Fortress of Mist

by Sigmund Brouwer

  And slowly, he woke to perfume and the softness of hair falling across his face. Isabelle? Again?

  He drew breath to challenge the intruder, but a light finger across his lips and a gentle shushing stopped him from speaking.

  “Dress quickly, Thomas. Follow without protest,” the voice whispered.

  Thomas saw only the darkness of silhouette in the dimness of the tent.

  Could this be Isabelle?

  “You’ve returned,” Thomas said.

  “Returned? There is no time for your riddles and nonsense.”

  “Then who are you?” Thomas reached for his sword, a movement that the intruder must have noticed, even in the darkness.

  “Fear not,” the voice continued. “You don’t need to defend yourself. An old man wishes to see you. He asks if you remember the gallows.”

  Old man! Gallows! In a rush of memory as bright as daylight, Thomas felt himself at the gallows. The knight who might win Magnus for him about to be hung, and Thomas in front, attempting a rescue through disguise and trickery. Then the arrival of an old man, one who knew it was Thomas behind the disguise and knew of his quest, one who commanded the sun into darkness. One who had never appeared again.

  “As you wish,” Thomas whispered in return with as much dignity as he could muster, despite the sudden trembling in his stomach. No mystery—not even the evil terror of the strange symbol—was more important to him than discovering the old man’s identity.

  The silhouette backed away slowly, beckoning Thomas with a single crooked finger. He rose quickly, wrapped his cloak around him, and shuffled into his shoes.

  How had she avoided the sentries outside his tent?

  Thomas pushed aside the flap of the tent and followed. Her perfume hung in the heavy night air.

  Moonlight showed that both sentries sat crookedly against the base of a nearby tree. Asleep! It was within his rights as lord to have them executed.

  “Forgive them,” the voice whispered as if reading his mind. “Their suppers contained potions of drowsiness.”

  He strained to see the face of the silhouette in the light of the large pale moon. In response, she pulled the flaps of her hood across her face. All he saw was a tall and slender figure, leading him slowly along a trail that avoided all tents and campsites.

  Ghost-white snakes of mist hung heavy among the solitary trees of the moor valley.

  It felt too much like a dream to Thomas. Still, he did not fear to follow. Only one person had knowledge of what had transpired in front of the gallows. Only he, then, could have sent the silhouette to his tent.

  At the farthest edge of the camp, she stopped to turn and wait.

  When Thomas arrived, she took his right hand and clasped it with her left.

  “Who are you?” Thomas asked. “Show me your face.”

  “Hush, Thomas,” she whispered.

  “You know my name. You know my face. Yet you hide from me.”

  “Hush,” she repeated.

  “No,” he said with determination. “Not a step farther will I take. The old man wishes to see me badly enough to drug my sentries. He will be angry if you do not succeed in your mission.”

  She did not answer. Instead, she lifted her free hand slowly, pulled the hood from her face, and shook her hair loose to her shoulders.

  Nothing in his life had prepared him for that moment.

  The sudden ache of joy to see her face hit him like a blow. For a timeless moment, it took from him all breath. He had never seen this woman before, but somehow, deep in his soul, it seemed as if he had known her his entire life.

  It was not her beauty that brought him such joy, even though the curved shadows of her face would be forever seared in his mind. No. Thomas had learned not to trust appearances; beauty consisted of heart joining heart, not eyes to eyes. Isabelle, somewhere lurking within Magnus, had used her exquisite features to deceive, while gentle Katherine—horribly burned and masked by bandages—had proven the true worth of friendship.

  Thomas struggled for composure. What, then, drew him to this woman? Why did it seem as if he had been long-pledged for this very moment?

  She stared back, as if knowing completely how he felt, yet fearless of what was passing between them.

  “Your name,” Thomas said. “What is your name?”

  “I don’t have a name.”

  “Everyone has a name.”

  “Everyone of this world,” she answered. “What if I am nothing more than a spirit? A walking dream?”

  “You toy with me. As if you already know me. Who are you?”

  “Someone who wants to believe that you are one of us,” she answered.

  “One of you? A spirit? A walking dream?”

  As answer, she took his hand, lifted it to her mouth, and kissed the back of his hand so gently that he wondered if he had imagined her lips brushing against his skin.

  She dropped his hand again. “I have already said too much. Follow me. The old man wishes to see you.”

  Abruptly, she turned, and he had no choice but to follow as she picked faultless footsteps on ground shadowed from the moon by the trees along the stream of the valley.

  Thomas bit his lip to keep inside a cry of emotion he could barely comprehend. Isabelle’s betrayal at Magnus now seemed a childish pain. He drew dignity around him like armor.

  They walked—it could have been only a heartbeat, he felt so distant from the movement of time—until reaching a hill that rose steeply into the black of the night.

  An owl called.

  She turned to the sound and walked directly into the side of the hill. As if parting the solid rock by magic, she slipped sideways into an invisible cleft between monstrous boulders. Thomas followed.

  They stood completely surrounded by the granite walls of a cave long hollowed smooth by eons of rainwater. The air seemed to press down upon him and away from the light of the moon; Thomas saw only velvet black.

  He heard the returning call of an owl leave her lips, and before he could react to the noise, there was a small spark. His eyes adjusted to see an old man holding the small light of a torch, which grew as the pitch caught fire.

  Light gradually licked upward around them to reveal a bent old man, wrapped in a shawl. Thomas could distinguish no features beyond deep wrinkles. Shadows leaped and danced in eerie circles from beneath his chin.

  “Greetings, Thomas of Magnus.” The voice was a slow whisper. “Congratulations on succeeding in your first task, the conquering of the castle.”

  “My first task? Who are you?”

  “Such impatience. One who is lord of Magnus would do well to temper his words among strangers.”

  “I will not apologize,” Thomas said, filled with indignation. “Each day I am haunted by memory of you. Impossible that you should know my quest at the hanging. Impossible that the sun should fail that morning at your command.”

  The old man shrugged and continued in the same strained whisper. “Impossible is often merely a perception. Surely by now you have been able to ascertain the darkness was no sorcery, but merely a trick of astronomy as the moon moves past the sun. Your books would inform a careful reader that such eclipses may be predicted.”

  “What do you know of my books?”

  That mystery gripped Thomas so tightly he could almost forget the presence of the other in the cave. The young woman.

  The old man ignored the urgency in Thomas’s words. “My message is the same as when we last spoke after the gallows. You must bring the winds of light into this age and resist the forces of darkness poised to take from you the kingdom of Magnus. Yet what assistance I may offer is little. The decisions to be made are yours.”

  Thomas clenched his fists and in frustration exhaled a blast of air. “You talk in circles. Tell me who you are. Tell me clearly what you want of me. And tell me the secret of Magnus.”

  The old man turned away from Thomas, disappearing and reappearing in the shadows of the cave.

  “Druids, Thomas. Bew
are those barbarians from the isle. They will attempt to conquer you through force. Or through bribery.”

  Yet another layer of cryptic answers. “Tell me how you knew of my quest that day at the hanging. Tell me how you know of the books. Tell me how you know of the barbarians.”

  “To tell you is to risk all.”

  Thomas pounded his thigh in anger. “The risk is shrouded and hidden from me. I am given a task that is unexplained, with no reason to fulfill it beyond my vow to my mother. And then you imply it is but the first of more tasks. Give me answers. No more circles!”

  Even in his frustration, Thomas sensed sadness from the old man.

  “The knowledge you already have is worth the world, Thomas. Use it wisely to save your own men from the Scots. That is all I can say in that regard.”

  “No,” Thomas pleaded. “Who belongs to the strange symbol of conspiracy? Is the Earl of York friend or enemy?”

  The old man shook his head. “Thomas, I pray there will come a day when we can trust you and reveal your destiny.”

  “We? At least tell me who you are!”

  “Thomas, give us a reason to trust. Very soon, you will be offered a prize that will seem far greater than the kingdom of Magnus.”

  The torch flared once before dying, and Thomas read deep concern in the old man’s eyes.

  From the sudden darkness came his final whispered words. “It is worth your soul to refuse.”

  Dawn broke clear and bright. Despite the cold that resulted from a cloudless night, few complained. Rain would be churned into a sucking mud beneath the thousands of feet of an army this size. White mist, common to the moors, would disorient stragglers within minutes. Cold and clear nights, then, were much better for warfare.

  Before the sun grew hot, all tents had been dismantled and packed. Then, with much confusion and shouting, the earls and barons directed their men so that the entire army formed an uneven column nearly a half mile in length—so long that the front banners began forward motion nearly twenty minutes before the ones in the rear.

  The army marched only for three miles before an eerie noise began.

  To Thomas, it sounded like the faraway buzzing of bees. Once he actually lifted his head to search for the cloud of insects. The whispering became a hum, and the hum gradually became a babble. The noise came from the army itself.

  Still, the army moved its slow pace forward.

  Finally the babble reached Thomas and his men, who were moving in the middle of the mass and slowly making progress to reach the front. Pieces of excited conversation became audible.

  “Demons upon us!”

  “We are fated to doom!”

  “Pray the Lord takes mercy upon us!”

  Then, like the quiet eye of an ominous storm, the voices immediately in front died. That sudden calmness chilled Thomas more than the most agitated words that had reached his ears.

  Within sixty more paces, he understood the horrified silence.

  Thomas felt rooted at the sight, and only the pressure of movement behind him kept him in motion.

  To the side of the steady motion of the column stood a small clearing. Facing the column, as if ready to charge, and stuck solidly on iron bars imbedded into the ground, were the massive heads of two white bulls.

  Blood—in dried rivulets on the iron bars—had pooled beneath the heads. Flies, gorged on the thick rust-red liquid, swarmed beneath the line of vision of the open yet sightless eyes of each head.

  The remains of a huge fire scarred the grass between the heads. Little remained of its fuel, but charred hooves carefully arranged outward in a circle left little doubt that the bodies of the animals had been burned.

  Thomas looked upward. Again a chill of the unnatural nearly froze his steps.

  At first, it appeared as heavy ribbons hanging from the branches of a nearby tree. Then, as Thomas focused closer, he fought the urge to retch. Pieces of entrails draped over the branches swayed lightly in the wind.

  Carved clearly into the trunk of the tree was the strange symbol of conspiracy, the one that matched the ring of the Earl of York.

  Thomas closed his eyes in cold fear. Words spat with hatred by Geoffrey echoed through his head.

  “Already the forces of darkness gather to reconquer Magnus.”

  Thomas shivered again beneath the hot blue sky.

  Thomas’s bold challenge would take place at noon—in a scant hour. Not for the first time did he doubt its outcome and his own destiny.

  Alone with a bowl of stew, he sat on a knoll that gave him a view of much of the camp. From knights and squires and yeomen and archers to cooks and peasants and those who simply followed for merriment, there were hundreds who depended on the choices he made.

  Who was he to pretend it was within his capabilities to wisely govern them all? And in the end, was it a good enough reason, simply because his long-dead parents had once ruled Magnus? What would all of his efforts bring him except power that some mysterious conspiracy seemed to continuously try to take?

  He felt a scratching in the cage hidden beneath his cloak. The tame mouse smelled food and had learned to expect to be fed.

  Thomas let the mouse crawl onto his hand. He’d been reluctant to have the mouse blinded to keep it from escaping, for he hated any act of cruelty. But better to risk the life of a mouse than that of an official food taster. The mouse, at least, was content. Not so much for the man who would sample every meal, wondering not only if it might be his last taste, but the beginning of a horrible and painful death by poison.

  Thomas placed the mouse on his shoulder. He felt the twitching whiskers against his neck.

  With both hands free, he slid some stew onto the flat of his knife blade. He set the bowl down with one hand, and kept the knife steady with his other. Then he reached across and gently lifted the mouse off his shoulder and onto his other wrist. The mouse crept forward and with delicate movements scooped the juices of the stew into its mouth.

  Thomas’s thoughts drifted away from the mouse, back to the hidden library that he’d consulted before this march. He’d found advice on herbs and medicinal plants. He’d made military plans based on other portions of the books. But nothing in any of the books had prepared him for battle against those of the strange symbol.

  Why not? he wondered. Why had his own mother not spoken a single word about Druids? Surely, on her deathbed when she’d made him pledge to reconquer Magnus, she could have anticipated that those who ruled it were masters of apparent darkness?

  A slight movement distracted Thomas. He glanced down at his wrist, where the mouse was staggering in tiny circles. At that moment, it tumbled sideways and landed in the grass. It kicked and shuddered, then stopped.

  This challenge may be a waste of time,” growled Frederick. His jowls wobbled with each word. “But I’m in favor of anything to make these peasants forget the morning’s unholy remains.”

  White bulls, rare and valuable beyond compare, suggested a special power that appealed to even the least superstitious peasants. What demons might be invoked with such a carefully arranged slaughter of the animals?

  It was a question asked again and again throughout the morning. Now, with the army at midday rest, nothing else would be discussed.

  Thomas felt the pressure. He faced the barons and earls around him. “If each of you would, please summon your strongest and best—”

  “Swordsmen?” Frederick sneered. “I’ll offer to fight you myself.”

  “Yeomen,” Thomas finished.

  “Bah. An archery contest. Where’s the blood in that?”

  “Precisely,” Thomas said. He wondered briefly how the fat man had ever become an earl. “How does it serve our purpose to draw blood among ourselves when the enemy waits to do the same?”

  The reply drew scattered laughs. Someone clapped Thomas on the back. “Well spoken!”

  The fat man would not be deterred. “What might a few arrows prove? Everyone knows battles are won in the glory of the charge. In t
he nobility of holding the front line against a countercharge. Man against man. Beast against beast. Bravery against bravery until the enemy flees.”

  Thomas noticed stirrings of agreement from the other earls and barons. He felt like a puppy among starving dogs. Yet he welcomed the chance to argue a method of warfare that had well served generals two oceans away and nearly two thousand years earlier.

  “Man against man? Beast against beast?” Thomas countered as he thought of the books of knowledge that had won him Magnus. “Lives do not matter?”

  “We command from safety,” Frederick said with smugness. “Our lives matter and are well protected. It has always been done in this manner.”

  Thomas drew a breath. Was it his imagination, or was the Earl of York, still silent, enjoying this argument? The thought gave him new determination.

  “There are better methods,” Thomas said quickly. He removed all emotion from his voice, and the flattening of his words drew total attention.

  “The bulk of this army—and any other—consists of poorly trained farmers and villagers. None with armor. How they must fear the battle.”

  “The fear makes them fight harder!” Frederick snorted.

  “Knowing they are to be sacrificed like sheep?”

  “It has always been done in this manner,” Frederick repeated.

  “Listen,” Thomas said, with urgency. He knew as he spoke that some of the earls were considering his words carefully. If he could present his argument clearly …

  “If these men knew you sought to win battles and preserve their lives, loyalty and love would make them far better soldiers than fear of death.”

  “But—”

  Thomas would brook no interruption. “Furthermore, man against man, beast against beast dictates that the largest and strongest army will win.”

  “Of course. Any simpleton knows that,” Frederick said, his voice laced with scorn.

  “And if we should find ourselves the lesser army of the two?”

  Silence.

  Thomas spoke from memory a passage of one of his secret books. “I would suggest an art of using troops in this way: When you have ten to the enemy’s one, surround him. When you have five times his strength, attack him. If you only have double his strength, divide the enemy. If you are equally matched to the enemy, when the situation permits, then engage him in battle. If you are weaker in numbers, there is no shame in withdrawing and being prepared and able to do so. Lastly, if in all respects you are unequal to a fight, then elude the enemy.”