Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael

by Martin Parece

  “My name is Rael, and I am a Dahken,” he says loudly, and his voice carries throughout the room. “By all rights, I am Lord Dahken of Sanctum. I am the only Dahken here. Leave me be.”

  For a moment, a sense of absolute stillness falls about the chamber, and Rael wonders if that is all he need say. He does not move, and he feels his heart as it tries to leap right out of his chest. Even when he slayed Demon, Rael’s heart did not pound so hard and fast. He somehow thinks that whatever hides from him in the dark can hear its beat. Rael turns slightly to his right in the hopes of finding a nearby wall sconce or a freestanding stanchion to hold his torch, and as he turns, he catches sight of something just barely out of the corner of his eye. By the time he can focus on it, it has already receded into the darkness, leaving Rael to wonder if he saw anything at all.

  The sudden clinking of coins to his left makes him turn back again, and Rael’s brow furrows as he tries to make sense of what he sees. The heaps of treasure beyond are distorted as if something obscures his vision, much like far off objects in the heat waves of a Tigolean summer. As he moves his eyes across the bizarre seen, he realizes a terminus where the sight of the gold and such appears normal. Rael’s eyes widen and his brow goes smooth when he realizes that he actually stares through an eight foot tall man-like shape, completely invisible except for the misshapen sight of the treasure beyond.

  Rael swings his torch toward the thing that he sees yet cannot see, and it meets no resistance at all as it passes through the outlined shape. A blow lands on his armored forearm, and while his father’s armor remains undamaged, the attack’s strength knocks the torch to the floor with a clatter. Rael quickly backs away, thinking to back out of the room. He almost trips over his own feet but is saved when his back meets the stone wall behind him. The exit is just to his right. The thing looms over him, and he can see its outline more plainly as the torch shows languidly through its “body”. Rael has the sense that the thing rears up to land some great blow, and he holds his shield high to absorb or deflect the attack. After a few seconds, he realizes the attack has yet to come.

  Rael opens eyes that he hadn’t realized he’d closed and peers out from behind the shield toward his unseen assailant. The thing has moved back several feet beyond the fallen torch, and Rael can barely make out its outline against the darkness beyond. Rael cautiously steps forward, never taking his eyes off the thing, until the torch lay right at his feet. It burns smokily as if it wishes to go out, and he slowly bends his knees to retrieve it. He nearly has it.

  The hairs on the back of Rael’s neck stand on end, or rather, they stand as well as they can, encased in plate armor such as they are. Whether it is some preternatural warrior’s sense, a flash of movement in the corner of his eye or some hint of sound to his left, Rael doesn’t know, but he knows that something moves to attack him. Rael half lifts, half swings his shield out to his left, straightening his legs to drive his body into the strike. For a moment, he catches a glimpse of another creature, spirit, whatever just before his shield impacts the thing. Unlike the torch, the steel of his shield impacts something solid, and soft blue light floods the treasury facing away from the shield. Something wails, screams, “YEEEAAAARRRRRGGGGG!”

  Rael holds his place, pushing against the shield until the resistance behind it seems to dissipate and vanish altogether. Once it is gone, he sees no trace that anything is or was there, and he turns to face the other creature. It has not moved, apparently watching him, and it backs into the gloom as he moves toward it with his shield before him. It disappears completely into the darkness, and Rael hears its soft movement through the treasury. After a few moments that seem to take forever, the sounds also cease.

  Rael pulls a few empty sacks from under his sword belt and begins filling them with as much gold and silver as they can hold.

  10.

  “I would rather be slogging through shit,” Rael grumbles as he trudges through about six inches of wet snow, but there is no one around to hear it except for his bay mare.

  She’s a good horse, young and strong, and he had purchased her in northern Aquis after he had already trudged a thousand miles on foot. The days had been growing colder with autumn, and Rael prepared himself for that before leaving Aquis. In addition to his horse, he had purchased a substantial amount of new wool clothes and blankets for both he and the animal. The Stable Master had asked him his destination and made several recommendations, and Rael had followed them exactly with the exception of one.

  “It’s a mistake to go into the Northlands, milord,” he had said. “I’d suggest that you not go at all. Most never come back, what with bears, mountain cats and beasties. And let’s not even mention the Northmen.”

  Rael finds it ironic that he bought a horse so he would no longer have to walk, a tiring existence when one is fully armored in plate steel, and yet he is again on foot. After he had crossed the at best vague border from Aquis into the Northlands, the ground became noticeable rockier, and it seemed he steadily ascended as the miles passed. He finally chose to dismount and walk with his horse, leading her with one hand on the reins. As he continued north, the nights grew bitter cold, and he awoke every morning to find the ground slick with bits of ice. At some point, Rael turned to find a gorgeous vista behind him – a long, rocky path sloping far below as far as he could see – and it was then he realized just how precarious this place was. One misstep from either he or the mare could spell disaster. He began to take extra care, slowing his progress even further.

  And then Rael discovered snow. When he first saw it, the dainty white flakes floating through the air were beautiful, even mystical. Rael of course has heard of snow, but never has he seen the stuff. The climate around neither the Narrow Sea nor Akor ever lends itself to frozen precipitation, and when Rael saw the first tiny snowflake, he stopped in his tracks to stare at it. It floated to the ground where it promptly disappeared, melting immediately on contact. He stood and simply watched as the occasional flake appeared and fell to the rocky ground, some of them fluttering slightly on the breeze as they did so, and he wondered why the people of the north worry so much about snow.

  His amazement dispelling, Rael continued his slow climb, pulled onward by the feeling in his blood. After a day, the footing had become slick and treacherous due to the light snow flurries. Two days after that, the sky seemingly opened and dropped millions upon millions of snowflakes down on the Dahken and his horse. It began to accumulate an inch at a time, and Rael found himself exhausting quickly for the extra effort required to keep both he and his horse from slipping.

  Rael comes to a halt, standing in a half foot of snow with more falling and looks east then west. To the left, west, the track seems to continue through the foothills almost like a road of sorts, but to the east it heads straight into the mountains. He sighs and looks up as if to beseech some higher power for guidance, but he receives no answer. Nor does he expect one. Rael cannot see the sun for the solid gray sky overhead, but he thinks it must be close to midday. He’s not sure which way to go, for suddenly he feels as if he may split in two, but he’s sure that he must find some sort of shelter before the day ends. Based on how cold his feet feel within his boots, Rael is certain that neither he nor the horse can sleep in the snow.

  At least now he understands why the merchant bade him wipe yellow wax all over his boots.

  For no particular reason he can discern, Rael turns east, and sheer gray rock begins to rise on either side of him after only a few hundred yards. The snow here is deeper; since it is unable to settle in large amounts on the sides of the mountains that seem to be forming around him, it falls down into the pass below. Confronted with forks, twists and bends, Rael plods on through snow that is now almost up to his knees. It works its way under the plates of his armor and slowly melts against his skin and linen underclothes to seep down into his boots. The mare seems to be losing interest in continuing, as he needs to pull on her reins more often to keep her moving.

  “We will
not freeze to death out here,” he assures the animal, raising his voice over wind that seems to cut harsh and cold through the narrow pass. “I promise you that we are close.”

  Rael knows the words to be true, but he doesn’t know to what they are close.

  He continues to push through the wind and snow, and each step becomes a battle just to pull his armored leg and booted foot from the deep, thick blanket. They continue only through force of will and the burning in Rael’s blood rather than any energy to do so as both horse and man are exhausted. Rael’s face hurts under a mask of frozen crystals that have formed from melting snowflakes and the cold wind.

  As Rael rounds a bend in the narrow track, he spies what he needs to save both of their lives, and somehow he knows it’s also what he seeks – a tall and narrow opening in the side of a mountain. It beckons warmly to him, both as shelter, and he can feel it calling to his blood. As he approaches, he can see that the crack is only four or five feet across at its widest, but it is about three times that in its height. A white smoke billows from the top of the crack, rising to join the cold clouds above. As Rael approaches, he realizes the smoke is in fact steam. Just outside the cave mouth, they can feel the warm air radiating from the cave mouth, and it almost feels like it burns his skin as it melts away the cold from his face.

  There is no snow within two feet of the entrance, and the frozen ground gives way to soft sticky mud, gripping at Rael’s ankles and the horse’s hooves. Rael enters the cave first, as it isn’t wide enough to admit the man and horse side by side, but the mare will not follow him inside. As he holds her reins, trying to forge deeper into the cave, she whinnies and yanks the reins from his grasp. Rael turns back to find the horse standing out in the snow, staring wide-eyed at the cave.

  “You will not come inside?” Rael asks the animal, receiving a white plumed snort in response. He steps back into the snow with his hand outstretched to again take the reins, and the horse rears up as it backs away from him. Rael holds his hands open in the air in surrender. “Very well, but you must enter eventually. It is warm inside, and we can rest there. I shall go make sure it is safe.”

  He releases the buckled strap across his chest that holds his shield in place upon his back, letting it fall to the ground. He turns, retrieves the shield and straps it onto his left arm. Rael then draws his longsword and steps back into the cave’s mouth, the sudden warmth sending a jolt through his body. He can see little, the crevasse illuminated only by the stark gray light coming from outside. Rael wishes he had a torch as only ten feet into the cramped cave, he can see very little. His shield and armor bumps and scrapes against the rough stone walls more than once. At least the ground is solid and dry, covered by a thin layer of loose dirt, and the cave’s air warms his steel, flesh and bones.

  After another dozen steps or so, the gray light from outside vanishes completely, but Rael can just barely make out a soft orange glow from up ahead. His nose, well thawed, starts to seep a clear fluid, and with nothing to wipe it away, it drips down his upper lip. Rael ignores the annoyance, but with it has returned his sense of smell. The steam above his head carries the distinct odor of rotten eggs, and something more subtle hangs in the air. He can almost catch a sickly sweet odor and something else before it is overpowered by the stench of the steam. Rael follows the orange light ahead, noting that it is a solid soft glow as opposed to the flickering of torches.

  The crevasse opens suddenly into a huge cave that is filled with the orange light, and Rael wanders in about ten feet, looking around in awe. The uneven ceiling is only perhaps five feet taller than the crevasse itself, but the cave looks to be about eight feet across and double that deep. It is bisected by an orange river, easily fifteen feet across, that flows through the cave from right to left, and having heard stories of lava, Rael knows that this is the source of both the light and the out of place warmth.

  The river of molten rock emerges from a depression in the cave’s right wall and flows through a trench. It disappears for a moment under what can only be described as a stone bridge, actually just part of the cave floor that varies in its width, before it reappears to flow into the left wall. At its narrowest, the bridge is still a good ten feet wide, more than adequate for a man and his horse to pass. Rael wonders at the trench through which the lava flows; it is so conveniently located as to make the Dahken wonder if it once contained an underground stream or river.

  A gaping dark hole on the other side of the cave, across the lava flow, catches Rael’s attention, and as he stares at it, he feels as if his blood is being pulled toward it. He begins to walk toward the stone bridge, drawn by the dark passage, and that’s when he notices the stench that fills the cavern. The scent he could not make out in the crevasse leading in is stronger here, and Rael distinctly recognizes the smell of rot, death and a beast. An epiphany strikes him like a lightning bolt – he should have known the mare had some reason why it would not enter the cave beyond claustrophobia.

  Rael turns slowly to his right, surveying parts of the cave to which he had not yet paid any attention. Several smaller and uninteresting passages lead off here or there, but it’s the scattered bones of animals and men that stand out. Some are old, but others appear fresher. And most are broken, damaged or scarred. His eyes pass over the crack from which he came, and it is the far corner of the cave that they come to rest. If he had only looked to his left as he passed into the cavern, he would have seen it, though he’s not sure that even now his mind wants to accept the creature’s existence amongst hundreds of broken and cracked bones, some of which still bear meat.

  A beast with pure white fur stands almost languidly as if it just awoke, and it shakes its great bulk from side to side much like a wet dog might. It stands six feet at the shoulder and has a body so large that Rael cannot imagine how the thing can pass in and out of the cave. The thing has a relatively small head, though it is bigger than a man’s, with a slightly elongated snout that ends in a large black nose. Rael has heard of bears, and though he has never seen one in his life, this creature must be one. The white fur around its mouth and snout is stained brownish red – evidence of some recent kill.

  The thing growls softly and begins to pad its way toward the Dahken, long black claws clicking on the stone floor of the cave. Rael steps back instinctively, somewhat awed by the immensity and obvious deadliness of the beast, and he half shakes his head to break the spell. He sets his feet wide and holds his sword and shield in preparation for battle. The bear must have some sense that its prey does not fear it, and it stops. Unexpectedly, it rears backward on its hind legs, its head at least twelve feet in the air. From his vantage point, Rael can see that the thing has in fact three pairs of legs, all six of which end in clawed paws. As if all of this is not imposing enough, the bear lets out a great roar which almost deafens within the cavern. Even after the roar ends, it echoes throughout the caverns beyond this one. Rael wants nothing more than to turn and run, but somehow he knows the thing will simply chase him down.

  The white bear moves toward the astonished Dahken with a speed not expected of something of such bulk. He would have thought the extra set of legs coming out of the thing’s midsection would have made it slower, clumsy, but they seem to have the opposite effect. Its head hangs low from its shoulder as it comes, and he can hear its breath passing through its jaws almost like a growl as it comes. Unconsciously, Rael steps backward once and then twice with trepidation born of uncertainty, for how can he expect to defeat such a thing? He steels his nerves and makes a warning stab with his sword toward the bear’s face. The motion buys him a few seconds as the beast stops short, but it lets out another roar, this one about half as loud as the first. The bear reciprocates the attack with a lurch forward and a swipe of its huge right forepaw. Rael steps back just far enough and just in time so that the claws barely scratch across the surface of his shield.

  Somehow, he knows without looking that the shield is undamaged, and he also knows that he cannot retreat much further. He
can feel the heat from the lava flow upon the steel protecting his back, and he distinctly notes the odd sound the molten rock makes as it runs through its trench.

  Perhaps he lost himself in thought for just a moment, or perhaps the bear can move with uncanny speed. Perhaps but regardless, Rael finds himself falling backward hard to the cavern’s stone floor as a weight the likes of which he has never felt lands upon him. Through some dumb luck or defensive reaction, he just manages lift his shield before the thing is upon him. The bear’s weight is crushing, yet somehow the plate armor of his father holds underneath it when it shouldn’t. Massive front paws have him pinned painfully, but the steel of the shoulder and armguards neither bends nor breaks. Jaws snap near his face, bringing with them hot, putrid breath smelling of decayed meat and fish, and only the blue steel of his shield keeps the mouthful of teeth from reaching him. His left arm, his shield arm is pinned between the upper part of his hauberk and the bear, and Rael cries out loudly as the bones in his wrist and forearm crack and break. He can think of nothing but getting away from the beast, but his sword is gone from his grip. Even if it wasn’t, he could not maneuver the longsword against something so close. Rael flails his mailed fist against the animal’s powerful legs and shoulder to no avail.

  The bear shifts slightly, lifting its bulk for just a moment, and Rael’s free hand shoots to his sword belt. It finds the wooden handle of his knife. It isn’t much of a weapon – only a few inches long with an edge on one side of the blade – but Rael has used it to gut fish or other small animals. The point is sharp, and more importantly, it is the only weapon he can reach. Rael stabs upward into the bear’s chest, leg and shoulder again and again, but even with his increasing strength the blade simply will not penetrate the thick white hide.