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FORTY YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS IN DARK OF WINTER...
The two boys had made a mistake in coming here. Realisation dawned for both almost simultaneously and subconsciously each felt for the others hand for reassurance. A tight knot of fear formed in their guts and Keddic, the younger of the two, started to shake uncontrollably.
“It’s my fault,” Godin gibbered. “I shouldn’t have taken you with me. We shouldn’t have come.” The disaster at Baern had happened twenty years ago and still there was a fascination around the event.
A mighty storm of gigantic winds, bubbling hail and slavering, twisted beasts had raided that small village and killed every living thing there; pulled apart and ate men, women and children, even the cattle. The Dark of Winter was told as a fairy story to the children of Sumner and Godin and Keddic were not the first inquisitive intruders to the phantom village. Morbid fascination with the story held a dare culture with the youths of Sumner and an unspoken rite of passage propelled some to investigate its ruins.
Now Godin and Keddic deeply regretted their impulsive curiosity. They were not typical of Sumner youths, bolshie, pumped full of bravado, quick to tussle. Godin was nearly twenty and Keddic was seven yet despite their age differences they were similar characters, slow to react, thoughtful, gentle. They were anomalies in such a violent world and ill equipped to deal with the psychological trauma of Baern. Even the places reputation left a foul taste in the mouth. Quickened their pulses.
“If we move something may see us,” Keddic hissed breathlessly. He was small and hairy like a monkey, stooped like one too with his arms lolloping in front of his legs. He could move quick if need to but unqualified fear rooted him to the spot. He flexed one of his longs arms, his body limbering up for flight.
“For the life of me I don’t see anything,” Godin knelt behind Keddic and wrapped himself around the smaller child, drawing him closer. He was not a brave soul but he loved little Keddic and would die to protect him.
“The snow’s heavier,” Keddic noted. Just one more thing to vex the adventurous duo.
What a miserable pair they made hunkered down in the centre of nowhere, directionless, cold, lost and frightened. Godin carried no weapon though Keddic carried a bone handled dagger, narrow bladed and short. They were ill equipped to counter danger. What had they been thinking of leaving Sumner and safety behind.
They had snuck from the village at first light, taking the familiar route towards the massive drift called Selbourne Cliffs. From there they feinted westward, to Baern, one of the many destinations all were instructed never to go to. Outside of Sumner it was a wild world and Baern had ghosts too making it just that little bit more bad than anywhere else. It was a forbidden destination and chieftain Eightlegs’ ire would be terrifying. Children had been lost before. Eaten by the dead? Who knew!
It was a crater now, what was left of that doomed village and a perpetual mist haunted its deep belly. Things travelled in that wet clinging mist, or at least to Godin’s mind they did. Indistinct shadows moved and swirled, noises reverberated around the dell. Ice cracked, leathery winged birds, startled, took to the air, low bellied things growled and groaned. Decimated trees like stooped mourners suddenly loomed large and Godin whimpered, realising they were playful figments only as the suns watery rays pierced the thick fog. But it was all proving too much for the boys. Fear quickened their heart rates, beaded their foreheads in sweat despite the chilling cold.
“I would go home but I can’t recall which way home is,” Godin confessed helplessly. “We can’t see anything until we are literally on top of it. And then, of course, it might be too late. How did we get so far in?”
“Talking,” said Keddic, forcing himself free from Godin’s protective arms. He rolled forward on his knuckles. “I think we should keep moving. The crater has to end eventually.”
“Maybe if we keep talking and don’t stop for anything we might get free from this clinging mist. Don’t go too far ahead, I can barely make you out as it is,” Godin called after the impetuous youngster but Keddic was gone, swallowed by the mists of Baern. A preternatural silence boomed in Godin’s ears. He wanted to shout at Keddic to come back but suddenly he became very conscious of his own self, as something alive and warm, an obvious intrusion in a world of spirits and cold. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound; the mists drew around him closer and wetter than before. Something was stirring and his imagination piqued.
“Keddic,” he hissed through gritted teeth. He threw his hands out level with his face rather as a blind man would walk, hoping to feel for obstructions before he battered into them. Old twisted tree roots almost tripped him so he walked very slowly. “Keddic, if you go and get eaten Eightlegs’ will kill me.” No comforting sounds responded, just that sense of indomitable silence persevered, like being buried beneath a hundred tonnes of snow, blind, deaf, alone. “Come back, I can’t go home without you.” Then suddenly, out of the mists, Godin happened upon a familiar shape. “There you are. What’s up?” Godin could sense just from the child’s demeanour that he had stopped because he had found something but he never responded.
“Keddic,” Godin prompted.
“Look at the ground.”
“What?”
“Look at the ground, ground.”
Godin did not want to. He knew that whatever lay there would haunt him forever. He was not built to cope with trauma. He thought too hard and too deeply on matters, he had a healing mentality and not a warrior’s one. But the same reason why he had hiked all the way over to Baern now compelled him to crane his head down and look, at once, at the thing in the ground.
Tortured dead eyes stared back at him. Frozen not very deep beneath a sheet of clear ice a huddle of squashed bodies looked skyward. Who knew how they came to be there, perhaps fallen in some pool of water when the Dark of Winter ransacked their village. Maybe a small avalanche had carried them thus far and over time cleared away. Maybe a demon from the Dark of Winter had stashed them to consume later but had forgotten about them. Now the bodies, gruesome in death, glared up at the living. One had a raised hand, almost piercing through the thin ice, reaching out for help.
Godin stared harder, thought he could see something wedged firmly in that raised, frozen hand. He bent down to test the firmness of the ice when a roar rent the still air and he startled. Panicking he looked all around but could see nothing. The creature came bounding through the mist straight for him. It came to a sudden stop, dropping down right in front of the boys. It roared again and Godin instinctively reached out for Keddic to save him. A burst of rapid movement and Godin was picked up and hurled. Now the boys were separated and the calmen, the snow-ogre, singled Godin out. Unusually aggressive, the thing charged at him.
“Run Godin, run,” Keddic squealed.
But fear turned Godin’s limbs to leaden weights and he could not move, could only watch as an arrow stopped the ogre in its determined charge. Godin’s dad, Rise, appeared behind the calmen, cleaving it in two with one powerful swipe of his double headed axe.
“Three more coming,” Curvedbow the archer shouted from his position on the rim of the crater.
Rise had an extra torso he now extended up and out from his waist so that it almost doubled his height. Keddic scampered up the warrior’s body, nested down on his highest tier of shoulder. The pair of them jeered and heckled and the calmen, confused and imitated by the size of Rise, held back. Keddic pulled the dagger from his belt and jabbed it ineffectively in the air. Then fearing the unpredictability of the ogres Rise charged them. He hacked down, down and down turning their powerful bodies into blood and mush and gristle.
“Dad stop,” Godin uttered. He had never seen his dad so possessed before and being of such a sensitive nature he found it unsettling. An arrow from Curvedbow zipped through the air into the last of the ogres, felling it, but Rise was so focused he continued to hack at the ground. It was only when the hand of the frozen dead was free from the ice and Rise had chopped its exposed face and head did he finally stop.
Chest heaving with the exhilaration of the fight he finally turned to his son, helping him stand with a steadying arm.
“Why did they attack us, us?” Keddic jumped down and Rise folded his extra torso back down.
“They could be nesting near here. We need to go home now. There could be more around. Curvedbow brought an extra Kamda with him but I’m tempted to make you walk. Teach you a lesson.”
“It was terrifying. First the people stuck in the ground, ground and then the calmen just appearing like that.” Keddic made to hold Godin’s hand but not before stooping down and taking what the frozen hand had been holding all along. “What is this, this?”
“A monoscope. An instrument made to see things far off,” said Rise intimating that the boys should start moving. “You put it to your eye and look through it.”
“So they saw the Dark of Winter coming and they stayed. If I was chief and saw the Dark Story coming I would run away and hide somewhere, somewhere,” said Keddic holding his prize close. At least to his mind the day had not been a complete disaster.
“Let’s hope you are never put in that situation where you have to choose. Up the incline, both of you, it’s getting late.”
Curvedbow registered the youths by arching his eyebrows. He was not impressed. Then he shot Rise a humourless look. “Haven’t left much to skin have you?” meaning the calmen. “I’ll come back later and bag the meat up, get my arrows back too.”
Rise let Godin mount the spare Kamda, sat little Keddic in front of himself, saying, “But I am sort of glad this day has changed the pair of you, perhaps you will remember how scared you felt and not be so ready to put yourselves in danger again.”
“Changed us, us?”
“The fight with the calmen has turned Godin’s hair white and you say everything two times. If that is the only consequence of coming to this cursed village then you are lucky. You have earned your monikers. This is fate.”