Kurt
North of Gwellan, South East Kell
“I wonder what Sarb is doing now.” Elben lowered his cards to stare mournfully out the window. The little steading faced north. Under a bright moon and a clear sky the southern outriders of the Whispering Forest might have been just visible from there. If it had been possible to make out even the new pigsty on the other side of the stream through the cheap slab of leaded glass.
This had always been Kurt’s least favorite part of the day: too late for more chores, but too early for bed, nothing left to do now but to eat the little he had, dwell on thoughts he didn’t want, and sit with sons he didn’t understand.
A son, he corrected himself.
“It’s your bet,” he grunted.
Elben returned his attention to his cards.
Something on the downs howled.
Kurt gave it no mind. Some fools had broken the forest’s peace and it’d be taking its due tonight.
The howl came again. A little closer.
Elben added to his neat stack of coins, deliberately setting each one with the defiled “face” side up. The Greyfox pillaged right across southern Kell these days, but she seemed to just scratch out and then throw away everything she took. A child could find her coins anywhere. They had become so commonplace as to be almost worthless.
“I’ll call you out,” he said, and with the seriousness of a general deploying his model soldiers to battle he moved the coin stack forward. Then he laid out his hand. “Frontal assault.”
Kurt spread his own cards across the table.
His djinni countered Elben’s naga priestess, his two Weik warriors bettered his son’s goblin pair, and an Undying King thoroughly outscored a Queen of the Elves.
“You’re awful at this game,” he said.
“I don’t understand the scoring,” Elben admitted, leaning forward to admire the cards on the table. “I just love the pictures.”
The game was called Cradle. Kurt had no idea why. He’d picked it up at Bastion Tarn. How Sibhard and Elben had come across his pack and learnt to play he couldn’t remember. Katrin, probably. His heart gave a twinge.
He pulled the spread cards together and shuffled them back into the deck.
“Why don’t you teach me a game?” he suggested.
“Me teach you?”
“Sure, why not?”
“What kind of a game?”
“Any kind.” He shrugged. “What did your Aunt Larion play with you while I was in the east?”
Elben deflated, his initial enthusiasm in the idea faltering as he thought. “I can’t think of any.”
Another long howl rattled the window frame.
It sounded close enough to freeze the milk in his belly. Just over the far side of Old Gray. And familiar too. Disturbingly familiar. He’d never faced the Uthuk himself, there was no crossing at Bastion Tarn, but he’d been trained for it, and he’d heard them. Kellos, he’d heard them. Like something crossed between the growl of a bear and the cry of a hawk, yet more alike to neither.
Kurt turned towards the window. He eased his chair back from the table.
“What is it?” said Elben.
“Probably nothing. Stay there.”
He stood and crossed to the corner where he kept his bow stave. Remembering why it wasn’t there any more, he said a word that Elben was too young to hear, and then lifted the old sword and battered shield from the mantle
“Stay here. Get under the table.”
“What’s going on?”
“It’ll be all right, just… just do as you’re told and stay there.”
He went to the front door.
He slid his shield over his forearm so that it was secured by the straps leaving his hand free, and with it he lifted the latch.
For a moment he was sure he had fallen asleep at the table and was dreaming.
He was at watch, on the high tower of Bastion Tarn, overlooking the southern Dunwarr and the Borderlands. Same sword. Same shield. An oft-recurring nightmare of a monster he had briefly glimpsed on the Plains of Ru came scrabbling down the loose-bound soil of Old Gray and into the yard. At the foot of the hill it sniffed and snorted. Its eyes burned like coals in the night. Its body was huge and blood red, emitting a deep growl the way a man would breathe. The pigs in their sty squealed in terror. From the back of the house, Boxer was barking. It was all Kurt could do not to slam the door.
It was not a dream.
This was not the Ru.
He was not in a castle.
With shaking arms he inched the door carefully shut, not daring to breathe even as the sounds of savaged wood and pig screams rang out from the other side of the yard. He closed his eyes and leant back against the door.
His breath came in a shudder.
Not a dream.
“Father?”
Elben ran to him, the hobby bow in his hand with a clutch of arrows.
Kurt caught him by the hand, terror making his grip so strong that he pulled the boy down. He pressed a trembling finger to his lips. “Stay down. Not a sound.”
“What is that thing?”
“A flesh ripper,” Kurt answered in a low voice.
Demon hybrids of the most distant east, so the campfire tales went, monsters born not from the union of beasts but from blood magic and Ynfernael sacrifices.
Elben’s face went white. “Uthuk magic. Like in Yorin’s stories…”
“Go,” Kurt gestured him back to the front room. Yorin drank too much and he talked too much. “Put out the light. Then meet me at the back door.”
“What about the pigs?”
“Pox on the damned pigs.”
“They cost us everything.”
“Only what I’m willing to pay. Now go.”
They scrambled together into the front room, close to all fours, keeping under the line of the little window. Elben licked his fingers and pinched out the candle flame and the room fell dark. Kurt nudged open the door to the pantry. A dozen wheels of white sheep’s cheese sat on the side. Too big to take with them. Elben joined him, snatched a knife off a chopping board and nodded.
The pigs had stopped screaming.
Kurt turned the handle and pushed open the back door.
Boxer and Whisper ran up with their tails between their legs. Boxer gave a loud bark that made Kurt’s heart leap for the moon.
“Quiet,” he hissed.
Elben threw a frightened glance over his shoulder.
The big dog sat on the ground and whined.
Kurt half-ran to the stall at the back where his horse was waiting anxiously, pawing at the straw and throwing his mane. He unbolted the stall door and led him out. There was no time to saddle him.
“We’ll have to ride elf style,” he said, turning quickly to Elben.
“We’re… we’re leaving the house?”
“A flesh ripper isn’t an animal, Elben. It’s a demon in animal shape. And worse. They’re the heralds of the Uthuk Y’llan. Where the flesh rippers hunt, the Locust Swarm isn’t far behind.”
“But… our house.”
Kurt physically lifted his son and sat him on the horse’s back. “It’s just a house,” he said, burying his own pain for Elben’s sake. “Nordgard Castle must have fallen. If the castle has been taken then our house isn’t going to last to morning.” He climbed up hurriedly and set himself behind his son. “If the Greyfox wants to call herself baroness of what’s left when the Uthuk are done, then she’s welcome to it.” He kicked his heels in. The horse snorted in fright.
Boxer gave a frenzied bark.
Kurt turned his head back, towards the house, Katrin’s house, and an arrow whistled across his ear, thudding into the back wall. The horse reared. Kurt threw his arm instinctively around Elben, covering the boy with his shield. Two Uthuk careened into the back yard. Their chests were bare, their purple-gray skin like stone under the white light of the moon. They shouted something in the broken language of the Charg’r and more arrows flicked towards the house. One slashed Elben’s arm. He hissed as blood welled up.
“You’ll live,” Kurt yelled, and kicked the horse harder. “Yah!”
This time, the charger leapt into a gallop, flying over the picket fence. Its turn of speed confounded the Uthuk who had been slowing down as they approached the house. Holding tight to Elben, who was in turn holding tight about the horse’s neck, Kurt looked back over his shoulder. The Uthuk were not even bothering to give chase.
Boxer’s wild barks ended with a piteous whine. Whisper, as always, was quiet. Kurt hoped he had been bright and run away.
The first flicker of fire appeared against the dark hills.
The scent of smoke came to him on the wind.
“Where are we going?” asked Elben.
“I don’t know.”