by Eric Ugland
“Yeah,” I said. “The night after that whole mess went down, she talked to me. Gave me a blessing.”
“I can feel her touch on you.”
I’m sure he meant that in a nice way, but god damn if it didn’t sound creepy.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. I bet.”
I pulled the little stone from my belt-pouch and set it on the ground. It lit up to the east. Nearly due east if I had my bearings right. So we needed to go east in the morning.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The rest of our group came back while I was sleeping. I hate to admit that I totally slept through their return, which was likely a testament to the silence of their movement and hopefully not because I’d suddenly become a very deep sleeper.
When I woke, the fire was burning low, and Amber, Tarryn, Ragnar, and Skeld were asleep around the fire. Vreggork was snoring against a wall, and Fritz sat watch at the far end of the tunnel, four of his eight heads awake, four of his eight heads asleep. It was weird to see. Meikeljan and Wulf were at the opening, talking in hushed tones, huddled against the wind blowing inside.
“Good morning,” I said softly, rolling out of my blankets, and getting to my feet to stretch. I managed to get through my whole routine without resorting to barbaric yawps or outlandish noises. “Glad you could rejoin us.”
“I must apologize for my departure,” Wulf said, eyes down at the ground. “It was a moment of terror and panic. It will never happen again.”
“Hey man,” I replied, “those things happen to the best of us. Just know that I have your back. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
He nodded a few times.
“What’s east of here?” I asked, thinking about the stone.
“Mountains,” Wulf replied.
“Little more specific?”
“We are headed east?”
“As due as possible.”
“Then tomorrow we will climb until we reach a pass. It is a narrow pass and might be blocked with snow or ice, the weather has been unwilling to make up its mind. Through the pass and we come to a valley.”
“And the forest?”
“Yes. The forest. The storm made it seem like we walked much farther than we actually did, though, in the end, we did not stray too far off course, surprisingly. Or perhaps you have a strong luck stat. Either way.”
“Is this forest the one you mentioned, full of nasty things?”
“It is.”
“Like how nasty?”
“I am unfamiliar with your scale of creature, well, nastiness. So I fear I cannot give an adequate answer.”
“Okay, imagine you’ve got prinkies and ladybugs on one end, and, uh, trolls, agachnern, and I don’t know, Nikolai after a night of heavy drinking on the other.”
I heard a chuckle from Skeld, but the joke didn’t seem to amuse either Meikeljan or Wulf.
“There are giant spiders all throughout the northern slopes of the valley. Great furry beasts that range in size from boars to mammoths. Brownies infest the trees, and hunt with poison arrows. Rumors tell of hags seen on the island in the lake, and I have come across the tracks of a lindworm along the southern forest. There is no part of the forest free of what you call nastiness. It is only what you come across.”
“But you made it through okay, right?”
“Yes. It is important to note I have never gone through at this time of year. I feel the danger posed by the inhabitants is largely dependent on food supply.”
“Ah. Any idea on how food supplies might be?”
“In late fall, it will be limited, likely.”
“Okay, so, not great.”
“Not great, no.”
I nodded.
He nodded.
Meikeljan looked confused, but he decided to nod along with us.
I had a vague idea what brownies were — I’d heard fairy tales about them — but I didn’t want to go through the forest full of confidence because I thought I was about to find tiny fairies who were mostly into mischief. And I had never heard of a lindworm. I imagined it was some relative to the banded worm, and if I’d taken one of those big bastards down, what could a lindworm do? And spiders? They needed to be afraid of me… or so I thought.
“Brownies,” I said. “Where I come from, there aren’t brownies. Can you tell me something about them?”
“You should consider yourself fortunate,” Wulf said. “Brownies are capricious little fucks. They delight in causing pain to anyone who isn’t them. They are territorial, they are quick to anger, and they have innate magic abilities that bely their tiny stature.”
“So they are small?”
Wulf put his paw about a foot off the ground. “Maybe this big. At most. Some are shorter. They can tame the beasts of the woods, riding owls and foxes.”
“Pixies?” Tarryn asked.
I turned around to see the warmancer wrapping his blanket around himself and coming into the conversation.
“I have not seen any of them,” Wulf said. “Nor have I heard of any seen in the valley.”
“Means there’s probably no portal there,” Tarryn said.
“Portal?” I asked.
“To the place the fairies come from, the Feedoheem.”
“So brownies are fairies?”
“Yes. Fairy is a more general term,” Tarryn said. “It describes most anything from their world. Much like devil is the word for entities from the hells and the like.”
That was an interesting concept, and just one more thing to learn. It overwhelmed me, the amount I didn’t know. Which only made me feel restless.
“You guys can talk about strategies, but I need to get outside and, uh, do something,” I said.
I stepped around them, ignoring the weird looks I got, and I walked out into the open world. The icy muck wasn’t too slippery. It was more crunchy, thankfully. The clouds had blown away, leaving the stars above. The moons had ice-halos, and the temperature had plummeted. My breath came out in great plumes, and just breathing in hurt. I jumped up and down a few times, shook out my arms.
It was time for my routine, so I went through the forms I’d learned. It made me smile, because the start was all Cleeve. I hadn’t known him that long, but I still missed the old guy. And not just because he was the only father figure I’d really ever had. That was the sentimental part, but it was also because when Cleeve was around, there was someone to make decisions who wasn’t me. Someone who could lead and make his way through the world in a good way. Me, I felt like I was just flailing around, trying desperately to take care of business yet really only creating bigger problems.
I had my battle axe out, and I worked through the forms: getting it going, stopping it, changing directions on the quick, all the little things I could do to feel like I was getting better with its use.
I switched over to a sword and shield, and did the same thing. It certainly wasn’t as useful as sparring with a real person, but it did some good, getting my muscle memory trained up. As I ran through things, I got more into it, giving my movements a little more oomph, until I was actually breathing hard. When I stopped, I realized my entire body was steaming. It felt good, especially when I looked over to see a row of little faces inside the tunnel staring at the crazy dude working out in the cold.
Chapter Twenty-Five
We were finally back on track for the original quest, breaking camp shortly after dawn, and heading out into the world. We were heading east, and with the sky a deep and dark blue, not a cloud in sight, I could see the pass that was our goal. We kept a similar order as before, though Fritz was flying in lazy circles above us. It made me relax somewhat, considering that he’d likely be able to see anything even remotely dangerous before it could get anywhere close to us. The ground wasn’t completely frozen any longer, but the snow line was not far above us, and the lack of trees in the area was a little disconcerting after we’d come from such thick coniferous forests. It was just a big bowl really. If this world wasn’t overflowing with m
onsters and danger, we’d have a kickass ski resort here. Instead, we trudged.
About an hour of hiking, and our path got steep. Then snowy. I broke out some short spears from my bag and passed them out. Vreggork was a little surprised at what I pulled from the bag, but he only showed it for a moment, then accepted the spears. And on we merrily stumbled, using the spears as balance in the snow. It was still in the realm of hiking, though. Off-trail, sure, but we weren’t having to climb.
That lasted another hour. That’s when we got to a layer of boulders. Fritz rested on one of the taller ones, each of his eight heads looking in a different direction, and somehow each looking bored in a new and uninteresting way. That told me that though this was going to be a challenging area to cross, there wasn’t any immediate danger.
Getting through the boulder field was annoying. Mainly because I was the tallest creature in the group with the biggest reach. Which meant I was the one doing all the work. I’d either climb up and haul people up, or I’d boost people to the top. Then I’d have to climb around, and help people down. Not like it was super difficult in a physical sense, but it just felt annoying. And it felt slow. But there was an end of sorts, and we had a little more of a regular hike until we got to the steep section. That required more effort, but wasn’t insane. It was more of a hike plus plus, using our hands as well as our feet to hike.
And that, more than anything else, seemed to exhaust my fellow travelers to the point where we were taking breaks at a ridiculous rate. It felt like every other minute, someone would be saying they needed to rest, and we’d all hold up and stand there in the snow, leaning into the mountain.
It did give me some time to look at where we’d come from, and it was beautiful when I discounted all I knew about it. I could just see the greenery of my valley, way far below. Otherwise, it was just snow-covered and smooth.
Then it’d be back to the slog. Up and up and up, wishing I had some thinsulate gloves. Or a snow-mobile. Or a gondola. The slog up to the pass took the bulk of the day, and by the time we got at the top, nearly everyone, but Wulf, was breathing really hard. Just not enough oxygen up where we were. The sky was a dark blue, nearly black. And besides the hard breathing of my compadres, it was nearly silent. The peaks still soared above us, craggy and sharp.
We took a moment to eat and rest at the pass. Well, the rest of them did, I walked along the pass, which was maybe two hundred yards in total, until I could see the valley beyond. It was a wide valley, a few hundred feet down from where we were. I could see the pass exit, on the far side. A wide variety of trees covered the valley, from slope to slope. Both evergreens and deciduous. Oddly, pretty much everything was green except for an area to the north that seemed to be in the midst of some kind of disease. The trees there were largely dead or dying. A like took up the middle of the valley, shaped a bit like a garbanzo bean. And a fair amount of the lake was taken up by an island, low on the west side rising to a hill of sorts on the east side. And on that hill, amongst the trees, was something that could be a building, or could be a squarish rock formation. Hard to tell, it was just a little too far away for me to make any real concrete guesses.
I went back to the group.
“A lot of trees down there,” I said.
Wulf nodded, gulping down water. “And it will be warmer than here.”
“Is that natural?”
“Doubtful,” he replied, using the back of his arm to wipe the drops of water from the fur around his mouth. “No one winters here, though it has often tempted tribes.”
“Spiders keep them out?”
“The collection of creatures kept us out.”
“Ah. How long of a hike is it across the valley? I’m assuming we need to get to the other pass, right?”
“Yes, and an estimation is difficult at best. A day to the lake, a day to the pass.”
“So we’ll need to camp down there.”
“Twice. Most likely.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
As we trekked down into the valley, we dropped below the snow line. The temperature difference was noticeable, dramatic to the point it couldn’t be a natural phenomenon. At least not anything I’d ever known or heard of. It was like stepping into summer. The warm breeze ruffled my beard and blew my hair out in a romance cover sort of way. Too bad I wasn’t bare-chested. Those in front of me were quickly shedding layers. It made me wonder what the evening and night might be like in the valley.
We started to hear animal sounds again. Insects, birds, chirps and calls sounding out from the green trees and lush grass. I saw chubby little birds weighing down the bush branches they squatted on, almost blissfully unaware of anything else going on in the world.
The strangest part about all of it was the path. We were walking on a path. A dirt path, sure, but it was a marked difference from the complete wilderness above. It added a thin and somewhat unwelcome veil of civilization to this place, and was sending my curiosity into overdrive.
You have been offered a quest by the holding of Coggeshall:
Discover the Mystery of the Valley
Discover why this valley remains warm all year, why it remains hidden, and why there are three disparate groups living in it.
Reward for success: Holding safety rating increase.
Penalty for failure (or refusal): Holding safety rating decrease, decreased desire to remain a follower of Coggeshall.
Yes/No
Well, that was unexpected, I thought as I accepted it. But nice in a way. Probably one advantage to having such a large holding, I could continue gathering holding-based quests a remarkable distance from my home base. I wondered if the holding would try to force my hand to make the entire place safe. If I discovered some nasty nest of monsters, would I have to take them out or suffer a penalty? I probably needed to stop thinking about the potential for more quests, or the holding might start sending me stuff I didn’t have time to handle.
The sun was low in the sky. Our hike up the other side of the pass had taken up the bulk of our daylight.
“We need a safe place to camp,” I said. “Any ideas, Wulf? And is it safe to step off the path?”
Wulf looked at me like I was nuts.
“Nothing is safe here,” he said. “And why would it be worse off the path? Following the path is what we want to avoid — it leads straight to the lake. Not sure who’d be crazy enough to go there. Better to go off the path.”
“And a camp?”
“I don’t know. Maybe up in the trees? Or, I don’t know.”
“Should we walk through the night?”
“No, that is a stupid idea. Spiders are more active at night.”
“You seem to have very little good news about this place.”
“There is no good news about the damn valley. I hate this place.”
“You led us here.”
“I listened to you all huffing and puffing your way up the mountainside. You will all die if we go over the peaks or ridge lines.”
“Too high up?”
“Too high and too difficult. At least through here there is the chance of survival, slim though it might be.”
“Okay, well, Wulf and Amber, find a spot where we can camp for the night. Probably something towards the south, since spiders are to the north, right?”
The bear dude nodded, but also grumbled. He probably thought I couldn’t hear him.
Amber nodded and set off, angling towards the south. I was somewhat tempted to make for the lake — I had no idea what a hag would be in this world, and frankly, I was curious.
There was something remarkably refreshing about the walk, almost as if we’d stumbled into a park. The trees were big, healthy things, and there was just this sense that the place was more polished and manicured than it should be. Lots of berry-producing bushes. Flowers blooming in clusters that were just out of place enough to be wild if you were determined to see them that way. The trees weren’t overly thick, a bit like they’d been pruned back some.
We w
alked on a bit of an angle, and the uphill side increasingly steep until it was unclimbable. And iced over. The downhill side was the opposite, becoming a more gentle slope with trees that were more sparse and spread out. And the animals were still around. They didn’t seem to have any reaction to our presence. Sure, some watched us as we trooped on by, but nothing ran away. Some particularly bushy-tailed squirrels munched on nuts while judging us. The experience was off-putting enough to keep us from talking to each other, even though it was very obvious no danger existed. It made Wulf’s fear of the place strange, at least to me.
Above, Fritz soared in lazy circles, his eight heads looking in different directions. Notably one was facing up, into the sky. I wished I had some way to signal the monster, just so I could ask him what he was seeing. What the world around us looked like. Or, you know, if there was some big fuck-off wyrm or dragon about to rampage through the trees and rip us limb from limb. Little questions like that. Though, at the same time, I figured that if he did see a big fuck-off monster coming to kill us, he’d let us know.
It took an hour of strolling before Amber and Wulf finally agreed on a resting spot. Some large rocks had fallen down from the cliffs at some point, and they formed a loose square. Getting into the middle of the proto-courtyard required some serious squishing through a very narrow gap, something I couldn’t do. So I climbed over the top of the big-ass rocks, and dropped inside. It wasn’t particularly roomy in there, maybe fifteen feet by twenty feet, but what it lacked in space, it made up for in security. I pulled some more broken furniture out of the bag, and we used that to make a small fire. Skeld got to cooking, Ragnar and Amber foraged, and Tarryn read a book. Meikeljan had me assist him in climbing to the top of the rocks, and he knelt down and engaged in a longer, more thoughtful prayer. Wulf, for his part, ate dried meat and sulked. Which was slowly becoming his normal. Vreggork busied himself by picking up small stones and carving them. Into what, I had no idea.
