The Horasian Emperor had been old and
sick, Thorsten reflected. The man was very clearly dying. He made a sorry
impression there on his huge, splendid chair, wrapped in finery. Soon there
would be need for a successor, which couldn’t have come at a worse time with
the rebellion and all.
Thorsten could have spat in his face, but
the emperor looked so frail that it would have been like to kill him. He felt
sorry for the man.
His own accommodations weren’t very nice
after they took him away, a dark dungeon cell deep beneath some fortification. There,
he waited.
The dungeons were relatively empty because
most prisoners had been pressed into the army to fight in the war. The only
other man there was a lunatic called Prat who professed to having killed his
own mother, wife and daughter before cooking the latter in a stew. This had to
be where the boundary was in terms of who was allowed to redeem himself through
military service instead of punishment. The times were evidently grim.
Prat knew a thousand riddles and he would
constantly pester Thorsten with them.
“Heh, heh, what’s this, what’s this?” he
would say. “It disappears the second you say its name!”
And Thorsten would think for a time,
haphazardly.
“Some…ghost,” he would reply eventually,
and Prat would rattle the door of his cell.
“No!” he would scream. “No! Silence! Ha,
ha, ha, ha, ha! I have another! Feed me and I live but give me a drink and I
die!”
“Some…drunkard on the brink of death,”
guessed Thorsten.
“No!” Prat screamed and rattled his door
again. “Fire! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I have another! What am I, what am I? I
can fly but have no wings, I can cry but have no eyes, and wherever I go,
darkness follows me!”
“A crow without wings and without eyes,”
was Thorsten’s best guess.
“No!” came the answer as usual. “A cloud!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
It could go like that for hours. Then Prat
would become very quiet and Thorsten could hear him weep. The hardest Prat wept
was when they came and took him to be broken on the wheel. Thorsten never saw
him again after that.
His last riddle was: “What am I, what am
I? I have nothing to lose but my chains!”
Thorsten found that one most annoying of
all, for it could be a hundred things.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s me!” he had
roared, his voice echoing off the stone walls.
“No, I’m the mud skins down south on them
plantations! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
Prat had been mad like that.
Towards his own final day, they called
upon Thorsten more often. He was manacled and led outside to be loaded into the
back of a cage wagon. People would throw dung and rotten fruit at him as they processed
through the streets under heavy guard while a herald in the front of the wagon
would read announcements.
“Hear ye, hear ye!” the herald would cry.
“See the Thorwalsh demon, spawn of Olaf the Terrible himself, his last living
son! Come to see him die a week hence on the outdoor stage at the Opera House! His
Royal Magnificence the emperor himself will attend the vivid execution as we
relive the fall of Thorwal!”
The rehearsals for his execution were held
inside the Opera House so as not to spoil the spectacle for the people. There
were great slabs of wood painted with pictures of the sea, a harbour and very
primitive dwellings which served to set the scene on the stage. Everything was
made to look dirty and barbaric, and the actors who played the Thorwalsh
warriors were all behaving themselves like animals.
Thorsten’s role in the play was that of
his own father, culminating in his death.
“We shall have his tongue,” the fat man
said at one point, pondering the proceedings. “It would not do to have him
spout profanities in the emperor’s presence.”
Said and done. They came for Thorsten that
evening with five men, a hot knife and iron pincers. He had never felt such
pain and was so weak afterwards that he could hardly stand. But still they
dragged him out of his cell every day, and his mouth tasted like burned meat
ever after, right until his sense of taste vanished altogether.
To play the part of the giantess that had
crushed his father to death, they had an ogress who was ten paces tall,
closer to eleven. She was rather young, had flaxen hair and was of a
drop-shaped figure, wide hips and a little bit of a belly. She was also completely
and utterly stupid.
“No, no, no, you crush him!” the
fat man would lament and point at Thorsten when she had forgotten again and
made to crush one of the actors or her own handlers.
For everyone’s safety, she was shackled
even worse than Thorsten and surrounded by twenty men with pikes, heavy
crossbows and thick ropes attached to her chains. They also had a scorpion
pointed at her during the proceedings in case she went rogue.
She wasn’t a vicious creature, far as
Thorsten could tell, merely a slow one, and she couldn’t tell one human being
from another. From what he overheard, she had killed five people so far, more
through carelessness than anything else.
“Oi quash he?” she would mumble, confused,
and everyone would laud her.
She didn’t respond well to threats or
being yelled at. This much, the people at the Opera House had already learned.
One time, she said: “Me hungwee!”
And an unfortunate actress, dressed up as the
most absurd representation of a shield maiden, vanished up to her hips in the
ogress' mouth. The woman survived because the ogress had only suckled on her,
but it took a distressing amount of time to convince the great beast of letting
her morsel go.
Thorsten had laughed when that happened,
which in lack of a tongue sounded more like clacking and hurt abominably.
The ogress was the real reason for the
frequent rehearsals because she would forget within moments whatever she was
told. She was supposed to trample onto the reinforced stage, walk over to
Thorsten and kill him by a single stomp of her foot. Then she was to destroy
some of the painted wood buildings and walk off again, which was far too much
for the poor thing to remember.
Worse yet, she was supposed to only pretend
to squash Thorsten during the rehearsals, which of course she forgot as soon as
she got all the rest of it right.
Thorsten was chained to a wooden post on a
platform, and whenever the ogress had a good day he had to jump out of
the way of her stomping foot. The first time this happened, when he still had a
tongue, he had jumped so that she would step right on top of the chain.
The post had cracked dangerously, but more
unfortunately her weight on the chain yanked him forward with more force than
he could possibly resist, pressing him face-first into her toes. He got a
mouthful of her that time, and hence dodged differently from then on.
It wasn't until the day before the event
that the big ogress had one entirely correct run, making everyone involved with
the project quite happy. Then, on the day of days, Thorsten ate his last meal.
He couldn’t tell them his wishes, so they
gave him a single boiled egg, three salted herrings and a bit of fresh red beet
along the side, but the small feast was no good. It hurt his mouth to eat it,
whereas the awful rye gruel they had given him before tasted much better
without a tongue.
This incident made him frightful for an
entirely different reason, however. After today, he could fully expect to feast
for all eternity in Swafnir's Halls. But what without a tongue? It would be
dreadful, surely, to sit there and stare at meat and mead, knowing he would
never again taste them. And all his stories, how would he tell his ancestors of
his great exploits without a tongue?
It made him so sick to think of it that he
retched blood.
He needed a priest, but all they sent him
was some fat fool with the sun on his chest, blabbering about absolving sins. But
even if they had a Swafnir Priest for him, Thorsten couldn’t have told him of
his plight either.
Writing might work, but how to express his
problem in Thorwalsh runes he couldn’t fathom, and no one else here could read
runes.
He needed time now, most of all. Time to
get closure on this problem, or some way to get his tongue back.
But today was to be his last day in this
world.
He fought them violently when they came to
take him, taking them by surprise and forcing them to retreat from his cell for
the first time. He had been nothing if not pleasant prisoner up until that time
while waiting for his execution, squandering all hope of escape. He had
squandered another, he realized, by not waiting for them to take his chains off.
He cursed and cursed himself for it.
His rage gave way to acknowledgement of
his situation. When they came for him again, this time with twenty men instead
of just five, they found him weeping on the floor, just like Prat the madman.
He didn’t remember anything about the
wagon ride to the stage. They hit him with clubs a couple of times for good
measure and loaded him into the wagon, but it seemed to him that the way there
took mere moments. He was running out of time.
The outdoor stage was a sort of ancient
stone pit, probably built by those ancient, sophisticated people that had come
in their galleys from beyond the Sea of Seven Winds, either killing, displacing
or assimilating anything they found to form their great empire. The stone rows
of seats had been extended at the top by wooden scaffolds with benches for the
event, and the old stage had been flanked by great wood towers where actors,
handlers and the ogress could hide while waiting their turn. Between these two
towers was built a bridge up top carrying a number of mechanical contraptions,
all wrought with rope, wheels and chains.
The ranks were full when Thorsten's wagon
arrived and the emperor had taken seat in his splendid wooden box from where he
enjoyed the best view of anyone. And the play was already in motion too.
It began with two young, beautiful
actresses, one dark, one golden-haired, walking through a shrunk environment of
rock, stick-sized trees and miniature houses.
The girls seemed to praise the Emperor a
lot as they trampled everything beneath them to kindling, and they laughed
about how feeble, backwards and disagreeable the Thorwalsh people were. The
scene ended to great cheering from the audience.
While the setting was changed, a
gargantuan green curtain was lowered from the bridge between the towers.
Servants ran to take away the now destroyed landscape and replace it with the
new one, a city if Thorsten was any judge, meant to misrepresent and denigrate
Thorwal further.
He was given sackcloth hoses and a fur
vest to wear, as well as a huge, gilded helm with an absurd number of horns. The
makers of the play evidently tried to sail on three ships at once, trying to
pass him off as a barbarian, a beggar and some sort of king all at the same
time.
Over in the other tower structure, the
ogress did not fare much better. So as not to offend Horasian sensibilities, she
had to be made to wear a dress. She had worn a cloak of furs and rawhide during
the rehearsals, along with a breechclout that left little to the imagination. Her
new garment was of sturdy, solid craftsmanship, green cloth with yellow lace,
but trying to make her understand how to put it on was a task they had
obviously underestimated.
On the stage, the finishing touch to the city
was made by upending several sacks of kitchen mice into the scenery, another
insult to Thorwal and its people. When the enormous curtain was hoisted up
again, the actresses started to trample the city under their feet, causing the
little grey critters to panic and flee in every direction.
A few women screeched with outrage when
the vermin started to run into the audience, but in general the scene was
received with plentiful laughter and cheers.
“The rats are fleeing the sinking ship!” one
of the actresses proclaimed. “Quick, stomp them all in the name of Horas!”
Thorsten had resigned himself to his fate,
much as it still pained him. He had never feared death before today. He had
been waiting for it eagerly, in fact. The play was an unnecessary detour that before
today he had nevertheless found rather entertaining. It was just another story
to tell in Swafnir’s Halls, a story he might now never tell.
It had all come crumbling down. And now,
as he saw the play, it made his blood boil. The city where he had grown
up alongside so many people that he knew and loved, to be destroyed so
callously, and his people so utterly defenceless, he felt a rage at the back of
his throat that made it hard for him to breathe.
The next scene was not as vivid from his
vantage point as it featured another contraption from the bridge between the
towers. This was a wooden frame on strings attached to two cranes which could
be lowered, lifted and shifted with the help of many men and counterweights. To
the spectators’ eyes it was disguised to look like the side view of a giant
brown shoe.
Now actors dressed as mock Thorwallers were
running across the stage and the giant shoe was lowered quickly between them
and the audience. The actors, skilful jugglers and acrobats, then jumped onto
the wooden beams that made up the framework and were lifted back up with it,
thus creating the illusion for the audience that they had been crushed. They
then dumped stripes of red cloth from their pockets to resemble the blood and
gore. It was an engineering feat as well as a theatrical one, and the audience
was well astonished, even if from Thorsten's perspective the magic didn’t work
very well.
The next scene was a sea battle wherein actors
walked inside wooden boats carried by shoulder straps, but it was confusing and
nonsensical, and all the ships looked like dromons. There was no part of any
giantess in this one, the Thorwalsh fleet instead getting itself sunk by sheer
incompetence, vessels ramming into each other to the roaring laughter of the
crowd.
Each time the curtain fell, a young,
handsome narrator would tell the audience what they were about to see in the
next scene. It was this narration that told Thorsten that his great moment had
come.
He knew at once that fighting them would
not do this time. They had been warned. They took him bodily to a place on the
stage where his chains could be fastened to an iron ring in the ground, made
sure he looked the part and left him there. Meanwhile, across the stage, the
ogress was being coaxed by her handlers to trample him, and then to wait
because she was suddenly overeager.
Boos and hateful shouting rang out when the
curtain was lifted this time and Thorsten finally got a very good glimpse of
the crowd. He could see the old, frail emperor in his box, surrounded by
nobility. From the poorer folk, rotten apples, onions and cabbages started flying
towards him.
When the ogress stomped onto the stage, the
entire place went as silent as a grave all of a sudden, only her heavy
footfalls to be heard.
Thorsten gritted his teeth and pulled on
his chains, but it was no good. She was fixed on him and chewing her lip,
having to concentrate hard so as not to forget what to do. The chain was so
short that he would have no chance to get out of harm’s way, and there was no
post that he might make her snap. It seemed hopeless.
But then, things started to go wrong.
“Crush him!” a shout rang out first from
the audience, tearing apart the blanket of silence.
More shouting followed and the ogress
turned, her big, blue eyes noticing the mass of people and becoming visibly
scared. The handlers and stage folk were in panic, starting to urge her from
all directions to get on with it.
It seemed like the play had turned into a
disaster.
Thorsten stood with his hands in his irons,
watching it all unfold. Yes, the play was vicious and meanspirited but it was
also unfathomably dangerous when coming to think of it now. To place an ogress at
the incalculable whims of a crowd. And expect her to perform an execution.
When the ogress didn’t move, the mob
turned on her, flinging insults and more rotten food. The handlers meanwhile
tried to call her back so she could be calmed and instructed, but the
gargantuan girl would not take her eyes off the jeering people.
When she made a step backwards, her foot
caught in her dress and she fell, smashing into the wooden tower structure and
making the whole construction swing dangerously, as well as removing one of its
legs.
Thorsten watched helpless from below. The
square beams that the structure was made up of gave way on one side and the
whole tower started toppling over and taking the bridge with it. Actors and
stagehands rained down from above, smashing into the floorboards with sickening
sounds amidst a wave of rope, wood and steel.
The ogress was on her feet again,
revealing that she had crushed one of the young actresses under her rump when
she fell. This was the least of everyone’s concerns, however, because the
sudden rain of bodies and objects terrified her even more than the crowd. She
screamed and ripped apart her dress even while the tower continued to
disintegrate, and when one of the cranes' walking wheels smashed her in the
head she jumped, stark naked, from the stage right into the now panicking mob
of people.
The poor, giant creature half crawled and
half trampled over the ranks, giving no regard for who or what was in her way.
She wasn't nearly as huge as those terrors which had obliterated his home, but
here in this confined space that mattered little.
The scorpion at the back finally thrummed
loudly, but the iron dart missed its mark, impaling two onlookers instead. The
few ogress’ handlers who had not retreated or been killed now rushed the stage,
feathering the huge girl with quarrels. But they couldn’t stop her.
The huge wooden foot from before crashed
down onto the stage, missing Thorsten by two paces while shattering to bits. It
had hung onto the still intact tower until someone on top must have cut it
loose when noticing that the tower in question had started to bend as well. Perhaps
more importantly, Thorsten noted that the weapons of those actors who had been
in the false foot were now strewn all around, and a nice, heavy axe just within
his reach.
He reached for it and hacked away manfully
at his chains, but the weapon turned out to be made of cast iron, untampered,
and it bent and blunted quickly under his swings. He had to be careful, as well
as keep track of the raging ogress and anyone noticing his doings.
The quarrels in her back made the ogress
lash out at the stage again. Being at least ten paces tall she could easily
stretch and reach places that seemed initially safe to her attackers. She got
one handler in each hand and squeezed, making Thorsten uncomfortably privy to
the cracking of bones before her giant fingers crushed the guts out of the men
she killed. The other handlers thus retreated from the stage, and a pike thrust
to her arse made the ogress turn back around again.
The defenders were not well organized, but
nevertheless a small portion of unwavering pikes formed up on one flank,
advancing upon her. The emperor’s guards at the green and golden box were also
busy reloading their crossbows and forming a wall of spear points trying to
defend their liege.
The wooden ranks that had been constructed
at the top of the stone seat rows left only two narrow exits and a much larger number
of bodies trying to squeeze through, in essence turning the outdoor theatre
into a roofless slaughterhouse. Meanwhile, men at arms tried to get inside to
defend their Emperor, wrestling and clashing with the mob of commoners trying
to get out.
The only thing missing was a fire.
“And what you think you're doing?” a voice
challenged Thorsten from behind.
A man was there, one of the handlers,
holding an unloaded crossbow.
Thorsten charged him immediately, but the
chain was too short and he couldn’t reach the man. He was held back like a hound
on a leash.
“Just you wait!” the man hissed, producing
a shiny crank device that he attached to his crossbow to load it.
The Horasians built all manner of
different crossbows, including ones so heavy that they could not be loaded by
hand. The heaviest ones used a windlass, a device of many ropes and a winch that
could pull the string and bend the heavy bow. Lighter ones used a kind of lever
for enhancing the strength of the user without sacrificing too much speed. This
crank variation was entirely wrought of steel and very fancy, but it did not
seem to load very quickly, thus giving Thorsten time to go back to his hacking.
He eyed the progress anxiously, caught in this
absurd situation in which they both stared each other down while working on killing
the other.
‘Whaler!’ Thorsten wanted to curse the man,
but it came out as some throaty gag.
The Horasians caught whales for meat,
blubber and bones, and most of all ambergris which they used to make their exquisitely
pungent perfumes. It was the source for much animosity between the two peoples.
“Reaver!” the man shot back as though he
had understood, cranking his device all the while.
The crossbow was quicker and its user
grinned wide while putting in the quarrel.
Knights and proud warriors shunned the
crossbow and everyone using it, supposedly because it was a ranged weapon that
could defeat their expensive armour. The real reason, it had since dawned upon
Thorsten, was that it was so damnably easy to use. It was long and cumbersome
to load, but it didn’t take much strength and very little in the way of skill.
A peasant brat who had only ever held a pitchfork could be taught to use a
crossbow well within a fortnight. And from a range of less than three paces one
could not reasonably expect anyone to miss.
Seeing his hopes fade, Thorsten resolved
to throw his axe. He had been a good axe thrower in Thorwal, but those were
tools specifically made for the purpose. Here, this battered lump of iron did
not compare favourably, and so it flew all wrong.
The man raised the weapon to his chin to
take aim just when the thing came flying, striking him in the mouth with a
crunch of his teeth.
Thorsten was lucky. The bolt slipped off
the wooden rail when the man flinched backwards, and all the time spent loading
was wasted when the trigger was inadvertently pulled, thrumming all that penned-up
force into thin air.
“Bastard!” the man spat through a mouth of
broken teeth.
Thorsten clucked like a hen, his lack of
tongue momentarily forgotten. The helmet on his head had made him sweat and so
he pulled it off by one of its horns. It was remarkably ugly, over large and
impractical to boot with its long sharp horns that would inevitably tangle with
its wearer’s hands when fighting. But for beating someone to death with it...
He threw it at the man as well, as hard
and well-aimed as he could muster. The crossbow man was busy fumbling with his
cranequin, judging Thorsten disarmed. The heavy helm hit him in the top of his
head and a moment later he was left on the ground twitching like a man affected
by the falling sickness.
Thorsten couldn’t find another weapon in
his reach and the link he had been beating still held firm. He should have thrown
the helm in the first place, he reflected, for now he had nothing with which to
cut the chain. He tore and yanked at it as he could, but it was no use.
Tired, angry and frustrated he sat himself
down, looking at the battle before the stage to gain some solace. It had ground
somewhat to a standstill. The ogress had made short work of anyone but the
large mob in front of her. How she was able to do so was rather obvious now.
The fools had taken off her chains to get the dress on, and then neglected to
put them back on for time constraints. There were more dead people than he
could count, most crushed under her when she had jumped in panic right onto the
ranks, mauling anyone she could get her hands on.
She was kneeling in the remnants of the emperor’s
box with a wall of steel points before her, keeping her at bay. Every now and
then, her hands would find and opening and pull another man from amongst the
defenders whom she then dropped and crushed deliberately under her knee. She
was bleeding from a hundred wounds, but these were mere scratches to her.
Thorsten recalled the battle he had lost in that ford on the Andra, many days
ago, and he couldn’t help but hate what he now saw.
Behind him, his attacker had stopped
twitching in the meantime and had now to be presumed dead, but his crossbow had
not fallen backwards with him. Thorsten crawled and tested his reach, finding
it easy to drag the crossbow to him with his foot. He should have thought of it
much sooner.
The quarrel he could attain in the same
fashion, but there was no way to get the crank device into his hands. The
crossbow was a heavy but nevertheless nicely decorated thing with a sturdy
steel bow and thick, twisted linen thread for a string.
It was the antithesis of any Thorwalsh
weapon, complicated, expensive and unwieldy to load. Throwing axes were much
easier, though of course requiring a lifetime of training to master.
Despite this, it was immediately apparent
to him how to load the crossbow, namely by pulling the string backwards until
it snagged inside the gap of the metal wheel protruding from the wood on the
upper side. This wheel could be made to turn and let the string snap forward
via the trigger on the bottom side of the device.
That was all very well and good, except
without the loading device Thorsten found that his arms did not possess enough
strength to get the string anywhere near as far as it needed to go. He
therefore put his feet into the bow and pushed the crossbow away from him while
holding onto the string with his hands. It was still nearly impossible and something
tore apart painfully in his back, but under moaning and groaning he finally
succeeded.
He got so excited then that he almost lost
the quarrel when pointing the crossbow downwards. He had to place his thumb on
it to keep it from sliding. Then, after careful aim, he loosed the pointy bolt at
the battered link in his chain.
It gave a mighty clang and the
crossbow thrummed so loud that his ear started ringing. The bolt was embedded
deeply in the wood below and the top half snapped off. And the blasted link was
merely nicked on one side.
“Raah!”
Boiling with rage, he swung the stupid
crossbow like a pickaxe, right at the link, snapping it in two just at the nick
he made. He had finally found some real steel.
His joy was yet elevated more when he noticed
that the fat man who had taken his tongue lay dead below a large wooden beam
nearby.
Now he had to get out, make an escape
somehow. He discarded the unwieldy weapon at once and took another crude axe
from the ground. It was of the same dastardly making as the previous one, a
cheap decoy that looked the part and little else, but as a rule, human skulls
were even softer still. It also had a nasty long spike at the back that he
thought might prove useful.
He went immediately via the still intact
tower where they had offloaded him, but no sooner was he getting close than he
could hear the rattling of arms and armour coming his way. Reinforcements had
arrived, and he initially thought of passing himself off as an actor. That
wouldn’t work very well, however, on account of his hands still being bound
together and the length of chain he carried.
He rushed back to the stage at once, looking
for ideas. The other way off the stage was barred by the collapsed tower and the
ogress was still engaged in heavy battle in front of the stage, even worse than
a moment ago.
This was because she had climbed to her
feet, all her terrifying height, which made the line before her break and try
to run. But there wasn’t really anywhere they could run. In their
desperation, people were now flinging themselves from the top of the extended
seat rows, disregarding the injury they would endure upon impact with the
ground outside.
And the ogress was laughing.
Sometimes she stomped two people at a
time. Often only half a body would end up beneath her and get crushed. And what
was going on above wasn't much better.
She had gotten hold of a pike, which in
her hands looked like some bloody meat skewer. Some Maraskans sold roasted meat
on skewers just like that on the street. And the ogress, a shy, dull, timid
creature hitherto, was using hers exactly the same way.
The meat lumps on her skewer were
people, of course. And most of them still flailed with life. She had apparently
fallen into some sort of bloodlust such as wasn’t alien to a Thorwaller.
She needed to be stopped. But then again,
this was nothing if not justice. Thorsten saw the Emperor of Horas, that frail,
done man, lying on the ground behind the ogress, vainly stretching out a hand
at his fleeing men.
‘If I kill him...’ Thorsten thought.
He tried to imagine what his father might
do, but Jarl Olaf, Hetman of Hetmen, would never have been stupid enough to get
himself caught like this in the first place.
Thorsten wasn’t his father's equal in
terms of cunning, as he had learned quite painfully.
‘But how would he sit in Swafnir's Halls?’
Would he be flat as a flounder, all
squished and squashed as he had died? That would be absurd. But if he could be
whole, then surely so could Thorsten.
He recalled a story now, of Hrangsgar, the
warrior with one arm, one leg and one eye, who upon entering Swafnir’s Halls
had knocked over every ale horn because he had grown unfamiliar to his missing
limbs. The great priest Thorgun Swafnirson had told it to a boy who'd lost a
finger while throwing axes at the time. The memory made Thorsten smile.
He jumped off the stage amidst the blood
and gore, diving into the shadow of the ogress. The emperor noticed him.
“Help me!” he squealed. “In the name of
all that's good I command it, oh!”
The frail man noticed at last who Thorsten
was, and the realization made his eyes wide. He was a dying man any which way, crushed
by sickness and burden. Thorsten once again reconsidered.
‘If you are unsure, boy, flip a coin!’ His
father had taught him once. ‘When t'is in the air you'll know which side you
want.’
He looked calmly at the emperor but just
then the choice was taken from him when the ogress took a sudden step back and
her heel landed squarely on the old man. It seemed to sink through the
body, compressing all that puffy fine dress and snapping the emperor’s brittle
bones as if they were nothing. His death rattle was a squeak when the air was
violently forced out of him and his head rose to kiss the heel that had crushed
him, a final insult to his injury.
It was an unworthy death for a sovereign,
but perhaps a just one after all he had supposedly done.
The ogre girl's sudden shift had been
prompted by the scorpion finally hitting its mark, putting a
one-and-a-half-pace dart through her. The tip stuck out of her back, dripping
blood, and she started swaying like a drunkard before finally falling forward.
This was most unlucky because she ended up taking a number of stalwart
defenders with her. Those who were only trapped partially called out at once to
be freed.
Then, there was another shout from the
stage: “No! His Royal Magnificence! No!”
It was a cry of great despair from one
voice softspoken and noble belonging to a young man in a shining cuirass, green
sash and an open sallet on his head. The different-coloured sashes marked the
ranks of officers, Thorsten knew, but he did not know what green stood for
other than that the man who wore it could command a line of crossbow men such
as now emerged.
Having come too late, the young officer
forgot his charges and jumped off the stage at once, throwing himself at his
dead ruler’s body. His helm went clattering to the ground, forgotten and
disregarded. He did not even seem to take note of the armed and shackled
Thorwaller at first.
Thorsten was still wrestling with himself.
If he had any sense, he would kill the young nobleman and have the crossbows
feather him for a glorious death, departing finally to Swafnir’s Halls as he so
desired. Supposedly, the mead there tasted so sweet that it made grown men cry
when first it touched their lips, and it never ran out.
But something made him stay.
He looked where the ogress had fallen. So
much death everywhere, bodies burst open from the pressure when she stepped on
them. So much foolishness.
In their efforts to leave, soldiers had
tried to cut their way through the crowd, slaying men, women and children
indiscriminately. They stood now, drenched in the blood of innocents, among
still so many who were alive and cried, looking for loved ones they had lost or
clutching those they still had to their persons.
“What happened here?!” the officer asked
harshly.
Thorsten looked down, noticing it was him
the man was addressing. The young man had tears in his eyes and was cradling
the old Emperor’s head like a baby.
The officer flared at him in rage: “For
Horas’ sake, man, speak!”
Thorsten opened his mouth to show that he
had no tongue, and only then did the other notice the chain and shackles,
staring in sheer disbelief. A nod to the ogress and a helpless shrug was all
Thorsten could offer. It wasn’t his fault; this was all the fat man’s doing and
whoever else participated in this farce. Putting an ogress in such a confined
space with so many people and the emperor no less, putting him a box that could
only be accessed towards the stage with no way of escaping should something go
awry. They should have placed him at the top of the last row and made a
staircase just for him and his entourage, separating him from the common folk.
For whatever reason, they had neglected to
do so, and now the ruler of the Horasian Empire lay squashed in a puddle of his
own guts.
“Where you trying to save him?” the
officer asked, still kneeling.
Thorsten considered for a moment. Then he
gave a nod.
‘After all, why not,’ he thought. ‘Why
shan’t I see what life still brings for me?’
If they let him live, that was. And just
as well if not.
-
Linbirg awoke in the warmth of Mara’s lap.
She could still feel the wetness embalming her and how heavy her hair was where
that same wetness hat dried and matted it. She remembered the night before and
rejoiced at once that it had not been a dream. How many of Marag’s Children she
had been made to please, she did not remember. She must have fallen asleep from
exhaustion at some point.
It had been dark and hot and terrifying. There
probably hadn’t been so many Children of Mara, back when Linbirg’s ancestor had
made this strange pact, so he likely wouldn’t have had to spend endless nights with
his poor mouth at work like Lin had.
She was completely naked, her smallclothes
torn away in the lusty play, and she could also feel it in her bones.
“You are hurt,” Mara spoke softly when she
felt Lin stir.
A giant hand came down for a caress.
Lin sat up and looked at her legs, chest
and belly. She felt as though three horses had trampled her, but she couldn’t
see anything more than a few bruises.
“Your face, little one,” Mara cooed. “They
have cut your face!”
Lin felt it with her fingers, remembering
the ice on the lake, the sharp pain when she had crashed through it. And she
remembered all the rest of it as well.
The beginnings of daylight were coming
through the great grey ceiling, giving her a much better view than before. The
structure was like a giant, otherworldly tent held up by tall wooden logs which
in turn were held in place by the weight atop them. The ogresses had plenty of
space, everything soft and warm. The air, on the other hand, was so stale and
thick that one could have sliced it with a dagger, and it made Linbirg’s throat
tighten. But on the whole was the giant sleeping bag a much more agreeable accommodation
than most, certainly compared to the ogresses’ prior camp.
“It’s nothing,” she told Mara to change
the subject. “But I need your help, quick. We have to go and take the city.”
“Take?” Mara asked, confused.
She still spoke softly so as not to wake
the others, but despite her efforts, giant bodies started to stir all around.
“Conquer it,” Lin said. “I wanted to do it
last night, but you all…”
‘Shoved me between your thighs instead.’
Mara frowned, “We thought you had come to do
your part. Did not the grey woman send you to us?”
Linbirg wanted to smash her fist into her
own head, “I escaped, you big, stupid monster! I jumped out of the window into
a pool of frozen ice! A boy helped me, and his friends, and we wanted to take
the city so that...”
‘So that what?’ She thought, which was a
good question.
She wasn’t from Honingen. She didn’t want
it.
‘Or do I.’
Lionstone was her ancestral home, but
Honingen was a deal more prestigious, not to mention powerful. And there was a
power vacuum in the kingdom. The old king had run away, perhaps died, and now
Janna and Laura were unaccountably gone too.
She had lots of questions all of a sudden,
and a mighty appetite in her stomach. When she looked up at Mara, however, the
ogress seemed to be in a fragile state of mind.
Lin had to scramble to reverse her
outburst, “I apologize for calling you a monster. I didn’t mean that. Forgive
me, please.”
Mara growled softly, “I eat your people
like you eat bread. I am a monster, but I'm not stupid.”
There was something threatening about the
way she said it. It wasn’t the first act of threatened insubordination either.
Lin had better tread lightly.
“You're not stupid,” she said. “I was
angry, is all. Yesterday, the boy was there, and his friends. They waited for
me to come get you. They had a plan, I think. Now I don’t know what to do, and
time is running short. Just about now, my absence from the palace will be
noted, if it hasn’t already. Things will be set in motion, men with weapons
looking for me. If they find me...”
“I'll squash them,” Mara finished. “And
the grey woman, too.”
Lin liked to hear that very much, but
there was another problem, “How do we take the city? Do you have an idea?”
Killing her knights came back to haunt her
again and again, she noted. But regrets didn’t bring them back to life.
Mara shrugged: “You say it’s yours now and
we step on every worm that says otherwise.”
That might mean squashing a lot of people,
but it was a price Linbirg was ready to pay.
Just then, a horn was blown outside. She
looked to Mara, finding the ogress raising a brow in suspicion.
“It's not time for work yet,” she said in
a tone that was stubbornly certain. “Let us take a look.”
She rose, holding Lin dangling from her
hips while other ogresses stirred and rose with them.
But Linbirg had a bad feeling in her tummy,
“Wait, what if it’s the countess' men?!”
The giant woman pulled a bundle of
stitched-together furs from her shoulder and nonchalantly rolled Linbirg inside
like some food parcel. Her objections fell on deaf ears, and when the ogress
tightened the wrap she could hardly shout anymore.
There was an opening through which she
could see out when she craned her neck, which she conceded was better that
nothing. She just hoped no ogress would inadvertently step, kneel or Praios-forbid
sit on the bundle not knowing that she was inside.
Mara stuffed the fur roll under her armpit
and led the others out of the giant tent. It was large enough so that the
ogresses could stand to their full height there, but the tunnel leading to the
outside required them to crawl on their knees. Every time Mara's weight shifted
onto her hand Linbirg got a painful squeezing. The ogress was obviously sparing
her most of it or Lin would have gotten squashed, but it did feel a
little like some sort of revenge.
“What you want?” Mara barked when she was
outside and stood upright.
Lin couldn’t see anything but it sounded like
there were more than just a few people. More ogresses came out of the sleeping
bag from behind as well.
A man answered, “Uh, there's been...a man,
who escaped from Galahan Palace last night, an alchemist known as Retoban the
Blue. The man is a fugitive. You wouldn’t happen to have seen him?”
Lin was wondering why he didn’t ask for
her instead, before remembering that he couldn’t. If he let Marag's Children
know that Franka had lost her hostage then there was nothing to keep the
ogresses from going rogue.
Mara turned and spoke roughly with the
others, a particularly frightening exchange in ogre tongue.
Then, she turned back to Franka’s man, “We
haven’t squished any blue men, sorry to say. Anything else?”
There was a silence. Lin didn’t know how
well Mara could lie or how believably she could put up a front that said
everything was ordinary.
“Aye,” the man announced eventually. “Work
day starts now.”
All in unison, the ogresses started
complaining in their gruff, ogrish tongue. They evidently understood these
words by now, and they didn’t like their meaning.
“You'll break your fast shortly!” the man
had to shout to be heard. “Today, our highborn countess has a special feast
prepared for you in recognition of the fine work you've been doing! It will
just take a little more time! The feast will be had at the palace before noon,
you have my word! Just make sure none of you are missing out! Our lady
wishes all of you to...to taste of her generosity!”
Mara started conveying these words at
once, turning complaints to approval while also pressing down her arm to
squeeze and put an end to Linbirg's struggles.
“It's poison!” Lin croaked between gasps
for air. “Don’t go there!”
It was Phex's blessing to have met Retoban
who had told Linbirg of this. According to him, the poison had been meant for
Janna and Laura, but now with the giantesses gone and Linbirg escaped, it was
obvious that Franka meant to rid herself of Marag’s Children. However much the
old lady might want to keep them for their sheer strength and labouring power, they
had become too much of a threat now. Lin would like to prevent it, but until
Mara decided to lift her arm there was nothing she could do.
The man, meanwhile, carried on announcing,
“Before the feast, all of you will be tearing down that thing you sleep in. Our
lady wishes to move it where it doesn’t impede the view on her city so much. Remain
outside for the moment so my men and I can go see if the alchemist isn’t
hiding in there. Are all your creatures out?”
Mara grunted, which he seemed to take for
a yes. Then there was motion.
“Oi!” Another man called after a short
while when Mara was walking. “Where you think you're going?”
“Taking a shit,” Mara replied, snarling.
“You want to watch? It's got to be bigger than you.”
The man did not, and so he let Mara go.
Linbirg understood why Franka wanted the
sleeping bag moved. Without the ogresses, it was useless and too big and heavy,
so she wanted it out of the way while she still could. She was tying up loose
ends.
Mara walked for a while before letting go
of Linbirg, unrolling the bundle and letting the girl plummet into a patch of
dirt.
“Why must you squirm so much?!” The big
ogress chided. “You tickled me so, I almost let go of you!”
Linbirg breathed and wheezed, “It’s
poison! Don’t eat a single bite of Franka’s food, it will kill you!”
They were behind a growth of brush and
relatively shielded from view, a circumstance that judging by the smell had
served many other people in search of a privy before. Lin scrambled to her feet
at once.
Mara chewed her thoughts while squatting,
releasing the loudest fart that Linbirg had ever heard.
“Poison,” the ogress echoed as if the word
was entirely new to her. “What do you want to do?”
The excuse for a privy call had not been a
lie, Linbirg discovered, and no exaggeration either.
Lin gagged, “You must...urgh, you must not
eat it, is all. Go to the palace when they tell you to, give the others a
signal and then…it would be good if you took Countess Franka hostage. If she is
there, you should just take her. Don’t kill her yet. With the others…at
least at the palace you can kill them all. Don’t let too many escape.”
“Mh,” Mara grunted as her turd hit the mud
with a large, wet thud like some fat corpse.
Then she lifted her breechclout and
Linbirg had to step out of the way of the torrential ray of piss flying at her.
It pooled on the ground, chasing her feet and she had to step further and
further away. She couldn’t help but feel that Mara held a grudge against her.
“Can you put me back, please,” she had to
ask, uncomfortable.
It was very cold on top of it all and she
was naked.
Back before the gargantuan sleeping bag, Mara
instructed the ogresses as to what needed doing and the work commenced at once
without complaint. Whether the instructions on how to proceed had already been
conveyed, Linbirg did not know. She was pinned in Mara’s armpit again, and
before long she made a note in her mind to have her ogres bathe when all this
was over. The stench was starting to come through.
Ogres did possess a sense of
cleanliness, however, as was demonstrated by what happened next.
Suddenly, the man who had announced the
coming feast started to shout, “What are you doing?!”
Mara chuckled, as did a few other ogresses,
and she seemed to move a lot, including up and down. She had taken the man into
her hand for some reason.
“No, no, please!” He shouted, and Linbirg
thought that the fighting had already begun.
That wasn’t so, however, because as soon
as the kerfuffle started did it end again. One could hear the man stammer
incredulously after the ogress released him.
“I am a knight!” He shouted, his voice
breaking.
It only drew more chuckles from Mara.
“No, you’re a wipe,” she corrected. “An arse
wipe, heh, heh.”
She had apparently wiped herself clean
with the man, and Linbirg shuddered to think whether this was normal behaviour
for her. Giving the game away too early was ill advised, but once again she
couldn’t influence what was happening. But neither did the incident seem to be
of any consequence. The knight was silent from then on, but there were no
rebukes or anything of that nature, as if the ogresses often mistreated
Franka’s people.
They had to walk a tightrope every day,
Linbirg guessed, both sides threatening each other. Marag’s Children could do
anything so long as they did not overstep the mark completely, which probably
meant that the humans they came into contact with lived rather dangerously.
The supports were pulled out of the
sleeping bag before long and Lin could see through the little opening how it flattened
out. When Mara asked where they should take it, the knight did not reply.
“To where the pepper grows,” replied some sour
man. “Or back to that spot where it was. Makes no matter.”
The ogresses could pull the huge object easily
enough, dragging it over the fields and back to Galahan Palace. They moved
quickly, and it pleased them apparently to drag the thing right over the knight
and his men first. It was soft and airy so the men probably got away without
injury, but this constant, callous maltreatment was something Linbirg would
have to curb in the long run.
Ogres and people clearly weren’t meant to
live side-by-side. The former was infinitely more powerful and could mistreat
the latter almost with impunity. There was no sort of balancing force. If Lin
took control over Honingen, surely her ogres would take that to mean they could
have their fun with the city people. This certainly wasn’t what the
butcher's boy had in mind, and it might spell problems for Lin too.
She was just a girl, after all. A knife in
the darkness, a crossbow on the street or a poisoned supper, and her reign
would be short-lived.
‘Or I instruct Mara to kill every last
soul in the city, in case of my death,’ she thought. ‘And then I'll let everyone
know.’
That should keep any catspaw at bay so
long as they were of sound mind.
‘Only the mad ones to worry about then.’
It would probably be prudent to have any
known madmen rounded up, just to be on the safe side. But this still meant
practising moderation far as cruelty was concerned. A man who thought he had
nothing to lose was a dangerous thing.
After putting the giant sleeping bag where
it needed to go, back to where Janna and Laura had once slept, Mara walked her
force to Galahan Palace.
“Be welcome, Marag's mighty Children!” Lin
could hear the countess call out sweetly. “I wish to thank you on this die for
your fine service! Come and feast on this meat! Drink of our ale and be merry,
and if you feel a bit drowsy afterwards then do not despair! There will be no
more work required of you today, so you may rest and sleep to your hearts'
content!”
Silence answered her, only frozen grass
crushing under the ogres' heels.
“What?!” the countess snapped at the
murmur of someone else. “Of course I said day, what were you hearing?!”
Then, Linbirg's eardrums nearly burst
because Mara let out a battle cry, “Raaaah!”
The other ogresses picked up the cry and
Linbirg's fur cocoon was transferred as everything started to move so quickly
that she couldn’t tell up from down. Ogresses screamed, men, women, horses;
crossbows thrummed and flesh was brutally crushed from bone.
Mara shouted commands with a fearsome
growl in her voice that made her sound like some demon. She was quite cunning
for an ogress, Lin had to admit.
Then it was all over, as quickly as it had
started.
One ogress could easily take on a number
of men, but on this day even the numbers had been in Linbirg’s favour. When
Mara unravelled her she saw bodies on the ground, stepped upon almost casually.
A knight near Mara's foot dragged himself forward by his last good arm before
the ogress crushed his head and helm under her bare heel.
A woman was dangling by a leg enveloped in
an ogress' fist, lifted and treated to playful licks and nibbles from below.
Ogres loved killing. It was a simple fact
of life. Two young boys were running from a group of laughing monsters, toying
with them on a hunt like a band of giggling girls.
It was unworthy and vicious.
There were also far fewer men than Lin had
expected and in anguish she turned her eyes to Honingen. It didn’t make any
sense. Franka should have known of the danger, despite her cunning ploy, but it
didn't even look like all her Immen Knights were protecting her at this time. Lin
could only find two of them.
She sat on Mara's hand like on a throne, the
fur under her. She was still naked, bruised and covered in the remnants of
yesterday’s pillow play with the ogres. It had to be a queer picture she made
and an even queerer smell surrounding her. And the time under Mara’s armpit had
probably not helped in that regard.
But she was victorious – for now.
“Isenmann!” An ogress said, presenting her
with Countess Franka Salva Galahan.
The old woman’s knot of hair was partially
dissolved, hanging in a long grey wisp much longer than Lin would have
expected. Blood was running from that old wrinkly nose and she had dirt on her
face. But she still wore a mask of hatred and carried an air of superiority
even as she stuck up to her elbows in the ogress' fist.
“You little cunt,” the countess snarled. “I
knew you would be my ruin the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“Where are your men?” Lin asked pointedly.
“I see only two of your knights and a handful of others. Why aren’t they here
guarding you?”
The old woman looked sour, “Does it matter
where they are? They are not here. And thank Phex they weren’t either,
oh, heh, heh, there is a blessing in disguise.”
She seemed surprisingly light-hearted all
of the sudden which unsettled Linbirg.
“What? Who?!” she was forced to ask in
confusion.
“Her whelps,” Mara growled. “They run off
some place, the boy knight and his pretty woman.”
Franka laughed, “An ogress knows
more than you, child.”
“I didn’t want to kill them,” Linbirg lied
at once. “I hold them no grudge. Unlike you.”
She gestured for the lady to be put down
but Mara intervened by making a sound that indicated disagreement, “Mh, I've
always thought they looked soft and, mh, tender.”
“Fine,” Lin waved off. “If they show their
hide around here, you can eat them both.”
Franka still looked unimpressed, but then
Mara rubbed it in by smacking her lips together and next to them the serving
woman that was being eaten gave a last cry of despair before large white
incisors tore her apart below the shoulders. That finally seemed to worry the old
lady.
“Too bad you won’t be around to see it,”
Linbirg smiled while the working mouth of the ogress chomped and chewed its
victim. “But I'll watch. Might be I'll have some of your sugar while I do.”
She really didn’t have much of a bone to
pick with Franka's grandson and his Fenwasian wife, but then again it would be
ill-advised to have any Galahans and their spouses milling about these parts. If
they turned up, the handsome couple would be ogre food. It was unfortunate
Linbirg hadn’t been born an ogress or she might just eat them herself.
“You're welcome to it,” Franka smiled,
beaten. “Enjoy your victory. Heh, it seems this silly old woman has provided
you with a victory feast, too. All this food, it would be a damnable sin to let
it spoil. Eat your fill, child. You have earned it!”
Linbirg returned the smile coldly, “We
know it’s poisoned, my lady. All your gifts are.”
“Gift!” Mara suddenly shouted, jostling
and shaking Linbirg on her hand. “Gift! Gift!”
She pushed past the ogress holding the
countess and grabbed the one that had eaten the serving woman by the shoulder.
Linbirg was entirely confused until she saw it.
To wash down her bloody meal, the big oaf had
opted for a barrel of ale, pushing in the top and quaffing the contents all at
once.
Gift
apparently meant poison in the ogre tongue, which under different
circumstances might have been a funny coincidence but now was nothing but a sad
sort of horror.
Mara beat the barrel out of the other
ogress’ hand, smashing boards and rims apart. Her voice cracked when she was
speaking. She reminded the others to let food and drink alone, revealing that
two others had probably doomed themselves with their stupidity.
“But...we have the grey woman,” Mara said
with tears in her eyes. “How can her magic hurt us?”
It was a forlorn hope and Mara knew it, of
course. She was just grasping for straws. Lin hoped, too.
‘Maybe it wasn’t poisoned,’ she thought.
Maybe Franka had just been trying to win
the ogres' friendship. With Linbirg gone, maybe even presumed drowned, perhaps
her greed hat gotten the better of the old lady.
But when Linbirg saw her again, the cold
satisfaction on Franka's face told her something else.
“Three is better than nothing,” said the
countess. “I pray one day your beasts will understand they can use anyone like
they use you. And then you are in for a reckoning. I know what you are, you
little cunt, the tales of your misdeeds have caught up with you. I only regret not
killing you when I had the chance.”
Linbirg frowned, “I won’t make that same
mistake. Mara, crush her slow.”
The big ogress grunted and gestured but
few others had eyes for what was happening. Some were crying while others
looked worried, not quite understanding what went on. The ogresses could turn
from a horde of murdering demons into a flock of young washerwomen in mere
moments, and seldom had Linbirg seen it more on display. They weren’t all like
Mara, blessed with the wits to see the whole tapestry, much like most men
weren’t either. They were also precious little use on their own.
“Ahhh!” Franka cried out when Mara crushed
her right arm at the elbow.
The old woman’s bones were brittle and
crunched like music in Linbirg's ears.
Crunch.
The left arm went very much the same way,
except this time Mara twisted her heel to prolong the torment.
Franka was on her belly, crying. Linbirg watched
from up close on the ground, huddled in the soiled cloak of some dead knight. She
enjoyed it.
“Enough!” the old lady begged. “Let me
die, you've had your revenge, child!”
Linbirg pursed her lips, “But we haven’t
even gotten to your knees yet.”
She gave Mara a nod.
Crunch.
For being flattened bit by bit, the
countess managed to stay awake for a surprisingly long time. Bad weeds didn't
wither, as the saying went.
As her wits started to go and she was only
babbling incoherently in a pool of her own blood, Mara finally broke the
woman’s back before pulping her completely with both feet rhythmically trampling.
Franka Salva Galahan, countess of Honingen, was turned into an unrecognizable
paste that one would have had to scrape into a bucket for burial. By that time,
all three ogresses who had tasted of the food were dead.
-
The
night was light and full of mud. Krool’s knowledge ended more or less at the
causeway but sticking to it got them through much more easily than either of
them had dared hope. Dari could see the castle easily, but the light from above
meant that they could just as easily be spotted; so easily, in fact, that they
had practically no way of getting inside unseen.
There were too many watchers on those
walls and towers, much as though they expected something to happen.
The moon was red on this night, a large,
round pool of blood in the sky. Its light was red as well, which was
irritating. Out in the bog, some withering reeds and crooked birch trees had
been red too, whereas others hadn’t. Dari didn’t know what exactly to make of
that.
Now they cowered behind what little cover
there was, watching the castle.
“Borbarad was wrong,” Dari told Krool,
whispering. “They are not here!”
Krool pointed at the castle, “They must be
in there.”
Dari scoffed, “Do you have any notion how
big they are?! If one of them was in there we wouldn’t see a castle. It
would be flat as a Maraskaner’s nose!”
“Heh, heh, fairies are tricksy cunts,” he
whispered. “Nothing is as it seems. You’ve seen it.”
Indeed, she had. At one point while
crossing the causeway, Krool had suddenly been much faster than her. Her legs
had been heavy and she had to pick herself up, running after him. Then,
suddenly, he had been behind her, himself running to keep up.
“What you run for?!” he had snapped at her,
and she had understood.
She was getting strangely used to
mistrusting her own eyes.
“Is that castle even real?” she asked. “Perhaps
the fairies have just made them look like a castle?”
“Aha, don’t be silly now,” Krool chuckled.
“They’re either in there or not in there. Only one way to find out.”
“Can you turn invisible?” She asked him,
looking between the steep, open hill around the castle, intentionally void of
cover, and the muddy pools they had to crawl through to find a different
approach.
Dari decided she hated bogs.
“Nay,” Krool grinned,” but I pass for a
fool well enough. Uh, can you sing?”
“Depends on how strong the wine is,” she
replied. “But you are certainly not thinking of walking up to that gate and
knocking, are you?”
He didn’t reply.
They could see helmeted heads atop the
battlements and every now and again a puff of mist becoming visible in the
moonlight. The night was simply too bright to climb the small hill unnoticed.
“The main house makes part of the outer
walls, I think,” she pointed at the large roof that seemed to be on the
backside of the castle opposite the gate. “If there are no battlements there we
can...”
The palms of Krool's hands were the same
colour as hers, which was a thing she had always found strange in the black-skinned
Forest Islanders from the far south. She was reminded of it again when suddenly
he held her mouth shut.
“Shhh!” he made. “Listen!”
She did. There was something behind them
that was neither horse nor man coming up the causeway. It made strange sounds,
scraping, muffled steps with little weight, but also huffs and puffs that
sounded almost human.
Krool dragged her further aside,
uncomfortably close to the dangerous boggy waters. She could smell it, almost
worse than him.
Then, a figure emerged, tiny but
two-legged, but also too misshapen to be a child. But it was a child,
roughly speaking, a young, crippled little girl with something on her back that
Dari couldn’t identify. She got sick to her stomach seeing it, and so scared
that she almost lost hope.
“Run,” Krool advised and started out
sprinting.
Dari was so perplexed that she followed
much too late. She tried to remember how to work the Axxeleratus spell but
before she could, the black fool suddenly disappeared into thin air. It made a plopping
sound and instead of him there was a particularly ugly nettle growing there,
swaying dangerously with the momentum he had had. Dari came to a slithering
halt on the damp ground.
“I know you,” said the girl behind her. “You
didn’t sing for me. Are you my heroes?”
Dari turned with her heart beating inside
her throat. She had so much of a belly full of this place and magic in general
that she began to understand the sentiments of Praios priests.
The girl was indeed the one she had seen
before, golden eyes and green-brown skin and so many leaves in her hair that it
was impossible to tell the colour. But it was also dirty and slick now, that
hair, and she had even more scabs on her body than Dari. She was limping as
well, and of the wings on her back one was torn in half. She didn’t look very
good, nor particularly powerful, but Dari still believed that attempting to
throw a knife might get her turned into a nettle as well.
“I don’t know what any of that means,
please,” she lifted her hands to show that she didn’t carry anything dangerous.
“Please don’t turn me into a plant, I’m not here to hurt anyone!”
The fairy moved up, studying her, and Dari
tried to turn her face as friendly as possible lest her lie be discovered.
From the tower, one of the guardsmen
shouted, “Hey, who goes there so late in the dark?!”
“Who are you?” the fairy asked innocently.
Dari had to chew that question for a
while.
“I’m Dari,” she finally tried to force a
smile before nodding at the still swaying nettle. “This here is…well, was
Krool. I don’t…I’m not…I mean, we’re not…here to…are you hurt? Is there some
way I can help you?”
Plop.
Krool gasped for air, sitting in the mud
there as he had been, swinging back and forth and awkwardly hugging himself.
Dari considered this a victory even though her mind was still racing over what
to do.
She stretched out her hand, “And who are
you?”
The girl-fairy seemed strangely bemused,
as if the notion that someone did not know her name was grotesque to her, “I’m
Farindel, of course! How can you not know that when you walk so loudly through
my woods?”
Dari swallowed hard before remembering to
put her smile back up.
“It’s so nice to meet you!” she cheered. “I
have heard so much about you!”
This hearsay was mostly that this almost
godlike creature was the subject of worship around these parts, particularly
the House of Fenwasian whose coat of arms was a thistle, and that people who
wandered too deeply into her realm were never seen or heard of again. This was
not the way Dari intended to die, but it might well be so at any moment.
The fairy seemed to take quite positively
to flattery, however, because she smiled and her eyes lit up in a friendly
manner. She looked, talked and behaved herself like a five- or six-year-old
child, which made Dari a little uncomfortable. She had never been any good with
children outside of making inconvenient ones disappear.
She was thinking of something else to say,
well aware that her life and perhaps more than that was at stake, when that
blasted idiot of watchman shouted again, “State your name and your business or
we’ll be sending arrows your way!”
Dari snapped unbiddenly, “Shove your
arrows up your bunghole, you lackwit, you don’t know what you are dealing with
here!”
Her nerves were as taut as the bowstrings
up on those walls, and in shock she looked to the fairy to see if it had doomed
her. But the little girl’s face split in half with a bright smile, giggling
generously.
“Hey, can you do this?” Dari followed her
gut and crossed her eyes while simultaneously sticking out her tongue and touching
the tip of her nose with it.
The fairy-girl exploded with
laughter, almost falling over in the process.
“More!” she demanded, giggling.
Dari thought quickly but couldn’t come up
with any other grimaces, so she did the same one again. The result this time
was quite different.
“You already made that one!” Farindel
complained, and it was as if a storm was brewing in the air.
Dari thought frantically, ultimately and
helplessly sticking out her lower jaw to make herself look ugly and forming big
ears with her hands. That earned her another row of giggling.
“Krool, help me here,” she murmured under
her breath. “Just be silly!”
“I can do that!” the fool exclaimed. “Tada!”
He made it look as though he meant to jump
to his feet but turned himself too far thus making half a summersault and
landing on his head where he remained standing. He had to have an exceedingly
strong neck for this sort of thing.
“Ow,” he complained then, his speech made
strange by his own weight pressing on his jaws.
This time, Farindel genuinely fell over
with laughter and the longer Krool remained so the longer she laughed.
Ultimately, he made himself plummet hard into the mud, making the fairy even
happier.
“What’s going on there?!” demanded another
shouting voice from the battlements. “State your names and your business or
we’ll lose arrows!”
Torches were burning on the battlements
now, Dari saw, so it was safe to say that their cover was blown. The people in
the castle were the last she was worrying about now, however, and yet when she
looked there, she saw something that finally gave her a way out. A banner was
flying over the gate, a black thistle on yellow.
Farindel stood up and shouted back, still
laughing, “Stick your arrows up your, hah, bunghole, you, ha, ha, you lackwit!”
Dari stretched out her hand.
“Come, I’ll take you to the castle,” she
said. “You’ll like it there.”
“Will he come too?” the fairy asked
after Krool.
The fool had his legs stiff and
outstretched in front of him in the air, walking about on his hands and making
chicken noises.
“Of course!” Dari nodded, speaking as one
would with such a young child. “We’ll all go together, you and me and him!”
Farindel nodded and took Dari’s hand. It
felt no different than any common child’s. Krool walked after them on his
hands.
“Stay your arrows!” Dari shouted to the walls.
“We’re coming up! We’re bringing Farindel to you!”
That confused the men on the walls enough
to shut up for the moment.
“How come he’s so dark?” the fairy asked
about the mad fool. “Is he a bad man or just dirty?”
Krool was dark even for one from the
Forest Isles, and in the red moonlight he looked almost pitch black. But
perhaps the Fairy could see in the darkness.
“He was born that way,” she explained
patiently. “His mother was like that and his father too, and everyone else down
where he comes from.”
The girl wrinkled her nose, “But he’s an
evil man too. He wasn’t, but now he is. He serves the darkness.”
‘And what about me?’ Dari wanted to ask
but dared not.
She didn’t know what to say, and it would
have been good if another shout from the battlements could have interrupted
them, but it was strangely quiet up there. The men did not even speak when they
neared the gate, and then the huge oaken portal swung suddenly open as if
pushed by an invisible hand.
Inside, an army of men awaited them,
bearing torches. A tall Fenwasian stood at the centre of it all, long, golden
hair cascading down his broad shoulders. Two squires were still fitting pieces
of inlaid armoured plate to him as if they expected a battle. It was a bit much
for two people and an apparent child coming to their gate, speaking of the
mistrust they held for whatever climbed out of these marshes.
The man stared at Farindel the entire
time, and Dari and Krool decided it would be best for them to drop into the
background. Then, without so much as a word, the tall man knelt, and the whole
yard followed him. Dari felt very uncomfortable and knelt too, and so did Krool
after she hissed at him softly.
Farindel seemed to like it because she spread
her arms and two stars shot up from her palms into the air. High above then,
the stars united for a split second before exploding into a hundred little
sparks, raining down but guttering out before they could touch anything. A few ohs
and ahs could be heard.
The tall man raised his head, still
kneeling, “Thank you, Mistress of the Wood! We are grateful to receive your
blessing!”
It was so silent in the yard that the
opening of a door upon the main house was a great disturbance and a young woman
stepped out in riding dress, running forward through the ranks at once.
“I am looking for my hero,” Farindel announced,
absurd in her childish voice. “Can you help me?”
The tall lord swelled his chest, “Every
man here is willing to die for you, my lady!”
Somehow, Dari sensed that this wasn't
exactly what the fairy meant, even if she couldn’t spot any disagreement with
the sentiment amongst the soldiers.
“Father, look, she's hurt!” the woman who
had arrived next to the lord's side called, and Dari could identify her as Lady
Devona Fenwasian whom she had seen before at Galahan Palace.
That would mean that the lord was Bragon
Fenwasian, Count of Winhall, one of the most powerful people in Albernia. He
had to be the reason Farindel came here, Dari surmised, to get help from those
who worshipped her.
Devona ran to the fairy and knelt next to
her, examining the broken wing. Dari used this time to look for a way to steal
out of the situation but with everyone kneeling it was impossible to do
anything. The scene in the middle of the courtyard developed to be a tad absurd
as well because Devona evidently couldn’t do anything about Farindel's wing,
Bragon Fenwasian didn’t know what the fairy wanted and she made no effort to
let anybody know. The cold was starting to seep into Dari's knee before anyone
said something.
“Did the Red Wyrm do this?” Lady Devona
asked of the fairy.
Farindel nodded, “She grows very strong
now. I cannot fight her off anymore.”
“You should have come here sooner, my
lady!” Count Bragon started eagerly before being cut off.
“Must I come to you?!” the fairy snapped.
“Does the tree come to the bark beetle, hm? You stupid creatures carry your
noses so high in the air that you forget who you serve! I should turn you all
into plants for a thousand years so you learn!”
It was a spoiled child's temper tantrum
and the unbridled wrath of a goddess all in one. Dari decided that far as gods
went Farindel was a shit one to cling to. She had never really thought about it
but if someone had asked before, what she imagined this fabled fairy to be like,
she would have said, 'wise.’
This couldn’t have been further from the
truth, however. Instead, the fairy was evidently an arrogant, poisonous little
cunt with the intellect of a child and strange magical powers. She wasn't that
far removed from Pardona in that respect, coming to think of it. The world was
full and getting fuller of powerful cunts, apparently.
Cries for clemency rang out amongst the
men, none louder than Bragon himself, “We beg your forgiveness, mighty
Mistress! We are worms, we mortal men, unworthy of your grace! Please,
guide us! Give us wisdom that we may serve you!”
Farindel giggled, “That’s better, you stupid.”
She shot another one of her stars straight
through the air to explode upon Bragon's head. It didn’t really do anything
other than startle him a little, but it caused several of the men to lay
themselves down into the dirt completely and even Devona cowered back. Dari
found the whole thing distasteful and absurd.
“Tell us!” another Fenwasian next to
Bragon shouted through rivers of tears. “Tell us what we should do, we beg
you!”
“Have you mud in your ears?!” Farindel
gestured, her voice a high-pitched squeal. “I want my heroes!”
“We...do not know what that means, my
lady,” Bragon replied desperately. “Who, who do you speak of?”
The fairy balled her fists, shook them impotently
and squeaked, “My heroes, you stupid! I want my heroes!”
Dari found it too absurd to follow.
“Let’s go, they’re not here,” she hissed
at Krool who was looking as though he had lost control completely.
That morning, he had seemed to know
everything, she recalled. Now he appeared to be nonplussed, backed against a
wall. The lack of assurance she saw on him made her own morale waver.
Over in the middle of the courtyard, Count
Bragon Fenwasian and his daughter Devona suddenly disappeared. Almost
predictably, two thistles now stood in their places, a tall and handsome one
with remarkably nasty pricks, and the most beautiful thistle that Dari
had ever laid eyes on. It was time to go.
She stood and took Krool by the wrist,
dragging him with her. They hadn’t taken more than three steps before her feet
suddenly stopped against her will, and it was as though some force had taken
possession of her from the neck down. She could see with her own eyes as her
right leg hopped lightly even as her left foot turned upwards to meet with her
right hand. Then her body repeated the motion the other way around, slowly at
first but then faster and faster, again and again with no end in sight.
She was dancing a peculiar sort of dance
such as was sometimes performed in a tavern, stomping one foot and slapping the
sole of the other with the opposite hand, thereby creating some sort of rhythm not
unlike a wheelbarrow going over cobblestones.
She understood Krool's initial sentiment
now and cursed herself for having ignored it. He was dancing too, she saw,
albeit to an entirely different tune.
In the yard, pandemonium broke out with
some men starting to pray loudly, others trying to run away and everyone
shouting over one another.
“Silence!” the fairy screeched and stomped
her foot, and at once it looked as though everyone was in trance.
Only a single man could still be heard,
young and of yellow hair, wearing huntsman's attire. Dari could hardly believe
her eyes but it was Ardan Julian Galahan, Devona's young knight husband and the
heir of Honingen.
“Devona, my love, no!” he moved all around
that particularly pretty thistle, desperate to help but not quite daring to
touch it.
“Ah!” Farindel made when she noticed him.
“There is my hero!”
She was happy again, and at once all her
curses were reversed, Dari and Krool stopped dancing and the Fenwasians turned
back into their former selves. For half a heartbeat, everyone in the yard was
making noises again. Then they all fell quiet.
“Hero?” Ardan echoed into the void. “What
do you need me to do?”
It was a stupid thing to ask and
Farindel's mood already started swinging again.
She screeched, “End the Red Curse!”
“Hero!” the other Fenwasian, much smaller
and of less splendid stature than Bragon, suddenly called out into the night.
“The giantess! The bigger one, she spoke of a hero on our way here!”
“Ah,” Krool made under his breath.
“Fetch her!” Bragon commanded. “Both of
them, now!”
If his short existence as a thistle had perturbed
him, he did not show any signs of it, much unlike his daughter who was crawling
so deep into Ardan's embrace that it seemed the two meant to melt into each
other.
Dari exchanged a glimpse with Krool at the
mention of the giantesses even though her mind could not fathom from whence
they should appear. When they were brought, her jaw went down all the way to
her breastbone and stayed there for a considerable time.
They were small. It was hard to recognize
them by anything other than their clothing, but it was definitely them. Laura
was Dari's size, roughly speaking, and Janna wasn't much larger. Both looked to
be in dire condition too, mud- and blood-spattered and their eyes red and
crusted with old tears.
When Krool saw them, he started to laugh
so hard that he lost his stand. It took Dari a moment to realize why. Whatever
Borbarad's big plans for Laura and Janna were, he would have to bake
considerably smaller loaves now. The two of them together couldn’t have
overpowered a single able-bodied man, let alone a kingdom.
It was an almost epic sense of justice
Dari felt, reliving in her head all the mistreatment she had suffered at those
giant hands. They would still have to die, of course. And just now seemed to be
the perfect time to facilitate it, right after the Fenwasians were done with
them. That they were still breathing truly seemed like a wondrous leniency in
light of what the two former behemoths had done to the County of Winhall,
Bragon Fenwasian's home.
In the yard, many seemed to feel the same
as new eruptions of shouting indicated. The men prayed directly and loudly for
Farindel to kill the former giantesses, or alternatively to allow for
them to be killed. The latter raised Dari’s suspicion, like a human finger bone
in a bowl of pork stew. One needed to take only one look at the count of
Winhall to conclude that he was not a merciful man. His appearance might have
been deceitful, but even the warmest, most kind-hearted sort of lord would have
condemned Laura and Janna to die, if only to mitigate the possibility that they
might grow again.
‘Perhaps he’s saving them for a larger
audience,’ Dari thought.
But that would be stupid.
“Are they saying they can’t be killed?!”
she hissed at Krool.
The black man in his shredded motley had
trouble stifling himself.
“Mh, hm, hm, transformation magic,” he
grinned. “You think you could've killed me underfoot when I was a nettle? No, you
couldn’t have snapped my stem! You'd have needed a knife or an axe, just as you
would now, and it wouldn’t be quick neither. To kill those two lot you'd need
to hack at their necks till your arms fall off, heh, heh, heh!”
“But they're not plants,” Dari pointed out
in desperation. “They're just...small, like us!”
“Like us, correctly,” Krool giggled. “She's
made them human! Ah, ha, ha, ha! Don’t you see?!”
Once again, his madness got the better of
him and she understood nothing. If it took until her arms fell off then she
would be perfectly willing to make that sacrifice, but she sensed she wouldn’t
be afforded that opportunity. Life was cruel that way.
“Silence!” Bragon Fenwasian roared, and
the entire yard turned as silent as a grave again, all but for Krool who
couldn’t stop laughing.
The unbridled cackles were echoing off the
castle walls and created a very awkward situation. The Albernian count gave an
irritated look and whatever he wanted to say stuck in his throat. He must have
assumed Krool and Dari to be companions of some sort to the magical, childish
fairy or else he might have had Krool’s head. The moment of absurdity and
tension lasted too shortly to be resolved, however, because just then Dari
heard noises behind her. The gate was open, and from thence came moaning and
scratching sounds, and the horrible squishing of mud and water.
“Things in the moor!” the call came from
the high tower like a hailstorm smashing into a field of grain. “Red Things! Rising
in the moor!”
“To arms!”
‘Red things,’ Dari thought when she saw
what was marching upon the open gate. ‘Dead things.’
Like everyone else, the watchers had their
eyes upon the yard, and saw the approaching danger much too late. Evidently,
whatever had ever drowned or otherwise died in this misty, terrible bog was now
crawling back out again, red and screaming for vengeance. She had seen bad
things in the red woods. This was worse. Some of these things had clearly been human
once. They were walking on two legs, for the most part, and flailed around
their arms, if they still had them. But there was many a beast as well, some
looking partially eaten while others looked as though they had been eaten
twice.
Horrible mutations were visible here too. One
man, presuming from his height, had an additional arm growing straight out of
his chest, red and mud spattered and grabbing blindly at the air. And the
moonlight made everything even more terrifying to look upon.
“Close the gate!”
“Bring me my armour!”
“Archers!”
“Defend Farindel!”
“Sally out!”
“Shield wall!”
Everyone was screaming, sergeants and noblemen
gave conflicting commands, men ran into each other in their haste to obey or
get away.
Dari didn't want to get into contact with
anything out there. She ran for the gate instead, helping the few smart men at
work to shut it.
Krool grabbed her by the shoulder and
pulled her back, “What are you doing?! Get your friends and we're out of here!
Come!”
‘They're not my friends!’ she would have
liked to scream, but in light of things it seemed pointless.
“We're surrounded, my lord!” a runner
reported screaming from the walls. “They're coming from all sides!”
Farindel, all but lost in the sea of
running men, screeched at the top of her little lungs, “Protect me!”
She could turn people into plants and make
them dance against their will, but against an army she was apparently
powerless.
The men at the gate were struggling,
screaming for help. A red creature made it through, a hairless, two-headed dog
with a vicious speed to it, running straight for the fairy. It was so quick
that no one could stop it, and Dari watched in astonishment as it bypassed man
after ineffectual man until it almost reached its destination. Then, with a
slash and a whimper, the beast lay dead with both its heads struck off, Ardan
Galahan standing with the blade in his hand and a look of iron determination.
“Well struck, lad!” Bragon Fenwasian
acknowledged, himself uselessly being clasped in more plate by his squires,
there in the middle of the yard. “Archers, to the walls! Bring arrows and
torches! Everyone else, hold the gate! Don’t let anymore of these pests inside!”
Something was finally being done to
restore order and Dari tore herself loose from Krool.
“Where are we going to go, we're
surrounded,” she hissed at him. “Make yourself useful. I don't want to die in
this bog!”
“Should I sing a song for morale?” he
suggested, not serious. “Two headed dog! Two headed dog, I am stuck here in the
castle with a two headed dog!”
Some men turned to look at them,
irritation and disgust in their eyes.
“Shut up!” Dari hissed. “If you keep this
up, these red things will be the least of our problems!”
Instead, Krool launched into a sailors' song,
“under wind and rain, why bemoan a bit of pain? It’s as bad as it seems, but
somehow we still have dreams!”
She left him standing there, turning to
the gate to help hold it. From atop the gatehouse, stones and arrows were thinning
the horrors without, while from inside, men were pushing against the beasts
that tried to squeeze through the gap of the closing doors. Spears were
invaluable against such a rabid foe, and the men wielding them stuck theirs
into anything trying to crawl through, pushing it back.
With combined efforts, they were finally
able to push the doors shut so they could bar them. The last red beast, a
living moor body that was so decayed it hardly looked human anymore, was
crushed in between the wooden doors.
The sight produced unwelcome memories.
Dari looked around for something to do,
seeing Janna and Laura being questioned by Bragon in the middle of the yard. Farindel
was screeching something she could not comprehend while Devona was keeping the
fairy company.
Then, the scene changed very suddenly. It
was as though someone had lit a giant red lantern in the sky. There was
considerably more red light now, she saw, a huge, glowing pillar of it coming
from somewhere deep in the Farindel Woods and piercing into the clouds like the
eye of a storm. These very clouds turned red too and began to twist and whirl
around that pillar. Red flashes started to chase each other in the sky. And it
began to rain blood.
Lord Bragon, now finally armoured fully
but for a helm, spoke briefly with the fairy before turning to the yard at
large, “Keep your mouths shut! Do not drink the rain! It will give you
madness!”
Krool laughed somewhere in the distance. Then,
people started to go rogue.
It was as if some seed had planted itself
in their minds, and now watered with blood it burst open and released its
fateful spawn. Men froze where they stood as though awoken from a very long
slumber. They took a moment to take in their surroundings before raising
whatever they had in hand against the man at their side.
A tingle in Dari’s neck saved her from
being skewered by a spear thrust. She dodged out of the way and jumped forward,
drawing her blade and burying it in her attacker’s neck. He died gurgling. The
need of self-defence obscured what was what in the red terror. Between two men
killing each other it was hard to tell who the original assailant was.
A man next to her slew his brother in arms
and she jumped on his back with her blade entering his throat just after he
shouted, “Wait!”
It was too late, however. That man died
too and yet another man looked at her and raised his spear point.
He thrust and she dodged, shouting, “I’m
not mad!”
The man withdrew a pace, “Then what did
you kill him for?!”
They were helpless, aimless, trapped. In
the middle of the yard, Laura and Janna were affected as well. They were struggling
madly but two Fenwasians, the count and the other, wrestled them bodily away. Devona
carried Farindel like a child and Ardan stood amongst those sane men who
guarded them.
“Into the keep!” Bragon Fenwasian shouted.
“Any man who’s got his wits about him, go to the keep!”
Those who were affected by the madness did
not speak. They made sounds like animals, snarling, growling and howling. By
these means, there was a way to tell which was which. Like everyone else who
could, Dari started to run through the mayhem to the hexagonal tower.
There was a stable full of screaming
horses next to the entrance of the keep. That entrance itself was elevated at
least two paces off the ground, reachable by a flimsy wooden stair that could
be removed quickly so that any attackers would have a harder time ramming down
the door. Those men affected by madness did not seem capable of much more than
blind aggression, so the keep seemed indeed like the best place to be, provided
anyone inside had not turned madman.
She arrived just in time with the
Fenwasian group, and the door was not barred, so they all made it inside as
quickly as possible.
“What are we going to do?” The smaller
Fenwasian asked of Count Bragon. “There’s no way out of this!”
Janna and Laura were kicking and
screaming, contained only because the men who carried them were hardened
fighters and infinitely stronger than them. Their skin was turning red, Dari
saw, though if it were from curse or exhaustion, she could not tell.
“You big stupids drank the water!”
Farindel complained. “How many times must I tell you, do not drink the water!”
Bragon Fenwasian transferred Janna to two
of his men who held her down, “Bind them up! There are shackles below in the
cellar. Remove all weapons you find there.” He turned to answer the question, “Defend
the keep. Rally our men here. Kill all the madmen. Where is Rodowan?”
“I am here, my liege,” a tall old man
answered from the round stair that led to the upper stories of the keep. “We
have cleared the tower. All our bowmen up top are dead. I have replaced them
with men who are still loyal.”
He had long grey hair and was not a
Fenwasian, but other than this, Dari knew nothing of the man.
“Always ahead of me,” the count smiled
mildly. “I wish to hear your counsel. What shall we do?”
Farindel answered instead, “You have to
kill the Red Wyrm! Urgh, why are all humans so stupid!”
“We humbly beg your forgiveness, Mistress
of the Woods,” the old man Rodowan said. “We pray you share your wisdom with
us. Guide us, that your will be done!”
Once again, Dari was struck by how useless
the fairy was. She had to serve some function other than terrorizing people by
turning them into plants or making them act foolish against their will. If not,
there was no reason to pray to her, but then again, Dari had seen men pray to
Laura and Janna for merely the reason that they were powerful too.
“Oh, I know!” The fairy proclaimed like a
child at play. “Let me down so I can put all the red men to sleep!”
Said and done. Devona put Farindel on the
ground, and the little, winged snot nose waddled out of the tower, everyone
else on her heels. In the yard, she raised a fist and made a puff of golden
sparks explode, upon which everyone fighting suddenly yawned, dropped their
weapons and laid themselves down where they were, curling up and starting to
snore in a heartbeat.
Dari decided she didn't like fairies.
Of course, Farindel had put everyone
to sleep, not only the madmen. And the beasts outside the castle could still be
heard raging, shoving and scratching at the wooden gate. The red rain had
already stopped at this time. Dari had hardly noticed in the chaos as many of
the torches in the yard had guttered out. Everything was muddy and steeped in
the red water, doused in the red light, all red and black in this nightmare.
“Secure the gate!” Bragon Fenwasian
ordered. “And sift through the sleepers. Anyone with red skin, you kill.”
He drew his sword as an example and went
to stab the nearest reddening man to death, but Rodowan stopped him.
“My liege!” the old man hollered.
“Wouldn’t it be wiser just to wake those who are not red?”
Bragon was a born commander, clearly, and
willing to make even painful decisions. A wise man, however, he was not. They
tried the old man's plan and it worked, checking the sleepers’ skin with a
torch and waking those who showed no signs of reddening. Those who were rudely
woken looked like they might nod off again at any moment, but at least an even
greater bloodbath was prevented this way.
Then followed the next problem.
“My lord!” two men came from the keep, leading
Krool by his collar. “We found this one hiding below. What shall be done with
him?”
The count of Winhall looked with a mix of
distaste and annoyance at the black fool before tossing a glance at Farindel.
“He's not ours to hang,” he declared
briskly. “Let him go.”
Dari would have welcomed it if Krool
hadn’t smiled the way he did. It made it impossible not to think ill of him.
“The Red Wyrm is coming,” he said through
his yellowed teeth. “What will you do, my lord? We will all die.”
Contempt was written plainly on Bragon’s
face. He looked like he was perfectly willing to ignore the issue until his
eyes found his daughter.
“We will stand and fight,” he said then.
“Make everyone ready. Take this creature below and shackle him well.”
Dari didn't know what the Red Wyrm was. It
had to be some monster, she thought, some demon. But she had killed a demon
before, even without magic. Krool did not seem so sure about the whole issue,
however. The two strong men were pulling at his motley, but he did not move a
single inch, strong and stubborn as an ox.
He addressed the fairy, “You know they
don't stand a chance. You have lost. You are all lost. Your last hope died when
the giantesses turned red. They were your only way out.”
“Help!” a shout came from the gate.
“Milord, they’re breaking through!”
There was a crash and a scream that
sounded like it came from a mad cow. A red, beastly head with two horns stuck
through the wood. Dari mistook it for another actual demon before recognizing
the creature for a hairless wisent, driven savage by the Red Curse.
She saw a spear on the ground and took it,
just in case.
The wisent was promptly stabbed to death
by the soldiers, but that didn’t alleviate the problem. The gate cracked and
creaked dangerously under the pressure from outside.
“There is always hope,” Farindel told
Krool. “Hope dies last.”
The fool rolled his eyes and let the men
lead him away, which made the great Albernian count turn to Dari.
His cold eyes pierced her, nailing her to
an imaginary wall, “And who would you be?”
The verbal altercation between Krool and
Farindel, as well as the fairy’s lack of intervention in the arrest must have
told Bragon that she and Krool weren't as close to Farindel after all. Something
told her that she might follow Krool into the cellar at any moment. And she hated
getting caught.
“My lord, you would do well to let the
fool fight by our side,” she pleaded. “He is quicker than anyone. I've seen
him. I will fight by your side as well, as I have done since I brought Farindel
to you.”
Mentioning the useless god-fairy softened
his expression a bit, although on this stone-faced man it meant preciously
little. Nevertheless, he seemed to consider for a moment.
“I am loathe to let women and fools fight
in my battles,” he declared before a shout came from the tower again.
“Watch out at the gate!”
Wood crashed and splintered, shards of the
gate went flying all through the yard. Farindel squeaked and Devona shrieked
and Dari frowned at what came through.
It wasn't a mass of red beasts this time
but a giant foot, clad in red scales and wearing long black claws for nails. The
giant toes had trapped two men beneath them as they curled downward, digging
into the mud and crushing the bodies beneath them until they stopped screaming.
“I like this,” a great voice filled with
evil lisped in the sky.
There was a gargantuan shadow. How exactly
anyone could have missed a foe of this size approaching, Dari could not tell.
But things had just turned from worse to insurmountable.
“Into the keep!” Bragon, Rodowan and
others shouted.
Farindel and Devona were deemed most
important as everyone who was still able fell in around them. A set of glowing,
red eyes looked at them from above.
“Kill her!” Farindel screamed. “You have
to kill her! You have to kill the Red Wyrm!”
‘No one ever said she would be so big,’
Dari justified herself in her mind.
She would rather face three Grakvaloths
blind instead of whatever this was. She also figured that the giant
monster would either step on or reach for the big group around the fairy, so
she kept away from the others and stopped for the moment.
Farindel then gave a grunt and shot a big,
golden spark into the sky, whizzing loudly and exploding with a glare so bright
it made the very yard glow. The big, red thing screamed and reared back,
blinded by this blessed spark of light.
When Dari risked a peek below the canopy
of her hand, she saw that the monster had the scales and claws, hands and feet,
head, skin and tail of a dragon, but otherwise the physique of a slender maid,
even the hint of breasts upon its chest. It was also huge as it stood there, as
tall as Janna and Laura had been, perhaps.
‘Wyvern,’ she understood, ‘a Wyrm is a
wyvern.’
There was only the keep. Even without it's
claws and terrifying teeth, this gargantuan dragon lady could stomp them all
like bugs if they remained in the open.
‘Krool was right,’ Dari thought. ‘We're
all lost.’
On second thought, she knew how scarcely
little walls and towers had served their occupants against giantesses, being
more trap than defence. Dispersion might be the only hope after all.
“Halt!” she shouted at the others. “You
are running into your doom! Spread yourselves out and hide!”
What she said was even truer than she
knew, she realized, for the entrance of the keep was now barred by a fine net
of...
‘Spider web?’
On the hexagonal tower, a black shadow
stirred, revealing it to be not a shadow at all but a giant spider, larger than
an ox, black and long-legged and shining like onyx in places. Dari stopped in
complete shock upon her discovery, and there was something more to this new
beast that gave her pause.
The head of the spider was the upper body
of a woman, the colour of stone, stark naked, black-eyed, and gritting long, venomous
teeth.
‘More evil, mighty cunts.’
Predictably, Bragon and his posse did not
heed her words. They recognized the web and drew steel, but among them only
young Ardan seemed to see the threat looming above them.
When the spider jumped right in front of
the group, Ardan gave a shout and slashed with his sword in a wide, savage arc.
One of the eight, black legs was sheered clean off and the monster screamed,
retreating, turning and crawling lightning-fast up and over the wall. Swords
hacked through the web with ease and the group vanished in the tower, the heavy
oaken door falling shut behind them.
As the wood and metal rattled, the light
in the sky guttered out and Dari found herself alone and night-blind in the
yard. Her neck was tingling like a disease and it was all she could do to lie
herself down and play dead.
She found herself next to an old man with
snow-white hair and his face turning red, one of the mad sleepers, slumbering
peacefully. Then a shadow passed overhead and he was gone, replaced by a wall
of pink scale. The dragon lady’s foot sank horribly into the ground,
accompanied by the bodies she was crushing.
“Oh, that’s what that feels like,” the
lisping, female voice said above.
Dari suppressed a whimper.
Several men who had been thrown from the
gate when it crashed open were moaning all around. Dari could feel the huge
beast lower itself to pick up a few of them. Their voices rose horribly into
the darkness before the slobbering sound of the dragoness eating could be
heard.
“Mh, tasty!”
A bit of dragon-spit rained down on Dari
at the lisping word, and where it touched her skin it started to itch
abominably. It wasn’t hot, however, only disgustingly lukewarm.
“Lissandra!” a new female voice hissed, further
away and evil. “Are you done playing?! Bring me Farindel, now!”
“You shouldn’t have made me so big!” the
dragoness complained. “How will I go in there? I'm too big!”
“Tear it apart!” what must have been the
spider answered. “Use those sharp claws I gave you!”
The foot next to Dari lifted and settled
further away in the yard. Standing next to the tower against the returning
moonlight, it became clear that this beast was not quite equal to the former size
of Janna and Laura. One third, perhaps, Dari thought, and against all odds it
seemed that the keep might be able to withstand her.
The only problem was that Dari wasn’t
inside.
-
When Furio Montane awoke, he thought that
he was surely in some Netherhell. It was cold, dark and earthy. His body felt
strange, every movement strained him. Some demon sat not far from him, huffing
and puffing, breath misting in the air.
But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness,
he recognized a number of things he had missed before. He was sitting in a box
at the bottom of an earthy pit. And the demon was not a demon at all but some
turban wearer, covered in dirt and whimpering at his bloody hands. The man had
lost all his fingernails by digging.
“Retoban?” Furio’s own voice sounded
strange to him. “What are you doing here?”
For the life of him, he couldn’t piece any
of it together.
“Rest, friend,” the alchemist replied. “Put
yourself at ease. You are a dead man.”
“Dead?” Furio echoed. “Truly? Am I a
ghost, like Ilmenview?”
He didn’t know whether he particularly
liked that prospect.
“Hah!” the other smiled and threw back his
head. “No, not like that. I told them that would happen if they burned
you.”
“Burned me?” Furio asked and looked at his
hands.
They did not look burned at all.
“No, they didn’t burn you!” Retoban
insisted. “They didn’t want you to turn into a ghost and take vengeance! They
had to bury you with rites and all. The provost of the Boron temple himself
spoke you a sermon! Oho, but they buried you deep, too. And a strong box in
case your body rose as those not long ago in the city. I didn’t think about
that. I almost wasn’t able to open your coffin.”
He pointed a bloody finger at the twisted
and mangled padlock that had closed the steel-reinforced box in which Furio
sat. It dawned upon him.
“I was buried?” he asked. “Why?”
Retoban grinned, “Because you died! Not really,
though. But your murderers didn’t know that.”
“You are speaking in bloody riddles,” Furio
declared and decided he would rather stand up now. The night was cold and it
froze him, he was hungry and his throat was very dry. “Let us go,” he urged. “I
have a hunger. What hour is it?”
“Go, where?” Retoban asked. “I have brought
food, just...my hands, could you...Balsam, perhaps?”
Balsam Salabunde,
Furio remembered, a healing spell. Quite simple but nevertheless powerful. The
greater the injury, the greater the cost. He took Retoban's fingertips in his hands,
closed his eyes and mumbled the formula.
The alchemist bowed his head in gratitude,
“Nine and ninety blessings upon you. Now, I hope you enjoy cold capon. No wine,
I fear, but I have milk of this morning.”
‘Capon,’ Furio thought, ‘Capon, yes. Wine
and pipe weed. The Galahans.’
“I was poisoned!” he declared, more to
himself than by way of conversation.
Retoban met his gaze but did not react as
shocked as Furio had hoped or expected.
“Yes, that is quite true, relatively
speaking,” the alchemist replied. “A wonderful sleeping concoction so
created as to produce the appearance of death, aye. There was some
wonder as to the lack of stiffness in your limbs, but it does not seem to have
mattered.”
“Who was it?” Furio asked feverishly. “Who
wanted me to appear dead?!”
It didn’t make any sense.
“I did,” Retoban the Blue admitted freely
before finally explaining in more detail.
Janna and Laura hadn’t come back. Countess
Franka Salva Galahan had tried to kill him, framing the noble girl with the
ogresses for the murder. Retoban had cleverly seen through Franka's plans and exchanged
the poison for a different sort of brew that would put Furio to sleep and make
him appear dead rather than killing him.
“But,” Furio noted with a mouth full of
cold capon and milk while they were eating, “mh, how did you make it out
of the palace?”
The alchemist smiled, “I had to jump into
ice-cold water with the girl they blamed for murdering you. Do not worry, I let
her believe you are dead.”
Furio shook his head, “But why?”
“Because she loves you not!” Retoban
replied meaningfully. “None of them do!”
“They blame me for all the giantesses
did,” Furio conceded. “They do not know.”
‘Did I ever really have a choice?’ he
tried to remember. ‘Did I go wrong?’
“It matters little now,” Retoban smiled.
“You are dead to them and to the world, free to do as...well, if we get rid of
the evidence, that is.”
He was referring to the opened grave, an
ugly sore upon the meadow. Retoban was a curious sort of fellow. He had brought
food and drink for both of them, but not even a spade with which to dig.
But what he said was true. Furio might
have been still in danger here, but if he kept his head low and slipped through
to the sea, he might just be able to go home again. Ship travel in winter was far
from safe or being an enjoyable experience, however. And besides, someone had
to investigate what had happened. If the black wizard had something to do with
it...
“I am bound by duty,” he declared. “One
such as me is never free.”
There was a sort of pain reflecting from
Retoban’s eyes. The alchemist had hoped the two of them might run away together.
“I know this,” the Tulamidian lowered his
turbaned head. “North then. Will you take a night’s rest, at least? We can stay
in the home of the hanged chicken man.”
After filling the hole, they went to a
small cottage not far from the grave. The capon had come from here, Furio
recognized, a pair of giant feet had torn through crofts and fields, and four loose
ends of rope hung from a tree not far from the only building.
Whoever had hanged the farmers had taken
care to dispose of their bodies but never bothered to burn down the house or
even loot it. It must have happened recently or else others would have come and
taken the stores, to say nothing of the chickens and the cow.
But as nice as the accommodation was under
the circumstances, Furio could not find sleep.
“Of course not,” Retoban informed him. “The
draft I gave you to wake you up will not wear off for a few days.”
He had slept enough, Furio recognized. He
sat in the darkness, pondering what he might do, all the while peppering
Retoban with questions.
They were not far from Honingen, but the
alchemist did not believe it would be an issue.
“The old countess has much more
substantial problems than us,” he said lightly. “It seems there will be another
revolt, one much bigger and, um, ogrish, heh, heh.”
‘Another revolt in Honingen?’
One would have believed the people might
grow tired of it, given that after each time, the city seemed to have a couple
hundred fewer inhabitants.
“A good time to buy a house,” Retoban quipped.
“If you can defend it.”
Furio did not think the subject fit for humour.
He needed to go north and find out where Janna and Laura had gone. To do so, he
thought, he would merely have to follow their footsteps each of which left a
shallow pond-sized hole in the grass. It couldn’t be very difficult.
After Retoban drifted off to sleep next to
him, the night was sheer torture. There was nothing to do, not even a book to
read. He had no writing utensils and only his thoughts and the breathing of the
cow to keep him company.
He thought of the note he had found in the
rubble of Honingen’s city hall. The black wizard. Clearly, some shenanigans were
afoot. He didn’t like it. He thought about his dream and the gods. His duty.
‘Are you Rohal reborn?’
His breath faltered for a second.
“Retoban!” he whispered feverishly in the
dark, shaking his colleague with one hand. “Reto!”
The alchemist stirred, as did the cow,
“Uh, is someone coming?”
“No!” Furio breathed. “I just had a thought.
Borbarad! What if he is back, back in this world?! Would that be possible?”
He sounded silly, he realized, like a
child afraid of its own shadow. But Retoban humoured him.
“Mh, there is a mad theorem I once read,”
the alchemist said, yawning. “The musings of some armchair sorcerer who lost
his wits, to be sure. He was hypothesizing that time was a flat circle. That
which happened, happened again, and again, and forever again. This meant,
according to him, that if one left the circle and re-entered it at a different
point, one could skip time or go back and forth, even though in the end all
this would avail one nothing. I must confess, I thought it vile blasphemy at the
time, and I do not think different now. Say, what has you so spooked?”
“Just a thought,” Furio conceded. “Go back
to sleep.”
‘Truly he, indeed?’
It was hard to tell, but nevertheless
something churned in his stomach at the thought, a kind of foreboding
intuition. He kept that to himself, however, not wanting to appear more
superstitious or cowardly than he already did.
The next morning saw Furio already up and
about, trying to make breakfast. He could restart the fire easily enough, but a
lifetime of studying the arcane and other such elaborate pursuits had left him sadly
unskilled at catching chickens. The blasted little creatures squawked and
gawked but whenever he came near them they simply scurried away.
“You have to throw a basket on one,” Retoban
suggested when he woke up and saw.
The Tulamid in his sapphire-blue kaftan
was immaculately clean whereas Furio looked as earthy as the hole from which he
had crawled. Retoban knew a spell to clean himself head to heel, as well as
another one that kept roaches, fleas and other critters away from his bed in
the night. Those were simple, almost trivial spells with little use for one
like him, but Furio envied his colleague nonetheless.
What made him happy was that his body
appeared to be in a much better state than he had remembered. He wasn't strong
or particularly dexterous. In fact, after waking in his coffin, he had felt
rather rusty in the joints. But those constant dull aches and that strong urge
to sit had subsided. When he moved now, his muscles were encouraging him to
test them more.
Besides, Retoban made for just as comical
a figure at catching chickens. He tried to catch one under a basket, which
wouldn’t have been a bad idea if the alchemist had dared to move a little
quicker. When he ultimately did, and the basket finally contained the desired
animal, he slipped and fell, arms flailing, butt-first into the muck.
It made Furio laugh like he hadn’t laughed
in months.
“I haven’t thanked you, yet,” he noted
when they plucked the bird together. “For, uh, saving my life.”
Retoban seemed embarrassed and shook his
head, “A common courtesy, not worth mentioning. One hand washes the other.”
‘Yes,’ Furio thought, ‘but how do I wash
yours?’
Furio had had two companions thus far, Rondria
and Graham, both of whom died gruesomely. But then again, this Retoban seemed
more like a man who could handle himself.
“I have to find out what happened,” he
explained himself. “There are men who need to know.”
Who those men were, he didn't know
exactly, other than the emperor and his wise advisors at court. He didn’t even
know how much, if anything, the Praios Church's inquisition had left of
Horasian wizards.
Retoban stopped plucking for a moment, “All
I know is that your gargantuan maids have not returned. Their absence seems to
have been the spawn of all this trouble. And then, after the countess' heir and
his wife ran off, I wasn't called upon often.”
Furio sat up on his stool, “They ran away?
Why?”
The alchemist shrugged and resumed
plucking, “I do not think even the countess knew. She was walking up the walls
with fury, as the northerners say.”
Furio couldn’t tell whether or not this
was important. It might have been just two young hearts enflamed with passion,
fleeing from the clutches of seniority.
‘I would have like to do that once,’ he
thought and smiled.
Although, with the state Albernia was in
after Janna and Laura entered, it was certainly a reckless undertaking. Small
wonder old Franka became so enraged.
“I should go and pluck a chicken with that
countess,” he said. “She has a deal to answer for and might know more of what
happened.”
She had knights and soldiers, to be sure.
But he was a wizard, and he felt strong again.
“I am afraid that won’t be possible,” Retoban
replied. “You are not the only one wishing to redress past wrongs with her. The
girl I told you about, if those ogres still heed her call then Franka Salva
Galahan’s fortunes will not last much longer.”
“Oh!” Furio made.
He was angry that Franka had tried to kill
him, but he didn’t know if the news of her apparent demise made him feel any
better.
“I go north then,” he determined. “Follow
wherever those footsteps lead. It may be my end, truly this time. But I must. If
you are wise, you will not follow me there.”
The alchemist sighed and stared at the
dead, almost naked bird for a long moment.
Then he said, “They were burning wizards
everywhere I went, my friend. And unlike you I lack the spells with which burn
them back. I must come with you. Otherwise, my only choice is to remain here.”
He gestured around the hovel. It wasn’t
bad by peasant standards, but still Furio judged it would only be a question of
time before someone with ill intent came knocking. Like as not, this had been
the farm where that fateful capon had been raised on which they had supped when
the countess tried to poison him. And the hangings were likely connected to
that as well.
That having Retoban around might prove
useful became apparent after they had cooked the bird and were eating it, letting
the soup cool and congeal outside to take along on their travel. Alchemists,
apparently, made for astounding cooks, and Furio ate better than even at his
own noble father’s table.
“Horses would be good,” he noted with the
bone he was gnawing on still in his mouth.
Retoban stroked his goatish beard, “Difficult
beasts to come by, I am afraid. The countess sent out riders in all directions of
the heavens to look for her heir. We may well run into some of these on the
road. We had best move quietly.”
Furio frowned. He didn’t intend to rush
from shadow to shadow on his way north. Travelling on foot during the midst of
winter was bad enough as it was, to say nothing of all the other perils.
“It would be best to disguise ourselves,”
Retoban added. “Remember, my friend, you are a dead man. It is in both our interest
to keep it that way.”
“Heh, and what,” Furio chortled, absurd
pictures of the two of them chasing through his head. “A Horasian and a Tulamid,
begging alms in the winterly Albernian countryside, asking after two female
monstrosities who have trampled whole kingdoms out of existence?!”
“A little dirt goes a long way,” the
alchemist replied. “As for the rest, we needn’t say much, and best if we mumble
when we do. We can be peasants fleeing the turmoil at Honingen. Do you have any
coin?”
Furio shook his head. Of what money he
had, he had been completely and utterly robbed. He didn’t have his staff, no
potions, no bedding or change of smallclothes either. A bad feeling was
spreading in his stomach when he realized that but for the muddy robes upon his
back he truly was a beggar.
Retoban was right, he saw. Their only hope
of survival outside of this cabin was the generosity of good and godly folk, unless
they wished to betray all moral sense and turn brigand. The thought of
incinerating a peasant family for a heel of bread made him sick to his stomach.
“Peasants it is,” he concede grudgingly.
Having to wear robes or at least some sort
of insignia marking one as a wizard was a requirement imposed by the guilds.
Over the course of his life, any sorcerer would become so accustomed to them
that any other sort of dress felt queer to the point of irritation. The former
occupants of this cabin had also been hanged and burned with their winter
garments on, leaving the two arcane colleagues scarcely little to choose from.
“Dress like an onion,” Retoban advised
smartly. “If you get hot upon the way, you can always peel off another layer.”
Thus, Furio ended up with a set of old and
moth-eaten hoses over newer ones, two stained shirts over his shift, a hood
over a hat, and a queerly festive-looking jacket on top. The family had been
wealthy, at least, undoubtedly owing to the fact that they supplied capons to
the Galahans.
They brought as many provisions as they
could carry and took the pot and a good blanket each in case they had to sleep
outside. The prospect of it was dreadful, sure enough, but there was no way
around it. As they set out on their journey, it began to snow and before long,
the cold was seeping into Furio’s feet through his boots.
Despite the circumstances, things didn’t
seem to be going horribly wrong at all. They passed the village of Storkrock at
a distance and found the road north easily enough, and of the riders they
dreaded meeting, they saw not even so much as a trace. Their own trail would
vanish in the snow as well, which was welcome. At the same time, it was simply
impossible to tell the age of any giant footprint they came across, which
filled Furio with a sense of uncertainty.
It was also a testament to the might of
the monsters he was seeking, how they could so casually leave their mark
permanently upon the land. Retoban, when pointed to the observation, disagreed.
“Think how sad,” the alchemist said. “They
soil the great creation wherever they walk.”
The desert peoples of the Novadi and in
large parts the Tulamids as well, despite the latter’s allegiance to the
Garethian Empire, believed in a single god whom they named Rashtullah. This god
had supposedly made everything, and he could do everything and guided
everything somehow, which sounded appealing only on the surface. It left the
faith open to a myriad of contradictions of which the pantheon of the Twelve
did not suffer. It would be horridly discourteous to point this out, however.
Interestingly, there were the sectarian
believers in the One God amongst the Garethians and Horasians as well, but
those were hunted and burned at the stake for heretics.
The two travellers reached Arran in the
evening of their first day, and the tanners there were happy to have some
company, even if it be refugees. Retoban was wary of talking to anyone but had
to concede that having shelter was a thing they couldn’t do without.
“Few ever talk to tanners,” Furio argued.
“The stench that clings to them spreads many ailments.”
It was the work with rotting skins and
meat, plus the disgusting concoction of urine, dog faeces and other such things
used to turn skin into leather that was to blame for this circumstance, and
indeed the odours that surrounded Arran were little short of appalling even
though only minor tanning could be done during the frost.
“This is known,” Retoban agreed. “Although,
I wonder, how come those self-same tanners are rarely afflicted?”
Furio did not have an answer to that
question, and the tanners did not look like they would be able to provide one
either. Their work was of a hardy nature that did not involve a lot of thinking.
On the question of the giantesses’ whereabouts, on the other hand, they were
very happy to provide an answer, stating that the two had trampled past the
village some two weeks ago. This startled Furio somewhat, making him wonder how
long exactly he had been dead, or respectively asleep.
To Boron, the god of death and sleep, that
might make little matter, but he wondered how long his would-be murderers had
him lying in a room before putting him into the ground.
‘Somewhere, between the sacred silence and
sleep,’ was a line from a prayer he remembered, little use as it was.
He couldn’t well start a conversation
about it with Retoban while in the presence of simple folk. But simple as they
were, they knew their craft very well, and Retoban the alchemist proved very
adept at whittling the secrets of their trade out of the smelly men and women.
“Isn’t that marvellous?” The curious
Tulamid said after a while when Furio had begun to find the depths of the
dancing flames on which he was thawing out his feet to be more interesting. “To
think that bark makes leather soft?”
“Oak bark works best,” the old, almost
toothless tanner with whom he had done most of the talking added.
“Why though, I wonder?” Retoban pondered.
“What is in oak bark that makes it so?”
The alchemist had become very interested
in the profane side of his profession after discovering that during the brief
period when magic had left the world some of his formulas would no longer work the
way they used to. He suspected that there was a way in which substances
interacted with each other that had nothing to do with the arcane. And if he was
able to formulate and establish rules according to which this happened, he
might be able to open up a whole new field of alchemy far beyond boiling soap
and making perfume.
That was what he had told Furio to make
the march a little more interesting, anyhow. It was as good conversation as any,
even though Furio admittedly cared little about why bread rose and why oil and
water did not mix unless pot ash or soap were added. Such knowledge, in his
mind, was more quaint than useful, especially with so many sorrows looming.
With confirmation that they were on the
right trail, they continued on the next day well-warmed, fed and rested but
nevertheless glad to be breathing fresh air again.
Their next stop, some time after noon, was
the castle of Feyrenwall further up the river and sitting upon a rock they had
to climb via a serpentine path. Looking up at the archers between the merlons, Furio
had a bad feeling in the pit of his belly which wasn't improved by the dark and
terrible banners flying there. Finally arriving before a raised drawbridge over
an impassable gulch with sharpened stakes at the bottom they were greeted by at
least a dozen loaded crossbows pointed at them.
A man with a face so leathered that it would
have made a tanner proud addressed them roughly, “That's close enough! Keep
those beggar hands where we can see them and state your purpose!”
Furio loosened the blanket he had draped
around himself to reveal his good jacket, but when he opened his mouth nothing
would come out. He wasn’t good at sounding like a peasant, and even worse at
sounding like an Albernian. With the tanners, it hadn’t really mattered because
they had been much too eager to have someone new to talk to, and a little drunk
besides. It was winter, after all.
But this was different, the hostility
grave and unwarranted.
“Let us go,” Retoban urged under his
breath.
Furio gritted his teeth. It wasn’t
terribly late in the day, but the cold and the endless walking didn’t go as
easy as it had yesterday. True to Retoban’s threat, he hadn’t been able to
sleep, and the smells at Arran seemed even worse when everyone was snoring.
Then there was also the story of the
missing dragon bones. The tanners had removed the skin of the dragon Laura had
slain, and also stripped the flesh off the carcass to reveal the impressive
dragon skeleton. The problem was that these bones had somehow gone missing. The
tanners blamed bears which sometimes came from the other side of the river, but
Furio had a different, more sinister suspicion.
In any event, he had been hoping strongly
for a hot bowl of soup by a fire at Feyrenwall, and he saw no good reason why
it should be denied to him. Furthermore, there were supposedly no more
populated places between here and the Farindel. There might be farmsteads, true
enough, but one never knew if what was lurking inside was truly so innocent.
He stepped forward and worked the Bannbaladin
in his mind. It wasn’t entirely moral nor according to guidance, but neither
was the way the men opposite conducted themselves. The leather-faced captain
leaned over the side of the wall, squinting. Then he gave the command to open
the gate.
“A sudden change of heart,” Retoban noted
in a voice that sounded almost like criticism.
The grizzled warrior was standing at the
other end of the drawbridge when it came down, sword by his side and confused soldiers
behind him, but a smile on his face that could have melted butter. Further, he
embraced Furio in the middle of the bridge and even gave him a kiss upon a
bearded cheek. This Bannbaladin had apparently come out particularly strong, or
else this man was just exceptionally gullible.
“I know this man!” he roared amiably with
his raspy battle voice. “Don’t remember from where, though. Tell me again, how
was it we knew each other, and who is your companion?”
Furio had to think quickly, and an idea
came into his head that explained away everything well enough. The spell would
wear off eventually, so it would pay off to leave the gate with some ambiguity
too.
“We must have been drinking,” Furio
smiled his warmest lie. “I remember you too, though not from whence, exactly.”
He gestured to Retoban, “This man here is my master. He is a healer from the
south, come to see the Holy Jar at Honingen.”
“Ah,” the loud man chuckled. “Terrible
time for a pilgrimage, eh? Does he have a name?”
Names were customary as well as dangerous,
of course, and the two wizards had failed to agree upon false ones. But Retoban
simply smiled, bowed and rattled off a Tulamidian name that was so long no
person unfamiliar with Tulamidya could be expected to remember.
As for Furio’s name, the gatekeeper clearly
did not know it either but was too embarrassed to say so, much as Furio
couldn’t reveal he didn’t truly know with whom he was dealing.
“We do have need of a healer,” the man
wiped his mouth with a leathery hand. “Our lord is dying, and our own healer says
he cannot save him. Took a traitor’s quarrel, the poor lad. You do not look
much like a healer, though.”
“We, uh, had to flee Honingen in some
haste,” Furio explained quickly. “It’s bad there. Quite bad.”
“Oh?” the man pursed his lips, laying his
entire stubbled jaw in wrinkles. “Thought things had started to calm down over
there, now that the giant queen has gone away. What’s it this time?”
Furio swallowed and debated whether or not
to tell the truth. He didn’t really know the full extent of that truth anyhow,
so giving a believable answer was challenging.
“Ogres,” Retoban said after a moment, saving
Furio from his predicament again.
“Ah,” the man nodded fiercely. “Aye, that
had to go wrong, hadn’t it? Will you take a look at our lord then?”
It seemed quite trusting and forthcoming,
but between the spell, the desperate state in which things seemed to be and the
general welcomeness with which healers were regarded, it was only logical. In
fact, this welcomeness had been the very reason Furio had turned Retoban into a
healer. The notion wasn’t extremely farfetched either, because many alchemists knew
how to make poultices, ointments and other medicines from herbs with healing
properties. Only that there was such a high-status and apparently severe case
to treat was something he hadn’t expected and the only thing that made him a
little bit uneasy.
“Take me to him at once,” Retoban inclined
with another bow.
The man swiftly commandeered one of his
men to facilitate the request, but beckoned Furio to stay back. He spoke in a
hushed voice, still friendly but also somewhat stricken.
“Have you heard of my son Cathal?” he
asked so that his other men could not hear. “Young lad, looks nothing like his
old man, plays the lute and drinks too much wine on most days? He was a squire
to our lord, but he never came back with them from Honingen. Heard he took up
with that Blaithin singer whose children now sit at my lord’s table as
orphans. Perhaps you have heard of their mother, too, Elia Talvinyr?”
Furio shook his head twice, having no
memory of any of them.
“Aye, like as not he’s dead,” the leathery
man concluded sullenly. “And perhaps we’ll all be dead soon. If running away
from peril was what you came here for, you’ve come to the wrong place. The Red
Curse is at our doorstep.”
Furio craned his neck to look at the terrible
colours blowing in the wind atop the gatehouse, “Is that the same curse I see upon
your banners?”
“Aye,” the other said, following his gaze.
“Our lord’s mother, she picked it. Now, Muriadh, our lord’s father, he replaced
the family crest with the Red Wyrm on white. He was mad like that. Caused much
bloodshed under that banner.”
Furio had heard the story before.
“Aye,” he agreed. “But he was betrayed and
brought to justice with the help of his wife, was he not?”
The leathered man nodded, “Ah, she was a
sweet woman. I owe her my post. Niamor blossomed under her...till she too went
mad, that was.”
“Oh?” Furio raised a brow, now genuinely
interested.
He hadn’t heard that part before.
“Aye, not a catching story, that one,” the
man lowered his voice again. “Killed herself, in the end. Threw herself into
the moat at Aiwall, she and her men cornered. Hadn’t she made me castellan
here, mayhaps I would have died there too.”
“How horrible for your lord,” Furio
replied. “I shudder to think of the day I have to bury mine own parents.”
That day would inevitably come, sooner or
later. He had written to his parents when he had been with the army, but
recently he just hadn’t thought of them at all. Most wizards lived very
estranged from their families.
The castellan shook his head, “Ah, he
didn’t get to bury either of them. Muriadh was executed by them Fenwasians up
at Iauncyll. And they never found Laille’s body, pour soul.”
“Stonebreaker!” someone hollered from
inside the castle at that moment. “Alrik Stonebreaker, your master calls for
you!”
It was a soldier, and Alrik Stonebreaker
had to be the name Retoban invented for Furio. It was a tad obvious, because it
was a common jest that half the world was named so, even though in truth he did
not feel as though that was strictly true.
The leathery castellan smiled and shooed
him on, but not without extracting the promise of coming back another time if
circumstances allowed. The soldier led him wordlessly through the remarkably
ordinary castle and into the main house where they went straight away to the
lordly chambers. There, the stench of death awaited.
The room was dim, hot and dusty, the air
smothered. A ring of concerned figures stood around the bed, some whispering
grave things and resting their hands on the shoulders of four glum children. A
little girl was crying quietly. Retoban stood at a table against the wall, the
rapid tick, tick, tick of mortar and pestle awfully loud.
“The flesh has mortified,” the alchemist said
softly when Furio went to him. “I can make a strong poultice, try and draw out
the bad humours, but what Lord Ilaen really needs is surgery.”
“I cannot explain it!” an old woman wept
from the ring of bystanders, loud and shrill. “My nephew did everything right,
and the wound was getting better!”
That nephew had to be the Peraine acolyte
standing next to her, clothed in a plain green shift.
“His Lordship wouldn’t rest well, she
says,” Retoban went on under his breath. “Apparently, he kept tearing the wound
back open. He is burning with fever. Have a look.”
Furio didn’t feel well as he moved into
the concerned circle, but he had made them into healers and healers they had to
be. A simple spell of Balsam would seem like a miracle to these people,
or else they would know it to be witchcraft. In any event, the spell could only
prevent, not cure infections far as he knew.
The lordly patient lay atop his covers, naked
above the waist, his body shiny with sweat. He had his eyes closed and was
mumbling feverishly, and every now and then a jolt of pain made him flinch. He
was still a strong man, Furio could see, very muscular and showing battle scars
here and there. Beneath his left side, where the corrupted wound was, they had
put a white linen that was stained in all manner of colours, mostly brown and
black.
It had long been customary for a medicus
to probe and explore a flesh wound with fingers and metal instruments, but in
the Horasian Empire there had since been prominent voices rallying against this
practice. Pus, likewise, was a contentious issue.
“He has a lot of the laudable atter,” the
Peraine acolyte announced. “But he doesn’t get better. We know not why.”
Medici during Bospharan times said that
pus was a sign of infection and should be removed whereas according to more
modern traditions it was a sign of good healing. The newest ideas Furio had
heard of again doubled back. He didn’t know these matters well enough to be of
any true assistance.
For his disguise, this wasn’t really a
grave concern. Retoban could make a poultice for Lord Ilaen and they could be
on their way. But that wouldn’t save him. Cutting away the corruption with a hot
knife and closing the wound with Balsam might not work either, because
the infection had spread in and between the ribs.
“Was this wound cleaned and dressed when
he sustained it?” Furio inquired of the castle healer.
The man nodded fiercely, “boiling wine and
vinegar, a good poultice against infection and clean bandages. The wound wasn’t
very deep to begin with because his chainmail stopped the quarrel short. I’ve
never known a wound to get so much better and then so much worse.”
That was indeed noteworthy, Furio thought.
It had to be the pus. It was the only logical explanation.
“It might be advantageous to remove the
atter,” he declared. “Give the flesh room to close. Forgive me, my master and I
are not surgeons. We make poultices and medicines, strictly.”
The acolyte rushed forward and tended to
the task. While stepping back, Furio knocked against a wooden bowl on the
floor, spilling some of its contents. It was blood, drained from the body to
help balance of liquids. This practice was highly contested as well. Healing
was a field fraught with uncertainty.
The Peraine acolyte was older than Furio
and knew his craft evidently well. With nimble hands he pushed and shoved at
the swollen flesh, squeezing out a flood of stinking discharge. The lord
screamed with pain and threatened to wreathe himself out of his bed,
necessitating Furio to hold him down.
“Give him some wine,” the acolyte urged,
and Furio helped the lord drink.
The amount of discharge could not be
contained by the linen cloth any longer and started dripping onto the floor, a
sea of dark yellow with red streaks of fresh blood in it, but also dark black
ones. Towards the end, what came out was mostly black, and he thought that it
looked queer, more like pitch than old blood.
When Retoban came with the poultice and a
bowl of something he said would help lower the fever, Furio showed him the
strange substance.
“It isn't blood,” the alchemist agreed
softly.
The two of them had to mumble to each
other so as not to be overheard.
“What do you think?” Furio asked.
“Poison?”
It was a dangerous question but Retoban
pursed his lips and shook his head, “Yes and no. It is poison, clearly,
but I do not think it has been given to him.”
“Perhaps the fire in his heart has
guttered out so that his blood is no longer cleaned,” Furio suggested.
The raging fire in the left chamber of the
heart was yet another contested issue, but it seemed to explain the phenomenon.
Against all reason and sense, Retoban dipped his finger into the black
substance, dabbed it against the tip of his tongue and tasted it. A groan of
revulsion went through the room and Furio felt sick. Retoban, likewise,
immediately regretted his madness and spat violently onto the floor, once,
twice, thrice.
His wide, almond-shaped eyes foretold that
this was no ordinary matter. Furio had felt that it looked unnatural from the
start. He cast the analysis spell and the arcane structures of the world
began to reveal themselves to him while everything else turned grey and moved
into the background. There wasn’t a sliver of magic in the room but for him and
Retoban, and the bright, red crystalline structure that was Ilaen Albenblood's quarrel
wound. He had never seen anything like it before, neither this shade of red nor
magic of this nature.
“It's a curse,” he mumbled and went on to
describe it to Retoban.
Being a member of the White Guild, Furio
knew a number of spells to reverse curses. Which of these to choose usually
depended upon the nature of the curse. In this case, he was unsure, however. It
had to be some influence spell, he surmised, because it didn’t appear to be
demonic nor an illusion. Influence magic was close to druids and witches, who
in turn were closest to fairies. It seemed to fit.
His counter spell, cast wordlessly with
his hand upon the wound while Retoban provided a distraction, did not alleviate
the curse, however. He tried the spell for reversing a transformation for good
measure, but that one failed too.
It felt strange, casting spells while
dressed like this. He was getting uncomfortable. Additionally, somewhere at the
gate, the leathery castellan had to experience a drastic change in disposition
just about now. This might or might not spell danger, but if too heavily in
doubt, Furio could always cast the spell again and make his and Retoban’s
escape.
“A...curse?” The old woman from before
echoed while Furio was trying his spells.
“This is no natural wound any longer,”
explained Retoban. “You did the right things, but the wound will not heal
unless the main cause has been removed.”
The acolyte was at a loss, “But...who
might have...is it the Red Curse?”
“That is difficult to say,” the alchemist
replied when Furio noted something.
“Look!” he pointed Retoban to a dark,
black line that slowly emerged from the wound and up the patient’s body under
his skin.
It was inching forward, sliding like a
snake, and the colour frightened him.
“If that is not stopped, he might be in
greater peril,” the alchemist noted at once before turning to the acolyte. “Do
you have leeches?”
Furio pressed down his thumb to stop the
black line from advancing while leeches were brought up to suck out whatever this
was. The removal of the pus must have ruptured some blockage in the wound,
leading to this result. Furio half regretted not having applied the poultice
and leaving Lord Ilaen to the inevitable.
Leeches were swiftly at hand, however, and
the Peraine acolyte used a pair of iron pincers to grab one and guide it to the
spot. The lord gave another whimper of pain when the animal attached itself to
his person, and they could see the method seemingly bear fruits as the leech
drank whatever had been traveling underneath the skin there.
“It’s working!” the acolyte cheered.
It was a small victory and short-lived.
Regrettably, Furio’s analysis spell had
outrun while waiting for the leeches, so he was not able to observe everything
that was happening on an arcane level. To his profane eyes, the leech first
detached itself before curling up and apparently dying in agony. Before a new
one could be applied, a notable change in colour occurred on the leech’s body.
It had started out black and glistening, but now it turned first brown like a
slug and then redder and redder until it seemed to glow.
Furio wrenched the pincers from the
frightened acolyte, but when he tried to grab the queer thing it made a sound
like hissing steam before exploding into something that bore no resemblance to
its former self.
It was a red mass of goo that sprouted
tentacles on all sides, like a headless squid. And it was moving quickly.
Without delaying for another second, Furio
reached for it with the pinchers again, grabbing it tightly and pulling it off
Lord Ilaen’s skin. It behaved like half-solidified pitch, dragging itself in a
long line while its tentacle arms wreathed and curled around the pincers.
He ran like a haunted dog to the hearth
and tossed everything inside, creature and pincers. He watched the thing hiss
and squeal before it burst in the heat of flame, and finally its body caught on
fire.
“What was that?” several people asked.
“Ilaen!”
Next to the dying lord, Retoban
frantically tried to stop the advancing black line. But it was too late.
“It turned red, like the Red Curse,” Furio
said, no longer bothering to whisper while he watched for any changes in Ilaen.
The line had went up his throat, the side
of his face and into his hair line where it disappeared. But other than that,
there did not seem to be further horrors. Moreover, once the observation was
made the line seemed to pale and vanish. It was as though it had never been
there in the first place.
“What does it mean?” Retoban asked,
whispering.
Furio did not know. The three healers
watched over Ilaen for some more time and Retoban finally administered the
poultice and fever medicine. The patient did not die, but neither did he appear
to be in pain any longer. He did not move nor make a sound but for his
breathing. It looked as though he were only slumbering peacefully now.
They had his sweat cleaned off and dried
and put him under his covers so that the room could be aired. Retoban said that
this would be advantageous. When they were done, the lord did not look as
though anything was wrong with him but for his unwashed hair. This gave his
wife, the lady of the castle, so much hope that she kissed both of them.
“The gratitude and hospitality of
Feyrenwall are yours!” she declared through eyes so pink and swollen that they
could no longer weep.
It was already getting dark at that time, and
Furio and Retoban were exhausted. Nevertheless, the lady put out a sizeable
feast for them and insisted that they at least stay the night. Furio welcomed
it. If truth be told, what he had seen in the lordly bedchamber had made him
wary of sleeping outside unprotected so close to the source of vile evil. And
the hardest part of this voyage was still ahead of them.
When Reodred Ardwain, the leathery
castellan, entered the hall to eat, he did not seek Furio’s company. He did not
touch any wine nor spoke unless spoken to, and the entire time he fixed Furio
with a stare that spoke of deep suspicion.
The food was much more pleasant. Furio
made sure he only swallowed after having seen others eat off the same platter.
It couldn’t hurt to be careful. Their disguise meant that during conversation
at table they had to lie constantly about what they had done, where they had
been and so forth.
Retoban tried to remain as vague as
possible, presumably so as not to burden his soul too much. But they were all
lies anyway, and if truth be told, it was exhausting having to keep up the
charade.
There weren’t any musicians in the hall
either, but some of the younger ladies in attendance as well as one of the
children could sing well enough to pass for entertainment.
“Have you taken some holy vow, Stonebreaker?”
one of the ladies asked Furio at one point in a rather heavy-handed attempt of
flirting with him. “You have such a handsome face but you hide it behind all
that filthy hair.”
The lady of the castle, Moraine of Niamor,
admonished the younger lady for the insult, but Furio was not offended.
Instead, he apologized for the dishevelled way he looked and vowed to have his
hair and beard trimmed at the earliest opportunity. This in turn led Moraine to
another act of generosity, arranging for both bath and grooming as soon as the
eating was done. They had lost a little bit of time by staying the night at
Feyrenwall, but all in all it was good that they had come. Saving a life, much
more a noble one, had to please the gods.
Alas, despite the wine he had drunk, Furio
could not find sleep. He became drowsy and uncomfortable, but sleep would not
come. Retoban, on the other hand, had caused mild irritation by refusing to
drink wine. He would neither touch ale nor beer, either. The milk had already
been poured in with the old to let it sour and be preserved as cheese later.
So, he had asked for boiled water from the well. While everyone else became
rather drunk, a thing for which apparently there hadn’t been proper cause or
opportunity for some time at the castle, he kept his mind sharp and was able to
save the two of them whenever Furio gaffed. Having him along paid off in ways
that were ever new and surprising.
And despite not drinking, the alchemist appeared
to be asleep even before his head sunk into the pillow. This, Furio grudged him
a little bit. Perhaps on the morrow he would ask Retoban for a sleeping draft.
Not being able to sleep was sheer torture, the hours upon hours of excruciating
boredom. He should have asked for a book or writing materials, he reflected. He
couldn’t even think of how to use his time productively otherwise.
That was when he heard the strange noises.
There was the shuffle of footsteps somewhere
outside their room. Wood creaked, somewhere. Then a giggle, like a flock of
hens or else a particularly frightening madman, high-pitched and unhinged. Furio
stiffened in his bed and swallowed, thinking whether or not he should wake his
friend.
‘Caution is the mother of fine porcelain,’
they said in the Lovely Meadows.
There was some kind of scraping at the
door.
The fire in the hearth had not even begun
to burn down, so the light in the room was still sufficient. Furio decided that
he would act alone. After all, between the two of them it was declaredly his
responsibility to wield the combat spells. Retoban, for all his other uses and
abilities, would only get in the way.
When he rose and looked, there was dancing
light shining through from underneath the door now, a candle or taper in very
close proximity.
As quietly as he could, Furio hopped out
of bed, straightened his shift and tiptoed to the door, a hand already on his
shoulder and a devastating Ignifaxius on his lips, ready to be spoken. Then
he wrenched the door open with his left hand, putting all his strength into it.
The hinges screamed and the door ring on the opposite side rattled noisily, and
a cacophony of female screeching greeted him, almost deafening his ears.
It were the ladies, Ceara of Jasalin, Erin
Morganyr and Talia of Albenblood-Lighthouse, who was by far the sweetest of
them. They were screeching first and then laughing too as they ran away as
quickly as they could back to their chambers. A stone fell from Furio’s heart
as he was able to breathe again. It was all innocent after all, or as innocent
as things like this ever got. The unmarried ladies of low Albernian nobility had
already been unbecomingly flirtatious at table. Furio had welcomed their
advances in the beginning, in spite of knowing better. He felt reinvigorated, like
a new man. He craved neither his crutch nor the Stoerrebrandt’s. These women
had not seen men that were unfamiliar to them for some time, and with them
being lesser nobility and the duo of Furio and Retoban apparently being
accomplished healers, it wasn’t too far-fetched that their interest would be
raised. It was unspeakable in many ways, but undoable or unheard-of it was certainly
not. Among the urban moneyed nobility, it was quite a common saying that a man
in need of a woman should seek the country. There was value in scarcity, and on
the land, far off the centres of society, new faces could be a rare enough
occurrence to entice a lady to do things she would later come to regret. Lowborn
boys supposedly said the same thing, albeit less eloquently.
Furio certainly regretted having scared
young, handsome Talia with her dark-brown hair and captivating, green eyes. She
was a bit on the tall side for a woman, but not to him. Furthermore, she was
slender and strong, graceful, and had a pleasant-enough face to look upon. He
would have enjoyed the company of either of the other ladies as well, to be
sure. He just felt so much more alive since his death.
He debated going after them when another
figure entered the hall, coming from upstairs. This one, with the silhouette of
a man, did not carry a light, hiding any further details in shadow. It had to
be a servant on his way to the privy, or else a guardsman making his rounds in
the night. The figure stopped to look at him for a brief moment, then turned
its head and walked away into the darkness.
Furio turned away to look after the ladies
again, the wine making him dream immoral things. The very fact that they had
come to his door at this hour was elevating his confidence. They had hoped that
the prude Retoban was already asleep, he told himself, trying to build upon the
positive responses he had given them during supper. But if he was caught in bed
with one of them on the morrow, it might well spell bad for him, so he turned
around and…had to stifle a screech of his own when he was staring square into
Retoban’s face.
“What’s the matter?” the alchemist
inquired, tired but pointedly.
“Err,” Furio made, feeling himself redden.
“A flock of young hens. You know, young women folk.”
He would have expected the Tulamid to
admonish him and stifle a yawn, but instead Retoban seemed to widen his
almond-shaped eyes and try to peer past him into the dark.
“There are strange lights coming from the
kitchens,” he said. “Is that a fire?”
Furio turned. Indeed, from where the
stairs led down to the kitchens, for that had been from whence the dishes came
during the feast, there were reflections of orange light dancing on the walls. The
servant from earlier had also vanished in that direction, however, so it was
probably just the fulfilment of a request for food from upstairs.
Like as not, it were the ladies who had
become hungry again while sharing a flagon of wine and discussing his
manliness, he envisioned. But that was vanity.
“Perhaps we should go take a look,”
Retoban suggested.
Prima facie,
the suggestion seemed pointless. However, at second glance, if one were to go
upstairs and seek out the ladies, the light of fire in the middle of the night would
be a very reasonable excuse. And one could feign worry, particularly as a
healer, to seek the ladies out, concerned for their health and wellbeing. That
wouldn’t quite save one if caught abed with them, or in the act, as it
were, but one could take other precautions to deal with that in turn.
Furio felt as giddy as a young man again.
But after they slipped into their
ill-fitting clothes and advanced upon the stairs, they saw smoke emerging, and
it became clear quite quickly that the source of the light was not a fire for
the purpose of some peaceful nuncheon. Only Furio dared to go downstairs, and
what he saw made him run right back up immediately. He couldn’t see how it had
started, but somehow a large, bunched-up cloth had caught fire, then setting
alight the table on which it stood and all other items upon it, all set in some
room between the bottom of the stairs and the kitchens.
They called out at once. Retoban went
upstairs to wake everyone there while Furio took charge of the lower stories. It
was Phex’s wish that they had discovered the fire early, and his blessing too,
for there was still time to save everyone and try and put out the flames before
they destroyed the building. When he stepped outside, Furio saw a lone figure
standing in the yard, so he was not the only one who had noticed it, but it
fell to him to find the outside entrance to the cellars and wake the servants
sleeping in the kitchens that way, which wasn’t particularly easy in the
darkness.
When he had brought them outside, Retoban
was emerging from the main entrance with the ladies, children and upstairs
servants, and the guardsmen from the gate and walls were joining them as well.
Moraine of Niamor was screaming, “My
husband, we have to save Ilaen!”
The servants and soldiers were quickly
forming a line from the building to the well where all available vessels were
hastily filled with water. At that time, the flames were already starting to
lick out of one of the windows of the main building.
Furio pulled the shoulders of two water
carriers and burdened them with the task of rescuing the injured lord. He would
have gone himself but experience had showed him that some things were better
left to stronger men, particularly if they were of this nature.
It was very surprising then, when the two
came back and reported that the lord was not to be found in his bed, and a man
under a blanket in the middle of the bucket chain announced, “I am here.”
Retoban had a torch and shun the light
upon the speaker, and indeed it was Ilaen Albenblood, handing buckets along as
though nothing had ever happened, as though there wasn’t a corrupted, pus-leaking
wound in his side.
“Oh!” Moraine of Niamor threw herself at
him, necessitating the buckets to be handed around them. “Oh, my lord of
Praios! Oh, Phex!”
She buried herself so deep in his arms
that it made Furio jealous, but the lord himself seemed rather unperturbed.
In spite of all, he nodded at the burning
building and said, “It’s my fault, this. I was hungry and wanted to warm myself
a meal. When I realised I wasn’t in the kitchens it was already too late.
Everything was burning!”
“The fever!” his lady threw in at once,
explaining his behaviour. “Oh, you should have spoken to someone! What if your
negligence gets someone killed?!”
“Everyone is well accounted for, my lady,”
the grizzly, leathery castellan said with a sharp look at Furio.
In the dim light of torches and housefire,
he looked as though someone had formed him from pure clay and then burned him
in the fire of a smelting furnace. The man wasn’t even particularly old as
Furio had learned much to his surprise during the feast. He had just kept in
the sun for too long and his skin did not thank him for it.
Furio leaned into Retoban’s ear and
murmured, “We should leave.”
But
a look thrown back across the yard revealed that the gates to the outer ward
had been closed. The earliest time for their departure would be on the morrow,
as planned. They would do well to turn their backs on this place.
“My lord, your wound,” Retoban imparted
helplessly. “You should not be out here!”
“Oh, this?” Ilaen Albenblood looked down
at his open side after disentangling himself from his woman. “I’ve had good
care.”
That could not be argued with, so everyone
was ushered to night under more modest accommodations in the keep when it
became clear that the fire would be kept under control. The main building
needed airing out from all the smoke, and there was some anxiety over the fire
restarting from undiscovered ambers in the structure.
Perversely, this time, despite his best
efforts to stay awake, Furio fell asleep like a stone, and he awoke with
sunlight already shining through the arrow slit within their small new chamber.
He grabbed his things at once, the pot, the supplies, the blanket and his
robes, and he shook Retoban awake with a boot.
That was rather strange, though. He had
heard that the followers of Rashtullah, such as abhorred pork and fermented drinks
as well as their derivatives, prayed fervently and at length several times
during the day, starting in the early morning. Yet, Retoban never did any such
thing, and still would not touch pork or alcohol except for alchemical
purposes. Religion was a selective game, to be sure, and fraught with
hypocrisy. The same was true for many believers in the Twelve.
‘If I had a copper for every priest who
shags whores,’ he thought merrily before returning to the seriousness as hand.
“Hurry,” he urged Retoban on, “we must go!”
It came out perhaps a tad more urgently
than was warranted on the factual basis.
The alchemist froze while packing his things,
“Do you think Lord Ilaen may have started the fire with intention?”
It was unthinkable, and yet it was
precisely what was on his mind. There was nothing to gain from it, it was
just…madness. Just like late Lord Muriadh Albenblood’s wife, according to the
castellan.
“I fear his lordship may not be of sound
mind,” he explained. “Something is wrong here, clearly.”
He could not stop thinking about his talk
with Reodred Ardwain, the castellan, of how the mother had become mad too in
the end. True enough, there appeared to be explanations for everything, but
that was not the direction of Retoban's reasoning.
“If that is true,” the Tulamid alchemist argued,
“then everyone here is in danger, particularly the children.”
The children. It was ever the innocent who
suffered most. That sentiment was wrong, of course. It was just that reactions
were felt most strongly for them. He felt it too, despite the absurdity of it.
There had been children in every village in Thorwal and Janna and Laura had
destroyed them all before his very eyes. Just like all the rest.
“Perhaps it was just the fever,” he
conceded, his guts churning in shame. “Let us see if there is anything we can
do.”
If it was just an accident, then
everything would be fine. If Ilaen was mad there was nothing they could do
anyway.
‘Well, perhaps a word of warning.’
But when they climbed down from the tower
and came into the yard, they could see Lord Ilaen up and about, tending to his
horse before the entrance to the main house. A crowd of people stood around
him, stable boys, men, and the castellan, all watching in distress. The lord
was wearing hunting attire and seemed to be in very high spirits.
Lord Ilaen as a man looked rather unremarkable.
His chestnut-brown hair was becoming scarce at the top of his head, but it was
shorn so much that it looked like an extension of his stubbly beard. His
grey-green eyes looked friendly and awake, as appeared to be the essence of his
nature.
“My healers!” he exclaimed happily when he
saw Furio and Retoban coming. “I must apologize for not having thanked you for
your service yesterday. I was in a bad way and confused.”
“Aye, that is quite understandable, my
lord,” Furio evaded the courtesy as he stepped around the beautiful brown mare.
“But if you want your recovery to be of long duration then you should take back
to your bed and rest, else all our hard work will be in vain.”
“Hah!” Lord Ilaen grinned and slapped his
horse. “I cannot lay down. I feel so much better. I was hoping the both of you
would join me. I have a mind to go hunting!”
‘Hunting?’ Furio thought, despairing. ‘Has
he entirely lost his wits?’
At least this would make any sort of
explanation obsolete. He was about to caution the lord some more when his wife
came angrily shouting from the main house.
“Ilaen!” she screamed in distress. “Why
are you not in your bed? What in Praios’ name are you doing?!”
“My love!” He cheered, grinning even
wider. “I am all better, look!”
He lifted his clothes to show her. The
wound was a great deal better than it had been, the swelling subsided somewhat,
but it was still partially open and leaking.
“My lord, you should…” Furio started
before the lady cut him off.
“Do you intend to go riding?” She
screeched. “You will undo yourself! Do you mean to die, you stupid fool?!”
The lord laughed in her face before
turning to Furio, “Hah, with a wife like that, who wouldn’t, eh?”
The slap she dealt him echoed across the
yard. He froze and held his cheek, and Furio dared hope that she had slapped
some sense back into him. But when the initial shock was overcome he made a
boyish face and assaulted her, right there before all the people in attendance.
He took her face in his hands and forced his mouth on hers, kissing her violently
and in spite of her struggles, only leaving off her after a long moment. He was
strong, still, Furio could see. Alas, madmen with power were the most dangerous
of all.
“Has your fever subsided, your lordship?”
Retoban inquired cleverly.
Ilaen looked at him as if he were drunk.
“No,” he declared happily. “I have a fever
in my blood, and only the cold wind in my face can cure it!” He looked at the
men standing around with grief on their faces, “Eh?! What are you lot waiting
for, quick, get the hounds and ready yourselves, your lord means to go
hunting!”
“Ilaen, you can’t go hunting now!”
Lady Moraine pleaded with him.
His reaction was even starker than before.
In the blink of an eye, his dagger was drawn from its sheath and at her throat,
and he grabbed her neck with his off hand, staring into her eyes.
Spittle flew from his mouth and into her
face when he screamed at her, “Do not presume to tell me what I can do, woman!”
It remained like this for a moment ere he
let go of her and the lady collapsed, crying and shaking profusely. Furio was
shaking too.
“Ah, stop your whinging,” Ilaen cursed
down at her before looking to the main house. “Now, where are my children?
Bring my beautiful children to me!”
He sheathed his blade then, but still nobody
thought it was a good idea to comply. When no one would move, the castellan
proved most loyal, setting himself into motion and calling out names. He also
spurred on the stable boys to make do on his lordship’s orders to which they
reluctantly acquiesced.
“My lord,” Furio pleaded, “your wife has
the truth of it. If you do this, you may well die.”
“Ah,” Ilaen waved off without looking, “I’ll
hear no more of this. Best ready your bow arm…uh, what is your name again? We
have not yet properly met, have we?”
If Furio had seen Ilaen at Honingen before,
back when Laura had played her courtly games, then he did not recall it. The
two of them had never bandied words, and Ilaen did not seem to recognize him
either, perhaps because he was so much more kempt now.
“Stonebreaker, my lord,” he replied.
“Alrik Stonebreaker.”
Retoban’s name had the word ‘Ibn’ in it several
times for in Tulamidya it meant as much as ‘the son of’. Ilaen laughed at the
ridiculously long name and called the alchemist exactly that.
“Ah, there are my children!” the apparent
madman exclaimed when the little ones were brought out. “Thalian, my son! Come,
your father takes you on the hunt today!”
“No!” Lady Moraine cried out on the
ground. “Ilaen, he’s six! You’ll kill him too!”
“Rubbish!” Ilaen laughed and marched upon
the boy, lifting him up and throwing him before catching him again.
The child was scared and started crying,
and the girl saw her mother dissolving in the dirt and started crying too.
“By the gods, why is everyone so glum in
this castle?” the lord asked all around.
Then Furio and Moraine started shouting in
unison when Lord Ilaen unceremoniously tossed his son into the saddle of his
horse and slapped the mare over her hind to send her into a gallop.
The noble steed had not made three steps
before the screaming child fell off, his little head hitting the cobbles so
hard that it bounced back up before coming to rest again. The lady screamed, the
lord whistled after his horse and the little girl started crying out for her
brother.
Furio felt tears burning at the edges of
his eyes. He had heard the stories. With the Red Curse, it wasn’t only that the
plants turned red and the animals rabid, but it was common to hear of strange
things occurring without specification. It was harsh to see for oneself
what these things entailed. Sure enough, an over-eager father getting his son
injured or even killed was not unheard of. These things happened, just like the
crops failed and the cattle stopped breeding every now and again without that a
curse had to be at fault, no matter what the people suspected in their superstition.
And indeed, while Lady Moraine crawled to
her son and cradled him in her arms, screaming all the while, Lord Ilaen seemed
to only have eyes for his horse at first but then seemed to come around to
realising what he had done. He stood at his wife’s shoulder with an ashen face.
When he tried to reach for the child, the lady screamed at him so viciously
that he backed off and his hat fell off the back of his head without him
noticing.
“Don’t just stand there, healers!” the
castellan growled then. “Do something!”
Retoban and Furio rushed to the boy. It
was hard to get a look for the lady was clutching young Thalian so tightly that
she was like to smother him. When finally they were able to get the boy free
they could see that he was still breathing.
Young bones bend well, it was said, and it
did not appear as if the boy’s skull had been shattered. It was also not
uncommon, on the other hand, for death to occur a couple of days or weeks hence
in the case of an injury like this. The skin had broken and a flap partially
torn off, and blood was pouring out in worrying quantities. It did not look
promising, especially since the boy was no longer conscious. Had he had to bet,
Furio would have put his coin on death, without question.
“Will…” Lord Ilaen cried out, now
mortified. “Will he live?”
It was hard to hear him over Lady
Moraine’s crying.
“Pray, my lord,” Furio said loudly before
mumbling to Retoban. “Balsam Salabunde. Or the boy will die.”
He put his hand on the injury and mumbled
the formula as quickly and discretely as he could, acting as though he himself
was praying. Then, he called for bandages.
It worked out remarkably well, somehow.
The boy’s head injury was under his hair, so blood and dirt disguised the lack
of an actual wound there so long as one did not look for it explicitly. Then, Retoban
wrapped so many thick bandages around Thalian’s head that the boy looked like a
little camel driver, adding instructions for the cloths not to be removed before
a week hence. The accident had also left the rest of the boy quite green and
blue, so the one spell did not grant him a suspiciously full recovery. He would
not be doing cartwheels up and down the yard any time soon.
But when he opened his eyes again and
spoke, the glee that flowed from both parents was palpable. It was the right
spell in the right place at the right time, precisely as Furio had been taught.
A wizard’s use to the world was maximized that way, and the common people not
unnecessarily antagonized.
“It’s like I said,” Ilaen finally conceded,
“I have a fever in my blood. I should rest…rest until I am better.”
He also apologized to his wife at quite
some length, although he did it so far apart from everyone that Furio could not
hear what he was saying. Was it enough to declare a man mad if he put a knife
to his wife’s throat? Judging from what one could hear from men in their cups,
the notion, at least, was not that uncommon. And she had slapped him, publicly
humiliating him. For a lord, such a thing was intolerable and warranted a
strong reaction, although slapping her back would probably have sufficed.
It was also unknown how the lady took his
apology for she went back to the keep with her injured son to watch and pray
over him at his bedside. Ilaen, meanwhile, resolved not to take himself to bed
but assess the fire damage, already diverting from his promises.
“My lord, you should rest,” Furio intreated
upon him yet again, climbing after him through the wreckage of the kitchens.
The building was made of mortared stone or
else the results may have been calamitous, but even so the floors atop had burned
and partially caved in, feeding the fire a bed with cloth hangings, straw,
sheets and blankets.
“Those were my children’s rooms,” Ilaen
observed with a look at the damage. “If you had not seen the fire and acted the
way you did, all four of them would have died screaming.”
Two of the noble children in the castle
were his lordship’s own, Furio had learned during the feast, and two others had
been given to him as wards so that they may learn the ways of a proper court.
There was some dark shadow hanging over that whole issue, or at least he could
not shed the feeling that there was something he wasn’t told.
“My lord,” Furio said, trying to choose
his words carefully, “when we treated you, some bad humour may have escaped
from your wound. We cannot rule out the possibility that it has affected your
mind.”
Ilaen laughed, “Ah, hah! That would be a
fine excuse, wouldn’t it? No, healer, I fear I have only myself to blame. Me
and my own recklessness. It has ever been this way.”
“Your lordship,” Retoban chimed in from
behind Furio, pressing forward. “We put a leech on you to drain the bad blood.
It exploded, my lord! The leech exploded with red blood!”
“It probably overdrank itself,” Ilaen
offered, shrugging. He wasn’t really paying attention to them anymore, focusing
instead on the damage. “We’ll need wood,” he concluded. “I’ll send a boy up on
the roof to see about things there. Let’s pray we don’t need to rebuild the
whole place.”
“My lord,” Furio tried, but Ilaen waved
off.
“Stop bleating!” he snapped. “You two are
worse than my wife! I will pay you for your services and release you after my
son’s recovery. Now get out of my sight before I have you whipped!”
-
Linbirg sat at her desk in front of the
countinghouse that currently served as the improvised city hall of Honingen. The
city was hers. There hadn’t been any meaningful resistance. Her ogres could
overwhelm them all. But if she went inside, she would be at the mercy of
whoever was stronger than her, just as she had been at the mercy of the
Galahans. So, she had to do her work outside, which was far from ideal in this weather.
Her wardrobe had changed completely. She
had a nice, thick dress, a brocade jacket, and the city magistrate’s chain of
office draped around her shoulders over a fur shawl. She liked these clothes
most of all. But she didn’t get to enjoy them.
Running a city was a chaotic business and
she wasn’t cut from an administrator’s cloth. She could kill Belisa Tibradan
well enough and wear her chain of office. But she couldn’t really replace the
woman. At least that was what Linbirg believed.
Perhaps it had been another mistake to
kill Belisa. She lay squashed before Mara’s feet not far off, her blood
freezing to red ice on the cobblestones. But what was done was done, as ever,
and Linbirg could not ask her help to make sense of the parchments before her
on the table.
The council of guild masters were having a
discussion she hardly understood a word of. She had also heard the names of
each and everyone of the people present, and yet she couldn’t remember a single
one except for Bran Braelghan the Elder, guild master of butchers and father of
Bran Braelghan the Younger, her red-haired, gap-toothed butcher’s boy. When she
had entered the city, sitting on Mara’s hand, she had sent ogresses to block
all the gates. Mara had then caught people at random and held them upside down
until someone finally divulged where Lin could find him, but it came to pass
that Bran’s father had already heard of his deeds when they met again. Bran’s
face still bore the marks of his father’s temper, cuts and bruises, but he had
not wanted his father killed, nor even punished. He wanted the guilds to rule
the city. Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely clear where Linbirg’s place was in
all this.
He had insulted her as well, before. But
that had been while in the process of rescuing her, so she was ready to forgive
him.
“Having a market is the most important
thing,” a bald, burly guild master reiterated for the tenth time or so. “It’s
the lifeblood of our city, bringing in coin from elsewhere. We cannot subsist
without it!”
Just like the nine times before, everyone
nodded in agreement. Discontent existed over how often a market should be held,
however, and how the right to erect stalls should be handled, and whether there
should be separate markets for different goods or just for livestock.
“And what of them?” a smaller guild
master raised a new item of debate, nodding at the ogress closest to him. The
gargantuan women, between ten and twelve paces tall, stood between Linbirg’s
council and the crowd that had gathered to learn what was being done with their
city now. “Peasant or merchant, I wouldn’t take my goods anywhere these things
might step on me.”
A frightened whisper went through the
circle a few furtive glances were cast at Linbirg.
She pulled at Bran’s sleeve and leaned to
whisper to him, “Should we have that one squashed? I find him insolent.”
Bran shook his pretty head, “That’s Tamlin
Ceol, master of the saddlers. And he has a point.”
She didn’t agree at all. It would probably
be best to remember his name and have Mara remove him at the earliest
opportunity. Just to be sure, she took a quill, dipped it into the inkpot and
scribbled the name Tamlin Ceol on a corner of parchment before ripping it off
and shoving it into her bosom as soon as the ink was dry.
“You’ve torn a piece off our imperial
reform bill,” Bran noted disapprovingly.
There was another set of words she didn’t
understand.
“Is it important?” she asked sheepishly,
eying the large document that contained so much minuscule writing that it made
her dizzy.
She could identify the words Mersingen
Castle at a glance, and singular words here or there, but nothing appeared
to make broader sense.
“Well, it’s only a copy, of course, but it
recognizes the League of Imperial Towns, among other things,” he replied in a
way that suggested great importance. “If we’re lucky, mayhaps we can join the
League! Can you imagine that?”
She couldn’t.
“They may scare the pilgrims away as
well,” another guild master agreed with Tamlin Ceol. “Perhaps it would be best
if they, um, retired from Honingen? I am sure we could find some sort of
arrangement.”
“We owe the ogres our freedom!” Bran the
Elder declared with a cautious glance at Linbirg. “We do not have soldiers and
of our able-bodied men few and fewer are left to defend the city. What if
Nordmarken comes, or the Stepahans or the Fenwasians, or a band of brigands or
mercenaries? We need them!”
“Bollocks!” Another guild master objected,
one wearing scissors on his belt next to a dagger. “We’re their prisoners now,
just as we were the giantesses’ before them! All this Vulture shite has
poisoned your brains! We need King Finnian back, and I for one pray daily for
his swift return!”
Linbirg sighed and pulled Bran’s sleeve
again, “And what’s that one’s name?”
“What’s she writing?” yet another one of
the guild masters asked in alarm when Linbirg took a fresh sheet of parchment
and started to write down the name of everyone she wanted to be flat by
morning.
The list was expanding rapidly as the
discussion progressed.
“She’s, uh, taking notes, I believe,” Bran
the Younger explained with a look over her shoulder. “We have Lady Linbirg’s
assurance that her ogres will not only obey our laws but will help uphold them.
That includes all new laws we are passing here.”
Bran had indeed requested that assurance
from Linbirg, and she had agreed without thinking about it. Perhaps he thought himself
awfully clever, or elsewise he placed a lot of importance in the contents of
parchments even though he could evidently not read very well. Whatever the
case, his scheme swung back like a quintain and clobbered him over the head.
“I call for a vote to banish the ogres
from our city!” Fann Cailin, the smaller man, shouted at once, stepping forward
and raising his fist into the air.
His name was already on Linbirg’s list.
She could hear Bran Braelghan the Younger
suck in air through his missing front tooth but it was his father who really
let flare his temper.
“Oh, call a vote! Oh!” he made, imitating
a chicken. “When did you grow a fucking spine, Cailin?! Usually, you let Karjelin
speak for you first and then it’s tweet, tweet, whatever you say, master!”
There were greater and lesser guilds,
according to membership and importance for the city, Linbirg recalled Bran the
Younger explain. Cailin’s guild had to be one of the less important for despite
looking deeply insulted he remained quiet.
A tall, lanky guild master in
exceptionally fine dress looked disapprovingly at Braelghan, however, so he had
to be Karjelin. Linbirg wrestled with herself whether or not she should put his
name down. She noted that how well the men were dressed could tell her how
important they were, for Bran the Elder, despite being merely a fat butcher, was
exceptionally well dressed for a commoner as well. The Braelghans prided
themselves in having invented the renowned Honinger Crackers, the loudest
sausage in all the world, and their family led the guild of butchers.
“A vote has been called,” Karjelin finally
noted thinly. “I would hear Vialligh and Mandibel on the matter.”
There were two more of those well-dressed men,
one who was even fatter than Braelghan and one who was very young and looked as
though he had inherited his position only recently, along his forebear’s
ill-fitting wardrobe. Everyone looked to the young boy first but he only shook
his head a few times and professed to have no opinion on the matter.
So, it fell to the fat man.
“You all know me,” he began heavily,
revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth. “You all know my family has been in
Honingen from the very beginning, making our living in the very trade that gave
our city its name. You all knew my daughter, Boron rest her soul. She was in
the service of our beloved city magistrate Belisa Tibradan, who lies there,
trampled to mud beneath another giant beast’s foot!”
“If I had my cleaver, I would cut your
fucking head off, Vialligh!” Bran the Elder blustered when it became clear
where the little speech was going.
A shouting match ensued and only few
things could be understood clearly, which was mostly insults, but Vialligh
roared over them all, “What laws were being followed there, I wonder? What
trial did Belisa stand before her death was decided, and who voted on it? I
know I didn’t!”
Lin could feel Bran the Younger’s fingers
dig into her shoulder. It made her sublimely happy and she put a cheek against
the back of his hand, feeling his skin. But it lasted only briefly.
“Masters!” He called out to restore order.
“Masters!” It wasn’t enough so he took away his hand, put the lid back on the
tin inkpot and banged it loudly upon the table until everyone quieted down. “You
can’t chop wood without dropping a few splinters! You all know this! Our
problem is simple! The ogres are lending us a hand! Would you slap it away?!”
“You do that, who can blame them if they
give us their foot instead?!” Bran the Elder added hastily. “And they’ll put it
right up our arses!”
“I lost three members to those helping
hands!” Cailin objected before the shouting resumed.
Linbirg couldn’t take it any longer. She
took Bran’s hand and held it against her cheek, looking up at him from her
chair. He was so beautiful. She felt all fluttery inside.
He seemed rather perturbed by what was
going on, however, his great plan unravelling before his eyes. He couldn’t
understand why the guild masters were objecting, but Lin had already come up
with a plan to make it work.
“If you vote upon the morrow, you will win,”
she smiled at him. “I can have Mara kill all the stubborn ones. Or we can do it
right now, if you want?”
She didn’t like the smug, satisfied faces
of most of them anyway. If it hadn’t been for Bran she would have had Mara and the
others turn them all into carpets. She knew Mara was just waiting for the
order.
“What?” Bran took his hand away and looked
at her in disgust. “No!”
She pressed her lips together, fearing
that he might think her cruel.
“Well, hostages then,” she offered.
“Nobles always take hostages to compel others. Where you chop wood, there will
be splinters?”
She felt clever for quoting his own words
back to him, but it didn’t have the desired effect. Instead, he turned his head
away from her, denying her the feeling she received when basking in the gaze of
his green eyes.
“So your boy’s bitch will let us
make our own laws so long as we make the laws she likes? What kind of freedom
is that?!” Vialligh spat in the middle of the circle, again the only man with
the lungs to drown out all the shouting.
It was the last thing he said before
Mara’s foot slammed into him and pressed him down, compressing his fat body
like a fluffy pillow.
“You worm!” the ogress growled angrily
from above.
The quarrelling circle was silent at once.
Men ducked and cast their eyes upward to look for more giant feet dropping out
of the sky. Meanwhile, Mara’s toes wiggled playfully. They had enjoyed playing
with Belisa Tibradan’s hapless form as well.
But Bran the Younger was not happy at all
with this development.
“No,” He shouted. “No, don’t do it!”
Pleading seemed to intrigue Mara only more
and they could hear Vialligh whimper and groan as she increased the weight upon
him. It was only because he was so fat that he was still alive, Linbirg had no
doubt.
She made her decision and stood, “Off him,
Mara!” She gestured for the ogress to lift her foot too, just so everyone could
see who was truly in power. “Young Bran said it right!” she declared as soon as
the ogrish foot ascended. “I agree to be your guardian in all this and abide by
your rules but if you cast me out then I am no longer bound by these rules!”
She looked at Vialligh slowly clawing
himself forward over the cobblestones, every move untold agony. She wanted to
see Mara smash him to pieces even though his insult hadn’t really offended her.
She rather liked the picture, in fact. Bran had a dog, a little Therengar-Terrier
that was brown and white and was called Hot Sausage. If she could be loved by
Bran the way he loved his dog then this would make her the happiest girl in
Honingen.
She went on, “I am the only thing that
prevents these ogres from killing you all! I am what constrains them. But, if
you don’t want me...”
She smiled and showed them her cold
shoulder while turning her thumb down at Mara. The ogress understood perfectly,
her foot coming back a moment later and crushing Master Vialligh into the stony
ground. He squealed like a pig before the air left his body.
“There’s this one thing you can’t do,” she
sniffed at them. “And you lose your heads over it.”
“I-I-I withdraw!” Fann Cailin screamed
before kneeling down next to Vialligh. “No vote, as you wish! For Ingerimm’s
sake, don’t kill the man! We’ve had so much death here already!”
“You are quite good at it,” Bran the
Younger told Lin when they were more on their own, strolling along the outside
of the city walls after the council meeting.
Mara and another ogress walked behind them
for protection while in front of them, Hot Sausage was chasing after the stick they
took turns throwing. Lin had a wonderful time.
Guild Master Vialligh, conversely, had
been so gravely injured that he needed to be loaded onto a cart to be sent off,
and without him it hadn’t really made sense to continue the meeting. Karjelin
had left in quite a dark mood and many others as well. Lin still carried the list
of their names in her sleeve.
“Liar,” she grinned at the compliment. “I
hardly know what a law is, much less how to make one.”
She had told Bran earlier that she feared
making a poor figure of city magistrate compared to Belisa Tibradan.
“Exactly,” he smiled at her. “Belisa did
not know these things well either. A city magistrate should not make laws. But
Belisa was the countess’ puppet. You are not.” He sighed, “But you shouldn’t
have killed her. They were right about that.”
She bit her lip awkwardly, torn between
not wanting to appear cruel and wanting him to understand how much easier life
was with the power to flatten one’s enemies.
“We can’t keep all of them alive or they
will bond together and destroy us,” she said. “What if they vote to oust me
again on the morrow? What if they win?”
‘What if I have to let Marag’s Children
loose on you all?’
He would never love her then, to be sure. Perhaps
her best bet in such a circumstance would be to have Mara force him. If he
could get hard, somehow, then perhaps he could make a woman of her, even if not
by law.
It was a shame the laws of Honingen did
not apply in all of Albernia. But then again, just now it seemed that the
kingdom didn’t have a ruler. Maybe someone should step up and remedy that lack.