The fire spread through the whole village due to the humidity. It devoured all the thatched roofs from within, lighting up the night sky with a circle of flames around the town square. It even spread to the human remains, leaving behind the terrible smell of burning flesh.
The warrior with the antlers pressed forwards. His helmet and the plates of his armor glimmered, reflecting the flames. He raised his gigantic sword. Fillan was frozen in fear and tried with all his might to move, but couldn’t budge an inch. The memory of Ailéas’s scream echoed in his head and vibrated in his eardrums.
“Craig!” screamed Sören, up against two more English soldiers.
The mercenary intervened just in time, blocking the blade with the handle of his axe. The contact made a deafening noise. The warrior in the helmet slipped out of the hold on his weapon, aiming for Craig’s neck and barely missing his carotid.
“Get out of here!” the mercenary cried to the teenager.
He pushed his opponent back and soon followed up with a furious spinning of his axe, held with his arms outstretched. Despite the impressive distance, the warrior leapt backwards and was able to raise his guard with the steel of his blade on his shoulder. At the end of his movement, Craig also sank into a defensive stance. The two warriors were measuring each other up.
The rain poured, calming the fires and tapping on armor.
Fillan was pulled violently from behind, forcing him to turn around.
“Idiot!” shouted Moira, covered in blood that wasn’t her own. “What did I say?!”
He was still deafened and still terrified, but he also felt ashamed to be lectured this way.
A soldier jumped on them. The druid dealt him a devastating blow with her stick and sliced his throat with a curved knife. Fillan would never have guessed she was carrying such a weapon. She stowed it quickly back in her clothes.
More English were flooding into the village, and they’d soon be overrun.
“Let’s get out of here!” shouted Craig, twirling his axe in the air.
His opponent laughed at another masterfully choreographed attack. Fillan and Moira made it back to Fergus and jumped on their mounts. They spurred on their horses and headed towards the darkness in haste. The rain soaked their faces. Kyle, Sören and Edan were right at their heels. Just before they reached the edge of the village, Fillan turned. In the light of the last flames, he saw the knight decapitate Craig with one brutal movement of his sword. The mercenary had sacrificed himself to buy them time.
“Craig! They murdered Craig!” moaned Kyle.
“Sören!” Edan screamed as he fled into the night. “Sören, you hear? What the hell are we doing? We should go back and make them pay!”
“No! Shut it and follow me!”
For the first time, Fillan felt the Norwegian was losing control of himself. The one who was normally icier than a loch* in winter now had a trembling voice.
They carried on all night in closed formation, holding tightly onto their horses and trusting Sören’s horse, who knew the region and led the way. More often than not, they could only go at a trot because it was the only way to prevent their horses from breaking a leg in the darkness. They crossed many rivers and often changed direction. Sometimes they even separated into two groups only to meet up again later. Fillan realized Sören was doing everything he could to make it impossible to follow their trail.
They didn’t stop until dawn at the top of a leaden hill in the region. There stood the ruins of a broch*, of which only an old wall and an arch remained. All their faces were marked by the terrible events at Cranshaws.
“Do you think they’ll pick up our trail?” asked Moira worriedly.
Sören, deep in thought, did not respond.
“No way,” said Edan on his behalf. “We’ve come twelve miles, I’d say. Plus, they were all on foot as far as I could see. We can relax. Sören, I…”
The Norwegian pushed past him without even a glance. He headed right for Fillan and pulled him off the horse, making him violently hit the floor.
“Idiot! What the hell were you thinking!”
“I’m sorry,” babbled Fillan in a terrified voice.
“Did you know who that was?!”
“Who?”
“The antler knight!” growled the mercenary.
“He was the one who killed my master.”
Surprise flooded the Norwegian’s face.
“Do you mean to tell me you saw him in Berwick?!”
“Yeah, he was the one in front of the shop.”
“Were there any more of them?”
“Three, with red capes.”
Sören had him by the neck and pulled him right to his face to scream at him.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO BEFORE?”
“I did… The English soldiers and…”
“HE AND HIS MEN HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ENGLISH SOLDIERS!”
His eyes were like a madman’s. A madman dying of fear.
“What do they want with you?!”
Fillan glanced around the group. They were all watching with a worried look, the type you’d give a condemned man.
“The captain… They think I killed the cap–”
“But the Lann Fala wouldn’t care about that!”
“Lann Fala?”
“Merciless trackers! The warrior you charged at is their leader! Cornavii!”
Fillan had never heard the name, nor that of the Lann Fala. He felt completely lost and tried with all his might to calm the anguish of his memories.
“What did they want with your master?”
He had no idea. All he could remember was the sight of the giant sword plunging into Alastair’s body and his own cry of despair.
“I don’t know,” he burst out, spitting at Sören’s face.
The fear somehow made him want to lash out.
The mercenary shook him one last time before letting go of him. He paced away in agitation.
“Sören,” called Edan, “how many times have I told you? We never know what kind of shit the Brotherhood gets us into. This story stinks of something fishy.”
“I know.”
“We’d be better off leaving him. The Templars will…”
“Our of the question!” interrupted the Norwegian. “I won’t look like a quitter in front of the Brotherhood.”
“But Craig…”
“Out of the question, I said.”
He let out a guttural scream that echoed around the waters. All the birds went still. Silence hung for a few moments over the group. They all watched the scene without moving. Fillan sat on the floor and saw that Sören was staring at him again with those signature wolf eyes. The mercenary withdrew a bloody sword from the bag on one of the horse’s backs.
“So you think you can fight, huh? So, fight!” he screamed, throwing the sword at Fillan’s feet.
He pulled out his own sword and flexed his arm muscles.
Fillan had only just managed to calm his breathing and acted with a reflex he never would have thought possible. He looked around for Ailéas. She was normally the one to come and fight in his place. “You always get yourself in trouble, then it’s up me to save your skin,” she’d always joke. Deep down, she was always more than happy to come to his aid. He hated that; he hated the idea of her saving him for years. But in this moment, he wanted nothing more. All the emotions he’d been pushing down threatened to boil up to the surface: Ailéas, his twin, his mirror image. He missed her so much. His heart almost burst out of his chest.
“I don’t…”
“Stand up!” bellowed Sören.
He shakily raised the weapon and stood up. His fingers were trembling.
“What are you waiting for? Attack!”
The steel was heavy at the end of his arm, and he shifted his other hand up to try and steady it. Fillan wanted to take a step forward but remained frozen in place.
“Well?” spat the Norwegian.
Fillan couldn’t explain why he couldn’t move. It was the same paralysis that had come over him in the street in Berwick and against the knight in Cranshaws. A deep-rooted terror.
The mercenary launched a high attack, and Fillan barely had the good sense to dodge. In shock, he threw the sword into the air.
“If you can’t fight, you’re an idiot to charge in!”
Ailéas’s words were still ringing in his ears.
“Are you listening to me?” raged Sören. He whacked him in the face with the hand holding the sword hilt and Fillan felt his nose crack before stumbling back.
“Devil take you! I only just patched him up!” begged Moira, raising her arms to the sky.
The giant paid no attention to her. He came so close to his face that Fillan felt the hairs of his beard bristling against his chin.
“I lost one of my men because of you.”
An ounce of sadness tinged his anger. He raised his fist once more, but Fillan was instinctively able to protect himself by throwing his arms out in front of him. He opened his eyes to Sören’s furrowed brow, frowning deeper than ever before. His expression was indecipherable. Fillan saw he was staring at his wrist, where he had a birthmark.
“You…”
He fixed him with a more surprised look than Fillan had ever seen, as if the giant had seen a ghost. He walked away without another word.
“Sören!” yelled Edan. “Damn it! Sören!”
“Set up camp and leave me the hell alone,” ordered the Norwegian before disappearing into the trees.
Someone held out their hand to help Fillan up. He expected to see Moira, but it was Kyle. Once he was up, he wiped away the blood dripping from his nose.
“What happened?” asked the young woman.
Fillan gave her a sulky look.
“He floored me, that’s what happened. You were there, you saw it perfectly well.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I mean, what did you say to make him leave like that?”
“Not a word.”
“Nothing?”
His terror gave way to shame, and anger that the others had watched and made no move to intervene. He left, shrugging his shoulders, ignoring the glare from the warrior.
* A loch is a type of long lake typical in Scotland, formed at the crossing of valleys.
* A broch is a round and hollow tower made of drystone dating from the British Iron Age to the early Middle Ages – i.e. between 100 BC and 300 AD.