretching over the painted walls where they cut through griffins, lynxes, holy
people and sunflowers.
A few more golden items and decorations
were in evidence here and there, as well as red and white hangings over the
rafters.
Tonsured and wearing white, red and golden
robes, a priest stood in front of the congregated townsfolk.
“Lordship, truth and order!” He shouted as
Dari moved in, mixing among the poorer folk standing at the back of the temple.
“Lordship, truth and order! In despair and darkness...”
The people answered him in unison: “The
light prevails!”
“Against witches and liars...”
“The light prevails!”
“With fire and sword...”
“The light prevails!”
Dari shouted it with them the last time,
lest someone saw and thought her impious. Nevertheless did these preachings
leave her with a foul feeling in her belly.
“Where the light of our Lord Praios
shines, lies and doubt perish!” The priest went on. “Where the light of our
Lord Praios shines, order will not falter! Where the all-seeing eye watches, darkness
retreats! In the name of Praios, our eternal lord, all-seeing judge and blazing
king, may his light fill your hearts! May his light lift your souls! May the
light of our lord show you the way, now and forever! Aye!”
“Aye!” The congregation shouted back and
the spook was suddenly over.
“Quick one,” someone near Dari chuckled
under their breath as they all shuffled back out of the temple.
For a small community like this, the time
before and after prayers was perhaps even more important than the service
itself because it represented an opportunity to converse with people one might
otherwise miss during the day. From what Dari heard, procuring fish and
firewood were the most important things at this time.
She saw the fat woman talking with the
Efferd priest, and even though it seemed to be about a certain amount of coin
she owed him, Dari thought that it might be best to make hay whilst the sun
shined, as the peasants said, and leave Ambelmouth swiftly.
‘And do what?’ She thought.
The night before, she had been certain
that she would abandon trying to save Steve and Christina, yet when she awoke,
her mind had still worked on pretences much to the contrary. She decided to
postpone the decision, which she was able to do because her way led her down
the Tomnel in either case, giving her one more day. Then, she would have to
decide, either turning east towards Griffinsford and ultimately Gareth, or
either west or north, depending on where Varg the Impaler had been sighted.
The only thing she was now certain of, was
that she did not want to stay in Ambelmouth. That sermon was as much as she
could stomach, and she would not want to get into trouble for skipping morning
prayers.
Therefore, she went straight back to the
little harbour, only to find that her boat and the heavy leather bag containing
her provisions were gone.
She had to close her eyes for a moment and
fume in silence at that brazen priest and his wretched boys. No doubt, he
thought he was doing her a favour, even saving her life. To her, however, it
was little more than theft and betrayal and she wanted to slit his throat for it.
She met him again on her way back as he
was leading the other fisherfolk to the boats to bring the nets out, grinning
and jesting, all the amiable, gap-toothed fraud he was. It wouldn't do to kill
him here, she knew, with so many eyes about, even though her hands were twitching.
He even had the temerity to hail her:
“Forgot something, or have you taken a liking to our town?”
It was too much.
She smiled back at him to lower his
defences before putting him on his knees with a sharp kick to the groin. Her
next kick went against the side of his head which felled him sideways and
knocked three more teeth from his mouth.
His companions shouted in alarm and tried
to rush her, but stopped after she nearly killed the first of them by hitting
the apple in his throat, leaving him wheezing on the ground gasping for air.
“Thief!” She hissed at the priest to
establish that she was in the right. “I gave your boy a silver and you
steal my boat?!”
He was disoriented and spat blood, his
eyes rolling aimlessly, trying to focus on her. She stepped over him and
brought out her knife, and to the gasps and anguish of everyone around cut the
purse from his belt before jingling it at her ear.
“I'm only taking back what's mine,” she
said and took out a silver. “Though I should take it all.”
Such a thing might do in the poor quarters
of Gareth where it was customary to rob the losers of brawls, but not here in
Ambelmouth if that sermon had been any indication. To satisfy her lust for revenge,
she dropped the purse clean back into the priest's face before stepping off him.
“We didn't took your damn boat!” The
oldest of the sons rushed to his father's aid. “If you’re too blind to find it don't
take it out on him!”
“Might be the river took it,” an older
fisherman with white hair suggested. “Did you tied it well fast?”
“I tied it,” protested the boy, “double
Efferd's knot, my father showed me how! It's there, right where we left it!”
Dari had another bad feeling in her tummy,
and was forced to restate that it was not.
With a horde of confused and bitter
fisherfolk at her back, she let the boy lead her back to the harbour. Her
assault had left the priest incapacitated, which could spell bad for her if
against all odds she was somehow proven wrong.
That fear proved unfounded, however, as it
was the boy who now drew the fisher's ire.
“It was here!” He gestured feebly at the
empty spot in the water. “It wasn't holed neither, and I tied it well, I know I
did!”
“Fool!” One of the more senior fishermen
clouted him over the ear. “Then where is it?!”
Strangely, the boy recovered from the blow
with an eerie look of recognition: “The fool!”
The feeling in Dari's tummy darkened
further as a natter broke out.
“But he played so godly yesterday.”
“Has anyone seen him at prayers?”
“He weren't there. Would've stood out like
a painted dog, that one.”
“I never liked him.”
“Skin like soot, up to no good!”
“Oh, you sang a different tune yesterday.”
Dari felt as though she was falling. When
she brought up her hand to wipe her mouth, she found it shaking like leaves.
“A man,” she asked, “dressed as a jester with
dark skin and yellow eyes?”
The old fisherman was the only one with
the courage to look her in the eye and nod: “Blue and white, his motley was. Don't
know how he came into town, thought he had his own boat.”
Her blood ran cold. It would be too much
of a coincidence not to be him.
The boy ran at once to ask the archers on
the walls and came back with confirmation right away.
“One said he saw him sail north around the
bend!” He called, huffing and puffing. “Not so long ago, he said, while we was praying!”
Why the archers had made no attempts to
stop him, interested her only marginally at this point. It was much more
important to get her boat back. She also felt a sting of guilt over what she had
done to the priest and vowed to pay it back doubly worse to Krool. The problem
now was catching him.
“Tell your father I'm sorry,” she said and
flashed two silvers at the boy. “Can we go after him now?”
In theory, if she had rowers they should
catch up to the black fool in due time. He had a head start but not by much,
and he alone couldn't possibly move the boat off the river.
The boy's face hardened and twisted as he eyed
the coins, but before he could make a decision their plans were thwarted.
Another man noticed it first: “There's no
oars, boy! All them oars are gone!”
“What kind of callous soul does that?”
An evidently slow-witted women asked.
Dari gave the vessels another look,
finding that it was true. Krool must have dumped them in the river to cover his
escape.
“Isn't that one, there?” She pointed to
the far opposite bank where one of the wooden shafts had gotten tangled amongst
branches in the water.
“We must get them back!”
Like drunk Thorwallers, the fisherfolk
scrambled into their boats. She understood their haste. Without fish, they were
starving, and without oars they couldn't make it back into their town. Over
this, they seemed to forget all else. One man even elbowed Dari out of the way,
for which she retaliated by tripping him and sending him headlong into the
water.
Beating up the priest had left her taut
like a bowstring and reminded her of the many skills she possessed. It was easy
to think oneself weak and meek under Janna and Laura, hapless and condemned to
another’s will.
At this point, Dari had had truly enough
of Ambelmouth and decided that she wouldn't care to see it again. This in turn
opened up more options for her.
While the fisherfolk started rowing with
hands, sticks, bowls and wooden boards, she climbed the hill to the castle to
steal a horse.
‘Help yourself, so help you Phex,’ the
saying went, and she couldn’t help but notice that it held true.
A spotted mare, saddled and bridled, had
just left the castle led by a groom and was now crossing the wooden bridge into
town. It was hard to believe that Phex should have nothing to do with it.
“Hey, groom!” She called out. “Where are
you taking this horse on such a fine day?”
The man turned, making the horse stop. He
was about her age, blond and browned by sunlight.
“Out along the river,” he replied amiably.
“Milady don’t ride her, so someone must. Have you come to see her? Best not
right now, I warn you, she's in her headaches.”
“Oh,” Dari made while edging closer, “I
pray she recovers soon!”
He laughed: “You and her maid, both!
Milady's always been prone to headaches, specially when the weathers change.”
Dari walked the length of the horse, stroking
its fur with her hands.
“She's such a fine animal,” she cooed. “I
wish I had a horse like that.”
The groom nodded: “It was Milady's
husband’s, but he was too frail to mount her. Way I see it, she might as well
be mine. I'm the only one that rides her, so...”
She smiled at him: “Well, not today. I'm
sorry.”
She could've opened him from balls to
brains with her knife, but deemed it unnecessary. Instead, she bent down,
grabbed his leg and half lifted, half shoved him backwards over the edge of the
bridge.
He went with a scream, but once he
vanished within the brush below he was silent, only the thud of his body
hitting something hard indicating what had happened to him. For all the good it
did, she hoped in her heart that he wasn’t dead.
The mare baulked briefly ere Dari could
snatch the reins and swing herself into the saddle. Then she kicked her heels
into the horse’s flanks and rode.
It wasn't all smooth, though. An archer on
the gatehouse had been paying close attention and sent an arrow her way, the
shaft thumping her poor horse in the rump, scaring the animal so much that it
almost threw her. At the ring of alarm bells, they were closing the gates of
the palisade as well, the only land exit Ambelmouth had.
She made it through, but only barely, and
two more arrows followed her, one hissing past her right ear and another
punching a hole through her leather mantle. Krool, if she caught him, would
have a deal to answer for.
If she didn’t catch him, she might
be truly in trouble now, she realized. She had no food, other than the horse,
and if she ate it she would have to go on foot through the wilderness.
‘Or I'll sneak back in during the night,’
she thought. ‘Steal some food, steal a boat and seek a place to shelter.’
The next day she might continue on as
though nothing ever happened, at least if she managed not to drown during her
escape.
For now, she rode away from the town and
along the river, glimpsing at the water in between the trees and brush for
signs of her boat. So long as the horse could run, she would be alright.
She slowed down eventually, to spare her
mount and not miss her boat if she rode past it. After the mare tired she took
her to the river's edge by a sandbank to water her, taking the opportunity to
look for pursuers. If the fisherfolk were indeed after her then she seemed to
have well outrun them for the moment.
Boats were slower than horses, but horses
couldn’t run forever, so the boats might eventually catch up. And while the
mare Dari had stolen was tame and docile it had certainly seen better days, not
to mention the arrow still sticking in her rump. She examined the wound and concluded
that it would mean the end for the animal. The rough gallop with which Dari had
escaped the town had torn it wider and wider, and long streams of blood ran
down the horse's leg.
But when she looked the opposite way, down
the river, she found that she wouldn't have need of the horse much longer.
It was right there, her boat, beached on
another sandbar and a figure in blue and white motley beside it, wearing a hood
against the cold. A tiny, little fire was smouldering there, and Krool appeared
to be roasting a fish.
He was unmoving, though, so much so that
it wouldn’t surprise her to find that he had fallen asleep. It came just in
time, too. When she tried to move her horse off the river it refused and laid
itself down instead. To die, Dari had little doubt at this point.
She didn't want to make too much of a
noise and ruin her advantage on the mad fool, so she left the mare where it was
and went on afoot, sneaking in between the trees that lined the riverbank, much
as she could never losing eyes on her target.
‘Now, a throwing knife?’ She thought. ‘Or
something more personal?’
She wanted revenge for him effectively delivering
her to the inquisition, which led to her being gruesomely tortured within an
inch of her life. But then again, he had saved her life in that freak
blizzard.
‘But will a throwing knife be enough?’
It would pay to be wary of this man,
having seen the things he could do, no matter the state he was in now. The
closer she came the more her neck began to tingle, telling her that failing
might go Ill for her.
‘A stab through the neck,’ she decided,
‘and quick.’
Not letting him suffer was her way of
thanking him for the good he had done her.
He hadn't moved the entire time, and when
she was on the sand her footsteps were well muffled. The blade was in her hand.
‘Easy now.’
He must have fallen off the boat and
nearly drowned, she thought. Perhaps he had already succumbed to the cold. His
footsteps were all over the place as he must have gathered firewood, but the
fish he had caught was as black as charcoal on the belly.
He must have never even checked her bag
for food, otherwise he could have eaten hard cheese and sausage instead.
She held her breath and stepped behind
him. Like lightning the sharpened steel shot forth, slicing through hood and
motley and burying itself up to the handle in...something that felt and sounded
like dry brush.
“Welcome,” his horrible voice breathed
into her ear, and something else she never heard because she panicked.
She whirled around stabbing, but a strong,
black hand caught her wrist. When her eyes saw him she was terrified to find him
naked, a black, scarred golem of nothing but muscle.
The next thing she saw were all the four
knuckles of his fist, smashing her in the face so hard that her head flew
backwards.
“It's snowing,” she mumbled confused as
white flakes danced around her eyes.
Then everything went dark.
-
“Think of him as the sword, dear, and you
the sheath,” the Horasian Master said. “And what a fine fit you were too.”
Thorsten pulled his britches over his
member and fumbled at the laces, awkwardly aware of the woman's stares. She was
older than him, but well-built for a Horasian, fleshy and robust, although her
teats could not compare to those of a proper Thorwaller woman. His seed was
running down her arse and formed a pool on the impenetrably soft velvet
cushions.
How her husband could live with himself,
Thorsten did not know. He had ordered and then watched Thorsten bed his wife
from start to finish, and Thorsten wasn't quite sure who of the two had enjoyed
it more. It wasn't as though the master had put a hand on himself during it,
but there had been the odd, irritating gasp and moan.
“Get dressed, boy,” the master smiled. “We
shall go light a candle for Tsa and then it's off to the cockpit!”
Horasians were strange people with customs
that seemed queer and foolish. The cockpit, as an example, referred to a place
where roosters were made to fight, pecking each other to death under the curses
and jeers of fine-clothed men who bet obscene amounts of coin on the outcome.
Thorsten would much rather have the birds
made into soup.
The city was an uncomfortably large place
full of smells and noise. One could hardly walk down a cobbled street without
bumping into somebody or being run over by a horse or carriage, and everyone,
even the last, piss-poor beggar, was extremely prickly about their honour.
Vinsalt was also the capital of the
Horasian Empire. He was right in the heart of the enemy now, and yet he was a
captive, bent and broken, doing as he was told. He did not even wear irons. The
scars upon his back were his chains.
It pleased his master to dress him as one
of his servants and parade him in front of neighbours and peers. It was all
about who one saw and was seen by, and a huge, docile Prince of Thorwal
attracted the interests of many folk, especially in times like these.
Niando Tuachall himself was a lesser member
of a vaguely noble family, married into the slightly more noteworthy house of Vistelli. He traded mostly in grain and Thorsten had
already learned that the Horasians did not regard this business as a
particularly prestigious one, much to Niando's chagrin.
With his new exotic pet, however, these
problems didn’t seem so big anymore.
“You can ask me if you want,” Niando said
as they sat in the carriage, a large, rumbling, noisy, crammed and inconvenient
way of travel, even worse than riding. “Why would I light a candle for Tsa?”
If the serving men in the front and back
of the carriage were listening, or if they could even hear anything, Thorsten
could not tell. They were almost entirely enclosed in this terrible, shaking
box on wheels.
His master continued, unbidden: “I hope
that you will get my wife with child! I shall have a tall, strong son, just
like you.”
How lighting a candle to some idol was
going to help with that remained an open question, but Thorsten knew better
than to say anything.
The temple proved to be a whitewashed
building with many paintings of eggs, lizards and rainbows, and a large number
of unkempt children about, making mischief. Niando did not require Thorsten to
follow him inside, but after he came out again and they wanted to move on, one
of the wagon's wheels suddenly fell off.
“They removed the splint, Signor!” The
wagon driver leaned into the cabin, pointing out the culprit amongst the
children.
“You should have better watch over my possessions,”
Niando scolded in reply. “Now go and get it back!”
A boy of twelve or so was holding up the
metal splint, grinning. But when the servant went to grab him, he hopped away
and tossed it to one of his friends. A game ensued thereupon amongst the boys,
quickly involving both servants and a fat, long-haired priestess with a rainbow
sash around her chest, all to no avail.
“Want your splint back, Signor?” An older
boy showed up at the window of the carriage. “Give us ten coppers and it is
yours!”
“Signor, I beg you!” Implored one of the
servants from afar. “Let us use the spare!”
“Sooner I'll use your finger!” snapped
Niando in rage.
It was a very strange and bewildering
situation to be privy to, but such things happened all the time in Vinsalt.
What Niando said made Thorsten recall a story his father had told him once, of
a place far away called ‘Oholt'. That place was so named because a king had snapped
so many splints on his wagon that he had run out, and had commanded his serving
man to put his finger in the hole to keep the wheel on. Then, when the king
wanted to know the name of the village they were passing, all the serving man
could say was, ‘oh hold, oh hold, oh hold!’
It had brought roaring laughter to the
hall when his father had told the story, but these days Thorsten was doubting
whether it was even true. So many things seemed doubtful now.
“Boy,” Niando rounded on him for his
inaction, “don't sit there like a chamber pot! Do something!”
The servants strutted after the laughing boys
like some of the roosters they were likely to encounter at the cockpit, making
for an absurd spectacle. Now even a dog joined in, and people stopped to point
and laugh as well.
Thorsten kicked the wooden wagon door open
with his boot, hitting the boy who had made the offer and knocking him
backwards. Ere the lad could get up, he was over him, seizing him by the collar.
The boy was fourteen or fifteen, a man by age perhaps but clearly not by body.
He was small and thin, perhaps half of Thorsten's weight if even that. So he
didn't really but up much of a defence.
A single punch was enough and the first
boy was out cold. There were drunken brawls happening here too,
supposedly. But Thorsten couldn’t imagine what they might look like. Perhaps
this counted as a brawl already, in the Horasians' eyes.
Upon seeming him and what he had done to
their friend, the other boys dropped their game and the splint, choosing to run
away instead.
“Splendid!” Niando shouted from the wagon.
“Well struck, like a true warrior!”
‘You do not pay me like a warrior,’
Thorsten thought.
The other servants who bowed and scraped
and cleaned and served were all paid for their labour, but then again he was
spared such menial tasks. Furthermore did he eat with his master and mistress
at the same table. The difference was that he didn't have a home, no right to
leave, be it for a day or to quit his service entirely. He was beholden to
Niando like a slave, having been bought off the rowing bench at another
Horasian city.
Thorsten’s voyages had not exactly gone as
planned. He had set out from Joborn with three ships, men, supplies, weapons
and tools, tasked with razing the castle Engasal. He had bypassed the castle in
order to save time, but by then he had already lost the first ship.
It turned out that his force of Fjarningers
and Andergastian outlaws were spectacularly unskilled at sailing longships. The
outlaw Badluck Robin had snagged his vessel on a rock and managed to turn it
sideways, upon which it had been pushed over by the current, capsized and nigh
everyone aboard drowned.
Reaching the open sea with the two
remaining ships had taken far longer than Thorsten had anticipated, and when
they were finally out and turned north under full oars they ran straight into a
storm, battering them south and away from their destination. Thorsten did not even
know what became of Chieftain Arombolosh and Gillax the shaman. The last time
he saw their ship it was slipping away yonder mountainous waves.
The storm toyed with Thorsten’s Fishermen’s
End for days and the exceptionally icy wind and snow lead to men freezing to
death at their oars. Ice built up on deck and froze their mast. The longship
became top-heavy, a thing that needed to be avoided on such a vessel due to its
shallow draft. Finally, during one pitch-black night, it all became too much
and they toppled over under a wave. The mast snapped off and all the crew was
lost, only Thorsten managing to cling to the rudder for dear life when the ship
righted itself as the ballast was washed off in the ice-cold waters.
The next day when he woke, the storm was
over. But he had already been in sight of a huge Horasian dromon whom that same
storm appeared to have blown north, albeit with much less substantial damage. Thorsten
had been too weak and cold to fight at that point. They had captured him,
stripped him naked, whipped him a couple of times for good measure and chained
him to an oar.
That wasn’t the last whipping he received,
either. The overseers down in the hold could strip the flesh from a man’s back
with every lash, and they used their tools liberally at the slightest
infraction. He had heard as much at home from the mouths of those as who had
escaped it. But he had always envisioned himself beating it, gritting his teeth
and making it through, strong-willed until an opportunity of escape arose from
somewhere.
In reality, he had lost his will to
escape, make mischief or even give the overseers a challenge right in the
middle of his second whipping. He slept at his oar. He ate at his oar. He shat
at his oar. And he watched many a man perish at the oar as well, be it to the
whip, malnourishment or sheer exhaustion.
When he couldn’t take it anymore, he had
confided to an overseer the details of his heritage, thinking that a death at
the gallows might be more merciful. But it hadn’t happened so.
While they lay in harbour after their long
and gruesome voyage, the rowing slaves were still chained to their benches like
animals in a sty. In the night, the overseer returned with a man, words were
exchanged as well as a bag of coin, and Thorsten’s shackles were loosened.
That man was Niando Tuachall. He nursed
Thorsten back to health with soup, fresh fruit and a bed to sleep in. He shaved
him, bathed him and had a healer see after his condition. And when Thorsten was
strong enough, he made him fuck his wife.
If truth be told, it could have been much
worse. And it threatened to become much worse as soon as Thorsten failed in his
duties by his master. Escape would be easy now. Niando was a small man with narrow
shoulders and a bad leg, soft and weak to boot. Thorsten could throttle him to
death, and his fat wife, at any point he wished. Or he could just walk out of
the door.
It was what came after that made him stay.
They lifted the wagon and hoisted the
wheel back on, put in that blasted splint and continued on their journey.
“So much criminality,” Niando complained
as they moved. “It is the war, I tell you. Men think they can do as they please
now, and our imperial laws mean nothing.”
The war
meant the ongoing revolt of some noble families against the Horasian emperor. Vinsalt
hadn’t seen much fighting yet because many troops loyal to the throne were quartered
here. But if what Thorsten overheard was anything to go by, things weren’t
going so well in the rest of the empire, for neither side.
If it hadn’t been winter it might have
been the best possible time to raid the coast. The thought made him grind his
teeth together.
“Can you fight, boy, truly?” Niando asked
suddenly.
Thorsten was reluctant to answer. He hated
speaking in the presence of Horasians, and he was always in the presence of
Horasians now. Oft as not, his Thorwalsh way of saying things made them giggle.
“In war?” He asked, ultimately smelling a
chance to escape.
If somehow he could make it to were the
chaos was greatest, he might be able to slip away.
“No!” Niando waved off. “Not in war, boy.
In a proper duel! Man against man, as it were, blade in hand!”
Thorsten knew the way Horasians duelled
with their thin blades and absurd demeanours. He found it silly. They didn’t
even use shields, little fist bucklers at the most and even that only
sparingly.
“With axe and shield, aye,” he finally
said. “But I have used blades.”
He slew an ogress once with a sword that
was taller than him, although that battle had spelled the beginning of his
misfortune. The longswords he had acquired in Andergast hadn’t brought any more
luck either, and both were lost when the galley took him, same as the armour he
had so liked.
Niando put on his thinking face: “A drunk
brawl and some rape and plunder will not do. You wouldn’t be fighting
fisherfolk neither, but proper men of your station…well, as a lackey. But if
you do it well, there might be gold in it for me. Plenty of gold, hm. Though I
would be loath to lose you, my lusty stallion.”
He laughed and Thorsten felt uncomfortable
inside his own skin. It was the ability of this small, weak man to make him
feel this way.
Suddenly, Niando leaned forward as if to
kiss him, and Thorsten recoiled, but the master only wanted to knock on the
wood and let the waggoner know that they were changing destinations.
Vinsalt sat on two banks of the Yaquir
river, a mighty stream with many ships, leading around the desert of Khôm to
the east and far, far inland. An ancient imperial road ran across the Yaquir
here, spanning the waters with the longest bridge that Thorsten had ever seen. The
northern bank of the river was generally richer. Most of the temples were here,
foremostly the gargantuan Praios temple inside the inner walls, dwarfing even
the emperor’s own palace. But then again, there was also the lackey quarter which
they had just passed, with many houses spilling over and bursting at the hem
with the servants living in them.
Their way now took them through
Albornshenk, a much better situated part of the city with all manner of
institutions Thorsten could not even begin to comprehend, such as the Connetabila
Criminalis Capitale, the Academica Horasiana and a school that
judging by its name did nothing but teach dancing.
They ended up even further beyond, in the Horasgardens
where the urban nobility had their villas. Much as in the lackey quarter, most
people afoot here were servants, doing the biddings of their betters. But there
were notably fewer people, less filth and a somewhat overbearing greenery surrounding
it all.
Niando guided the wagon to halt at one of
the snow-white buildings amidst luxurious gardens where some type of festivity
appeared to take place. Servants stood in rows, ready to serve cakes, wines and
other such culinary ugliness to a flurry of furlined femininity that stood or
sat around giggling, reading or listening to the soul-crushingly boring music
of a harp.
Thorsten felt ill walking in, wondering
what his master wanted here.
Niando, however, was in his element,
albeit that in his somewhat worn black velvets he was now thoroughly outdressed,
looking like a beggar. He was all smiles all of a sudden, drawing his hat at
this lady or that, exchanging a few pleasant words as the situation required.
They went through all this with a
sure step and walked around the house past a young nobleman who apparently had
drunk a little too much wine, to yet another and even larger garden where most
of the men congregated. These men were no less absurdly dressed than their
female counterparts, albeit that they wore pantaloons instead of dresses, accompanied
by velvet hats with singular feathers. While the ladies had also seemed to wear
an excessive amount of fur for the mild Horasian winter, the men did not wear
quite as much. It did not escape Thorsten, however, that like the ladies in front
of the house some of these men had powdered their faces white, rouged their
cheeks and wore very feminine hairdos.
It was all a great mummery, pretentious
and false, and from its midst rang the clanger of thin blades smacking into
each other.
Overdoing everything they did in true
Horasian fashion, their latest fancy in weaponry was the florett, a thing that
could not even be called a blade because it was round instead of sharpened. It
was nothing but a pointy, hopelessly bendy metal stick, complete with a metal
bowl to protect the hand of the wearer. Noticing the absurd Horasian arm made Thorsten
remember Léon, probably the only Horasian he had ever liked.
Niando went to the far side of the crowd where
one could see the combatants. Two young men battled each other on a stretch off
roughed-up grass, each holding a glorified skewer already badly bent from the
endless lunging and parrying. Due to their arms being strictly stabbing
weapons, their fight was a rather one-dimensional one, dancing back and forth
while dodging blows by leaning. Much like all the rest, it looked stupid.
Finally, one of the combatants cried out
in pain and collapsed with his opponent's steel point in his shoulder. Everything
happened so quickly that Thorsten hadn't even seen the blow.
“Surgeon!” A man called out and a
grey-haired man shuffled forward to the crowd of supporters that immediately
flocked around the fallen man.
They could hear him cry like a child,
which made even some of the older moneyed nobility cringe with embarrassment. Then,
after another tense while, it was announced that the fight had to be
discontinued as second blood had been achieved.
“Time for some refreshments, I think,”
said Niando, grabbing at an imaginary cup in the air. “Boy, that servant there
carries wine.”
Thorsten looked at the man, standing there
like one of the stone statues that the Horasians liked so well, holding a
tablet with glass cups on thin, elevated bottoms. It was as though the more filigree,
fragile and impractical something was, the more the Horasians loved it.
“What are you waiting for? Shoo!” Niando
waved him on.
Thorsten was not entirely sure of the
meaning, but being the thrall he now was, he set himself dutifully into motion.
“Do you carry wine?” He inquired of the
serving man after walking over, turning heads all about as he went.
With the combat over, attentions were
diverging somewhat, and he stood out like a painted dog wherever he went in
this city.
“For the guests, aye,” the servant
replied stiffly before whispering. “What do you think this is, you ape, hm? Blood?!”
Thorsten had seen an ape a few days prior
at the harbour bazaar, a clever little animal that climbed swiftly on top of
its master's shoulders and accepted coins from enchanted onlookers which it
then bit and stashed inside a little pouch.
There were certainly worse things one
might be compared to, so he let the insult slide and returned to Niando.
“Aye,” he hollered on his approach. “He does
carry wine!”
Niando was engaged in conversation and
seemed irritated by the interruption. Before him stood a lanky man who was
almost as tall as Thorsten, but easily thrice as old. Dwarfed by the side of
this man stood, apparently, a woman, red lips and cheeks on a powdered face.
Niando held out a hand: “And my cup?”
Horasians oft chose to hide the meaning of
their words behind of veil of unnecessary contortions, much as though they had
never quite learned how to speak. By now, Thorsten understood what was meant at
most times, but when something distracted him he could be caught off guard.
“You didn't say you want one,” he defended
himself factually, which made the tall man laugh and the woman titter.
“Another of your likely lads?” the
tall man inquired, grinning.
At first glance, he seemed like the kind
of man one could have a horn of mead with, despite his Horasianess.
Niando smiled mildly: “This is Thorsten
Hafthor Olafson, of Thorwal. Son of Olaf the Terrible, that is, some say the last
surviving one!”
“Ah, ha, ha,” the man laughed. “I'm sure
he is!”
The woman tittered dutifully, albeit in a
way that Thorsten found utterly revolting. She wasn't very pretty with her protruding
jaw and the accentuated lines on her face. Her dress was queer too, colourful
but barely longer than the jackets and doublets of the men. He wasn't sure but
perhaps she was a whore. Whores' clothing was usually cut a little scanter.
“So, Signor Olafson,” the tall man looked
Thorsten square in the eye, “how is it that you find yourself in this Signor's service?”
“He bought me,” Thorsten replied flatly
before Niando jumped in to cut him off.
“He is indentured to me, he means. I
bought him free straight from a galley's oar and he is indebted to me for the
price I paid. Until such time as that is made good, his freedom is forfeit to
me.”
It seemed a lot of words to describe
slavery. Horasians were bags of wind.
“Oh!” The woman exclaimed with a mild,
sweet voice much too deep for her. “A Thorwaller who knows his sums! How much
is left of your debt, Thorsten?”
The old man laughed again: “Ah, that is
all lawful and proper, I’m sure. Alas, are we not still at war with
Thorwal?”
The woman scoffed: “Who are we not
at war with.”
But Niando waved off: “I have it on good
authority that those lands were and remain all but entirely flattened.
There is nothing there but a handful of survivors, busy rubbing themselves
together to make more.”
That elicited more mild laughter. Thorsten
wondered whether he should try and join in. Maybe it would make him feel less
awkward.
“I hear fisherfolk are rejoicing all over
the coast,” the woman added sweetly.
“Ha, ha, ha!” Thorsten made, but no one else
did and it only earned him queer glances.
“Ah, it doesn’t come at an ill time,” the
tall man replied, all serious now. “Imagine what would be if another one of
their raids happened on us in this state. It’s disgraceful!”
“Indeed, one cannot help but wonder how
much control His Royal Magnificence really holds over these beasts that we have
heard of, and whether or not he will call them to his aid,” Niando pondered. “And
outside the city many are looking for which way to jump. I myself
confess to a certain weariness of this whole issue…”
“Do best not speak loudly of such things,”
the old man warned before changing the subject. “Have you had a chance to
observe our warriors at work, Signor Olafson? I’m sure it’s not quite the way
of fighting you are used to.”
“Thorwaller steel is brittle,” the ugly
woman fell in, unsmiling. “If they made a florett it would break at the
slightest flex!”
She reached into her dress and drew one
such weapon, bending it in between her hands to show how flexible it was. It
was rather strange because under normal circumstances Horasians did not allow
their women to be armed. Women weren’t even allowed to observe men’s duelling,
the reasoning being that they might faint at the sight of blood.
Horasians, apparently, did not know very
much about women.
The florett had golden flowers worked into
its black handguard. It was good steel, undoubtedly, albeit entirely wasted.
It was offered to him for some reason and
he took it, eying the pointy end which was about the only thing one might
consider dangerous on this weapon.
“If I were to roast a piglet…” he shrugged,
struggling meanwhile to think up other purposes at which it might prove useful.
Roasting chickens, perhaps. Or driving
oxen.
The woman snatched it back from his hand,
quick as a cat and visibly infuriated.
Before she could let off a tirade, the
tall man spoke again: “Signor Olafson does not think highly of our Horasian
tools.”
Niando agreed: “They are unfamiliar to
him. The Thorwalsh rely on the strength of their bodies rather than wit and
skill, to be sure.”
“If all our foes were unarmed fisherfolk,
any old axe would do,” the woman added, wrinkling up her nose at Thorsten.
“You best use a crossbow,” he advised in
earnest. “Save those poor souls a slow dying.”
Suddenly, the old man heaved with rumbling
laughter while the woman stared at him in shock. Even Niando tittered.
“You will withdraw that insult now!”
She screeched at him.
Thorsten was confused.
“Splendid!” Declared the old man when
Thorsten did not reply. “I'll wager a hundred of what you like, on Signor
Cunning and his skewer!”
“At odds?” Niando replied quickly, cocking
his head.
The old man frowned: “Ah, come Tuachall,
you’re a fox! What odds?”
“Three?”
“Two!”
“Doubloons?”
The old man crinkled up his face: “There's
more of a jingle to Horasdors.”
“Ah, Horasdors it is!” Niando smiled.
Thorsten didn't know what had happened
until what he had thought was a woman reached into her hair and pulled it off
as though it were a hat, revealing dark curls underneath that were cropped
closely to a scalp that was not white but bronzy.
“Why do you dress like a lady?” He
chuckled, half about his mistake and half about the man's dress.
“Ha, what say you, Rondrachilles?” The old
man smirked. “That Thorsten could not tell cock from cunt!”
Rondrachilles Cunning, if that was his
name, eyed Thorsten coldly and with an entirely calm demeanour: “I hear many
Thorwallers have that same difficulty.”
That made Thorsten grit his teeth. He
wanted to punch the man into his big mouth but knew that moneyed Horasians did
not resolve their conflicts that way.
Instead, the old man spoke again: “Fight
as well as you talk and we will come to some reckoning on what you owe me. Now,
a bumper of red for Signor Tuachall and myself, and show Signor Olafson what
blades we have!”
He was ushered away quickly and inside the
house past even more guests, ending up in a small room that was full of arms. Blades
were laid out on the table, floretts, fencing swords, rapiers...the heaviest
thing he could find at first glance was a sabre, but he did not like the
balance of it. A falchion then caught his eye and he took it, finding that it
was lighter than so much steel had any right to be. This was achieved by hollowing
out the broad blade with no less than four fullers, and the oversized bronze
pommel at its end proved to be hollow too, upon closer inspection.
It was certainly a Horasian weapon.
But if his opponent was to use a florett
then speed was something he desperately needed, so the lack of weight suited
him well. And the blade was sharper than any he had ever touched before.
Back outside, Rondrachilles awaited him,
impatiently whipping his weapon at the air.
A man declared the rules: “You will fight
a Rondrian duel! No grappling, throwing, backstabbing or punching! If quarter
is asked...”
“No quarter will be asked,” Rondrachilles
cut him off, never taking his small brown eyes off Thorsten. “Nor given.”
“Second blood! Second blood!”
Niando protested. “By Praios, do not let them murder each other!”
“Aye,” the old man agreed. “Second blood!
The fight's over when one can no longer fight!”
“If quarter is asked,” the man repeated
with some emphasis, “victory is forfeit. I announce this duel between
Rondrachilles Cunning, indentured servant to Signor Marvallo, and Thorsten
Hafthor Olafson, of Thorwal, indentured servant of Signor Niando Tuachall!”
Applause answered him, a way of cheering
peculiar to the Horasians. Thorsten guessed that they clapped their hands
together because if they were to bang their cups like normal folk they would break
them, filigree and made of glass as those cups were.
Rondrachilles paid him a last, hateful
glance before bowing to Niando and the old man, Signor Marvallo. All of a
sudden, he behaved himself like a woman again, smiling sweetly, bowing and curtsying.
Thorsten couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.
The performance went on and on, too, with
no end in sight. Eventually, Thorsten banged the flat of his falchion against
the florett, making his opponent jump away from him and finally starting their
duel. They had no armour on, as ensured by the man who saw that honour was
kept.
Under these circumstances, Thorsten found
himself at a disadvantage. He had no shield and the thin, bendy florett had the
reach on his falchion, mitigating the advantage of his longer limbs.
He lunged at Rondrachilles quickly,
unleashing a series of cuts that drove the other man back and almost into the
crowd of onlookers. But Rondrachilles recovered and answered with three quick jabs
that forced Thorsten to abandon his attack early. Then the Horasian smiled as
though he was enjoying himself.
Parrying a florett with a short blade
proved tiresome and awkward. One could hardly see the bloody thing when it came
flying, and had to predict where to slash in order to beat it away. He had
certainly underestimated it, as he learned quickly on Rondrachilles
counterattack.
Now he was on the back foot,
slashing wildly to defend himself and hearing the nearing crowd behind him. He
tried hitting the florett hard in order to get past it, but it was so light and
bendy that this tactic seemed only to worsen his predicament.
Like a cat toying with a mouse,
Rondrachilles left off of him after he bumped into somebody with his back,
eliciting joyful laughter all around.
He needed to changed tactics.
Due to its nature as a stabbing weapon,
the area in and from which the florett could attack was relatively small, and its
capacity to parry was limited due to its lacking stiffness. Thorsten might have
tried to catch the weapon with his offhand, but as per the rules grappling
wasn't allowed.
It became clear to him that the florett
had been fashioned precisely for this, and like a fool he had failed to see it
beforehand.
But then, Rondrachilles seemed to make a
mistake. Cocksure of his victory he turned his back on Thorsten, returning to
the middle of the fighting ground swaying his hips and balancing the florett on
his shoulder.
“Swafnir!” Thorsten screamed as he propelled
himself forward, but an angry shout from the side-lines cut him short.
Rondrachilles turned just in time to avoid
his blow, bringing the florett around in a high arc that whipped across
Thorsten's face, tearing it open. The blow was so sudden and violent that he crashed
headlong into the dirt.
“Damn it, Olafson!” The old man hissed.
“Is it not enough that you're losing but must you turn backstabber?!”
Thorsten pushed himself up and watched
drops of his blood drip to the ground. His face burned but at least his
eyesight was unaffected.
When he looked up he saw Rondrachilles mockingly
purse his lips.
The florett was pointed at Thorsten to
ward against any more sudden onslaughts. Should he ask for mercy? It was
becoming clear to him that he wasn't winning this fight. Rondrachilles could
have killed him perhaps twice already.
He looked at Niando who was chewing his
fingers nervously, and decided that he'd rather be in Swafnir's Halls. He had a
deal to tell his forefathers, to be sure, and his father and brothers would be
there.
He stuck the falchion into the earth and
tore off his doublet, then his shirt until his upper body was bare. With the
weapon back in his hand, he spread his arms wide, offering himself up.
The crowd was gasping and murmuring.
Rondrachilles seemed taken aback by this,
but gave a dismissive laugh to shore up his confidence. He attacked very
suddenly with a jump forward, jabbing at Thorsten's heart. But as this
happened, Thorsten suddenly saw the opening, his opponent having overextended
himself on the thrust.
The tip of the florett grazed Thorsten’s
skin as he turned sideways, and for a brief moment he could see the fear in
Rondrachilles eyes. Then he brought the falchion around and at Rondrachilles’
neck.
And the crowd screamed.
The Horasian falchion was not only
fullered to the extreme but also wrought very thinly. It hardly felt the
resistance of the neck it was severing. Rondrachilles' head flew off behind him
and a fountain of blood spurted from the throat.
The body stood there dumbfounded for a
moment, as if it hadn't realized that it was dead. Then it collapsed and a
grave silence fell over the garden.
“Second blood!” The old man hissed
ultimately, storming off and tossing away his wine.
Niando smiled after him and raised his
cup: “My steward will call upon Marvallo's steward!”
Thorsten breathed heavily. He felt good.
-
“Distorted shadows scream, as Saturn’s children
dream. Faded colours bleed. I can see you don’t believe!”
Dari awoke with an aching body and the
taste of blood in her mouth, watching small snowflakes drift gently in the wind.
It took her a moment to remember where she was, the shaking of the boat and the
fool’s singing adding to the madness.
“So come together! And feel it now!
Goodbye, farewell! To the nethers of hell!”
He was sitting at the rudder playing his
lute, swaying left and right while hatefully spewing the lyrics of his song. He
was also wearing his clothes again, that blue and white motley, very worn at
this point and stained with all manner of things.
“The hunters now become…the hunted! Here’s
the darkness that you…always wanted! So come together! And feel it now!
Goodbye, farewell! To the nethers of hell!”
He had tied her to the mast and gagged her
with the woollen sock from her right foot but had inexplicably pulled her boot
back on. As hard as she found it to believe, this indicated to her that he
wanted her to live. Besides, had he wanted to murder her, all he would have had
to do was dump her in the river.
They were still going downstream as well,
although Krool did not seem to even bother with the rudder. It steered itself
every now and then, as if a ghost had taken helm of the boat.
Dari shouted into her sock to let him know
she was awake, but his eyes acknowledged her only briefly and with fleeting
interest. His lute playing picked up, however. He was shredding the poor piece
of wood as though he meant to rip it apart, and still she couldn’t help but
notice that there was a certain appeal to his music, even though it was deeply
offensive to all common standards.
On his highpoint, Krool started screaming:
“Lost children, come to me! We have the answers that you seek! I know, it’s
been too long! But at last, the light has gone!”
He leaned into his lute then and went
entirely berserk on it, playing as though he had eight hands instead of two. He
also started swaying left and right so hard that the entire boat became gravely
endangered of capsizing, with cold water inching over the sides.
He was clearly stark raving mad, and his
demeanour scared her. She didn’t want to drown in the cold river after having
just so narrowly jumped off Boron’s shovel another time.
She worked the wet sock in her mouth with
her teeth and tongue until it came out, “Urgh, stop!”
He ended suddenly on a queer note, staring
at her as though her call had frozen him somehow. The boat’s shaking subsided.
“As you die!” He hissed after another
moment before mercifully lowering his instrument.
Was he going to kill her after all? He
seemed unpredictable, his actions not making reasonable sense. She found it
very frustrating.
“What are you going to do with me?” She
demanded.
He seemed not to understand the question,
staring at her like a complete dullard.
Then he shook his head, “I am here to help
you. The question is, what are you doing?”
“Great help,” she sneered, “punching me in
the face and tying me up like this.”
“You’re not of sound mind!” His eyes widened
meaningfully at her, black in the middle but yellow on the outside and shot
with blood. “I fear you have gone quite mad, to be entirely honest about it. I
mean, there I was, a gentle, helpful soul, and all that comes to your mind is
to kill me!”
He hooted to underline his point.
“You ambushed me and stole my boat,” she
said, trying to grapple with his lack of reason. “And you delivered me to the
inquisition before. Do you know what they did to me?”
His eyes moved skyward, and a smile crept
across his black lips.
“I can imagine,” he said dreamily before
looking down at her again. “But I also saved you from that blizzard, did I not?
I seem to recall my master ordering me to do such.”
She chewed her tongue while taking it in,
trying to connect the dots.
“Yes, but why?” She asked. “Why help me?”
She wiggled a little to probe whether she
might get out of her bondage, but Krool clearly knew how to take prisoners.
His face twisted with irritation: “The
right man does not oft find himself in the right place at the right time. It can
be very annoying when it happens.”
Dari thought about what that might mean.
“So, you wanted me to kill the Chosen
One?” She asked.
“Taa-daa!” He grinned, swaying his head
from side to side.
It did appear to make sense, she
had to admit. A Praios fanatic had to be the logical enemy to all the black
wizard’s designs.
“But what’s done is done!” She argued. “What
do you want from me now, the Chosen One is dead!”
He narrowed his gaze: “Does a gravedigger
throw away his spade after the grave is dug?”
She swallowed: “Then what do you want me
to do?”
Krool smacked his lips for a moment: “For
now it would be of great service if you could remain still.”
He came at her and at once her knife was
in his hand. She closed her eyes and waited for the pain. But it never came.
Instead, the ropes tying her to the mast loosened and altogether fell off her
body.
When she opened her eyes again, Krool was
scrambling back to the rudder, letting himself plummet heavily onto the seat.
“If you could refrain from trying to kill
me again?” He asked vaguely. “Death is so boring.”
He hooted again, destroying any semblance
of reason that he had built.
Her stomach was in knots. When she felt
for her other knives, she found that he left them where they belonged, and the
one with which she had previously tried to kill him was lying at her feet,
unattended. It didn’t make any sense but she took it while she still had the
chance, only to then consider for a moment and tug it away half-way into its
sheath.
“Where are we going?” She asked, turning
briefly to glance downriver.
“Same old, same old,” he hummed. “You are truly
mad, you know. What, do you think you can just walk in Varg’s camp and get
Steve and Christina out alone?” He tsked and shook his head. “So mad, so mad.”
“You want to help me rescue Steve and
Christina?” She asked, her mind spinning.
‘How could he even know?!’
If truth be told, she could use a little
help. Just not from this insane creature. Krool was more likely to get her
killed than help her, even if helping her was his true motivation, which was
doubtful at any rate.
The question of why was on her lips
again, but before she could pose it, Krool leaned sideways and spoke past her: “That
is what you wanted me to do, isn't it, Master?”
“Slight change of plans, I am afraid,”
said a voice behind Dari.
She spun around like a leaf in a storm,
knife flashing. Short, slim and beneath a mop of mouse-grey hair he sat, right in
the bow of the ship which she knew had been empty merely a moment ago. The
black wizard seemed to have appeared out of thin air, or else he had been
invisible.
“You?!” She asked, perplexed.
“Yes,” he sighed and spread his hands.
“Please don't kill me, it would spoil all the fun. Also, Krool would eat
your guts if you do.”
She considered doing it anyway, so afraid
was she, but that same fear made her sheath her knife again. He wore simple
black robes and carried a large cloth sack on his belt, as well as an hourglass
in a copper frame, allowing him to turn it without taking it off. Despite his
reclined position was the sand in that clock running down merrily as though it
was standing upright, even though it was lying there almost sideways, resting
on his leg.
“Krool, let me be captain for once,” he
addressed the fool before shouting. “Hard to larboard!”
“Aye!” Krool hooted and obeyed to all
reckless extent he was capable off, swinging the ship around so hard that they
almost rolled over in the stream. Dari landed hard on her ass and was nearly
thrown overboard.
“This is much less fun than I thought it
would be,” the wizard complained, clinging onto the wood.
They ended up crashing bow first into
Albernian soil, Dari and the black wizard clambering out of the vessel and
climbing the riverbank while Krool pushed up the whole boat by himself,
including Dari's provisions.
There was something inhuman about that
fool, Dari recognized, explaining how and why he had outperformed her on every
occasion they met. His momentary absence left her with a chance to kill the
black wizard, perhaps. But that would mean her death as well, no doubt
about it.
“That's Winhall, way back there,” he
pointed. “Or rather what's left of it.”
A whole city, wiped out underfoot, its own
walls turning it into a death trap. Dari shuddered.
“What do we want here?” She asked as Krool
re-joined them, carrying Dari's things as though they had no weight at all.
“We're going that way,” the wizard
pointed towards the Farindel woods, a misty and eerie place in the distance,
doused in light.
She had heard stories about it, such as they
told in Albernia, and she liked none of them.
The sorcerer pulled his robes tight around
himself and started walking, rubbing his arms as he went. Now that Dari got a
clear look at him, he appeared a little sick, showing pale skin and a pink nose,
and the beginnings of rings under his eyes.
“I should be somewhere else,” he lamented,
walking. “But it appears our giant friends didn’t listen to good advice and got
themselves captured. Oh, this is bad!”
“Bad!” Krool hooted, happily hopping to
catch up. “Bad, oh, so bad!”
Dari stopped at once, demanding answers: “Laura
and Janna, captured, how?!”
It was too absurd to picture it in her
head. Three armies could weigh either of them down with chains and still not
stand a chance in her estimation.
“Urgh,” the wizard sighed. “Fairy magic!
Of all things, they had to get caught up in fairy magic!”
She shook her head: “But you are a
powerful wizard! And you've overcome the fairies before! Wasn't it you who went
through the gate and brought magic back into this world?!”
There had been a conversation between Laura,
Janna and Furio Montane that Dari had been privy to in which this and more was
mentioned.
“Aye, I waged war on the Otherworld,” he
replied, urging her to follow. “You wouldn’t believe the things...I made them yield
back the gift, but at a price.”
She stopped again, firmly crossing her
arms: “What price? You seem perfectly fine! And why are we walking around like
beggars when you can just appear where you want to?!”
There was much more she wanted to say but
kept quiet about, such as of what use her presence would be in all this or why
the black wizard wanted to help Laura and Janna in the first place. Far as she
was concerned, the black wizard could vanish into thin air and do whatever, and
Krool could go bugger himself with a particularly thick stick.
If Janna and Laura had truly been captured
somehow then she certainly didn’t want any part of their captor, nor was it in
her interest to free the giant girls. It was only the threat of Krool killing
her that kept her from trying her darndest upon that wretched wizard.
“You make it sound easier than it is,” he
frowned. “And much as I would like to, I cannot take you with me. Travelling
through the spheres is rather rough.”
She sneered at him: “Oh, spare me. You're
not the first mighty wizard I come across.”
‘And not the first one I'll see dead.’
None of it made any sense and she
suspected foul play. Her neck wasn't tingling but with this foe that didn't
have to mean anything.
The young black wizard gave her a pointed
look and smiled: “I like to think I surpassed Xardas in my later years, as did
Rohal. Some of his spells, though...in any event, I'm young yet and not as
strong as I was.”
Again, what he said still didn't make any
sense. He apparently didn't know how time worked, but there was something else
that gave her pause.
“Xardas?” She asked hesitantly. “You...you
knew him?”
He nodded: “Aye, Rohal and I were his
acolytes. You probably know how that friendship ended.”
He said it nonchalantly while her mouth dried
up all at once. Tears welled up in her eyes and her knees buckled. The world
was spinning before her.
“Are you Borbarad?” she asked, croaking.
Her throat was throttling itself with
disbelief.
He turned to face her fully now, this
young, grey-haired, unimpressive-looking sorcerer.
“Yes and no,” he said. “I was Borbarad, the
Opener of Gates, Wearer of the Demon Crown. But now, I am just me. I don’t
even have my crown anymore, at least until I have found all the missing
splinters.”
Léon had been afraid of this, she
realized. He must have foreseen it, or at least suspected, in spite of how impossible
it was. The last piece of the mosaic completed the picture while at the same
time it all came crumbling down.
“But...you’re dead,” she pointed out with
tears in her eyes. “Rohal crushed you beneath a mountain! How can you be
alive?!”
He shrugged: “Time is relative. It bends
and twists many which way. It drags on like cold sap from a tree, or flies by
you so fast that you cannot even see it.”
He looked down briefly and flipped his
hourglass just as the last grain of sand had run its course.
It was all just mindless drivel, she was
certain. He hadn’t even attempted to answer the question at all. Perhaps he was
mad, just like Krool, only not so shrill.
“You are mad,” she told him as much, making
him laugh mildly.
“A moment ago you said I seemed perfectly
fine! Now I'm a madman. Isn’t sanity in the eye of the beholder?”
Krool started hooting again ere he jumped
up, rolled forward and landed on his head. It was all the time Dari thought
she'd need. She reached into her mantle and pulled out a throwing knife,
sending it on its way in the same motion. She had always been deadly with her
throwing knives.
But Krool didn’t remain on his head for
long. The unnatural man seemed to jump just with the power of his neck,
landing on his feet and making a dash forward, quick as lightning. Her throwing
knife was caught in mid-air, vanishing blade-first inside a black fist.
“Think nothing of it, I mistrust you as
well,” said the black wizard, totally unimpressed. “Although, one would think
you weren’t the ideal candidate for good deeds.”
She was frustrated. On a professional
level, she felt it unfair having to compete with Krool. There was fear as well,
although it didn’t seem as though Borbarad was inclined to retaliate. This in
turn made her feel even more useless, and the fact that she hardly understood a
word of what he was saying compounded everything.
“I have done many bad things, it's true,”
she told Borbarad. “But comparing me to you is like comparing a runny nose to
the Zorgan Pocks.”
Krool’s hand was bleeding when he offered
her the knife, hilt first. It was humiliating, even though he was laughing
himself chequered over her remark.
“Apt,” the black wizard pursed his lips in
fraudulent admiration. “But I am not what you think I am, nor as mad as I was. By
the end, I was beholden to my demons much as they were to me. I do not want it to
be that way, this time. That is why Janna and Laura are important.”
It was folly, start to finish. There were
a number of men and women who had thought they could tell the giant girls what
to do, and none of them had been successful. On the other hand, Borbarad perhaps
stood a better chance than any, which made this entire situation even worse.
“You may find your flattened corpse
beholden to their sole if you really mean to rescue them,” she said, turning to
go. “But it seems I can’t stop you. I wish you farewell!”
“Except you don’t,” he mused, half in
jest.
She snapped back around, “Aye, I really
don’t! The best thing that can come out of this is if you die and those giant whores
stay in whatever imprisonment they are in, forever!”
Between this ominous villain and the
giantesses, it was hard to tell who the greater scourge was, though it was
undeniably true that the worst outcome would be if Borbarad succeeded, freed
Janna and Laura and misused them for his evil deeds. And if she walked away she
wouldn’t be able to influence the outcome.
‘You know what you have to do.’
The more she thought about it, the more
she realized that she couldn’t turn her back on this, no matter how much she
may have wanted it. They probably wouldn’t let her leave anyway.
The black wizard studied her for a moment,
then shook his head: “Such a broken, chaotic mind.”
“She’s mad!” Krool croaked, dancing.
“She’s utterly, utterly mad!”
Borbarad looked at his fool and then back
to Dari, closing his eyes and starting to laugh bitterly.
“What do you need me for then?” she inquired
warily. “You are a powerful wizard and Krool is quicker and much stronger than
I am. Between the two of you, I’m dead weight.”
With her last words, her breath began to
frost and suddenly there was an unnatural chill in the air, rising from the
soil. It felt like that blizzard from which Dari had to be rescued by Krool.
Remembering it started to breed more second thoughts in her mind.
“The mortal is right,” a female voice
said, cold as ice and evil.
Krool’s eyes widened so much that Dari
thought they might pop, and he started out singing: “Pardona, Pardona, the bane
of floor and fauna! If she doesn’t like your head, she’ll sow it on a pig
instead!”
“Silence, fool,” Borbarad snapped sharply,
not sounding so content as he had.
The newcomer was some sort of magical
creature, Dari was sure at once. She had the appearance of a woman dressed in
an elegant white gown that seemed to shine like ice in the light, wrought with
silver and pearls. Her long, slender face was ageless, somehow. There were
neither lines nor rings under her eyes but also a certain hardness that Dari
had only ever known to come with age. The one thing giving away that she wasn’t
properly human were her ears which were long and pointy, protruding through her
long, silver hair.
“This is bad,” Dari heard Borbarad mutter
before he addressed the strange lady. “How nice of you to grace us with your
presence, Pardona. Tell me, in what way have I offended you now?”
The ice lady moved slowly, threateningly. She
had to be very powerful, Dari assumed. She herself had been mildly afraid
before, but this woman made her skin crawl and her neck tingle so much that she
found it hard to stay still.
“Is this another one of your pets?”
Pardona asked, shooting Dari a glance that reminded her of the way Janna
sometimes looked at her. “I could swear I already killed this one.”
“She’s more resilient than meets the eye,”
Borbarad said as Dari realized what was being talked about, and that he was
blatantly lying. “And she killed the Chosen One! Isn’t that something?”
“So, she has served her purpose,” Pardona
concluded.
She raised a finger lazily, as though to
squish a gnat upon the wall, but in an instant the tip of her finger seemed to
explode in a white mist and a blur of ice and cold flew towards Dari. It was
only because the tingling in her neck had become so utterly unbearable that
Dari knew the danger and could jump out of the way.
When she looked behind herself, she saw
that everything, every last bit of plant life, was frozen white and dead,
crystalline and cracking, as though it might shatter upon the slightest touch.
“See?” Borbarad cheered. “If you don’t see
her coming, she might as well be the end of you!”
Dari would have liked nothing better. The
tragedy was that this mighty witch was staring right at her now.
Pardona cocked her head, piercing Dari
with her eyes: “A dabbler with a sixth sense for danger. Pfff, that’s almost
adorable. Let’s see how quick she is after I turn her into an ice statue.”
She raised both hands and Dari felt her throat
tighten, but Borbarad spoke to distract Pardona just in time.
“And what of your pets, hm?” He asked
quickly. “Your pig-headed bear man almost broke my hourglass the other day!”
“Leave my chimeras out of this!” Pardona
snapped with a voice like distant thunder. “My creations do not keep me from my
destiny!”
Borbarad laughed, riling her up more: “Oh,
destiny, is it? Alright then, what’s my destiny? To go mad, just like last time,
to lose myself and die eventually of my own folly?”
Pardona flared and raged like a woman
spoiled: “I didn’t bring you back through space and time so you could enjoy
yourself, you spellbegger! Your destiny is to finish the Demon Crown, to plunge
the world into darkness! Don’t tell me you mean to replace the might of all the
Netherhells with this vermin!”
This vermin
meant Dari who felt a stab to her pride despite being entirely misplaced in the
situation. What she was witnessing started to sound like a spat betwixt lovers,
bakers perhaps, raging over bread to vent the frustrations of their marriage.
“I will do all those things and more,”
Borbarad agreed, trying to calm her. “But I’d like to keep my mind while doing
it. I have been working tirelessly, just...give me a little more time.”
“Time,” Pardona echoed hatefully. “I’ve
had five thousand years of time. I’ve created horrors beyond count and
acquired immeasurable knowledge. What have you done with your time?”
“I’ve got a splinter of the Demon Crown!”
He reasoned, padding the cloth sack on his belt. “And I have trodden lose many small
stones that shall form an avalanche before long, smothering the world with terror!”
Dari couldn’t help but sense a tad of
insincerity in his words, as though he said all these things merely to please
Pardona. If what he had told her earlier was true, and Pardona had brought him
back to life for a different purpose, then perhaps he wasn’t the real enemy.
Perhaps she should help him.
Pardona’s face foretold nothing good:
“Small stones?!”
Dari decided to step in: “Laura and Janna
aren’t small stones, exactly. They’re living mountains of evil. They can
turn a large town into an Imman field in less than an hour, and never mind
anyone caught in between. I know little about demons and necromancy, but I’ve
never heard of anything more mighty, not even the gods themselves.”
‘Rohal perhaps,’ she thought. ‘Or,
well...Borbarad.’
The black wizard gave her an anxious
glance at her words, and the white witch got that look again, as though she had
discovered a dog turd on her doorstep. She raised her hand once more, except
this time she wasn’t pointing it at Dari. It looked more like she was giving
some sort of signal.
“Leave her head,” she said with a cold
frown to no one in particular. “I’ll give her a more fitting body
later.”
Krool started singing again: “Grakvaloth, Grakvaloth,
glutton, liar and a sloth! He is all invisible, unless he has come to kill!
Grakvaloth, Grakvaloth, glutton, liar and a sloth!”
Dari had no idea what that meant. This
changed in the next instant when behind Pardona a creature appeared out of thin
air, apparently straight from the Netherhells. She had never seen a demon, but
this had to be one or she would be damned.
It was a lion, vaguely speaking, with
burning claws and walking upright. All manner of it was terrifying, such as its
glowing eyes and the elongated teeth in its mouth. Its colour appeared grey,
like ashes, but that might have been because of the sense of shade in which all
this was unravelling as the very world seemed to grow darker.
Dari had seen a lion once in a spectacle,
but that had been a caged, toothless thing, a sad sort of monster. The
Grakvaloth was something else entirely.
The demon bent its legs and jumped,
farther than it had any right to, and Dari had to roll out of the way so as not
to be crushed. She spun out of her roll and unleashed her throwing knifes, all
burying deep in the demon’s body. They left burning wounds of flame and cinder,
but if the demon felt any pain then there was no hint of it.
It didn’t waste any time either, spinning
to face her as though it had no weight at all, and coming on quickly. It was
roughly twice Dari’s height which made it pale in comparison to any ogress, but
it was much quicker and a thousand times more vicious. The burning claws came
for her, aiming to tear her apart, but she dodged the first two blows and
retaliated the third with her blade, letting the giant cat’s paw run right into
it.
It was no good, however. Not only was the
demon much, much stronger than her but the burning claws meant that she
received a painful sore on her hand and it only made the injured claw burn
more.
Worse, she lost her knife, leaving her
disarmed and at the demon’s mercy. She could hear Borbarad heatedly arguing and
complaining to Pardona, but the white sorceress seemed not inclined to call her
demon off.
Dari jumped backwards, spun, and ran,
already feeling the demon’s fourth blow on her back. She felt the heat of it,
and the hint of claws, but it seemed she had escaped by the skin of her teeth
for now. The Grakvaloth was faster than her so she couldn’t even run away. A
moment longer and she would be dead, so she ducked and kicked with her leg in a
high arch, seeing her boot from below make contact with the claw she had injured.
Her knife was still in there, which turned
out to be a fortunate happenstance as the claw was blown apart by her kick into
a rain of sparks and ambers. She saw where her knife was going as well and made
a lunge for it after rolling backwards onto her feet, narrowly avoiding the
beast’s other claw.
But even her knife didn’t give her the
edge in this fight. She felt blood running down her back and realized that her
earlier escape hadn’t been as lucky as she had thought. Before long she would
slow down while the demon showed no signs of tiring.
It jumped at her again, and again she
retreated, clutching her tiny, naked knife. After the beast’s landing there was
a small opening for a brief moment and she flung herself in range to deal a
series of stabs. It felt like putting her knife in airy charcoal, cracking and
crunching under the blade and burning inside with strange demonic flame.
Then, the demon’s leg shot out from under
it so fast she couldn’t even see it, hitting her square in the chest. She could
feel her body cave under the immense power and her feet left the ground. She
flew and landed hard on the icy patch that Pardona had made earlier.
It was just awful.
When she tried to jump up, the pain left
her unable to do so. She grunted and moaned involuntarily, sounding like some
done, broken thing, wreathing there like a worm in the frozen grass.
The evil demon knew it had her now. It
bared its dagger-long teeth and snarled hellishly, making her wish it would
just get on with it and end her life.
It didn’t intend to toy with her, though.
Instead, it readied itself and jumped high into the air above her. When she saw
its face coming down, she knew that she would be dead in a few more moments. Rolling
to the side would have meant getting crushed under the demon’s foot, useless.
After landing, it lunged out with its
intact claw, but just ere it could strike did its face seem to light up and
make it stop momentarily. A ray of sunlight had broken through the clouds
above, hitting the demon in the eye. There was no time for contemplation.
Dari kicked herself up and slammed her
knife in the demon’s belly, holding onto the hilt and drawing the blade down
along the entire rump of the beast.
Sparks and ambers were all around her and
she screamed and roared like a warrior, cutting, stabbing, again and again,
screaming, roaring, howling, hating, murdering.
“Die!” She screamed.
And the demon obliged.
There was a thump in the air, a
gust of strange wind, and the demon disintegrated into a mist of yellow dust
that smelled awfully like rotten eggs and fire.
Krool hooted before anyone else could
react: “Dari, Dari, kills demons in a hurry! Pardona is very wroth, it seems
four horns are not enough! Dari, Dari, kills demons in a hurry!”
“She killed a Grakvaloth, single-handed!”
Borbarad called out. “And with a profane blade, too! Tell me again, what was
it, the might of all the Netherhells? Ah, the light of the habit!”
Dari’s body ached. She would be green and
blue by tomorrow, but it didn’t feel as though she had broken a bone. Her knives
lay on the ground amidst piles of sulphur and she went to gather them, keeping
a hateful eye on Pardona all the while.
The white lady was dumbfounded, boiling to
the brim with rage.
“You leave her be!” Borbarad warned. “She’s
useful. Don’t make her prove it again or it might be your life she’s
taking.”
Dari already contemplated throwing a knife
at Pardona, but something told her she didn’t want to know what it felt like if
the five-thousand-year-old sorceress really put her mind to it. A stalemate was
as good as it got under the circumstances.
“And your Nirraven ploy?” Pardona asked,
softening bitterly now.
“Let Varg wait a while,” He determined. “The
Jake will only be half so useful without Janna and Laura.”
“What if we used them to improve
the Jake?” Pardona urged. “Just to think about it, mh, six arms, four legs…six
legs! Three times the stomping!”
Borbarad laughed: “They stomp well enough without
your needlework.”
As they spoke, Krool sauntered over,
skipping in his step and giving Dari looks of unbridled admiration.
“You kill well,” he said softly through
his yellow grin. “Grakvaloths are real cunts.”
She chewed her lip so as not to blare out
the truth right then and there. Her eyes sought the sky but found only clouds
there, the ray of light gone.
‘Have I been saved?’ She wondered. ‘Was it
a miracle or did I just get lucky?’
Had the demon even stopped? She was unsure
of her own memory. It had all happened so quickly.
“I can show you a few spells,” Krool
whispered. “Spells that will make you go even quicker.”
“It’s time,” Borbarad interrupted them. “We
have an enchanted forest to cross, not to mention that curse. The only question
is what will try to kill us first.”
Pardona objected sharply: “You cannot mean
to go back in there! It would take weeks! The Impaler will grow suspicious of
you! Do you even know how long I have laboured to bring you back?!”
Dari had no idea what the thing with Varg
and the ogres was about, but she didn’t understand much of the rest either. Perhaps
she’d ask Furio Montane what a Jake was, or a Nirraven, or who Pardona
was, and what to do about Borbarad. Furio Montane would probably know what to
make of all this, if she ever made it back to Honingen. She would rather have
spoken to Léon, but Janna had killed him, never caring what far-reaching
ramifications it might have.
Krool’s offer was intriguing, if anything.
It was always better to be quick. Other than this, it was all she could do to
tag along. And if in the depths of the Farindel opportunity struck and she
could get rid of Borbarad for good then she would do it, and better yet if she
could kill Pardona as well.
Much and more might happen or might have
happened if Krool didn’t spoil her plans in the next instant when he suddenly
whipped up his head.
“You go!” He told Borbarad briskly. “Dari
and I will do it. We’re faster without you frail wizardly lot. I will teach her
a few spells, see if I don’t.”
Amazingly, the black wizard seemed rather
taken aback by this.
“Are you sure?” He asked. “This is no…”
“Go!” Krool laughed. “We’re safer without
you, draw less of an eye from the trees.”
It was very bad, indeed.
-
“One would hope that a field so regularly
ploughed would yield one good crop?” Niando Tuachall had quipped after
Thorsten was done with his wife.
There was nothing like making love after a
hard fight, and for all the absurdity with which Rondrachilles Cunning had
comported himself, he had been a decent fighter. It was strange, for Thorsten
their duel had endured mere moments, but when he looked at his falchion afterwards,
it was nicked and scabbed all over, as if they had battled each other for over
a hundred blows.
To be sure, a blade wrought so thinly and
with an edge so sharp, it was bound to take damage. But the extent was
surprising. He couldn’t keep it in any case, but Niando took him to a renowned
swordsmith and bought him a similar weapon, longer and heavier this time. The
Horasian couldn’t stop speaking about all the gold he would win by betting, and
how everyone would look up to him.
“But perhaps next time we try to be less
insulting,” he had laughed on their way home. “Throw a cup of wine in his face,
or some such.”
Before any further duels, a visit at a
surgeon was also required to see after Thorsten’s injuries. Only the cut on his
face was of any worry, but it turned out that most of it was merely a deep,
dark bruise. His nose had broken and the skin was torn at the top, but the man
said it would heal quicker if he didn’t right it, so that was the path Niando
chose.
It was all the same to Thorsten. At first,
his nose was blocked from all the blood, but once that was washed out only his
left nostril seemed to be working. That was all the nose he required, however,
and he was somewhat eager to be fighting again, simply because it made him feel
so much less queer.
And if some day, he’d have to fight his
way to freedom, then the training surely served him better than letting his
skills go to rust.
It turned out, however, that the beheading
of Rondrachilles Cunning stirred up much controversy. True enough, duellists oft
died of their wounds through blood loss, infection or a stab to the heart. Stabs
through the eye, nose, mouth or throat were also not unheard of, and any injury
of the brains was usually deadly. A beheading was rather uncommon, however,
especially with such a renowned combatant and in a duel to the second blood
only.
“Ha! Marvallo had that boy for years,
earning him more coin than both his racehorses put together!” Niando had
laughed in the wagon.
He did not laugh when soldiers banged upon
his door two days later, coming to take Thorsten away. And all his pleading did
nothing, not even lying and trying to convince them that Thorsten was just a
pretender and not the Hetman's son at all.
Normally, the Emperor and his high court
did not mix with the city’s petty nobles and moneyed folk, but word of the
beheading at the duel must have somehow filtered through and drawn the interest
of higher power. They put Thorsten in irons and took him to the most inner
circle of walls where the palace of the Emperor stood, dwarfed by the massive,
towering extravagance that was Vinsalt's Praios temple with its tall, painted
windows.
There, he was led first to a guard post
where they chained him to a table in front of some nondescript man in elegant blacks
and a white quill in his hand, brooding over an empty page of parchment.
“I have the honour to be Signor Marabello,”
said the interrogator with an apologetic smile. “I understand you are one
Thorsten Hafthor Olafson?”
Thorsten nodded, wondering what this was
and whether he would be tortured before his execution. The quill scratched over
the paper, leaving lines of ink. But he could not read what was written.
“The Olafson, son of Olaf the
Terrible?” The man asked.
He gave another nod, eliciting more
scratching.
“Tell me of Lionel Logue,” Signor
Marabello demanded softly.
Perhaps to incline Thorsten to more speech
than he had offered so far, or just as a common courtesy, he took a stone clay
goblet and jug from the side of the table, placing them within reach of
Thorsten's chains.
“Never met the man,” Thorsten shrugged as he
poured himself a cup of red wine. “I met his brother, Léon. Saved his life, to
hear him tell it. Heard the other one died.”
He took a swallow to wet his throat,
finding the stuff sour and watery. Red wine wasn't a drink he particularly
enjoyed, but it was better than nothing.
“Heard it from whom?” The man poked him
with another question.
“A woman named Dari,” he answered before
deciding to down his cup, using the opportunity to numb his senses in case the Horasian
wanted to test the truth of his words by more physical means.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, “And do you
think she told it true?”
Thorsten poured, drank and shrugged again:
“I don't see why she would lie.”
He also didn't know what the blasted
importance of that Lionel character was, apart from being Léon's
brother. Léon was a good man.
“This Dari woman, she wouldn’t
happen to have hailed from Gareth, per chance, would she?”
He didn't understand this question either,
so he shrugged again. If the little woman had ever told him where she was from
then he had forgotten. He couldn’t figure out why that would be important in
any case.
“I never asked,” he replied before his
curiosity got the better of him. “What’s this Lionel to you? Someone
important, was he?”
He shouldn’t have asked it, he sensed. The
wine was already working him over. He could stand his ground well as any
Thorwaller where beer and mead were concerned, and even burning snaps. But wine
was different.
Marabello’s hand slipped on the parchment,
producing a strange sound from his quill and spraying some ink dots where they
clearly didn't belong. The Horasian looked at the mess incredulous for a moment
before smiling sourly and reaching for a blotting paper.
“Oh, just the...son of someone whose life
is nearing its conclusion,” he beat the blotting paper onto the ink. “An estate,
money, titles...heirloom, that sort of thing. Now, I understand you were given
passage at Joborn by our honourable General Scalia under the condition that you
raze the castle of Engasal. Is that so?”
“I didn’t do it,” Thorsten said at once
with a laugh on his lips. “I took one look at it and decided it would take too
long. We would have been frozen in on the river.”
Regrettably, there hadn't been much that
they could plunder at Engasal either, as some other party had already ransacked
the place and evidently killed everyone there. Based on a stone-tipped javelin
he had found, Thorsten suspected the same kind of wild men he had fought once
before already.
Marabello pursed his lips when he was done
scratching: “You seem to admit quite freely to your betrayal.”
“You are going to kill me anyway,”
Thorsten shrugged and drank. “Nothing I say is going to change that.”
He wondered if this was the end of his
father's bloodline. His brothers were all dead but perhaps some of their
children had survived somehow, somewhere. Thorsten himself did not have any
offspring that he knew of, of course. Though perhaps Niando's wife would have a
child by him, at least if those candles were any good. He was looking forward
to hearing what his father would have to say about that.
Signor Marabello nodded sadly: “Aye, that
is true, I am afraid. I would free you if I could. You have done great service
to Horas by helping Léon Logue. But as it happens there are other
considerations, the momentum of war, politics and the hearts and minds of the
people. Killing you will be perceived as a victory, you see. And Hesinde knows,
we need a victory…”
Thorsten understood well enough and he
held no grudge against anybody. The only thing he resented was the accusation
that he had helped Horas.
“Could you give me a few days, so I can
grow my beard back?” He asked over his wine cup.
It would be dreadfully embarrassing having
to sit in Swafnir's Halls without a beard. All his brothers would make fun of
him. Other than that, he was ready and looking forward to his execution.
“That is beyond my control,” Marabello
apologized. “Though I believe a beard might improve the perception. I shall
certainly mention it.”
Thorsten nodded and downed his last cup,
surprised when Marabello took his parchment and held it to the candle on the
table. They watched the flames consume the words in silence before the soldiers
were called upon to untie Thorsten from his seat.
“When you meet his Royal Magnificence, I
must insist you do not take liberties,” Marabello told him outside the guard
post. “It would be best for you to kneel. I know Thorwalsh knees do not bend
easily, but might I ask this favour of you?”
Thorsten shook his head. Meeting the
Horasian Emperor was a feat not even his father could boast of, so he was eager
for it. But kneeling would ruin the story.
Marabello grimaced but seemed to concede,
pressing on with sure, energetic steps into the palace. After a series of hallways
stuffed with servants, they entered a huge, lavish audience hall where a group
of petitioners pooled before the throne and nobles lined the walls, taking
refreshments.
Thorsten's first thought was that he would
have liked to plunder this room for riches. Even the ceiling and walls were
decorated with gold. Huge portraits and mirrors framed with gold hung upon the
walls, divided by silken curtains before glass windows. Velvet carpets were
laid out on the floor, some showing pictures of all manner of things or just
illustrious patterns. The wood underneath was shiny and black as night, likely
pulled out of the vast rainy forests in the deep south where the Horasians
maintained their colonies.
The Emperor himself sat upon a gargantuan
golden chair on a pedestal, lording over all. Yet he was surrounded by so much
luxury that one could not even see him.
A small, young man knelt before the throne
with his head bowed, making an oath. He was lavishly dressed in a dark blue
cloak with silver fur at the hem and collar, a sword on his belt and a golden
crown on his head, albeit a rather tiny one compared to what Thorsten had heard
some crowns were like.
“And that you shall faithfully discharge
this duty,” the Emperor said with a thin, tired voice, “in my name and under
the auspices of the gods, from now on, forever and ever, until the end of
time.”
“I swear it!”
Priests pranced around in their colourful
robes. The air was full of smells. There was the smell of incense, a horrible,
stinking crop that believers in the Twelve fancied, but also the oppressive,
flowery perfumes of the nobles in attendance, the smell of food and wine, but
somehow yet the distinct stench of sweat and urine as well.
It was enough to make Thorsten gag.
As the priests launched into a hymn, a fat,
elegant man with white curls approached Thorsten and Marabello near the
entrance.
“Cyrill!” The man smiled, wobbling on like
an avalanche of lard and smelling like lavender. “Oh, is that him?
Frightfully tall! He will look wonderful! Here, have a look at this pamphlet. We
have put together a play that is foolhardy and certainly not for the
fainthearted!”
A small paper with writing on it exchanged
hands. It had been printed, which was another fancy particular to the
Horasians. Thorsten didn’t know how it worked exactly, only that it enabled one
to create large amounts of useless writing in fairly short order.
This particular one featured a picture in
black ink. It wasn't very clear but it seemed to depict a monstrously large
woman about to stomp on a small figure that might have been a man.
“Captivating,” Marabello commented thinly.
“Is this copperplate print here, in the middle? Is it possible to print the letters
at the same time?”
“Of course not,” the other shook his head,
chins wobbling. “We have it applied in two steps. Aye, it takes longer this
way, but with all these Maraskans about, we have more than enough able workers.
Plus, they take half the pay, work twice as hard, never fail at anything and never
complain!”
Marabello nodded: “That must be why they
are so beloved by the commoners.”
Thorsten dealt his captor a glance from
the side because what he said did not reflect what could be heard on the
streets. Quite the opposite, despite many Maraskan refugees’ friendly and even
obedient behaviour, the common people were beginning to despise them. They took
away all the work, it was said, and undercut the locals’ wages. That being not
enough, their gods were queer and unheard of, their customs absurd and their
foreign faces offensive to the Horasian eye.
To be fair, they did look rather
funny with their thick black hair and flat features. But Thorsten had never met
a nicer people.
“With this play we shall breathe great
spirit into our cause,” said the man. “Those who see it will get to relive the
fall of Thorwal, and all the better for us to have one of the real blood
to play the part of Olaf!”
He was pointing to Thorsten with his eyes
even while speaking as though it were in private.
“So this would be him,” Marabello
pointed out the small man on the picture before shifting his finger to the
large woman. “And this would be...”
“We have caught an ogress,” the other
replied. “If we can tame her enough we can have her squash him in the Opera
House. If not, well, the outside stage shall do. Perhaps that's even better?
Larger audience, the more the merrier, as it were. We shall begin preparations momentarily.”
Marabello soured and shook his head: “Is
that not excessively cruel?”
Thorsten understood now, at least
partially. It wasn't a headsman’s axe that would slay him. But he was fine with
it, having already resounded himself to death when they took him from Niando.
By rights, he should have been scared
stiff. But if truth be told, it was just another tale he could tell his
forefathers while they feasted unto eternity.
“I like it,” he told Marabello, sounding
quite confident and also perhaps slightly mad. “Just don’t make me wait so
long.”
Marabello dealt him a pitiful look before
resuming the discussion: “Be that as it may, I fail to see how this serves our
situation. Slaying a foe is one thing; tossing one before such a beast is quite
another. The Rondrians are going to call it un-Rondrian and the Libertarians
abject tyranny. It seems to remind me of how our current predicament started.”
He was referring to the two rebelling
factions in the Empire, roughly speaking. In the Horasian Crown Convent, a congregation
of selected people somewhat comparable to the Ottaskin in Thorwal, there were
four gross factions. The first were the Hesindians who were deeply invested in
progress and culture but held firm to the throne. Next came the Loyalists,
sometimes called the Bospharaners. They
were the largest faction and tried to defend the status quo more than anything.
The two factions that had split off and risen in revolt were the Rondrians, who
wanted Horasia move back to Garethian feudalism up to and including the
reintroduction of knighthood; and the Libertarians, who wanted to do away with
nobility, slavery, guilds and a whole host of other things.
Thorsten barely understood anything about
any of it but Niando had talked about it lengthily on occasion.
“Libertarians and Rondrianers!” The fat
man laughed heartily. “The radicals crawling in bed with the reactionaries!”
“Even so,” Marabello argued, increasingly
tense, “pamphlets have their uses, but they do not win wars.”
“Uh, what does win wars, pray tell
me?” The other inquired with a raised brow.
“Gold!” Marabello stated as if it was
perfectly obvious. “It buys soldiers and the means to arm them!”
His opposite tittered delightfully: “My
dear Cyrill, you are so correct!”
The
man gestured towards the middle of the throne room where the strange ceremony
was slowly coming to a close.
“Finnian ui Bennain?” Marabello asked,
perplexed.
The kneeling man stood now, revealing him
as a slim fellow of middling height with long brown hair, keen brown eyes and
the strangest tattoos on his face that bore some resemblance to the markings on
runestones.
Thorsten recognized the name and crest of the
King of Albernia. Thorwalsh pirates had in the past plundered Albernian ships
as well, often leading to difficulties due to Albernia being part of the
Garethian Empire and Thorwal being a Garethian protectorate.
“Aye,” the fat man said with a grin so wide
it laid all the rest of his face in rolls like bales of cloth. “No longer King
but Prince Finnian now, mind you. And the combined treasuries of
Albernia and Havena with him, and quite a considerable army.”
“Does he know his principality may
not be coming back to him just because he kisses the ring?”
The man swayed his head and wiggled his
chins: “Yes and no. He will learn it, I am sure, in the fullness of time. At
the appropriate juncture.”
Marabello didn’t seem convinced: “But
doesn’t that place him rather high in the matter of succession? Thorsten here
has just confirmed what we already knew about the death of…”
He broke off and hushed his voice, a
flicker of utter terror across his face.
“Not directly,” the older man grinned. “And
even still, it is certainly preferable over handing the throne to Gareth, no? Speaking
hypothetically, of course.”
Marabello swallowed hard. He looked sick,
as though he had drunk too much wine.
“Does…does the Comto Protector know of
this?”
The other turned away his gaze, smiling
into the room: “The Comto Marshall is in the field. We have sent word,
of course, alas you know how it is with the turmoil of rebellion. Ah, I believe
it is our turn at last!”
The foreign king bowed a last time before
the throne and was stepping off, leaving a gap for the next petitioner to fill.
Marabello grasped Thorsten’s arm to steady himself.
It was all the pity, Thorsten recognized
when the three of them set themselves in motion. He had listened to the
confusing conversation the entire time, wasting his thoughts instead of coming
up with some good liberties he might be taking.
But it was all well and good. After all,
he would be dead soon and he could boast in Swafnir’s Halls of how he met the
Emperor of Horasia.
-
At one point in history, there had leaked
a torture handbook of the CIA. Astonishingly, the techniques described in that
book did not resemble those gruesome ones from the middle ages, such as the
rack, burning with hot irons or crushing fingers, but seemed at face value to
be rather mundane, such as sleep deprivation or having to spend a length of
time in an uncomfortable position. Nevertheless were these techniques described
as being much more effective than more invasive ones, in addition to being
easier defensible if revealed. And it was in the Moorwatch dungeons that Laura got
to discover why.
They were chained up on the wall, next to
each other in a dark room that smelled like a latrine. A flight of stone steps
went down from a wooden door that had a cross-barred window. The torch burning
out there was the only source of light. There were additional chains and
shackles all over the room, but Laura and Janna were the only people there. And
there were additional sets of chains that would have allowed them a modicum of
comfort, such as being able to lie down.
But their captors had not opted for those.
Instead, they were chained by their wrists
at a height that did not allow them to sit, forcing them to stand there
endlessly, shifting from one foot to the next. It wasn't long before Laura's
legs started cramping, but she couldn’t stretch far enough to get relief
because the chains were too short.
It was a truly miserable situation, and
Janna's constant blaming didn’t exactly improve anything. And when Laura said
that Janna's comparative lack of boyfriends back on Earth had been because of
her constant nagging, it was the temporary end of their friendship.
“I'm sorry,” Laura tried after a while
when the silence became so oppressive that she couldn’t take it anymore.
But it was useless.
Equally futile was the attempt of
snatching some sleep in this position. Laura tried leaning against the cold,
wet wall, hanging herself from her chains, twisting this way or that, nothing
worked to get comfortable. In the beginning it felt like perpetually standing
in the subway, but after a time her arms started to hurt abominably as well.
It was possible that she would have to
spend the rest of her life like this, she reflected. Maybe it would get easier
with time. But with more time, the only things that happened were that the pain
got worse and a perishing thirst tormented her that grew to become even worse
than her hunger.
In her mind, she weighed the pros and cons
of licking the wall.
“We are going to die here,” she said into
the gloomy emptiness of the dungeon. “If they don't give us water, big or not,
we are going to die of thirst.”
She shuddered to think whether their
captors knew this. Death might be a blessing at this point. But the way
there...
She could hear crying from Janna's side
and tried to come up with something she might say, remedying the bluntness of
her words. But she came up short. The sobs and wails grew louder and louder
until she almost couldn’t take it anymore. Then, they stopped completely and
suddenly, which was almost worse.
Much to her amazement, however, Janna
could be heard snoring a moment later. That made Laura so happy that she
herself started to cry as well.
She reached out in her thoughts to the
black wizard: ‘Save us! Take us away from here and make us big again! I will do
everything you ask! Anything!’
It was like a prayer.
She half expected to find him sitting on
the stairs, a jape and a told-you-so on his lips. But he never showed.
Instead, there was a flicker at the
entrance to the dungeon, shadows dancing with the light of an approaching
torch. She could hear clinking keys and the whispering of men.
“Best straw I ever drew. Too bad we don’t
get to kill ‘em.”
“Girls die if you fuck ‘em hard enough. Never
been on campaign?”
“These ones don’t. No need to hold back,
boys.”
It was sickening to think about what was
coming down that narrow stone corridor and a terror gripped her heart at once.
She whistled at Janna while contemplating whether or not calling for help would
be a good idea. Count Bragon took himself for an honourable man. Like as not he
would have the men gelded if he found out. But the last time Laura had tried to
predict what he would do it had landed her and Janna in these dungeons.
“What’s going on?” Janna moaned, half in
sleep, still.
Laura answered coldly: “We’re getting
raped.”
That woke Janna up good and proper.
The door at the top of the stairs flew
open and in walked soldiers with thistles on their chests.
“Farindel's blessings to you, m'ladies,” the
foremost man grinned. “We'll be your entertainment for the evening.”
He was a squat, broad-shouldered one with
greasy black hair and a mean face. The man behind him was fat and huge, and
then followed a rough, mongrel mix of more rapists. Laura counted ten men in
total, which she took to mean that she would be accosted by at least five of
them, probably more.
“Help!” Janna called out as loud as she
could. “Help! Lord Bragon! Devona! Ardan! These men are raping us!”
“Bark all you want, you vicious bitch,”
the first man told her. “No one is going to hear you.”
“I've got something here I can shove down yer
throat if ye don't quit squealin',” said another man.
Laura tried her luck: “We'll remember your
faces, though. Come morning, you'll all be gelded.”
That seemed to unsettle some of the men,
but they still kept coming.
“I don't want to be a eunuch,” said the
big man. “Quick, cover their eyes with something.”
They formed a half circle around the girls
and the big man stepped forth to bury his meaty fist in Laura's face. It hurt
only for a moment, of course, but the feeling of helplessness stayed. She
resolved to close her eyes for the moment.
“Look at these teats,” another soldier
changed the subject, quickly before Janna's chains rattled and she could be
heard screeching at him to get his hands off her.
A man laughed and hollered, “Get them
naked!”
“No!” Janna twisted and screamed.
When Laura felt a pull on her leg she
opened her eyes, seeing a man sawing at her jeans with a dagger.
She loathed the idea of losing her only
pair of pants and started to panic, but the cloth, having shrunk with her, did
not part under the blade.
“What vile witchcraft is this?!” Asked the
man trying to cut open Janna's pant leg. “I've sharpened it this morning!”
“Use mine,” suggested a small man, gross
and uncomely.
But a smarter one interfered: “They're
wearing armour! Pull the damn things off!”
Laura quickly interlocked her feet in an
attempt to deny them, but the big man effortlessly untangled her while three
men wrestled with Janna who was kicking like a horse.
‘If I ever get big again,’ Laura thought,
‘I will smash this castle and everyone inside.’
The big man finally got her pants down to
around her ankles and pulled out his cock. It was small compared to the rest of
him, quite red and crooked. She had never seen an uglier penis.
She could smell the dark ale on his breath
as he buried his fat face in her neck. He had hands like hams and fingers like
sausages. There was nothing she could do to get him off of her. He lifted her
bodily, making her despair over her own lack of weight. She could’ve popped him
like a zit before shrinking and now she was but a toy in his arms.
She could feel the tip of his penis on her
vaginal lips while he breathed into her ear: “Now you get what you deserve,
little girl!”
His voice was dull, his head bald and he
had a double chin. That was all she knew. Hate filled her heart and tears her
eyes, blurring her mind and vision. She was boiling inside and it finally went
over the edge.
“Why do I deserve it, did I smush someone
you knew?”
He stopped and pulled away, his tiny blue
pig eyes staring at her. She had hit a nerve.
“Daughter? Son?” She mocked him. “Or wife?
Did I smoosh your little wifey?”
She laughed cynically. It was the only
thing that made sense.
When he buried his hairy, ham-sized fist
in her belly, she had to stop for a moment. She couldn’t breathe and felt the
severe pain, but then it was as though he had never hit her at all.
‘Kill me,’ she suddenly thought. ‘Kill me
now!’
She was going to say something else but it
was already enough. Some people were practically silos of penned-up rage and it
could take surprisingly little to set them off like a bomb.
He grabbed her head and slammed it against
the wall screaming: “You killed my son! You killed my son! You killed him! You
killed him! He was my boy!”
The other men gave shouts of alarm which
Laura could hardly hear over her skull crashing against the stone. She knew she
would be alright but for the moment all she could see was stars as her brain
was continuously being battered.
It took four to pull him off of her and
she was dazed for several seconds. For half a heartbeat there was a
head-splitting pain behind her temple. And then it was gone, as though someone
had flipped a switch. She was only mildly out of breath.
“Will you fuck her or no?” A smaller man
asked the big man. “Because if you don't then I will. She wiped out all my
family, see? Least thing I can do is give her some payback.”
He didn't sound wrathful. If anything, he
sounded remarkably calm and calculating, as if it was an equation he wanted to
solve. This frightened Laura more than all the rage and strength of the big
man.
On balance, as well, it seemed as though
the brief altercation had turned sombre the moods of at least half of the men. But
this small, mean fucker seemed only more determined.
“Why don't we just kill them?” Asked a
younger one, younger than Laura even. “Cut their throats and be done with it!”
The evil man sighed: “Have you been
listening? They won’t fucking die!”
“Aye, but you will,” an angelic
voice spoke into the room from the top of the stairs. “If I tell my father. Make
haste now, before I can see your faces.”
It was Devona Fenwasian, a torch, two
blankets and wine.
-
Dari felt weightless. Her feet touched the
leaves and thin, fragile branches at full force, but they held her as though
she were a feather. And she ran fast. She couldn’t hear when she ran at this
speed, nor really see anything other than what was directly ahead of her. Krool
had shown her these things, and she loved them.
Three spells he had taught her. And three
spells she had learned. Just now she still remembered how she was able to do
all the things she did without this unnatural help, but she knew as well that
there would come a time when she would forget.
The Treetop Walk was
the first spell, allowing her to tread on leaves and branches as though they
were solid ground, thus enabling her to walk on top or inside of trees, vanishing
here, popping back up there as she pleased. So long as there were trees, no one
would ever catch her.
Axxeleratus
was the second spell, and an even more powerful one. It allowed her to outrun
even the swiftest arrows and made her hands quicker than the eye could see. This
was how Krool had caught her knife, she knew, and she couldn’t even begin to
fathom all the things she might do with this gift. The problem was that
it didn’t last for very long.
Krool told her there would be a few souls
camped out by Winhall’s ruins, peasants returned to the land from whence they
had been driven when Janna and Laura came. He told her to slaughter a few of
them, try out her new abilities in combat. So, she ran to the city, miles and
miles away, faster than any horse but not the least bit tired for it.
Each time her spell ran out its power, she
had to enchant herself anew, each time getting better for it.
But Krool had warned her, there was an end
to her powers, and not having enjoyed long, extensive training, this point would
come sooner than she might like.
This didn’t seem to be a problem at first,
however.
The walls of Winhall were mostly intact,
and any way inside was either barred or guarded by the newly returned peasantry,
all in a very crude and makeshift fashion. To overcome the walls, Krool had
shown her the third spell, the Walk of the Spider.
This spell made her climbing skills
somewhat obsolete, which rubbed her pride a little, but it was nevertheless
useful. With it, she could put her hands and feet to any surface, and they
would stick there as though they were covered in sap. She could have climbed up
a plain wall of polished marble with this spell had she wanted to, and it was
very easy to get atop Winhall’s walls.
Inside, the picture was not like anything the
mighty fortifications would have led one to expect. There had been houses built
in rows once, on either side of roads. These formed large squares that had been
pastures, fields and orchards. It had to have been an idyllic kind of town.
Now, there were old, giant footprints
still visible everywhere, all the houses destroyed and the trees trampled like
flowers. From atop the battlements it looked like a child’s creation wrought of
sticks and leaves, trampled apart by a jealous other. Dari could only imagine
how many people had perished here, little more than afterthoughts and gory
imprints of their former selves, every fibre of their bodies squashed to
mincemeat. Janna and Laura had even picked apart the keep, a mighty round stone
building, judging by the sorry rest of its foundations and the field of rubble
around it.
They would have eaten their fill too, she
judged, devouring countless people to quench their hunger as she had seen them
do. Men, women and children, everyone would have become their meal.
Could Borbarad be this evil? Or would he
be worse? It was a question Dari had no answer to, and neither anyone who could
help her discuss it.
A few peasants used the town for shelter
now, as a guard against thieves and wildlife, having erected new hovels up
against the walls near the gates. They wouldn’t know the answer either, so Dari
had no desire to go and speak with them. But neither did she want to slay them
senselessly.
There had been a time when, spell or not,
she would have murdered them all without a second thought. Now, though, it was
an entirely different matter.
It was evening at the time, and the day
had been hard on her, learning these new skills from the mad, black fool. Once
he got to teaching, he was much more collected, but every now and then he would
break out into fits of singing, violence or foolery, and it was very difficult
to be around him then.
Dari crawled down the inner side of the
walls, using the shadow to conceal herself. The peasants had built fires where
they sat and cooked their sorry meals, enjoying the evening for a time before
turning into their hovels.
‘I won’t kill them,’ she told herself in
her mind. ‘They have done nothing wrong. I will just go by them.’
It felt eerie, walking the path of
destruction on the ground, and it reminded her of how small she felt when the
giantesses stood above her. It all came back to who would be worse, she
thought, them or Borbarad and Pardona. She didn’t even really know what worse
meant. White bones bleached by sunlight stuck out of the ground beside her. How
could one set free again such an evil?
But if Borbarad was worse and summoned a
horde of demons, or any other such things, Laura and Janna could trample them
just as easily. What if they were humanities only hope?
She sighed, going ahead. What role the
ogres might play, she had not even considered yet, nor the rift that seemed to
exist between Borbarad and Pardona.
“Who goes there?!” She was challenged when
drawing close to the collection of dwellings.
Men climbed to their feet and reached for
their weapons, clubs, scythes, thrashing flails, but also spears and long
knives, and one man challenged her with a crossbow.
She worked the Axxeleratus at once
in silence, the way Krool had shown her. Crossbows were great equalizers which
was why knights hated them. A boy could be taught how to use one in a day, and
so long as a quarrel was loaded he could bring down even a king if he was
lucky.
“A weary traveller!” She replied, drawing
closer. “May I warm myself at your fire?”
“Piss off!” A hard woman spat from behind,
a wooden hoe on her hand. “We don’t want you here!”
“Who you serve?” The crossbowman asked,
fingering the trigger.
Dari was asking herself the same question.
“I don’t know!” she admitted.
Someone somewhere laughed.
“Sounds like you should go to Honingen,” the
man replied. “They don’t know neither, I hear. How’d you get in here anyhow, ‘s
there a hole back there we didn’t plug yet?”
She’d rather not answer the last part. It
made her neck tingle a little.
Krool had talked to her about that as well,
saying that her ability to sense danger would slowly subside the more she
became able to use magic intentionally. She was worried about that, seeing how
this particular gift had saved her life on several occasions.
She reconsidered her view towards the people
in front of her. For one thing, there were now uncomfortably many of them, two
dozen at least, too many for her to take on without having to worry. Also, they
were being unnecessarily discourteous towards her. After all, she was just one,
small woman, alone in the encroaching night with no shelter nearby.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she
scolded them. “Here I am, a traveller on the road in need of help, and you turn
a crossbow on me.”
A few of the other weapons were lowered
and their beholders blushed with shame. But not so the crossbow man.
“Those who need help have to pay with truth,”
he declared. “Now, for the last time before I feather you, who do you
serve?!”
She decided she didn’t like him, but she
wouldn’t kill any of the others if it could be avoided.
“Death,” she answered and leapt sideways
at once.
The crossbow thrummed, but the bolt
passed her by harmlessly, vanishing into the twilight behind her.
“Farindel take you!” The crossbow man said
before dying with her blade in his heart.
She saw the reactions of the others, the
shock, the rage, the anguish, and the weapons swinging at her head. It was
almost trivial to dodge them, she found, to dance around them and pretend to
stab them all to death.
She made her knife point stop at their
skin, for she did not wish to kill them, but she could have undone them all had
she wanted to.
She could go right through their midst and
there was not a thing they could do to stop her.
Ultimately, she spider-crawled up the wall
and out of their sight, and tried to run all the way back to Krool and their
little camp by the road.
It was on the run back then that her
powers subsided and the spells would not work anymore. Worse yet, she felt
empty and tired as well, and her head started to throb like after heavy
drinking.
She had to walk slowly all the way back
instead, feeling every one of her bones, and she finally understood Krool’s
lesson.
‘Don’t squander your powers.’
Back there, he already had a new lesson
for her: Mibeltube.
“Takes the edge of your day and makes it
smooth,” he grinned. “Beats sleep and meditation if you ask me. Hoo-hoo-hoo-ha-ha-ha-hah!”
He taught her how to smoke the herb as
well, a peculiar method whereby he formed a funnel with a leaf which he stuck
into a bowl formed with his hands from where he sucked the smoke into his mouth.
She coughed her lungs out when her turn came, but soon after inhaling did the
pain behind her temple go away.
She dreamt of the Grakvaloth that night,
very vividly, and after each time she awoke did she find herself drenched in
cold sweat. When Krool woke her the next morning she was still affected by the Mibeltube,
planless, confused and drowsy. And when they had eaten and drunk a little bit
of wine, he insisted on smoking more.
“If your powers fail in there,” he nodded
towards the Farindel at the outskirts of which they had made their camp,
“you’re dead.”
They set out slowly and mundane. The sky
was overcast but for a pillar of light over the forest. It had been there the
day before as well. Krool carried the provisions and his lute, but the load did
not seem to encumber him very much. The woods grew redder around them as they
walked, but other than the unnatural colour there wasn’t anything particular at
first that would have made it different.
She was asking Krool questions the entire
time about himself, Borbarad and Pardona, but he dodged them all with Axxeleratus
speed. He wielded his madness like a shield, talking gibberish or laughing in
his awful, shrill way, and if he couldn’t get away with it he would just call her
mad. His armour was impenetrable.
Then her neck began to tingle and the red
forest started to fight back at them.
A huge, hairless rat, red as blood, was
the first thing it threw at them. It had long, terrible teeth and was the size
of a pig. Or perhaps it had been a pig once. It was hard to tell.
Krool smashed its head with his lute,
allowing Dari to slice it open at the belly.
Then two more of these monsters came. And
four more the third time, strange eight-legged roes that bayed for their blood.
They were still able to fend all of them off, but each time, it got harder.
She should have stolen spears at Winhall.
When a hairless, red bear with two heads
attacked them, Krool decided that it was time to speed things up.
They climbed a tree and started walking on
top of the leaves instead of beneath them, and they used their Axxeleratus
as well. This way, they could outrun the horrors below, barking, snarling and
howling after them.
Then, however, the very trees started to
join the fight. Krool made the mistake of stepping onto a live one which thanked
him for it by bending sideways and letting him fall to the ground.
“Don’t stop!” He shouted at Dari, but she
was so terrified that she had wasted no thought on saving him anyway.
He showed up again shortly after with his
lute in splinters and minus the provisions on his back, and a part of his
motley in ribbons.
“No good,” he said. “Watch out!”
He pulled her aside, yanking her out of
the flight path of another screaming, red rat. The trees were apparently
grabbing animals now and flung them like catapults, which was a thing Krool had
clearly not foreseen would happen.
He had also not accounted for the birds. A
cloud of fluttering red started to rise before them from the forest, moving
together like a giant hand that descended upon them.
Dari felt the hundreds of tiny beaks,
claws and wings as she and Krool smashed into the swarm. It was all she could
do to shield her eyes as her skin and clothing were torn to bloody shreds.
“Faster!” Krool bid her, screaming, but
her grasp of the Axxeleratus could not yet compare to his.
He had her jump on his back instead,
carrying her along and propelling himself to such velocity that she had trouble
holding on. Krool wasn't tall, far as men went, but fiercely strong and at
speed the odour that came off him wasn’t so bad anymore.
He plunged down in among the branches,
avoiding living trees trying to squash them like mice, got down to the floor
and up again, alternating his ways so that whatever the forest did to kill them
was always one step behind.
Soon, the worst seemed to be behind them. They
were deep and thick into the red, but there weren’t monsters anymore, nor
living trees. If anything, it became eerily quiet.
They paused in a grove of trees to rest a
while.
“A lot of noise we made,” Krool whispered.
“More than I wanted to. This curse is worse than any I've ever seen.”
Dari agreed silently, catching her breath.
It was as though the Farindel had a mind of its own.
“How come its so silent here?” She asked
softly. “It's almost too quiet.”
“Might be the master knew of our plight,”
Krool offered. “Might be he drew the dark fairy elsewhere.”
“He cares about us that much?” She asked,
almost laughing.
It seemed absurd, and again Krool didn't
answer her question.
“The food is gone,” he said instead. “And
our wine. We're lucky I still have some Mibel...”
“Shh!” Dari made when her neck began to tingle
like an anthill. “Something’s not right!”
From the corner of her eye she saw one of
the trees that formed the grove move ever so slightly. She took Krool by the
hand at once and yanked him along with her, out, out of that grove. The fool
understood and dashed forward, pushing her.
Behind them, the Grove snapped shut like a
giant trap, crushing everything inside it beneath its many arms, like some
giant sea monster on land.
‘When did all my foes become so big?’ Dari
wondered.
It was a reflection upon the fact that not
so long ago the worst thing she needed to worry about were city guards,
executioners and perhaps the odd traitor. Now there were giants and ogres,
age-old sorcerers, demons, and the very trees trying to end her.
“I yearn for a little less magic in my
life,” she sighed.
Krool made a face somewhere between
amusement and disgust: “Still think yourself useless?! Come!”
The forest grew less intense from then on,
it seemed. But that was only an illusion. Instead of trying to break their
bodies, the cursed wood soon switched tactics and waged war upon their minds.
“We’ve been here before,” Dari said time
and time again after noticing a tree or a rock she had seen already.
“You’re mad,” Krool determined each time
and pressed onward.
Climbing to the very top of the trees and
standing on the canopy of red leaves did not tell her anything either. There
was thick snow falling everywhere outside of the woods, and there were no
landmarks within its boundaries to go by. She knew neither direction nor
distance anymore.
“Here, these are our own footprints!” She
pointed to a muddy puddle and placed her foot inside to prove her point.
“Ha, ha, ha!” Krool barked. “You are
seeing things! Do not believe your eyes! And do not drink the water! I
don’t care how thirsty you are.”
It was truly maddening.
After enough instances of this, she became
so confused that she had to reassure herself of where up and down were. But
when she looked upwards to the skies, the whole world seemed to tilt and she
fell upwards, rushing into the great blue nothing before it all turned red and
she plummeted hard upon the ground. It knocked the wind out of her and made her
bruises hurt, and for a moment there she felt truly lost.
“Stop stumbling, we’re almost there,”
Krool said, dragging her with him.
Perhaps she was going mad, she
thought. And perhaps Krool was already so mad that the Curse couldn’t harm him.
He certainly knew how to be mad and still accomplish things, which was more
than she could say for herself.
After another while she turned her head to
look at him again but he was suddenly gone, the sounds of his walking that she
had heard all this time vanishing along with the realization. She panicked and
stumbled through the woods calling out his name. Now nothing looked the same
anymore, not even the way she had come.
Ice-cold fear gripped her heart and she
doubled back, but once again nothing was as she had left it. Moreover, the
woods were not red anymore but green, the colour they should be. She found a
rivulet and an idyllic little pond, and fairies, tiny little women with dragon-
and butterfly wings, were dancing there.
She recoiled, horrified, stumbling back,
falling, crawling, scrambling.
“Krool!” she screamed. “Krool!”
A girl stared at her from the distance, two
or three, judging by her size. She had golden eyes and green-brown skin and the
same kind of wings on her back as the fairies.
“Have you come to play?” The child's voice
asked in her head, impenetrably loud.
Dari turned and ran, but after two steps
her eyes opened to the exact same scene with the girl.
“Can you sing Coill banríon for me?” the
child asked.
Dari had no idea what that meant and this
seemed to enrage the girl so much that she screeched: “Siiiiiiiing!”
The shrill voice pierced Dari's ears like
daggers. Her very brains felt as though they were on fire. She shielded her ears
with her hands and threw herself down, wreathing left and right and kicking the
soil to get herself away.
When she opened her eyes again, she was
looking at Krool who was shaking her as though she were a dirt bucket.
“Stop screeching!” He snarled. “You'll
bring the whole bloody wood down on us!”
The girl was gone. The green was gone. Everything
was red.
“I want to go home,” she croaked softly
through the beginnings of tears.
Her heart was beating so mad that it
impeded her breathing.
Krool laughed cruelly and lifted her up:
“You idiot. You
don’t have a home.”
The woods grew lighter around them from
there, less thick, and the moonlight was strong. After another while they
reached the outskirts of a great and terrible bog, the plains of water and mud
glistening in the moonlight, interrupted by the shadows of gnarled trees.
“We have to stick to the path here,” Krool
said. “There’s a castle somewheres in there. Your giant friends are inside.”
It didn’t make any sense.
“There’s no castle in the world they would
fit in,” she protested. “And they are not my friends.”
Again, Krool only laughed in response.
Borbarad had said that Janna and Laura
were at Whispermoor. Dari had pictured all manner of things, but not a castle. The
combination presented them with a conundrum. They could either cross the bog
safely in broad daylight or attack the castle under the cover of night. They
opted for the latter, walking a causeway in twilight with deep, black bog on
either side them that Krool said would swallow them up and kill them if they
fell in.
It was just the thing Dari wanted to hear
with her feet blistered, legs cramping and eyes yearning desperately for sleep.
But there was no arguing.
-
Honinger Crackers. They were served in a
bowl of hot peas pottage and came with a small side of mustard and honey, a
lovely, if mundane dish.
Linbirg stared at the bowl after taking
her first bite, thinking nothing of it at first.
‘What was his name again?’
She couldn’t remember. His hair was red,
his smile brazen and gap-toothed. And he had had such lovely boyish eyes.
“Something wrong with it, milady?” Asked
the serving woman.
How long she had been in this damned room,
she did not know. It had to have been weeks at this point, and something had
happened. She didn’t know what, but it seemed that she was no longer the centre
of attention, if she had held that status at any point in time.
A certain restlessness was in the air.
Much was going awry. No loud noises were to be heard in the palace, except for
whenever Franka screeched at her servants from the top of her lungs.
Something was happening. Linbirg could
feel it in her bones.
She shook her head all the same. Surely,
the boredom and resignation were making her see things. They were just sausages
and mushy peas, and a lovely little spoonful of mustard and honey. Only the
sausages tastes exactly like the one the boy had given her.
“No,” she said, and took another one.
Crack!
The crunchy skin parted under her teeth,
but soon they were opposed by something unfamiliar. She felt it with her
tongue. It was paper.
“Are you certain?” The serving woman inquired.
“You don't seem to be liking it, I can have them cook you something else.”
The servants attending to Linbirg had been
a lot more appreciative of their task as of late, ever since the old lady
apparently turned into a raging dragon. With her chambermaid especially Lin had
established something that might almost be called a friendship of sorts.
She stuffed the paper into her cheek and
swallowed, quickly taking another bite and a spoon of porridge.
Opportunity to look at this strange object
came only after she had eaten the whole entire supper, and the serving woman
stood to clear away the dishes.
The headsman at the door was still there,
but he was napping, as usual.
‘It's surely nothing,’ she thought as she
fished the object from her mouth, trying to dampen her excitement. ‘Just a bit
of dry skin slipped into the stuffing.’
But it was paper, Honinger laid
paper, in fact, made from old linen rags. It had been rolled up tightly and
secured with a thin thread of leaf.
Her fingers shaking, she unrolled it,
finding to her great dismay not writing but some silly picture.
‘Is this a jape?’ She thought. ‘Is someone
mocking me?’
Hard to see at the small size, there
seemed to be a lady atop a tower beneath a full, round disk in the sky. Below
the tower was water, and an arrow pointed to it downwards from the lady.
‘Do they want me to kill myself?’
But there was a boat as well, on the far
side of the water, next to an owl. That part, she wasn’t too sure about. It
would pay to keep an eye out, however, as unlikely as it was.
The disk in the sky could be either sun or
moon, but jumping into the lake in broad daylight would surely result in being
seen. The disk appeared to stand at its highest point as well, right at the
edge of the paper.
‘Midnight?’
She stuffed the drawing down her bodice
and turned to the serving woman: “Is it a full moon tonight?”
The window was barred by glass but could
be opened to let in fresh air, as was usually done in the morning while Linbirg
was still under her covers. The problem was that her foot was still enclosed in
a shackle.
The woman gaped at her: “Why yes, Milady!
Can you feel it? I can never sleep when Mada's Mark is full.”
Strangely, she threw a brief glance at the
headsman and blushed.
“So do I,” Linbirg lowered her head and
smiled. “But I feel it helps to look at it for a while before bed. Could you take
off my shackle so I can sit by the window for a while and gaze? Please!”
“I'll...” the woman looked to the snoring
executioner by the door. “Won't that be cold?”
“I'll just wear my covers!” Linbirg exclaimed
happily. “Please, I couldn’t stand a whole night tossing left and right, and it
chafes my skin so!”
The woman sighed but ultimately complied
after getting Linbirg ready for bed. The executioner was not entirely in favour
of the idea but was ultimately persuaded when the serving woman touched him
lightly on the arm. Linbirg was not under guard at night. Prisoner or not, the
Galahans possessed enough honour not to lock a young lady in a room with a man
who might take advantage of the situation, at least not for long periods of
time.
It was bloody freezing outside, and the
moon was full. Below, where the moat was not dipped in shadow, the light
reflected like crystalline rock, and there was a clean, long reflection of the
moon in the middle of it all.
‘Behold the freezing moon,’ she thought
queerly, and shuddered at the grim realization that the moat was covered in
ice.
If she jumped, she would shatter. And if
not that, then she would freeze to death and drown. It was stupid. She closed
the window and slipped into her bed to get warm again, cursing herself for
being such a fool.
She could feel a cough in the back of her
throat and her nose itching already. The room was cold and she was alone. It
was all she could do to roll up like a cat and sleep the night away.
Midnight was still long hours hence. And
like as not, the drawing had merely been a silly joke. Or worse, it was some
plot concocted by Countess Franka, like the one to kill that wizard and confine
Linbirg here.
‘The sausage, though...’
She looked at the drawing again, then
crushed it in her fist. If it was true, then she would go to Mara and
the others and have them lay Galahan Palace low. She would have the old lady
torn limb from limb and hang one bit of her from every gate of Honingen.
‘And then?’
Revenge was obvious. What to do next was a
much greater issue. The titanic monsters had not returned yet, and it
increasingly seemed as though they never would. If she could regain control
over her ogres, that left Linbirg in a very powerful position, surely.
‘To the Netherhells with them all.’
She pulled on the simple dress she had
been given to wear and got the fur-lined cloak they put her in when taking her
to see Mara. She was tying up her shoes when suddenly the key scraped in the
heavy wooden door.
Lin had never jumped back beneath her
covers quicker.
In the gloomy light, the serving woman was
shuffling through the room to the window, making sure it was firmly closed. On her
way back, she came by the bed. Linbirg, pretending to sleep, almost started
crying, expecting the shackle to be put on to her ankle once more, at which
point it would also be discovered that she was dressed. But the serving woman
didn’t even look at her feet, only standing there for a moment before pulling
up the covers a bit tighter. Then she left again, quickly as she had come.
And she didn’t even lock the door.
Linbirg waited with bated breath. Nothing happened, not for a very long time.
With a beating heart, she snuck to the door and pushed it open, half expecting
an ambush. If the old lady was looking for a pretext to kill her, then maybe
this would explain the strange things occurring tonight.
But behind the door there was nothing,
only the stairwell leading down into the palace. She stopped and listened,
hearing a soft scratching on wood, like from a rat scavenging for food. It
seemed to find a scrap eventually and munched it noisily in the darkness.
A light source would be good to have if
she went down the tower, but then again nothing would be surer to give her
away. She knew, roughly, where there were things that might make noise if she
bumped into them, from those times she had been presented to the ogres with a
knife at her throat. And her shoes were not particularly loud.
‘I wish I was brave,’ she thought, still
standing there.
Her father had taught her that bravery
meant being able to act despite being afraid. That thought gave her courage.
She was down the first flight of steps
before she even knew it, and despite not clearly knowing what she wanted down
there. She could either go left or right now, or continue downwards, but she
could hear a patrolling guardsman and see the light of his lantern at the end
of the right corridor.
She opted to go left, past doors left and
right that had rooms with windows opening to the outside or the courtyard
respectively. All doors were shut but there was a burning taper on the floor that
someone must have irresponsibly left there, just next to one of the pillars in
the wall that held up the roof above them. Such things were a great fire
hazard, and some servant would surely have the skin off their back if the
countess found out.
Linbirg thought about retrieving it in
hopes of perhaps finding a way out of the castle that didn’t involve jumping
into ice-cold water. It was a forlorn vanity, to be sure, and perhaps she would
have done better just to wait for midnight and jump if there was any hope at
all.
“Be quiet!” A familiar, male voice grunted
to her right, yonder the light of the taper.
Her heart jumped. She could hear a woman
suddenly, too, breathing heavily out of the shadow created by the large stone
pillar in the wall. As she edged around, she could see the back of the headsman
with his britches around his knees, and just at the edge a of skirt belonging
to the serving woman.
She knew what they were doing, of course. There
hadn’t been feasts often at Lionstone, but they had observed the traditional days
of celebration such as the harvest day, and on such occasions much ale and even
wine was drunk in their halls, leading to many a large male hand slipping up or
down a serving woman’s skirts. Delightful squealing and other noises could be
heard later.
Seeing the scene in the gloomy light
fascinated Linbirg. There was something animalistic about it, a dirty, physical
act that was as natural as anything but still had to be carried out very much
in secret. In the songs it was all feelings and flowers. Here it was raw meat,
rough hands, grunts and the shuffling of feet.
A part of her wished she could be that
serving woman.
She had to pry her eyes away from the
rhythmic movement and turn back the way she had come. The patrolling guardsman
down the other corridor had apparently decided to take a rest, leaving only one
way open to her besides going back, further down another flight of steps into
the palace.
She was familiar enough with this way too.
It was the quickest route to the outside, but at this time the drawbridge would
be pulled up, making escape impossible.
There was a door in the cellars somewhere,
opening right atop the lake. It was a postern gate of a fashion, even though
its position stood out to anyone with eyes, and servants sometimes used the
rowing boat tied up on the bank to haul cargo straight into the cellar that way.
That door had to be well-guarded, however,
so as to prevent intruders breaking in, making the winterly palace into a
veritable prison. The more she thought about it, the more she had to concede
that jumping into the cold water was the only option. Hopefully the ice wasn’t
too thick.
But when she arrived at the stairs, she
found herself suddenly confronted with a man coming up from below. She could
barely see him in the gloom. He looked odd, with a huge bulbous head and large,
almond-shaped eyes. She was startled by him so much that she almost shrieked.
It was all she could do to turn her head away and haste up the stairs as
quietly as possible, hoping against hope that he mistook her for one of the
servants.
Absurdly, she saw him turn on his heel and
do very much the same in the opposite direction. She didn’t know what to make
of that before she could hear his voice.
“Shhh! Little girl!” He whispered up at
her, his feet no longer moving.
She halted too, swallowing hard. His voice
had a hint of some very strange accent to it, one she had never heard before.
It wasn’t very strong, however, and his voice was very soft and soothing.
“Little girl! Are you the one from the
tower? The girl that killed the wizard?”
‘No!’ She wanted to say, but no words left
her lips.
She could hear him climb after her, her
feet frozen in place and her mind cursing herself for being so afraid.
“Have no fear,” he went on, climbing. “Have
you escaped from your cell too?”
‘Too?’ She thought. ‘Was he another
prisoner of Franka's?’
If so, then they were allies, surely. Or at
least they had a foe in common.
“Did you put the paper in the sausage?”
She whispered when he stepped into her sight.
Light fell from her room through the open
door, illuminating him a little more. His head was bulbous not on account of
malformation but a long snow-white cloth that he had wrapped around his head to
form a very complicated kind of hat. He also wore robes that were strangely cut
but wrought in a very expensive-looking blue. His skin was copper, his goatish
beard sprinkled with white. And he had big, almond-shaped eyes.
“Paper sausage?” He asked, clearly
perplexed. “Is this a riddle? My customs forbid the touching of pork, little
girl. Pray forgive me, I do not understand.”
It all fell into place in her head. She
had heard tales of these people who shunned pigs and dwelt where the sun burned
so relentlessly that it turned their skin brown even before birth and made men
and women hot-headed.
“What do you want?” She asked him,
dropping the issue.
“Escape!” He whispered feverishly. “The
same as you, I gather? Do you know a way out?”
She hesitated for a moment while on his
face the pleading expression rested.
“I do not know you,” she finally said. “If
I knew how to escape, why should I tell you?”
“Because I am your friend!” He replied. “I
know you have not committed this murder!”
This was very obviously a trap. The only
way he could know was if Franka had told him. Nevertheless, it felt good to
hear him say it. The servants were mostly friendly now, but just after her
renewed imprisonment they had treated her like a demon and called her murderer.
“I thank you,” she replied courteously, “but
I do not wish to escape. I have everything I need here. All I wanted was
stretch my legs a little. Good night.”
She turned and went up the steps wondering
if she should call for the guards in order to ingratiate herself more
believably, but on the off chance that he was genuine she decided against it.
“Do you know the countess is going to kill
you?” The man asked.
She stopped again, weighing his words. It
didn’t make sense.
“Is she?” She asked. “Why now? She had
weeks and weeks to do it and all she’d need do is give the word.”
He pulled back slightly.
“I do not know why, little girl,” he
confessed. “All I know is they are building gallows for you. They will hang you
for murder.”
That made even less sense. Commoners were
hanged, nobles customarily beheaded. But perhaps they thought differently about
her, given that she was still a child by law. She was uncertain. All she knew
was that she didn’t trust this stranger.
‘And the drawing in the sausage?’
The circumstances told her that it was
part of whatever ploy this was. But the sausage was the red-haired boy’s,
no doubt about it. It seemed excessive and paranoid, even for Franka Salva
Galahan.
If Linbirg was hanged, then Marag's
Children would break out and flee. And with a bit of luck they would cause
quite a bit of damage in the process. Lin wouldn’t be around to see it,
however, so the thought was only of little consolation.
‘If it is true.’
She tried to test him: “How do you know I
did not kill Master Furio?”
The man swallowed and lowered his head:
“Because I made the poison that did. I made it at the behest of the countess to
kill the two giant women. When the giantesses left and did not return, and she
sought my cell to have me poison a bit of pipe weed instead, I knew she had
resolved to slay my colleague. I should have...”
He broke off, sounding tortured. Linbirg
felt bad for him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she tried to
console him softly. “You had no choice. The countess might have killed you.”
“Death is nothing,” he lamented. “I should
have refused or made a weaker substance to keep him alive.”
She shook her head: “Then one of her
knights would have smothered him with a pillow. If Franka wanted him dead there
was nothing to be done.”
“You are very wise, little girl,” he
conceded solemnly. “Now, will you take me with you, escape from this palace?”
She was still unsure. He might still be
Franka’s creature.
“How did you escape from your cell?” She
asked. “I mean, how do I know you are truly a prisoner here?”
He smiled mildly: “My guards eat my scraps
and drink my old wine. It was an easy thing. I have done this on many a night,
but this is the first time I saw you.”
His voice was full of respect, as though
he thought her some master of the shadows.
She swallowed to set him right: “The
servant left my door unlocked. I got lucky, is all.”
“Oh,” he seemed disappointed. “Then, do
you know how to escape from this palace?”
She wrestled with her thoughts for a
moment before giving him the nod.
“I have received a note,” She dug it out
of her bosom and handed it to him. “It was hidden inside a sausage.”
As soon as she said sausage, he
dropped the paper like a hot cinder.
“Rashtullah,” he muttered a prayer,
“forgive this unworthy servant, for I have sinned.”
It was truly silly.
She crouched and snatched the paper from
them steps before urging the strange man to follow her into her room. She
didn’t feel very sure about it, but on the other hand was it good to hear
another opinion. With the moonlight from the window, she held out the paper for
him to study it.
“This is a childish plan,” was his verdict
after another while. “Who drew this?”
“A butcher’s boy,” she said. “I do not
know him very well, but I know his sausage.”
He gave her an uncouth look before
returning his gaze to the paper, “They want you to jump into the moat at
midnight?”
She pressed her lips together: “It seems
the only way out. I fear the ice on the lake, though.”
“It is not thick yet,” he replied
immediately. “But if your butcher’s boy does not make for a good fisherman we
might drown. Can you swim, little girl?”
She shook her head. The bogs in the
Bordermark were too dangerous. One might go in and never come out again when
one’s feet became stuck inside the mud.
“I have thought about this too,” he
continued. “There is a potion that allows the breathing under water. But I lack
a crucial ingredient.”
He went to the window and opened it, peering
outside.
“Neither do I know any spells that might
be of use here. There is only the jump, and a cold, wet splash below. But if we
reach the bank...”
So he was an alchemist and a
wizard, she thought. But if she didn’t have to jump alone, that might be all
the magic she needed.
“Will you do it?” She asked him.
He inclined his head, “The countess may
have use for me yet, but my lavish life has left me most unsuited for
servitude. I will jump with you, little girl, when the time comes.”
She told him that they had best lay low
until midnight, so she slipped back into the covers while he did his best to hide
in the dark corner next to the bed. To pass the time, they whispered to each
other.
The stranger’s name was long and foreign,
and she could neither remember nor really say it correctly. He told her to call
him Retoban, and that he was named after a great emperor from long ago, called
Reto.
“He was not the greatest of Emperors,” Retoban
admitted. “But Emperor he was, and Prince of the Tulamids too, and under him
the land saw a brief blossom, so his name rings well. He chased his own,
corrupt family off the throne and conquered Maraskan for the Garethian Empire,
as you may know. A sad thing the servants of evil have torn it asunder.”
“What is Maraskan?” She asked, feeling
stupid.
He told her, and how it came to pass that
the evil men took it, and so much more after that. For these evil men were the last
remnants of the most evil man of all, a black warlock by the name of Borbarad
who wore atop his head the Demon Crown. He was killed by a great white wizard
named Rohal who threw a mountain on top of him. The Demon Crown was
shattered but several minor evildoers gathered its splinters and used the evil
power therein to carve out evil kingdoms for themselves, thus bringing the
island of Maraskan under their heel as well. Gareth was hard at war with these
forces of darkness. Linbirg remembered vaguely that there had been talk of
Albernians going east and joining in that fight, even some from the Bordermark
too.
It was all very fascinating and scary. She
thought that maybe, if she got Marag’s Children back, she might go east too.
Surely, a few evildoers in black robes stood no chance against ogres.
She wanted to tell Retoban of the idea
when from the open window they heard an owl's call.
“By Rashtullah's mercy!” Retoban
exclaimed. “That’s it! That’s the signal!”
It was time for them to jump and they both
rushed to the window. The cold was biting Linbirg’s flesh like a rabid hound. Down
below, where the boat was, they could hear splashing and the cracking of ice.
“Oohoo! Oohoo!”
Then they saw it. She could even make out
the butcher lad's copper hair, gleaming like ambers in the moonlight. She
hadn’t expected everything to go so smoothly.
Retoban helped her onto the windowsill.
“Hold my hand, little girl,” he said.
And then they jumped.
She landed slightly after the alchemist,
butt-first, crashing through the sheet of ice. Something hard and sharp slashed
over her face and left a streak of stinging pain and warmth there. The rest was
all frozen, all at once, and she could neither breathe nor see.
Something was pulling on her hand in the
darkness while she seemed to be sinking like a stone. Already the end of her
breath was approaching fast. She was scared and confused and the pulling on her
hand was becoming so incessant that she tried to fight it.
But then, all at once, the world grew a
little lighter and another hand, big and strong, reached down through the mist
and pulled on her collar.
When they dragged her out, she was
coughing and wheezing, and they told her to be quiet. Retoban was already in
the boat, his chattering teeth smiling. They were back on dry land before she
even knew.
“Out of these clothes, Milady,” the
butcher’s boy urged. “Quickly!”
“Who's this now?” Another young male
asked, significantly bigger than the red-haired one.
He was referring to Retoban.
“Another prisoner,” Linbirg wheezed. “You
must help him!”
“Aye, just be quick about it,” the big boy
complained. “If we're seen, they'll hang us.”
There were three more of them, all young
and lowly, two boys and a girl. They cut Linbirg out of her dress and almost
did the same for her small clothes, but the girl told them off and gave Linbirg
a blanket to roll into.
“What of Retoban?” Linbirg whispered. “Do
you have a blanket for him?”
“No need, little girl,” the strange wizard
alchemist smiled. “I will leave you here. Just know that you have my eternal
gratitude.”
Strangely, for as little as could be seen
of him in the moonlight, he looked completely dry.
“You ought to come with us,” the butcher’s
boy said. “If the old harridan catches you...”
“That is precisely what will happen if
I go with you,” replied Retoban in a tone that brook no argument.
He turned to go.
“Wait!” Linbirg whispered. “Tell them!
Tell them I didn't kill the wizard!”
The girl's hand on her shoulder seemed to
slump at the mention of the crime.
“What does that mean?” The big boy asked, incredulous.
Retoban turned back to face the group:
“The Lady is afraid you would hold it against her if you thought her a
murderer.”
“Murderer?!” The big oaf echoed. “Killing
scum like that is no murder! He stole the Jar of Holy Theria, he did, and raised
the dead too, and like as not gave our town the Bloody Diffar!”
Retoban smiled mildly: “May I inquire as
to why you have rescued the young Lady?”
That question burned under Linbirg’s nails
as well, at least now that he had put it.
“Two reasons,” the red-haired boy
declared. “For one, I bet that I would kiss you some day.”
He gave the bigger boy a stern look before
stepping in and giving Linbirg a quick, dry peck on the cheek. Linbirg was too
perplexed and scared to defend herself.
“That don’t count!” The big boy objected
immediately. “Only on the mouth counts, on the cheek don't! And with tongue!”
While she wondered whether they could
truly be so silly, the boy sighed and took her face in his hands. His skin was
still a bit damp and cold from the water but there was a rough kind of warmth
beneath it that made her grow soft.
He looked deep into her eyes and she felt
like she was falling.
‘So green and deep,’ she thought. ‘And so
warm too.’
Her lips parted under his and she welcomed
his tongue in her mouth. It tasted vaguely of mustard and honey, not that she
minded. She didn’t know how long it lasted but it was way too short.
When he pulled away, she almost went after
him, and only then remembered that she should have defended her virtue.
“There!” The boy declared. “Happy now?!”
Linbirg’s head was spinning. Part of her
felt violated, lifted and left to fall again, back into those cold, dark depths
of the water. Another part of her wanted to climb all over him, tear his
clothes off and feel him inside her, just like the headsman and that serving
woman. If only they had been alone.
“And the other reason?” Retoban inquired
from the side.
“Her ogres,” replied the boy. “The giant
whores are gone. Everyone says so. If we have the ogres, we can finally do what
the Vulture wanted, smash the countess' men and be free!”
It all came down to Marag’s Children, she
realized. It was rather sad. If this boy thought that he could do this to her
and use her like Franka had used her then she would have Mara pull his head off,
see how he liked her then.
“Take me to them,” she said, hiding her
feelings.
“Aye, we would!” Said the big boy. “If the
lovebirds were finally done yapping!”
“One last thing,” Retoban insisted. “The
Jar, I am informed it is more than just a relic. Fill it with honey and feed
those afflicted by disease, that pilgrims once again come in droves to your
city. Then you shall prosper.”
“Are you sure?” The butcher’s boy asked,
suspicious. “My father said it’s just some tale to make coin for the temple.
Else, why keep it locked behind glass?”
“As with most things,” the alchemist smiled
in the moonlight, “try it and you shall see.”
They parted ways with Retoban then,
hasting along the tree-lined road to Honingen. Not a soul was in sight
anywhere, but Linbirg worried that they may have trouble at the gates.
“We bribed a guard,” the boy assured her
briskly. “In any case, we won’t have any problems once we have your ogres.”
They veered off the path and moved through
the open fields that surrounded Honingen, to the left, not the right where the
ogre camp had always been. There was something in the moonlight looking like a
giant, queer rock cliff that had sprung up from nothing. Linbirg was certain it
hadn’t been there before.
“What is that?” She asked the butcher’s
boy frightfully as they neared the strange thing.
It seemed to have an unholy aura and was
even larger than she had believed, larger than Galahan Palace.
“Queen’s sleeping bag,” he replied,
somewhat brisk. “Don’t know which one, her or the other. Our lady wanted
to put your ogres in a log hall but people kept setting fire to it, everything
else they built too. They tried to burn the sleeping bags as well but the
fabric wouldn’t catch flame. Unnatural if you ask me. What kind of cloth
doesn’t burn?”
She swallowed hard and shivered from cold
and fear. In the fields, Janna’s and Laura’s footprints were still evident,
each the size of a small pond and stark reminders of their terror. Closer to
this new dwelling, ogress’ footprints were everywhere, and the water that had
pooled in them had turned to ice, reflecting the moonlight. The grass around,
where it still grew, was covered in hoarfrost and Linbirg’s breath frosted in
the air.
The giant sleeping bag made for a queer
sort of structure, she found. Big stones weighed down the opening to keep it
shut but in the middle there was a tunnel, large enough for an ogress to crawl
through, constructed from large beams of timber like the entrance to a mine
shaft. The inside had to be held up very much the same way, she assumed. It was
a scary thought that this sleeping bag had once been filled by a single body
and now all of her ogresses, huge monsters each in their own right,
could fit inside.
“They dwell in there now,” the boy said
and pointed at the entrance when they arrived. “You go and do what you have to
do. We'll wait here.”
Linbirg nodded. She wanted this, even
though her tummy was utterly in knots about everything.
While leaving them, feeling their eyes in
her back like knives, she thought of how gullible they were. After all, there
was nothing to stop her from having Mara stomp them all and be on her way.
Perhaps that would be better. They trusted her on sheer goodwill alone when
they might just as well have put a blade to her throat and make Mara obey, just
as the old countess had.
That boy, though. That damned boy. Linbirg
wanted him, even though she still didn’t know his name.
What lay in front of her was dark, a huge,
black nothing from whence hardly a sound could be heard. The fabric she stepped
on was queer even underfoot, soft and somewhat bouncy. She didn’t dare touch
it. It seemed to drink all sound as she stepped in and soon she was lost in the
darkness.
The air was stale and musty, and full of
smells. There was the fabric’s own fragrance, but also the mud that was smeared
on the ground from the ogresses’ feet when they entered after their hard days’
labour. Then there was the distinctly sweet smell of femininity, and Linbirg
had to pinch her nose to move on.
She sensed that her surroundings had
become larger, the smell of the fabric not so strong anymore, and then she
heard the ogresses snoring in front of her. She was still unsure whether or not
she should call Mara’s name when suddenly she heard sniffing. Then everything happened
very quickly.
“Isenmann!”
It was a cry of jubilation, awkward for
the hour, but the walls of the sleeping bag drank it. A shadow seemed to rise
in the darkness and a hand came upon her like an eagle on its prey, almost
ploughing through her in its haste.
“Isenmann!”
Other ogresses stirred while Linbirg was
lifted, sniffing the air, muttering, rising, rustling on the strange fabric
floor. A giant head bumped into the arm that carried her and shook her
violently. She was but a pet to these giant women, she felt. They treasured
her, aye, but if that somehow where to change then her life was over.
The ogress that had taken her was not Mara
as she could tell by the voice. She had never learned the individual names of
the others, all too similar to tell them apart and useless in the face of their
inability to speak the common tongue. Linbirg understood the wet kiss that was
placed upon the entirety of her face well enough, however.
“Mara!” She called out, trying to explain.
“Mara!”
There was no reply, even though the entire
great hall of cloth was now awake and teeming with giant, writhing bodies,
bristling with excitement.
‘Excitement is good,’ she decided. ‘They
are happy to see me.’
The thought hadn’t resonated quite fully
even before she felt herself being lowered, her captress’ hips already wiggling
from side to side on the ground. There was not a thing Linbirg could see where
she was going, but she could certainly feel, hear and smell. Her blanket was
torn off along the way and vanished, and she was struck with how warm the giant
bodies were.
She was happy they didn’t freeze but also
unhappy that the ancient pact that bound her to them had to be consummated now
leaving her newfound friends and rescuers outside, shivering.
The first ogress was uncomfortably rough
with her as well. She pinned Lin into the upholstered floor with her sex,
lifting her arse off the ground and starting to grind over Lin’s body. Each
time the immense pressure ran over her chest she thought she’d cave in and die,
but the cushioning beneath was much thicker than she expected and gave way ever
so slightly more than her body. Mercifully, the ogress finished quickly, and
Linbirg remained whole, if covered head to toe in slime.
“Isenmann!”
Done with the first one, she exchanged
hands in the darkness. Her ogre army had a lot of penned up lust. This next one
all but kept her on the ground, insisting that Linbirg serve her with her mouth
there. It was as hot as a smithy, and before long her throat craved water and
her jaws a bit of rest. But there was none to be had.
Three dozen ogresses she had had when
coming to Honingen. How many were left, she didn’t quite know anymore. But it
was a busy night.