Outsider

by Klaire de Lys

  ‘We’re from Bjargtre! Don’t shoot!’ Jarl shouted.

  For a moment there was silence. Jarl noticed that three arrows were pointed directly at him, two from the top of the stone wall and one from the small opening in the wooden gate.

  ‘We can pay for passage!’ Jarl yelled, trying not to turn and look at the forest as he heard a flock of birds flying up from the forest floor.

  ‘We need to get inside!’ Halvard hissed.

  The large, heavy locks clunked behind the side door in the wall, and Jarl took a step forward with Knud close behind him. A human appeared in the doorway shortly followed by a second, an archer, with his arrow lowered but ready to raise at a moment’s notice.

  Only ever having seen dwarves in his lifetime, Knud couldn’t help staring at the humans. They were so tall, a good three heads taller than Jarl. Their skin was dark, the colour of ebony, and they were draped in thick furs, the hems of which were embroidered with shapes of birds and trees. Brightly coloured threads of red, green, orange and blue stood out against the dark browns and blacks of their clothes. The buttons of their tunics were made of bone and had been carved to look like knotted rope. Rabbit fur topped their worn, leather boots, and Knud stared at the patchwork of leather pieces and the small, sharp studs sewn into the points of them.

  ‘What are you willing to pay?’ the taller human bellowed.

  ‘We can pay one Heit per dwarf,’ Jarl said quickly, painfully aware that they still had dried human blood on their clothes. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, his senses telling him something was watching them from the forest. ‘We don’t have any more than that,’ he lied, knowing he had a purse stuffed with coins in his bag.

  Nodding his head, the human glanced over at the forest warily and held out his hand. Jarl reached into the pouch that hung from the back of his belt and pulled out three Heit. Each coin was thick and hollow through the centre, almost resembling a belt buckle, with various letters and runes stamped upon it. Jarl pressed them firmly into the human’s hand and walked forwards, beckoning the others to follow. As soon as they were through the door it clunked heavily behind them, and Halvard lowered his axe, his face relaxing.

  ‘The inns are that way,’ the guard snapped, pointing ahead. ‘Take the second street on your left.’

  Nodding his head in thanks, Jarl marched down the street with Knud and Halvard close behind him. The humans stared at them in surprise, many of them never having seen a dwarf before.

  As they followed the human’s directions, the sun set over the mountains and the temperature dropped at an incredible speed. The street had no paving and the ground beneath them was hard from the cold. They shivered as they walked, passing rows and rows of wooden and stone houses with sharp, angled rooves, a thick layer of thatch covering each one. A warm yellow glowed from the square leaded windows and thick knotted patterns were carved into the door frames of each house.

  They reached the second street and Jarl turned into it.

  ‘If I don’t find a bed soon I’m going to start using this thing,’ Halvard grumbled, waving his axe in the air, ‘They’ll probably try and overcharge us again. Three Heit was far too much!’

  ‘Quite frankly I’d have given them all the Heit we have if it meant we could get out of that forest,’ Jarl replied. ‘Something was watching us.’

  ‘Well, I’d rather have a good fight than be robbed in broad daylight.’

  Shaking his head, Jarl said nothing. It was no use arguing with Halvard when the cold made him grumpy, lack of a decent sleep made him worse, and not having warm food for a few days made him borderline murderous. He could never be reasoned with in this mood.

  Ahead of them at the far end of the street, several inn signs lined both sides, each with the inn’s namesake painted on it. A knot, a red barge and a rising sun were the first three images that Jarl saw, the red barge being the smallest of the three. The Knot was easily double the size of its competitors and took up the entire end of the street. It had a second floor and a stable built beside it.

  He glanced across at The Red Barge. Skad had mentioned he would be staying there and Jarl decided immediately that although he had to see him, he would avoid the place for as long as he could. The man was absolutely insufferable to be around.

  Jarl strode up to the large oak door of The Knot, straightened his back and pushed it open firmly, his head held high. The many people crowded around inside stood aside to let him through. Knud stared up at his uncle, amazed at how he could command the attention of the room without so much as saying a word. It had been a long time since he had seen Jarl exercise this ability; in fact he couldn’t remember him having done it since Knute died. Something inside of him had disappeared with the death of his best friend.

  Striding up to the counter, Jarl cleared his throat loudly, and the innkeeper turned around, looking up at the space above Jarl’s head before looking down and spotting him. His eyes seemed to linger on the bloodstains on Jarl’s clothes and Halvard swallowed hard, his steel blue eyes glaring up at the man.

  ‘How much for three rooms?’ Jarl asked.

  ‘How long will you be staying?’

  ‘A week,’ Jarl said. Halvard glanced at him, one eyebrow raised, but said nothing.

  ‘That’ll be five Feoh,‘ the innkeeper finally said, and Halvard stiffened, positive they were being charged double the normal rate.

  ‘I only have Fé,’ Jarl lied, wanting to conserve the remaining Heit he had.

  ‘That’ll be ten Fé,’ he replied, and Halvard growled behind them. Jarl, scared that Halvard was about to ask the man to step outside, quickly pulled the money from his pouch and passed it to the innkeeper. He took the money and reached below the counter for the keys, then lifted the counter door and led them through the crowd to the stairs. The humans who were sober enough to notice turned to stare at them and one, who was too drunk to see their beards, bellowed out from the crowd.

  ‘No children allowed!’

  Jarl grabbed Halvard by his arm and stopped him from lunging at the man who had said it.

  ‘Calm down!’ Jarl muttered under his breath.

  At the top of the creaky, pine staircase, the innkeeper opened three of the many doors lining the hall, and passed each of them a key.

  ‘Food will be served for another hour, then it’s only ale. If you want, the maid can bring up hot water.’

  ‘Yes!’ Jarl said, his bones desperate for a nice warm bath. Halvard, seeming not to have heard what the innkeeper had said, lumbered into his room and slammed the door behind him. There was a loud thud from behind the door, the sound of Halvard falling to his bed, and then silence.

  The innkeeper walked back down the stairs, managing to resist the urge to turn around and stare at them. It was not the first time he had seen a dwarf but it was the first time since he had been a little boy. No matter how close they were, the dwarves of Bjargtre kept to themselves. To see a dwarf was rare, something to be discussed with friends for weeks afterwards. Normally they just passed through and left within a day or two. But whatever was happening up on the mountains seemed to be pushing more than just the occasional dwarf down into Einn.

  In his room, Knud headed straight for the bed and practically fell into it. He kicked off his iron-capped boots, dropped the key onto the floor and grabbed the edge of the blanket, rolling over in the bed so that it wrapped around him. He looked more like a worm than a dwarf, with his bright orange hair stuck out of the end.

  Jarl stumbled into his room, locked the door and placed the key on the bedside table. Like an invisible wave, the tiredness from the last few days hit him and he dropped his bag to the floor and kicked off his shoes. He pulled a clean outfit from his bag, desperate to get out of his filthy clothes, and as he slipped off his tunic, he noticed the mud and blood speckling it. A large patch of dried human blood covered the shoulder area from when he had hidden under the dead bargeman.

  ‘No wonder they were wary,’ Jarl muttered.

  Ju
st as he was about to tumble into his bed, he heard a faint tapping on the door. Irritated, he opened it, and instantly any thought of sleep disappeared when he saw a maid standing timidly in the hallway with a steaming jug of water in her hands.

  Jarl beckoned her into the room with an outstretched arm, and without speaking, she poured the water into the wooden tub at the far end of the room. She opened the tap on a large tank of cold water then hurried back to the hallway, returning a second later with two more jugs.

  ‘I think your friends are asleep, so I figured you could have these instead,’ she said cheerfully, trying not to stare at him.

  ‘They’re tired, it’s been a long few days.’

  ‘If you want, I can take your clothes down and have them washed.’

  ‘No! No, thank you, I prefer to clean them myself,’ Jarl said quickly, worried about how the humans would react if they saw just how much blood was on his clothes. They were already drawing attention just by being here. The last thing they needed to do was make anyone think that they might be dangerous. The bargemen who had died would no doubt have friends or family who lived in Einn, and three dwarves arriving with blood on their clothes that wasn’t their own would raise questions.

  The woman left and Jarl locked the door behind her. The tub was almost half full and he closed the tap to the tank, undressed, and stepped into the water.

  The water could have been straight from the cold tank and it would have still felt warm to Jarl. His body was so cold it felt like ice had managed to make its way to his bones and into the marrow, freezing him from the inside. At first it felt as if his skin was burning, but once he became accustomed to the sudden temperature change, the warmth slowly seeped through to his insides.

  Against his better judgment, Jarl leant his head against the back of the tub and closed his eyes. The exhaustion crept over his body as a dark mist descended on his consciousness...

  * * *

  It was so cold, and the air bit at his exposed face and turned his skin a mottled red. Pulling his fur cloak tightly around him, he trudged forwards through the snow. It was a slow, exhausting haul forwards and each foot felt as if it were made of rock, becoming heavier by the second. He was tired from the two hours it had taken to walk so far, and when he turned to see exactly how far he had come, he saw the tracks behind him had disappeared, the falling snow having covered them in seconds.

  Halvard had decided to stay in Bjargtre; he had not been terribly enthusiastic about stepping out into the spring storm. The snow would not last for long, at most a day or two before it melted, but that did not stop the cold, and Halvard hated the cold.

  Knute should have been back hours ago, and no matter how much Halvard had told him it was absurd to go looking for him along the Austr road, and that the snow storm had probably just slowed his patrol down so there was nothing to worry about, somehow Jarl had not been able to shake the strange feeling inside of him, a hollow sense of foreboding urging him to leave the city and go in search of his friend.

  The road was nothing more than an endless stretch of white and he was barely able to feel the stone road under it.

  Knute had only left with his patrol to escort the merchants from Lǫgberg back to the outpost, which was barely an hour’s walk away. When they had left, the storm had not yet hit the mountain and there had been nothing more than a heavy cluster of clouds slowly creeping towards Bjargtre against a clear blue sky. They would have reached the outpost before the snow became a hindrance, but even so, he should have seen them by now. He could see the tall towers of the outpost in the distance but not a single figure was nearby.

  The wind blew yet more snow down onto the ground, and the air became so thick with snowflakes he could barely see more than six feet ahead of him, the outpost towers now little more than a blur.

  Suddenly, his foot hit something in the snow, something soft and fleshy. Jarl crouched down and scraped away at the snow with his fingertips.

  With a shudder, a half dead donkey whinnied in pain, and as Jarl frantically pushed away more of the snow, he saw a deep stab wound to its neck, the snow around it a crimson red. The donkey had belonged to the merchants from Lǫgberg, he was sure of it. Its distinctive, shaggy red-brown coat had looked like hundreds of long hair cords; it’s snout completely white.

  His heart jumped into his mouth and Jarl looked around him, suddenly noticing small mounds in the snow nearby. He stumbled to his feet,raced to the nearest mound and scraped away at it in a panic. He stared down in horror as he uncovered the merchant’s face. The man’s throat was cut open and his eyes, lifeless and grey, stared up at him, a look of shock and fear embedded in them.

  A few feet to his right, Jarl suddenly saw one of the mounds move. He ran to it and dug at the snow as fast as he could. At the sight of the hem of Knute’s cloak, Jarl burrowed his fingers into it even faster, his hands having lost all feeling long ago . He clawed the snow away from his friend’s face just as Knute reached up and grabbed his hand in a vice-like grip, shaking uncontrollably.

  ‘Knute!’ he cried, as his friend yelled out in pain, panting and terrified. His face, or what was left of it, was a patchwork of torn and shredded skin; his left eye was sliced wide open whilst his right flinched wildly and stared up at him.

  Jarl didn’t need to ask what had happened; the marks on Knute’s face told him all he needed to know. The claw marks had not just torn the skin, they had burned it, and the wounds had been cauterised seconds after the claws had ripped it open. There was only one animal that Jarl knew of that left marks so identifiable: the Dip wolves of the northern plains. Any Dip this far west could only mean one thing: the goblins were raiding a lot further than Lake Krewa.

  Shoving his arms beneath Knute’s body, Jarl pulled him up out of the snow and onto his feet, all the while Knute wincing in pain.

  ‘Jarl! Jarl, put me down!’ Knute groaned. Jarl let him go and he fell to the ground, his hand pressed tightly over his stomach. Dark red blood oozed between his fingertips, his entire hand was swathed in it, his clothes soaked with it.

  Even if they had been at the gates of Bjargtre, there would have been nothing they could have done. This much blood loss was fatal. Knute’s skin was deathly pale and his breathing a hollow rattle. At most he would live for another few minutes.

  For a few seconds Jarl said nothing, feeling like he had been disemboweled himself. Moving to try and help Knute, he pressed his hands tightly over the slice across Knute’s stomach but knew deep inside that nothing could be done. His best friend was about to die in front of him.

  Taking a deep breath, Jarl forced himself to talk.

  ‘What...what happened?’

  Knute stared up at him, his good eye darting around like a madman’s. Jarl pressed his hand harder over Knute’s stomach urging him to hang on, to not let go.

  ‘Goblins! There were goblins!’ Knute said, his voice panicked. A small trickle of blood gathered at the corner of his mouth. ‘You have to warn them, tell King Hábrók the goblins have an Agroku!’

  Jarl didn’t know what to say or do. A part of him thought that maybe he could carry Knute back home, that it was still possible to save him; he was horrified at the thought of a life without his best friend. He had known Knute since he was a child; they had grown up together. He had been at his wedding, he was his son’s godfather. Knud...oh dear God...what would he say to Knud? He had already lost his mother to the red plague barely a year ago, how was he going to tell him that he had lost his father too?

  ‘Jarl!’ Knute shouted loudly, and Jarl’s mind snapped back. ‘You need to tell them! He was a young goblin. He can’t have been much older than fifteen or twenty, but he had so many rings in his hair! I heard them call him Ulf.’

  ‘How many rings?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he choked. ‘I only saw him for a few seconds before he cut me. But he had at least twenty. Twenty, Jarl! If this goblin has managed to control over twenty tribes while he’s still a boy...you must tell King Hábrók!’<
br />
  ‘I will!’ Jarl promised. Knute gripped Jarl’s arm more and more tightly, his breathing getting worse by the second. A horrible pained gasp escaped from his mouth as his life began to ebb away.

  ‘Knud...take care of him! Take care of my boy!’

  ‘I will! I promise!’

  Knute pushed Jarl’s hands away from his stomach, knowing he was just delaying the inevitable, but Jarl instantly pressed them back over the open gash.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt any more Jarl,’ Knute said, smiling, bright red blood seeping between the gaps of his teeth. ‘I miss Lína, it will be good to see her again!’

  ‘Can’t you wait a little bit?’ Jarl asked, knowing that Knute would prefer for him to joke in the situation, but he couldn’t hide the sadness and rage in his voice.

  ‘No, don’t think I have a choice this time!’ Knute laughed, looking up at the sky where the snow was falling less heavily now. ‘Ulf made sure of that.’

  ‘I’m going to kill him!’ Jarl growled, his hands shaking. ‘I’ll kill him!’

  ‘Feel free! He made my boy an orphan. I’m a little annoyed about that,’

  Half laughing, half crying, Jarl held Knute’s hand tighter.

  Knute had always been like this. No matter what the situation, there was always a joke to be made, usually at his own expense. It was just like him, joking till the very end.

  Closing his eyes, Knute breathed out slowly, his fingers curling inward and tightening for a second before folding outwards. His eyes glazed over and his whole body relaxed as his head rolled back against the snow.

  He stared blankly up at the sky.