He returned his attention to the ancient arch. Entering the forest here was not as good an idea as it had seemed in the sun, and he began to reconsider his plans. The draugr had been easy enough to avoid. They wouldn’t get away with rampaging the countryside and killing anyone they came across, not for long anyway. They were acting more like men on a mission. They might have sensed his presence and ignored it. When Arcmael first encountered them on the plain, he made the mistake of telling them he was a warden. As long as he kept his staff out of sight, this new band of draugr wouldn’t know him.
The Others, however, were another matter. If not for protective plants and the questionable ward of Othin, they would have killed him by now. He couldn’t hide or escape. And in Wyrvith their power would be as complete as it was on the Festival of the Dead when the Veil was thin.
Unfortunately, going east would put him many leagues out of the way, and he didn’t want to take more time than his injuries had already cost him. Not this late in the season.
With a deep breath, Arcmael stepped onto the damp-blackened path beneath the arch, gripping his staff. The forest devoured the light behind him. Unlike other wooded tracts in Dyrregin, Wyrvith had never been farmed for timber to build houses or ships, or to clear the land for agriculture. For the most part, it stood untouched by mortals.
Cold wind rattled bare branches and whispered in the evergreens, prickling his nerves and filling his heart with shadows. Arcmael made sure the rowan branch was still lodged into his quiver. He had also woven a long stem of dropberry into the stitches of his pack and placed some mugwort leaves into a pocket of his tunic. He closed his hand over the damp foliage. He had once heard that mugwort was sacred to Othin.
For a time, nothing bothered him, though he felt the Others’ presence in every leaf, trunk and twig. He walked until he reached a crude bridge made of fallen branches. Beneath it murmured a brook that ran over the stones of a temple ruin. The western side of the path fell off sharply onto a thickly wooded hill. Arcmael glanced up at the clearing sky. It would frost tonight. He would miss Dog’s warmth against him.
Thirty leagues from his friend’s grave, and he still grieved. Like a fool.
Every warden in the order got lectured on the pitfalls of loneliness. As much as human or animal companionship appealed, indulgence often came with a price. The warnings didn’t come from the Fylking, a warden’s only reliable companions, but from mortals who had learned over millennia that constant interaction with the Otherworld made one strange to other mortals. The Otherworld was a jealous mistress.
Arcmael had been doing this long enough to appreciate loneliness, but not long enough to appreciate the kinds of lessons of which his father would approve. Perhaps, when Arcmael had agreed to train with Wolf, the Fylking decided to instruct him on the more rugged aspects of being a warrior, such as not compromising one’s strength by getting attached to anything. Healing Dog of a fatal wound in exchange for a vow and then taking the creature’s life to demonstrate mortal weakness was as cruel as Arcmael’s father disowning and banishing him to Faersc to become a turnspit to war gods. For Arcmael was no warrior.
He ground his teeth, his pace quickening. After Skadi had left him in the wilderness to teach him a lesson on the value of self-sufficiency, she taught him how to perceive the Otherworld. He learned to still his mind and differentiate between his thoughts and those of the Others, including but not limited to the Fylking, though after a time he focused on them to the exclusion of nature spirits, mortals who had died and not yet passed beyond the veils of the physical dimension, and other unseen entities who took an interest in him for whatever reason.
Arcmael had learned to tell the difference between images he imagined and those projected onto his mind by something else. He learned to use his imagination as a tool of perception instead of a passive process by which he daydreamed about women or frightened himself with sinister explanations for shadows and sounds. Before long he was able to discern between different Fylking identities based on presence. He also began to see facial features, the clothes they wore and what sort of mood they were in. His dreams became lucid, and in that watery realm he learned a great many things about his new friends, and those lessons somehow bled through and enhanced his waking perception.
When Arcmael had finally become certain that the Fylking were real, Skadi brought him before the grim and volatile High Fylking of Tower Sif—the Gatekeepers, she called them—for his initiation into the order. Skadi had not told him beforehand that he would only be allowed into the order if the Fylking accepted him. Her deception was intentional, of course. He had heard rumors of initiates being rejected, such as what happened to Vargn, but he had assumed that talk arose to frighten initiates, nothing more. If he had known the Fylking sometimes rejected initiates for reasons known only to them, he might have put less effort into his training. Being young and angry that his new life involved serving warlords, he wouldn’t have considered the consequences of their refusal until he was well on his way back to Merhafr. The Fylking wouldn’t have given a shit for Lord Halstaeg’s standing or wishes in the matter, leaving Arcmael to the full force of his father’s wrath. In retrospect, that would have been worse than anything Skadi had set up for him.
But the Gatekeepers accepted him, the bastards, and for many suns afterwards he learned to work crystal and stone, name the constellations, know the hours of a solstice or equinox, identify different frequencies of light and energy and various other skills required to tend the gatetowers. He spent many a dreary night high in the halls of Faersc studying ancient texts on Dyrregian history. And many a day learning the arts of solitude.
He had to admit, despite his bitterness, that his solitude had never felt the way it did now in the silence beyond boundaries. Suns ago when Skadi had described the Exile sigil to him, he assumed it would simply make him as other men. When he told her that, the crone laughed like a drunk and then crisply reminded him that he was not as other men and never would be again. He had eaten at the tables of the Otherworld, binding him to it. At the time her fierce, cryptic words bemused him. Now, it was one too many admonitions he had thrown to the wind.
Clearly, the most foolish thing he had ever done was agree to Wolf’s bargain. One weakness leads to another, as his father used to say. In retrospect, Arcmael should have let Dog die as a casualty of war. Wolf said Dog allowed the Fylking to heal him for the warden’s sake. But Arcmael couldn’t accept that the animal would do that and then agree to let the Fylking take him in order to toughen his softer side.
A shadow fell over his heart. He had a dream the night Dog died. He had not thought of it since; the memory was eclipsed by the reality of what came after. A storm in the forest had awakened him. The eyes of dragons crouching on a gatetower glowed like swords as the light struck the center of the parapet and rumbled into the ground. Two brilliant lines shot over the land in a steep angle…
The Gate opened and something terrible happened. The last fine hair of the waning moon slipped into darkness, leaving Dyrregin in the silence of a smoking ruin. No, something came through.
The demon’s eyes burned with fire.
The details escaped him now. The earth screamed like a woman beneath its teeth, sharp as the blades of gods.
Arcmael stumbled on a root. How had he forgotten this?
From the ramparts of their starry halls the Fylking looked down upon the pentacle glowing like a brand on the surface of Math, and were afraid.
Afraid. And he had cast them from his life over the death of a dog.
He replayed the scene in Patanin over and over in his mind. A dream like that followed by death could not be coincidence. Why would Wolf talk of the weakness of mortals after giving Dog life? The only sense Arcmael could make of it was to put it in the light of his father’s lessons, the kind of things warriors had to learn to be strong.
It was just a dream. A nightmare brought on by the stress of his training.
His thoughts scattered as a ghostly arro
w whizzed from the trees and struck the path at his feet. It was black, carved with intricate designs and fletched with five silvery, glowing feathers. Elven work. A warning shot—no elf would have missed.
Icy wind slammed him in the chest, taking his breath. Amid the massive trunks of hardwood trees stood a spectral company clad in deep shades of forest hollows: blue, green, deep purple, indigo and black. Their faces and limbs were long and pale as the moon; their eyes were cold and dark. The air around them shimmered with green fire.
Deceiver, one of them accused.
Enemy of the Fylking! spat another.
“That’s a bit harsh,” Arcmael muttered, his earlier doubts driving the insult into his heart. He reached back for his rowan branch. Not feeling it, he pulled his quiver around. The charm had left him.
The elves laughed. Then they began to fade, until one breathed a parting word in the mist: Rowan won’t help you now, he said with a childish snicker. Traitor to your kind. Your fate is upon you.
The elves left Arcmael there, his body covered in chills. He pursed his lips and glanced around. If he didn’t know any better, he would swear they had come to gloat. Over what? Elves wouldn’t bother to make such claims just to rattle him. Perhaps Othin’s hypothetical injunction against killing him had frustrated them out of character.
Arcmael started walking again. The pall on his heart took shape as the forest itself, patient, vast and watching. The landscape began to steepen. In places, stone steps appeared between the roots, and rickety bridges crossed chasms between the trees. Golden leaves spiraled through the air and covered the path, making it devious and slippery. Streams and falls echoed in the long, tenebrous figures of trunk and bough.
Evening fell swiftly, deepening shadows. Now and then, a shaft of the setting sun would find an opening and bless Arcmael with hope. It faded quickly. When dusk plummeted into night like a stone, he revisited his remorse over having cast the Exile sigil. He had never felt this kind of mortal exposure with the Fylking around.
As he groped along, he wished he had not remembered that dream. He couldn’t shake it from his thoughts. Distracted, his pace slowed as he tripped and clutched at what he hoped was the path. Finally, he found a reasonably level place carpeted by leaves. He let his things to the ground and lowered himself to sit. With a deep breath of exhaustion, he leaned back against a tree.
His ankle ached and his stomach growled. He had eaten the last of his food earlier in the day and had not come across anything to pick, dig or kill since entering the Others’ wooded stronghold. He drank some water, wrapped himself in everything he owned and settled into the eerie silence.
Sleep eluded him. His thoughts drifted, tumbled and swirled down a black river of fate and bad choices, staring him down and filling his throat with bitterness. Had he ever made a decision based on anything else? His path had never been of his own making, it seemed.
When he finally slept, the dream world came alive, illuminating the contours of his mind with terrifying clarity.
He stood in the Vinland, in the heart of the Gate. Verdant hills rolled into the distance, striped with neat rows of grapevines and dappled with old family homesteads. Between the vineyards stretched fields dotted with grazing animals and patches of trees glowing in the setting sun. The air smelled sweet.
From the north a shadow clawed over the hills on a wave of sickly light. All things withered and quailed in its path. Arcmael extended his senses into the shadow to discern its nature. A first he felt nothing. Its energy eluded him, as if he were probing the mind of a god. Then he saw something on the shadow’s advancing edge. An animal? It was dirty white and ran with all its strength, barking wildly.
Arcmael’s veins filled with ice as the animal drew closer, its eyes two blackened orbs.
Mortals are such fragile creatures.
“No,” Arcmael whispered, his heart filling with sorrow.
Dog vanished in the encroaching dark. Mist covered the realm, swirling in black spirals. It grew as cold as the wastes of Isil on the northern borders of Ason Tae. It smelled of burning stone, rotting flesh and the rusted, crumbling trappings of dead warriors. A cacophony of uprooted vines, trees, roofs and writhing, screaming beasts drew up into the air, creating a swirling tower.
Arcmael fled. The maelstrom surrounded him, spreading from the Otherworld on every compass point, above and below, a vast geometric pattern of starlit angles and lines. The demon descended upon him with the force of a plague and crushed him into the ground with claws, thorns, fangs and swords.
They burn.
He awoke in the forest with a gasp. A hand covered his face; claws dug into his eyes, mouth and nose. In a rush of horror, he flailed out and ripped at it.
Nothing was there.
Something hit him in the stomach. As he rolled over, it kicked him in the ass. It felt like a hoof.
Holding his arms to his face to brace for the next blow, Arcmael tried to get up. Laughing, his assailant kicked him again. He sprawled out, turned over and tumbled into open space. His reflexes saved him as he whipped his hand onto a root and clung there, his feet dangling into some unknown depth. Something thumped and clattered below him. It sounded like his quiver and arrows.
Goat’s dripping asshole, a voice snarled. Not an elf, judging by that talk. Arcmael slapped his other hand on the root and peered over the edge. Shimmering in the light of the Otherworld crouched a squat, ugly creature with bowed legs, a potbelly and long, pointed ears. It was covered in scraps of moss and coarse tufts of hair.
A goblin. A thin sliver of fear touched Arcmael’s bowels as he realized the nature of the elves’ earlier threat.
The creature lifted its oversized penis and released a stream of piss into Arcmael’s face. Gasping and sputtering the greasy urine from his mouth and nose, he hauled himself up and latched his elbows and one foot onto the roots that held him.
Limp bent cock, the goblin spat. It kicked Arcmael’s foot from the root, causing his elbows to slip off as his body swayed in the air. He clung on, his arms aching with fire. The goblin picked up Arcmael’s staff, laughed and slammed the butt of it onto his hand. Burning pain leapt up his arm. “You little fuck,” Arcmael rasped. Hanging by one hand, he tilted his head back and yelled, “Othin!”
The goblin yowled with laughter. As the sound echoed away through the forest, others joined in. No Trickster here; no Trickster there, they sang. No Trickster anywhere!
The goblin broke the staff over his knee and tossed it over the edge. It clipped Arcmael in the head before clattering away into the trees. His hand was weakening. When the goblin raised a knife, Arcmael let go. He crashed through a tangle of branches, his body striking trunks and boughs on the way down. He landed in a net. It smelled of rotting compost.
Raucous laughter filled the wood. Truss him up! Drag him hither! Bind his limbs! Make him slither!
The pale, reeking forms of goblins closed in on him and tightened the slippery net around his body. Then, still singing, they dragged him over the forest floor until he lost consciousness.
As the Crow Flies
A last quarter moon hung low in the sky above Merhafr. Dressed in plain clothes that blended with the shadows of the lower city streets, Othin leaned back in his chair in a dim corner of the Tower View Tavern and flipped the latch on a window. He cracked it and took a deep breath of the night air. The moon no longer illuminated the road north to his love. Now waning, it had become a dispassionate herald of weddings and war.
Prederi leaned around Othin to see out. “I never knew the windows opened in here,” he said.
“Don’t let the barman see you,” Bren said, fingering a deck of wildcards. “He’ll think you’re up to mischief.”
Prederi laughed. “Like what?”
“You could get a body through there.”
Prederi’s response was lost in a burst of laughter from some fishermen at a nearby table. Part of an old building used to house warriors during the Sie War, the tavern had a high ceiling hung wi
th iron candelabra, the arms of which were in the shapes of eels. Thick stone pillars amid the tables created corners and blind spots, making the tavern a popular haunt for spies, thieves and those who sought them. Othin had taken an outlying seat in view of the tavern door. The place was full tonight, and aside from the occasional outbreak, the patrons were subdued by talk of spending the winter under siege.
The black waters of the Taeson River swirled below against a high wall that channeled the tides. In the distance, Tower Sor stood above the sea like a sentinel. The gatetower had a dark history, earning this tavern the colloquial name of the Sour View. Over twenty suns past, a ranger who had been drinking in this very tavern climbed up to the tower on a dare and fell to his death on the rocky crags. Two suns after that, a warden who was last seen near the tower by a passing shepherd went missing and was never found. And three suns past, a midwife had been collecting herbs from the fields and returned to the city screaming and out of her mind, uttering nonsense. Rumor had it she still had not recovered. The Fylking were blamed for these tragedies, of course, but no one knew for sure. And wardens do not tell.
In keeping with its reputation, Tower Sor had not been visited by a warden in three fortnights. The last one, who was expected over a moon ago, never arrived. The Citadel dispatched a messenger to the Faersc Conservatory to investigate, but he had not returned. Othin was not surprised.
The blood-red banners of war had not yet been hung on the city gates, but Merhafr shivered with unease. Like the Tower View, the taverns were full, day after day, as the townsfolk plied themselves with drink and company to relax and forget while they still could. Merhafr was not easy to besiege; however, two centuries of peace with Fjorgin under the Njorth Treaty had weakened the city’s defenses. The king’s army was spread over three realms, and recalling, preparing and providing for them over such short notice was no small undertaking. To make matters worse, generations of Fjorginan spies, who knew every detail of the city, could cause quite a bit of damage.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 17
