CHAPTER 34
“If you know it’s a trap, you can’t just go sticking your head in it to see what happens.” Idgen Marte was aiming a sharp eye at Allystaire as Torvul helped him get his armor on. Tugging first the left and then the right vambrace firmly into place, he shook his head.
“That is precisely what I can do.”
“What’s your plan? Ride in and be a target?”
“Well,” Allystaire said, “yes. Then kill everyone who tries to take advantage of my being a target.”
“It’s got a certain simple charm,” Torvul said from behind Allystaire as his long and nimble fingers pulled straps taut and buckled them in place. “Not unlike the man himself.”
“Dammit, Allystaire,” Idgen Marte breathed. “Fine. But I’m comin’ with ya.”
“I was counting on it,” Allystaire said. “You, me, the Order.” His eyes flitted to Torvul as he pulled his gauntlets on. “Can you and Gideon manage here?”
“Oh, no,” Torvul said, deadpan, his face flat as he stepped in front of Allystaire. “Whatever will we do? However will we defend against any attacker without swords and armor?”
“People have died, dwarf. It is not the time for jokes.”
“I know that very well,” Torvul shot back. “Between me, the lad, and Mol, we’ll have the number of anyone who comes near Thornhurst with ill will on his mind. I’ll have a talk with Keegan, too.”
“Damn,” Allystaire said. “I keep meaning to do that very thing.”
“I know,” Torvul said. “Ya can’t be everywhere. And I think his lot’ll do anything if they think Gideon is asking it of them.”
“They ought to,” Idgen Marte muttered. “Are you sure your, ah, ‘squires’ are ready?”
“No,” Allystaire said, “but if we wait till I am, we will all be dead.” He looked from Idgen Marte to Torvul and said, “If you mean to come, best see to your mount. I mean to leave in less than half a turn.”
Muttering softly under her breath, she turned on a heel and walked out of the room, rather than disappearing into a shadow. As soon as he felt she was out of earshot, Allystaire looked to Torvul.
“If something does happen, Torvul, watch the boy. Make sure he does not…” Allystaire paused, took a deep breath. “Be certain he does not kill unless it is at utmost need.”
Torvul eyed Allystaire from beneath a raised brow. “Can’t protect the boy forever.”
“It is not about protecting him,” Allystaire said. “It is about making sure he becomes the man could be.”
“What’s him pullin’ his blows got t’do with that?”
“Like unto the dawn, Torvul. Her words, at my vigil. And that it was my greatest task to see that he was not a false dawn.” He shook his head. “I do not know what it means either. Yet I know that if he learns to value life too cheaply, to take it too swiftly, I would be failing at the charge She set me.”
“Ya don’t hesitate t’swing a hammer or a sword,” Torvul pointed out. “Or hang a man. Ya just spoke of killin’ maybe a lot of men, and y’did it rather casually.”
“I want Gideon to be a better man than I am,” Allystaire said. “And if he comes with me to Ashmill Bridge, and a Braechsworn war party has descended on the place, then yes, I will kill them. And I do not want Gideon with me, not because I do not want him to witness the horror that may await us, but because I do not want to be tempted by his presence. In anger, I do not know what I might ask of him. I am certain, whatever it is, he would do it.”
“He would,” Torvul said. “And I think you’re makin’ a mistake, showin’ the boy a double set o’rules. But,” the dwarf said, raising a hand, palm out, and lowering his eyes. “He’s your charge, and I’ll not interfere. ‘Sides, while you’re off riding ‘round the country on a chase for raiders who’ve already left, he and I’ll be kicking back and having a drink. Well,” the dwarf added, “I’ll drink. He’ll work on his lute playing.”
“We will see. Guard the place well, Torvul,” Allystaire said. “I mislike the timing of all this. It bodes ill.”
“Boy,” Torvul said, “you could see ill omens and bad tidings and danger in a naked woman with a bottle o’brandy in either hand. I’m not sayin’ it’s not serious. Folk have died and those responsible’ll answer for it, and I trust you t’do that. Trust me to guard our home while ya do. Now go,” the dwarf said, beckoning for the door.
Allystaire nodded, clapped the dwarf on the shoulder with one mailed hand and headed down the stairs and out of the Inn. Just outside, the Order were drawn up in a row: Tibult, Armel, and Harrys in the front, standing by horses with lances standing in boots next to the saddle. Norbert was fussing with his tack, next to Teague, who once more wore a mask over half of her face. Gaston, Miklas, Mattar, and Johonn all looked more prepared to march than to ride, the former two with their long spears, the pioneer with his broadaxes and the axeman all more comfortable on foot than in the saddle.
Mismatched armor, mostly chainmail only recently scoured clean, didn’t gleam in the afternoon sunlight so much as it dully promised violence. Allystaire took a moment, as they all stopped what they were doing as he approached, to marvel at the change of a few weeks. All still bore their scars, body and soul, and yet they were healthy once more, moving with purpose and the reassuring competence of soldiers who knew their lives depended largely on their own preparation. Their transformations were often as much inward as outward, but Johonn, for example, had found his arm as strong as it had ever been only a few weeks after Allystaire’s healing.
Allystaire found Ardent at the head of the line, saddled, lance in place, but was surprised to find Gideon holding the bridle, or at least, that the destrier was allowing someone to hold his bridle.
“Gideon,” Allystaire said, as he put a hand on the pommel of his saddle and placed one foot in a stirrup.
“I know,” the lad said, stepping back. “You don’t want me to come with you. And in truth, I am probably more valuable here. I can relay what I see to you from the Temple, along with Mol. But it feels wrong, as if I am hiding from danger.”
“Knowledge of the enemy and clear communication wins more battles than any amount of iron and steel ever will,” Allystaire said as he swung up and onto Ardent’s back. “Working this way, Gideon, you will save lives. That will always be a greater feat than taking them.”
The boy nodded and stepped away. Allystaire cleared his throat, and felt the weight of the Order’s eyes on him as he turned in the saddle to face them. “We do not know what we are riding into, who is waiting for us, or what they mean to do. There are folk within Ashmill Bridge who worship the Mother, and that makes them our brothers and sisters, our children, our cousins. Remember what the Mother asks of us: any burden.”
The response rolled from nine other throats all at once. “Any burden.”
* * *
Kormaukr Dragon Scale lay low upon the ground, his sea-green cloak settling over his skin and hiding him in the shadows of the trees. Nearby, he knew that Onundr and Gauk, his brothers in glorious service to Braech, similarly waited.
It galled, to be lying in wait. Men like them were not made for the ambush or the stratagem.
No.
The hot-blooded rush into battle was the glory of Braech’s berzerkers, and lying on a forest floor, trying not to move, trying to will themselves into invisible stillness, this was no fit work for men like them.
Even the thought of it, the word “battle” floating across his mind had Kormaukr tightening the muscles of his shoulders, squeezing the earth he laid upon.
Suddenly there was the sound of hooves moving on the road they watched. He crouched, tensing every muscle in his body as men rode into sight.
The lead horse, some huge grey monster. Atop it, in gleaming armor, the paladin. Kormaukr was certain it was him.
He wanted nothing more than to rush forward, then and there, to tackle the man from his saddle and rip the ridiculous armor away, to plunge his gauntleted hands into the soft, weak, southern skin beneath.
But he was bid to wait, and watch, and so he watched the entire column slowly move.Kormaukr only counted eleven horses in the column that passed them. He suppressed the urge to laugh with the Honored Choiron’s demand for stealth. Eleven, against the band of Braechsworn Islandmen waiting for them?
He waited until they were long past, then stood, signaling for his brethren to do the same. They popped up, cloaks swirling about their legs. Then Kormaukr let out his laughter, and the other Dragon Scales joined him. Then the three set off at a casual ground-eating lope southward.
The Choiron’s commands echoed in his mind again. Find the boy they call the Will. Kill him, in any way that you can, but be certain he is dead. Fail, and you will be buried beyond the reach of the Sea Dragon forever.
An eternity on land was a fate not to be contemplated, Kormaukr knew. But after all, with what strength could one weak southern boy hope to meet a trio of Dragon Scales?
* * *
“Most folk are well after their first sleep by now,” Torvul said, as he turned the corner on the shelves behind the bar, where Gideon sat on the floor by the cold well, lute in his lap, open case on the floor next to him.
“I do not need as much sleep as they do,” the boy said. “And you understand why.”
“I s’pose I do,” Torvul said, “but I haven’t the vigor of youth any longer. Night is lookin’ a bit short to me, from here.”
“How’d you find me? I was trying to be unobtrusive.”
“I might be old,” the dwarf replied, then tapped an earlobe with one fingertip, “but I’ve still got the best ears in this town. I followed the notes. You’re gettin’ better.”
“I am still not much more than a fumbler, or so Idgen Marte tells me.”
“You could be well on your way to a legendary career as a lutist and she’d still tell ya that.”
“It’s true, though,” Gideon said, “not just her bluster. She would know. Torvul, I tell you that once upon a time, she saw music the way she now sees a fight.”
“What’s that mean?”
Gideon sighed. “She can see all the possibilities of a fight. Take Allystaire as a counter example. He sees who his biggest threat is and he attacks it, directly, head on, reasoning that if he can be hit, it means he can hit back, and that he’ll win that exchange. But Idgen Marte, and part of this is the Mother’s Gift, she sees all of the field. Everyone on it, everything that they can do or might do, and where upon it she should move to do the most good. She sees this through the interaction of light and dark to make shadow. When she was a musician, that was how she saw what she did; every place where sound and silence came together to make a song. And she knew exactly where and how she could fit into each piece of it. She can tell when I’m going to blunder up a stretch of a song before I even get to it. And from what she’ll tell me, she wasn’t accounted nearly as great a lutist as she was a singer.”
“She’s never talked t’me about any o’this,” Torvul remarked.
“I don’t think she’s talked to anyone about it since she ran away from her home, Torvul. I wouldn’t bring it up if I were you.” The boy frowned. “I shouldn’t even have told you.”
“Pay it no mind, boy. I can keep a secret as well as stone itself.” Torvul shifted how he stood so that he leaned against the shelf, heard some crockery rattle as he did. “What’re you doin’?”
“Practicing, and looking at the well. I know this is the key, Torvul. I just can’t figure out how to open it.” He paused, and then together, boy and dwarf said, “Then it makes this the lock.”
Together, they laughed softly, and Gideon set his lute down in the open case. “Why were you out talking with Keegan today?”
“How’d ya know that?”
Gideon shrugged as he stood up, smoothed his clothing with one flattened hand. “I was following Allystaire’s progress up to Ashmill Bridge.”
“And how is their progress?”
“Slow, because of the inexperienced riders. They should make the town in another two or three turns. They might not be let in until dawn.”
Torvul chuckled quietly at that. “And here I thought you understood Allystaire.”
“Allow me amend my statement; the town may not want to let them in until dawn.” He frowned. “I thought about taking a look at the town itself, but I felt as if I would be seen, that I would give something away. Once Allystaire is there it does not matter, but until then.” Here, the boy shrugged.
“What’s he ridin’ into? Sorcerer?”
“No,” Gideon said, shaking his head. “If it were that, I would go to him, no matter what he said.”
“Why haven’t they ever simply attacked him openly?”
“Besides needing their games and machinations to stay connected to the world? They’re cowards. I think most do not start out as such. It takes a certain courage, after all, to do what they do to themselves in the pursuit of power. But it is a mean, grasping kind of courage, the kind that turns quickly to cowardice once they have the object of their desire. They learned long ago that they could achieve their ends without exposing themselves to danger; why change that now?”
“Fair enough.” The dwarf’s jaw cracked in a yawn, and as he lowered the hand he covered his mouth with, he said, “We ought to at least be after a nap now. Can be up and after it again when you think Allystaire needs you.”
Gideon started to nod his head in agreement, then suddenly looked up sharply. “You never answered my question, Torvul. Why did you go seeking Keegan?”
The dwarf shrugged. “With Allystaire, his band o’knightly thugs, or thuggish knights, whichever ya please, and Idgen Marte gone, this place is a bit short on what ya might call conventional defenders. I wanted t’make sure we could count on them, if it came to it. Besides, Keegan and his lot owe you somethin’, and it wouldn’t be the worst idea to have a guard around ya when necessary.”
Gideon sighed faintly. “I’m not sure that’s necessary.” He bent down and closed his lute case, pulling the straps through the buckles and closing it firmly, then lifting it carefully in one hand.
“Remember, one of the sorcerers we faced died with an Islandman’s axe in his back. You can’t see everything around you all the time and protect yourself. Besides,” he added, putting a hand on Gideon’s shoulder, “I doubt it’ll matter much. T’bed now.”
They had gone only a few steps away from the bar when Mol’s voice sounded sharply in their heads. To the Temple. Now.
Torvul was just opening his mouth to say something when Gideon slapped a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. Then Torvul had the sensation of dissolving into near nothingness, of the things around them blurring, and moving at an unmeasurable speed. Suddenly the world resolved itself again, with the pair of them standing at the altar along with Mol, whose face was grimly set.
“Braechsworn are going to attack the village,” she was saying, and Torvul felt his heart sink for a moment.
The brief temptation towards despair was suddenly replaced with a roaring hot furnace of anger. “They think they can fool me, and find us unprepared? Me?” He was only dimly aware that he had roared the words, or that Mol and Gideon were staring at him oddly, because they had come out in the Dwarfish tongue.
He took a deep breath, and more words rolled out of his barrel chest, crashing like the stamping of huge hammers dropping upon rocks. “The Wit of the Mother and the last student of the last Stonesinger is not to be trifled with in his home,” he said, and it was as if the anger within him was the hammer loosing the bright ore from the stones of his words.
* * *
Allystaire sat silent and still on Ardent’s back, waiting. Behind him, he knew, were most of the rest of the Order, waiting for some signal. Few of them were as utterly silent as he was. He could hear the movement of their armor or weapons as they breathed or shifted their weight.
Only the horse beneath him closely mimicked Allystaire’s stillness.
Cannot wait forever, he told himself as he let a breath out through his nostrils, a bit at a time. Can’t expect the boy to watch the entire time. He has to sleep.
In fact, Gideon probably was asleep, which was likely why Allystaire hadn’t felt his presence hanging over them for some time. It was a time to be asleep, if the town resting quietly along the river was any model. If there were any fires or lamps still throwing light from the windows of Ashmill Bridge at this turn, his eyes couldn’t pick them out. There was only the sprawl of buildings, the bridge rising in a graceful arc beyond them, the massive old mill beside it.
Behind him, he heard Harrys drawing breath, ready to ask him a question. He lifted a gauntleted hand, and the grizzled old horseman settled back into silence. He could manage it only a moment, so Allystaire turned to him preemptively.
“We know nothing of the situation,” he said, mouthing the words slowly, as quietly as he could manage. “We will wait on the Shadow’s return.”
Harrys was close enough, and the moon behind the clouds just bright enough, for Allystaire to make out the shape of the other man’s mouth closing in a line. And then the sudden shock, eyes flying wide open at something beyond Allystaire, a hand falling to the falchion at his belt.
He startles too easily. Idgen Marte’s voice sounded in his head, casual and calm as always.
He rolled his eyes, confident she’d see it. They have come too far on too little sleep and face a fight against unknown foes. For most of them, their first fight in months, or years.
Well, she said, they’ve no scouts out, so all your careful quiet is for naught. Gather them around and let me speak with ‘em.
Before you tell them, tell me. How is it?
She eyed him as a cloud drifted over the moon. Grim.
He nodded, slid down off Ardent’s saddle and waved a hand, beckoning the men to him. He made sure to keep a strong hand on the grey destrier’s reins as they crowded around, as he could sense as much as see the stallion eyeing them.
Once they’d gathered, Idgen Marte sighed. “Here’s how it is. There’s at least a dozen Islandmen in there,” she began, her voice quiet. “If that’s how many I could count on a quick scout, surely there are more. But they’ve set a trap and I’m not sure how t’trip it without someone gettin’ hurt.”
“Getting hurt is what I am here for,” Allystaire offered.
Idgen Marte shook her head. “I’m afraid that knockin’ on the door and killin’ them all isn’t gonna work this time. There’s a sort of square, used for market days and such, near the bridge. That’s where they’ve set up. No good approach to’em without being seen. And they’ve got captives.” She drew her bottom lip up hard. “They’re bound, gagged, and tied t’stones. The river’s right there, and it runs fast and deep.” She let that implication sink in. A smattering of curses came from the men of the Order. Allystaire felt anger rise in him, felt the first stirrings of the music of the Mother in his limbs.
“There’s too many for me t’free on my own, I think,” she said. “They’re watchin’ ‘em careful, have baffled lanterns. I think I could get t’one or two, but then it’d be a simple thing to shove ‘em into the water and watch ‘em slip.”
“Have they any bows?” Harrys spat after he asked his question.
“None I could see,” Idgen Marte said, “doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”
“If I ride in and present a target, would that distract them long enough for you to free the captives?”
“There’s nearly a score of folk tied up by the river, Allystaire,” Idgen Marte answered. “I can’t possibly move fast enough.”
“Y’said there’s no good approach through the town,” Mattar said, taking a step through the ring of men, rolling his big shoulders beneath his hauberk. “What about on the river itself?”
Allystaire turned to look at the big man, whose hands rested on a pair of handaxes stuck through a belt. “What do you have in mind?”
Mattar shrugged lightly. “I know how t’move fast and quiet and I’m a strong swimmer. If I went wide o’the town and got in the river, made m’way down along the bank, I could be up beneath the bridge in a little more’n a turn.”
Allystaire looked to Idgen Marte. “You could put yourself along the bank as well?”
“Not in the water, but yes,” she allowed. “Still, two of us to deal with a score of folk right by the water…”
“Who else here can swim well? Not just make his way, but truly swim?” Allystaire looked back among the men of the Order, saw Gaston’s hand go up.
“I did m’time on the water as a boarder,” the curly-headed man said.
“Then you and Mattar had best strip your armor and make for the river,” Allystaire said. “Idgen Marte can watch for you and relay to me when you are in place. Go.”
The two men began stripping off their mail shirts. Gaston put down his spear and unhooked his scabbard from his belt, setting it aside. Mattar pulled one of his axes free and held it, haft out, to the slighter man. “Better to cut a rope,” the pioneer offered.
With a smile, Gaston took it and stuck it through his belt. “Don’t I know it.”
The two set off at a loping run, going wide around the spread-out clusters of buildings. Allystaire silently blessed the lack of a wall.
Allystaire watched them go for a moment, took a deep breath. “They killed a man to send me a message. If I ride straight in at them—”
“They might have bows ready to fire,” Idgen Marte said.
Allystaire shrugged. “I do not see another way. Just because I ride in first does not mean I ride in alone. If Harrys, Tibult, and Armel ride in behind me, Teague and Norbert watch for bowmen, and Miklas and Johonn act as our reserve, I think we make the most of our chances.”
“Lot of open ground t’cover.”
“Open ground is where horsemen excel,” Allystaire said, to approving nods from his fellow lancers and Harrys. “The more I think on it, the more I think that we have every advantage. The best case is that we are dealing with fanatics who are trying to make a statement; the worst, we are dealing with warriors. We will answer them as soldiers. As knights. Warriors rarely have an answer for knights working in concert. And fanatics never will.”
* * *
Gideon watched as Torvul strode purposefully out of the Temple, waving a hand behind him. The roll of Dwarfish words rumbling out of him was briefly interrupted for an interjection of the Barony tongue.
“The two o’you stay here,” he said. “Till I know what’s happenin’.”
“I can tell you what is happening, Wit,” Mol said sharply. “If you will contain yourself long enough to listen. It is three men—”
By then, Torvul’s angry footsteps had carried him to the door and beyond. Mol turned imploringly to Gideon.
“It is only three men, Mol,” he said. “Torvul has dealt with worse.”
“It is not three ordinary men,” she said. “When I laid my touch upon their minds I felt a chaos, a kind of madness, like nothing I have ever known. I could make no sense of them, nor could I speak to them.”
Gideon felt his skin grow cold as Mol talked, and one word only tolled like a solemn bell across his thoughts. Dragon Scales.
He pushed his Will beyond the limits of his body, felt his form slump against the altar, and rose up above the Temple. As had become his custom, though no one—that he knew of—could see him when he existed purely in the form of his own Will, Gideon thought himself into the shape of a marsh hawk. It allowed him a more directed use of his power, allowed him to guide himself more narrowly. Without that focus, Gideon knew only too well how easy it would be to become lost, and disconnected from the world.
A half moon lit the night brightly enough, despite some cloud cover, for anyone about at the turn to see their way. But the Will of the Mother did not rely upon his eyes; he let other senses loose upon the village below him.
It was easiest to know where Torvul was, to feel him as color, as song, as idea. He was a low, resonant note, an echo down a perfectly smooth stone hallway; he was a bar of silver edged in glowing blue flame, moving through a quiet night with angry purpose. Mol, directly below him, was a steady warmth, a note in a high register, clear and pure, an unwavering disc of orange, a sun in miniature that warmed but did not burn.
There were other tiny pricks of will-light scattered around him, calling for his attention, in Thornhurst or near it, but even to him, they were too indistinct, too vague, for him to see clearly.
For just a moment, Gideon was tempted to let his sense wander even farther, to rise higher so that he could take in the entire world, and all of those in whom manifested the minor of what he now felt.
Instead he was drawn to the three presences that seemed to him almost indistinguishable from one another: a harsh grey-blue that throbbed with a pounding like the ocean. They could only be the men Torvul had gone to confront.
Gideon dove back into his own form, found Mol kneeling at his side, and his heart hammering against his chest. He looked into the girl’s face, saw the fear written in her eyes.
“Gideon,” she said quietly. “I think Torvul has gone to his doom. This is not a challenge for the Wit.”
The boy shook his head as he stood up and adjusted his robe with one hand. “Do not underestimate him, Mol. Or me.”
He turned and started for the door. Mol stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Gideon, please,” she murmured. “Don’t.”
Slowly, Gideon shook his head. “I do not plan to kill them unless they force me to it,” he said quietly. “I do not wish to. Though,” he said, a little sadly, “when I am done with them, they may seek their deaths voluntarily.”
* * *
Waiting, Allystaire found, was much easier when he did not have a clear idea of what awaited him. Or rather, when the Mother’s Gift of Strength did not soar within his limbs, crying out to be released in defense of the innocents tied up along the riverbank. He found that if he closed his eyes and concentrated he could picture them. Not in detail, exactly, but in the moonlight he felt he could see the huddled forms, shivering in the cool spring night but trying to will themselves into stillness and silence. Hands and feet expertly bound with slim cordage, with rocks lashed to their already hobbled ankles. Hoping that the captors would not notice them, when the time came.
When Allystaire thought of the shivering forms, of the amount of rope, the expertise in the knots, he found the anger that began cold in his stomach fanning hot and bright into his arms, and the song rising louder in his mind.
That much rope, that well-tied, spoke of a plan. Of men who came here meaning to do this in order to lure him out.
Beneath him, Ardent, sensing his restlessness, pawed one hoof at the ground. He and the other horsemen were spread out, not in sight of each other, each taking shelter behind buildings as close to the clearing that led to the bridge as they could find. He gave Ardent a gentle squeeze with his knees to calm him; the destrier whickered softly and bent his neck, the long muscles flexing.
He wanted to run, to get on with it, as much as Allystaire did. How does he know? Does he simply read my mood? And it comes to it, how does he handle my seat with the Goddess’s power upon me?
Allystaire had no time to ponder the question, for then Idgen Marte’s voice came to him. We are in place. There are better than a dozen of them. Maybe a score. They are wearing long cloaks and rags to cover it, but near as I can tell, every one of them is wearing mail, carrying axes and swords. Speaking Island Tongue and drinking. I see no bows.
What of Mattar and Gaston?
They’re here, but you’ll need to distract the Islandmen.
Before Idgen Marte could complete the thought, Allystaire nudged his heels into Ardent’s flanks, and the huge grey came around the shuttered two-story building he was hidden behind and broke into a trot. Before long, the bridge swam into focus ahead of him, and the figures patrolling the square in front of it in long cloaks came into view. Allystaire nudged the destrier again, and Ardent picked up a bit more speed. Once they were at the edge of the clearing, with the nearest captor perhaps a dozen paces away, Allystaire drew the horse to a halt and swung his lance free from its boot. The square was perhaps a bit wider than the green back in Thornhurst at its narrowest point, which was where the buildings edging it left off. It widened as it approached the bridge, enough for carriages or troops of horsemen to cross. The Ash was fairly thin here, but not fordable in any case, for the banks sloped steeply downward and the river was deep along most of its length. Delondeur watchtowers—unmanned, for this region of the Barony had been left on its own for too long now—rose just within sight beyond the bridge itself, guarding the approach from Oyrwyn to the north.
Allystaire made it nearly a score of men wandering more or less aimlessly around the square, which was hard-packed dirt with grass at its edges, hard by long buildings that he imagined were warehouses or stables. The seeming emptiness of the town was astonishing; they’d seen but few faces at windows when riding in, hadn’t been challenged on the street by greenhat or Braechsworn. Nor had they been welcomed.
But, Allystaire had reasoned, common folk always knew when hiding served them best.
“BRAECHSWORN COWARDS,” the paladin suddenly bellowed, his voice echoing over the quiet of the night, waking a few slumbering waterfowl and sending them squawking into the night. “YOU SENT A MESSAGE ASKING IF I HAD THE COURAGE TO FACE YOU. NOW ASK YOURSELVES IF YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO FACE ME.”
At once, the score or so of men shed long cloaks and came up with weapons: longswords and axes, held confidently in gauntleted hands. Allystaire found one part of himself searching quickly for any bare-chested men, wearing clawed gauntlets. When he saw none, he couldn’t decide if he was relieved or disappointed.
“Paladin!” An island-accented voice, flat and harsh, called out and a man taller than most of the others shuffled a few paces forward. He was blond, had a sword in his hand, moonlight reflecting off of the naked blade and the mail hauberk belted at his waist, its edges flowing to the middle of his thighs. “Off the horse. Or town folk go to the water.” His words were halting, but his intent clear.
Allystaire believed he could read a smile on the blond-bearded face as the man said, “Plop. To the bottom.”
He badly wanted to turn the lance in his hand and throw it through the figure as he advanced, to pin him to the packed dirt of the square.
Time! Idgen Marte’s voice sounded in his head again. Play for it! Try to draw them to you.
“And what becomes of the horse, then? Will you try to ride it?” Allystaire knew the words sounded ridiculous as he said them, but with the Mother’s Song becoming a throb of anger, they were all that came to him.
“Eat it,” the blond man said, and the smile on his face was clear. “You are soft here, ride beasts better roasted.”
Despite the stakes of it all, Allystaire laughed, and casually, he slid his lance back into place and lifted one foot clear of a stirrup as if he were going to slide out of the saddle. “You are welcome to try,” he called out, “but I think my horse is more likely to eat you. Tell me your name so that I can tell folk the name of the idiot my horse ate.”
“Arvid,” the man called out, thumping a fist against his chest.
“Arvid,” Allystaire repeated, testing the name. More men closed in, most staying a few paces away. Casually, he dropped his hand to his hammer and turned to eye one man, braver than the rest apparently, sidling up to the horse. Ardent turned to watch him; the Islandman took a half-step back, then another forward.
“Well, Arvid,” the paladin said as he watched a shadowy figure appear behind one of the Islandmen guarding a knot of captives along the riverbank and casually drive a curved blade through his chest, then disappear just as fast, “I think we have wasted enough time.”
Even as the words left his lips, the Islandman edging close to Ardent made a lunge for the horse’s bridle. Allystaire did nothing but let the destrier defend himself.
Ardent’s neck darted to the side, and there was a sickening crunch. The Islandman screamed, drawing back a hand that was now short the better part of three fingers. Allystaire kicked the destrier into motion, and slid his foot back into the stirrup. The force of the stallion exploding into a run knocked the men gathering around him clear.
He spared another glance for the riverbank, and saw two more figures emerge from it and immediately make for the captives, lifting axes to hack at the ropes that kept the stones fast.
As he wheeled the mount around and pulled his lance free, he saw Tibult and Armel come riding into the square, lances leveled. Each of them had a target squared up as if it were a day in the practice yard, sinking lance-points through chainmail, flesh, and bone as easy as pushing the point of a knife through cheese. The cries of dying Braechsworn were loud in the night.
He swung his own lance out and leveled it with no more effort than it would’ve taken to lift a stray hair from the sleeve of a coat. He looked for Arvid but couldn’t find the lanky blond figure in the chaos that erupted now that Harrys had exploded into the square on horseback, reins clutched in his teeth, bent low over the neck of his courser, falchion and broadaxe held out at neck height for a man on foot.
He settled on a target anyway, a man holding a longaxe with naked incompetence, as if he were about to chop wood with it.
A part of Allystaire’s mind noted the man’s hesitation, his uncertainty about the weapon, but it wasn’t enough to stay the paladin’s hand, not when weighed against the folk tied up along the riverbank, ready to be casually and brutally murdered.
The lancepoint took the man’s throat, and with the force of the Arm of the Mother behind it, ripped the Islandman’s head raggedly free and sent it tumbling into the night. The body tumbled bonelessly to the ground, blood gurgling from the gaping neck.
He tossed his lance aside and turned Ardent again, getting a good survey of the battlefield, such as it was.
It was more of an organized slaughter than it was a battle. The Islandmen had been armed and armored, yes, but it became clearer and clearer they hadn’t any sense of how to fight together, how to engage the men on horseback, or even the basics of how to guard themselves with a sword. They had courage, yes, and they ran forward bravely and gamely, swinging their weapons with abandon and strength and chanted prayers to Braech.
And the Order of the Arm, against nearly twenty, were dispatching them almost casually.
Johonn and Miklas were providing a screen with long-axe and spear, respectively, for Norbert and Teague to loose arrows into the charging Braechsworn, but none even reached their line of two. If they weren’t speared by a lance or run down by the fleet-riding Harrys, the whistling counter-pointed song of long-and-shortbow cut them down till only a bare handful remained.
“Drop your weapons,” Allystaire called out. He spared a glance over his shoulder. Idgen Marte, Mattar, and Gaston had done their work well and quickly, freeing the captives and herding them away from the sight of a couple of bodies cooling in front of them.
He slid from Ardent’s saddle and stalked towards them. Three of them, including Arvid, given his height and the color of his hair in the moonlight, had gathered back to back, swords held out in front of them.
“We can cut you down like dogs,” Allystaire said, as he approached, hand falling to the head of his hammer, “or you can put up your swords and speak with us like men.”
When he spoke, one of them, not the tall, blond spokesman but a short, stouter man with a rough, thick-browed face raised his sword in both hands and charged forward towards Allystaire, screaming.
Allystaire sprinted forward to meet him. Before the Islandman could even bring his sword down, the paladin had moved within the arc of his too-long swing. He wanted, badly, to simply drive his fist through the man’s face, or even through his chest.
Instead, he threw his hands up and caught the man’s descending arms, squeezed till he heard the bones snap, and shoved the screaming man to the ground. He bent, picked up the sword the attacked had dropped, hilt in his left hand, blade in his right.
He walked slowly up to the two remaining men and began to exert pressure on the weapon, bending the steel, twisting it in his hand, until finally he had rolled the last foot of the blade up into a coiled ball. He tossed the ruined blade at their feet.
“You can drop your weapons,” he said coldly, “or I can crush your hands till you can no longer hold them. Choose.”
They tossed the weapons down and raised their hands. Johonn and Miklas handed off their weapons to the archers behind them and rushed forward to secure the captives, putting rough hands on the back of their necks and kicking their legs out from under them, so that both Islandmen fell roughly to their knees.
Allystaire felt the strength leaving his limbs, a familiar ache start to seep in. He strode forward to Arvid, seizing his thin face with his left hand. “You will find that you cannot lie to me, so it would be best if you do not try. Tell me what happened here. All of it.”
Arvid tried to wrench his head away from Allystaire’s hand, but with Johonn leaning on his shoulders and the paladin’s own grip, even without the Mother’s Gift, he couldn’t. The Islandman clenched his teeth and Allystaire sighed, pressing his senses, his will, against the other man’s determination.
“Honored Choiron Symod,” Arvid grated out from between still-clenched teeth. “Ordered us to come south, set a trap. Threaten heretics, make one drink the sea-water he gave us, send him to you.”
“Symod.” Allystaire practically spat the name. Idgen Marte strolled up behind the two men; he could sense her as much as see her. “What sense is there in this trap? You were as much danger to us as a cloud of flies. Surely you can see that.”
The Islandman began to laugh, a harsh and ugly sound. “Trap not for paladin. For town, boy, to the south. Dragon Scales left us soon after we took this town.”
Allystaire felt a sudden surge of anger, an impulse to snap Arvid’s neck. Instead, he squatted to bring his eyes level with the other man’s. “What do you mean, trap for a boy to the south?”
Arvid continued laughing, pausing only to launch a gob of spit onto Allystaire’s cheek. “Don’t know. Honored Choiron’s instructions. Boy has to die, so Dragon Scales go to kill him.”
Allystaire thrust the man away and straightened his back. He didn’t wipe the spittle from his cheek; he barely felt it. His whole body was cold with dread, as he was already measuring the distance back to Thornhurst.
Allystaire, Idgen Marte’s voice, in his head. Torvul is there too. And Mol. And Gideon is the strongest of all of us. Now is not the time to panic.
“Harrys,” Allystaire said. “See the captives back to their homes and let the town know they are free, find out what other damage was done before we came. Truss this one up and bring him back to Thornhurst with you,” Allystaire said, pointing at Arvid. He pointed to the other one who’d surrendered. “You. You go north and find your Honored Choiron and tell him that any harm done here, I will revisit upon him tenfold. Remind him that when I turned his god down, I warned him what it meant to make me his enemy. Take that one with you,” he said, pointing to the man whose arms he’d broken.
“How d’ya know he’ll go, rather than make mischief in the country?” That was Harrys, who’d dismounted, and handled his axe as if he was thinking on its suitability for the headsman’s block.
“The Shadow will see to it,” Allystaire said, lifting his eyes to find Idgen Marte. She nodded, and though he could not see her face, he thought he sensed worry from her.
“What o’the bodies?” That was Tibult, still in his saddle—the man made any excuse to stay on horseback he could find, now that he could ride again—looming over Allystaire’s right shoulder.
“Toss them into the river. Let them find their way back to their god. Let them warn Him that I am coming,” Allystaire said as he turned, seeking Ardent, the destrier waiting patiently a few paces away.
As he walked towards the horse, he heard Idgen Marte’s thoughts once more. Allystaire, don’t. He’s like no horse I’ve ever seen, but he’s still just a horse. Ride him hard all the way back to Thornhurst and you’ll kill him.
The paladin wouldn’t have sworn to it, but he thought that perhaps, just perhaps, his mount heard the Shadow’s words, for the huge grey destrier reared up, hooves pawing at the air in front of him for a moment, a deep whinny rolling from his barrel chest. The moonlight turned the grey of Ardent’s coat, for a moment, into a silver to match the paladin’s armor, and Allystaire smiled.
No, he thought. He is not. Then he pulled himself up into the saddle, let the destrier have his head, and they rumbled south, man and horse of one mind, one purpose, one Calling.
* * *
Torvul was halfway to his wagon when he heard the howl.
It was an ear-splitting sound, rending the night. It was a sound without humanity in it, and yet it wasn’t the call of any beast he knew. To his ears, it was the sound of a too-large hammer shattering the delicate instrument it was meant to shape. It tore at his ears and set his hands shaking. He looked at them, holding out the long fingers, the stained and scarred palms, and watched hands that had never once betrayed him trembling in the moonlight.
“I am the Wit of the Mother,” he rumbled aloud. “I am the last student of Ochsringuthringolprine, who was himself the last Stonesinger. I will not fear some rotten, stinking god of fish and salt. What is the sea when measured against stone?”
The litany should have calmed him. The very act of speaking should have slowed the hammering of his heart and stilled his traitorous hands, and yet a small voice rose up and said, What is the stone when measured against the relentless pounding of the waves?
Torvul shut his eyes and willed himself to continue walking onward towards his wagon, when he heard another voice, and this one was not small, nor did it come from within.
Be calm, Son of the Earth. Remember who you are and what has been granted you. Fear may cause your flesh to tremble, but does fear move stone? Does fear contend with rock?
Torvul dropped his hands to his sides, set his shoulders, and walked on. One of his trembling hands he curled into a fist, while the other he shoved in a pouch on his belt, pulling free a small bottle. He thumbed it open and quickly splashed some against his eyes, hummed a low note deep in his throat. The world around him blazed into brightness as if it were the sun overheard and not half of a moon, and shapes in the darkness resolved themselves into houses, trees, rocks—and people.
Villagers who lived inside the walls were coming out of their homes, eyes wide with fear. A few, remembering their months of militia training, were carrying weapons—spears and bows, mostly. Torvul smiled ruefully. Renard, he thought, from the grave you continue to serve your home well. Too well, he thought, as he realized the danger.
“People, go to your homes. Bar your doors and fill your hands and do not come out again until one of the Five tells you so,” he bellowed.
Almost instantly, yet another voice sounded in his head, this one calming, and, he knew, reaching out to everyone in and around Thornhurst.
Return to your homes, please, for your own good, came Mol’s voice, and Torvul thought he could detect the slightest hint of fear behind his sense of her. Danger comes to us this night, but the Mother will see us safely through it, I swear.
Torvul watched folk pause and look up at the air and if startled by the words they heard. They started to move back to their homes; then the night was rent by another, all too human scream.
The people around him panicked, and broke in flight. Some for their homes, some away from the scream, and one or two armed folk, towards it.
Torvul cursed and ran for his wagon, and the tools he left within it.
Lass, he thought, hoping Mol would hear him, can you get ahold of Keegan’s lot?
They’ve already tried to stop them, she answered, and he could feel the grief in her voice. Torvul, you must hurry to intercept them before Gideon. I don’t know what he means to do but I fear it is something dire. Hurry.
Torvul rarely ran, but he found his legs churning now. His strides didn’t eat much ground, but he churned his legs as best he could, though soon his breath was puffing out of his lungs like a bellows-organ of the Homes. He cursed the size of the village, though it wasn’t large; he cursed his age, though as dwarfs went, he wasn’t elderly yet; mostly he cursed knowing that, for all he jeered at Allystaire’s relentless exertions, the Arm would have been to his wagon and back already.
Well, the Arm isn’t here, he told himself. You are. The boy is. We’ll do.
When Torvul did finally reach his door, he was sucking great lungfuls of air, or trying. He fumbled open the lock and darted inside.
He blessed his organized habits. A half step in the door, there was his jerkin. Another step as he shrugged into it, the potion bottles and other oddments clipped to it jingling, and there was his crossbow, a sheaf of bolts. He patted the pockets clipped to the rings on his thick leather jerkin, his fingertips reading the runes inscribed on the hardened leather.
Signal. Woundclot. Nighteye. Echoes. He thought briefly of the ingredients scattered about the wagon. He’d once told Allystaire he didn’t use poison out of professional pride, but he knew well how quickly a poison could be wrought from the materials he had. But there was no time; once more he fingered the four pouches he had, and threw open his door, one hand already sliding a bolt home in his crossbow.
Thirty paces from his wagon’s door, two figures were moving in, one of them dragging a limp form behind him.
Torvul snapped the crossbow up and fired off a shot. It was pure instinct, and he was no sharpshooter, not by dwarf standards. But it was bright as day to his eyes, the bow was well-made, and at thirty paces, it was an easy shot. As he fired, he registered that the men coming towards him were both not only unarmored, but indeed bare-chested. He felt himself smiling as the bolt loosed.
Except the man he aimed for knocked the bolt aside with one sweep of a heavily gauntleted arm. Laughing.
“Put the toy down, little man,” the one who’d knocked his bolt aside laughed. The other, who dragged a limp and bloodied form behind him, laughed along with him. Their mirth was a harsh and grating thing. It was easy to imagine the howl from before coming from men like them.
“You’re the brewer,” the other said, through his laughter. “You give us a drink, eh. Maybe you live longer.” He shrugged. “Take it anyway once you’re dead.”
“I’ll give you some of my best,” the dwarf said. “Give ya more if ya like it,” he added, putting a plaintive whine in his voice. “Let me go and I’ll show ya the Temple treasury. Ya can have all the folk o’the village,” he added, taking a half-step back. He unhooked a pouch, the one that read Nighteye, and tossed it towards the berzerker.
Thank you, Lady, he thought, for not layin’ the same rules upon me as you did Allystaire. He studied the body that the Dragon Scale dropped casually on the grass. Torvul couldn’t identify the villager, but he lay limp, bloodied. His chest didn’t rise, not that the dwarf could see. Then he turned his eyes to the berzerker, who’d ripped open the leather pouch and tossed it aside, and was now eyeing the glass bottle distrustfully.
The other, apparently grown impatient, came to him and ripped it from his hands, jabbering at him in their own tongue.
Torvul slipped a thumb over another pouch and opened it, palming the bottle inside.
The berzerker held the bottle he’d tossed them up in the moonlight, studying it.
In one motion, Torvul slipped a bolt into his bow, raised, fired.
The berzerkers were fast, but they were concerned about their own flesh—not the delicate glass bottle one held up, framed in the light.
Torvul’s bolt shattered it. The moment passed slowly. Torvul felt he could see the individual droplets as they burst into the air. The berzerkers were pelted with broken glass, drawing tiny dots of blood on their hard features.
Droplets of the Nighteye potion the bottle had contained splattered all over their faces—and their eyes.
Torvul threw down the bottle he’d palmed, the one marked Signal, then ducked his head behind his arm, eyes squeezed tightly closed.
The night lit up as brightly as the sun itself, even behind closed eyelids and a shielding arm. There was no heat to it, but the brightness left white lines in his vision, blurred it as he hopped from his wagon and sprinted away.
* * *
Many miles away to the north, bent over Ardent’s neck, Allystaire saw the brief red flash in the night, the flare rising up and disappearing as quickly as it came. He pulled the destrier to a stop, peered at where he’d seen it, as if he could divine anything from the vague impression the red flare had left on his night vision.
Sweat streamed down his face, a fact he only noticed now that he’d stopped. “Time to let you walk anyway,” he muttered, patting the horse on the side of the neck.
Ardent’s chest was puffing like a bellows, breath pouring into and then out of him in great gusts. Allystaire started to ease his feet from the stirrups, but the horse gave his great neck a hard shake, struck a hoof at the road so sharply that a spark flashed in the night.
Allystaire nudged the war horse with one heel, and the great grey surged forward again, and paladin and mount were off once more.
Allystaire kept turning his head to where he thought he’d seen the flare, wondering what it could have signaled.
* * *
Torvul ran for all he was worth, which, when it came to sprinting, wasn’t much. Another howl rent the air behind him, but it was the cry of a wounded animal.
An angry wounded animal, Torvul thought, as he ran. His course took him back towards the cluster of buildings around the village green. Finally, his legs burning and his chest aching with the effort of drawing breath, he pulled to a stop and checked his pockets again, thumb scattering over the runes. Woundclot. Echoes.
He pulled open the former pouch and pulled out the bottle. “Forgive me, Your Ladyship, for the sin of waste.” He flicked it open, while he pulled free a handful of crossbow bolts, and began splashing the liquid onto the broad, flat heads. He shoved them, head-up, back into the sheaf at his hip and slotted one into the bow.
He brought the weapon up, flipped up one of the sighting rings, and began scanning his horizon, looking for targets.
Then he heard the laughter. He whirled to face it, saw a third man—Mol had said there were three. This one was dressed similarly to the others: loose trousers, no shirt, heavy gauntlets that covered his hands from fingertip to elbow. They were well-wrought; Torvul found himself noticing the details as the man laughed, spread his arms wide. They were etched, patterned like the scales of some great bronze wyrm, the fingers ending in sharply clawed tips. His torso was covered in a massive tattoo of a wave threatening to swallow a long-keeled boat; on the prow of it stood the crude figure of a man with his arms raised, his mouth open. Whether he welcomed the destruction and uttered a cry of praise, or roared defiance back at the sea, Torvul couldn’t tell. And he didn’t care; the tattoo made a target. He shot.
This Dragon Scale lowered one arm, trying, Torvul thought, to catch his bolt. He didn’t, not quite.
But he did slow it. It only just penetrated his skin, instead of punching clean through him and tearing into his vitals.
The huge man—he was easily a head taller than Allystaire, and built just as broadly—laughed again, slowly sauntering forward towards the dwarf.
“Did you think you could run from the Father of Waves, little trickster? Even if you bested my brothers, no brewer of poisons is the match of Kormaukr Dragon Scale. Bring me the boy,” the man said, “or I will kill every family in this village. Starting with the children.”
Torvul quickly slipped another bolt into the crossbow and raised it. By the time he fired, Kormaukr had nearly closed the distance. The bolt skittered away into the night, deflected by a gauntleted hand.
The berzerker sent the dwarf tumbling with a casual, backhanded blow. Crossbow bolts skittered out of the sheaf; he only held to the bow because of the sling over his shoulder.
Kormaukr was on him again, lifting him from the ground. Torvul fumbled for a bolt from his pouch, jammed it hard into the berzerker’s torso.
It was like trying to push the bolt through rock. It was possible, but only just. It made no more of an impression than the one he’d fired.
The berzerker laughed again, and threw Torvul in a high arc. The dwarf landed roughly, felt one of his shoulders go numb after a loud pop, found himself looking up at the stars. The potion in his eyes had begun to fade, so the sky was becoming that of a spring night once again, with a strange distortion hovering between it and the dwarf’s eyes; Torvul almost lifted a hand to feel for the damage.
The berzerker laughed and drew forth the bolt Torvul had stabbed him with, held it up to his eye. “Your poisons are nothing to the Dragon’s Scale, dwarf. Our blood is as the sea itself; can you poison the sea?”
“No. But the sea can freeze, and the will of man can direct it where and how he chooses.”
The strange hovering cloud become the slim figure of a bald boy clad in bright blue robes, a plain wooden staff in one hand, standing between Torvul and the berzerker.
Gideon raised his free hand, lightly, almost casually. “What happens if your blood freezes, Kormaukr Dragon Scale?”
The berzerker suddenly stopped, one arm outstretched, inches from Gideon’s unprotected neck. Torvul watched in shock, and not a little horror, as ice crystals formed on the outside of the gauntlet that reached for the boy’s throat. The metal of the gauntlet cracked, shattered, fell away from the arm beneath it.
The berzerker’s hand itself was, Torvul thought, scaled and clawed in the same way the gauntlet had been. And now cracks were moving up along his arm, to his neck, to the wide, terrified animal’s eyes that rolled in fear.
“Gideon,” Torvul whispered, pain shot through his usually strong voice. “No.”
“How much would I truly love the world, Torvul,” Gideon said, “if I did not save it from men like this?” The boy did not turn to look down at the wounded dwarf; he stared hard at Kormaukr Dragon Scale, and shook his head. “A man who has traded all that makes him a man for the power to bring terror, the strength to rend the flesh of anything unlucky enough to come within his reach? No,” the boy said, and if his voice was sad, it was also firm, as if he had made a decision.
Gideon closed his open hand, and Torvul watched as the towering Kormaukr Dragon Scale was suddenly sheathed to his very eyeballs in ice that rose up from underneath his skin. Cracks appeared, starting at the tip of his clawed, outstretched fingers.
Then the Will opened his palm, splaying his fingers, shoving at the air with his wide opened hand. And the frozen berzerker, his eyes still wide and rolling with fear, shattered.
Torvul awkwardly shifted his weight to one side, leaned close to the ground so he could push himself up with his good arm, but before he’d even gotten halfway, Gideon was standing over him and helping him up. The boy’s arms had a surprising strength in them, the dwarf thought.
What was more surprising was the light that blazed briefly in Gideon’s eyes as Torvul met them. For just a moment, they were a hard-edged gold without iris or pupil, then they were once again soft and brown. “Where are the others?”
“Blinded,” Torvul said. “Perhaps forever. That way,” he added, pointing. “What do you mean to do with them?”
“Make what use of them I can before sending them on their way,” Gideon said. Torvul clutched at the boy’s robe with his good arm, but Gideon disappeared through his grasp, vanishing like smoke.
* * *
The world may have gone dark for Onundr Dragon Scale, but that did not mean he or his brother Gauk were dead or beaten.
Onundr’s thoughts were wordless rage. He had one arm wrapped around Gauk’s ankle, while the other Braechsworn crawled ahead of him, his nose bent to the ground.
That Dragon Scales were reduced to sniffing their prey like hounds was a disgrace. It would not last, he was sure, but even with their eyes taken from them for now, Onundr and Gauk would see the Sea Dragon’s work done. Their eyes may have betrayed them, but the strength of their arms had not, their skin was still as hard as fine mail, their throats still full of bloodlust and rage and if they had to sniff his enemies out, they would.
No dwarf was going to best them. Onundr knew that as certainly as he knew that the sun would rise, that the oceans would roll against the beach, that Braech’s waters would some day rise and claim the world.
Already, the berzerker thought, his eyes were starting to clear, and the dark of the night was beginning to move in on the edges of his vision.
“You should be able to see what happens next.” The voice came from nowhere, and the berzerkers recoiled in surprise, if not fear, for neither had heard nor smelled this man until the moment he spoke.
Then Onundr’s vision suddenly cleared, filling with the mud and grass of the ground close beneath him; he saw the dirt crusting the etched scales of his gauntlets and recoiled in anger.
Dragon Scales did not crawl.
Onundur tried to bring his feet under him and stand, only to find himself suddenly lifted from the ground. He cast his eyes towards Gauk, saw that his brother was similarly being pulled into the air, bound in bands of bright golden fire. He looked down at himself and saw the same flames, binding but not burning, then heard the voice again as he was turned in the air, until he found himself facing a mere stripling, a thin, bald wisp of a boy in a robe.
“If it is any comfort to you,” the boy was saying, “for the first time in your lives, the power that resides within you is going to be used for the good of the world.”
Onundr knew in that moment that it was the boy whom he’d been sent to kill who had trapped him, trussed him like a pig going on the spit. What was more, he knew now how foolish, how vain that goal had been, because the power that spoke through the boy was an ancient thing, and vast.
“You will have your lives, when I am done,” the boy said calmly. “If you want them.”
The boy turned and started walking calmly, casually, and Onundr found himself floating helplessly in the air behind. He opened his mouth, tried to pull the air into his lungs to roar, and found that he could not; something the boy had done had robbed him of that as surely as it had robbed him of everything else.
“Men like you do not even realize what you have become, do you?” The boy spoke slowly, chidingly, as if trying to correct the missteps of a child. “You have no idea of what you have lost in pursuit of the power you have. It could be that what I mean to do will remind you, and that will not be a kindness.”
The boy suddenly stopped and turned to look at them, coming close, first to Gauk, and then to Onundr, peering closely at his brother’s face, then at his.
The boy himself was bald, his hair shaved carefully away, and his eyes were wide, brown and oddly shaped to Onundr’s eye. He was from somewhere far from where they now stood, he was sure.
“He draws from you even as you draw from Him,” the boy murmured, almost curiously. “Surely on some level even you understand that.”
Then the boy turned and walked again. Onundr imagined they were being taken to the local Temple, to be cut apart and sacrificed to their heathen goddess, so he found himself shocked to find himself floating to rest upon his feet on a bed of soft green grass, facing a tall building with a stone face and a high peaked roof, covered in tiles rather than the thatch that the rest of the village showed.
The boy turned and looked at the two berzerkers and then lowered his head, extending both hands towards them, fingers splayed open.
Almost instantly, Onundr felt a pull deep within him. His mouth filled with the taste of brine, his ears echoed with the roll of the waves.
And something began to issue forth from him, slowly, inexorably.
In each of the boy’s hands, small blue-grey balls of light began to grow.
As they did, Onundr felt the strength Braech granted him waning. Already, the gauntlets formed around his hands were growing too heavy, too large, the claws no longer fitting snugly around his fingers.
Slowly, the claws slid from his hands and hit the ground with a heavy thud. Panic rose in him, and he looked to his brother. Gauk’s claws slid to the ground slowly as well, slipping away from arms grown thinner.
Onundr watched as his brother’s chest seemed to draw in on itself, slowly collapsing, till the huge, muscled berzerker was hardly recognizable. He turned his eyes down to his own body, saw the pact he’d made with Braech vanishing before his eyes.
He hit the ground with a thud, the bands of light that had held him fast vanishing into the air. Gauk tumbled to the ground with him, and the boy joined his hands together, pressing the globes of blue light together into one, the size of a large stone, resting weightlessly in the boy’s arms.
Onundr struggled to stand, but all his will, all his strength had been sapped. He got as far as one knee till his legs turned watery beneath him and he fell back to the cool grass.
“It is not a great deal of power that is given to you,” the boy opined as he studied the ethereal thing he held. “And yet you do not even realize that. The ability to take whatever you wish—or be given it out of fear—is the only measure of strength you know. It is time that men like you learned to fear a different kind of strength.”
With that the boy turned and walked away, the globe of what he’d taken from them, of Braech’s broken trust with them, lighting his steps as he disappeared into the door of the tall building in front of them.