by Tim Marquitz
The knight stared without blinking. Unlike Brant, there was no hint of the man’s thoughts reflected in his features. Mihir, however, gave him no time to contemplate his options.
“He’s one of us, eh, Damien? Shytan by blood, even if he is a skeg.” His voice was smooth, its tone bathed in honey despite the prejudice that came so easily to his tongue. “There’s no need for hostility.”
Gryl nodded agreement with the knight. He was more than willing to play the role of snow nomad—however disrespected—if it brought peace and allowed him to go on his way. The more they dismissed him, the better. The tremor had crept from his arm into his torso, the mad dash down the hill having sapped the last of his energy. He would fight if he had to, but he’d rather not.
“I’ve no quarrel with you knights.” He gestured to the berserker he’d killed. “I’ll take the scalp I earned, by your leave, and let you be about your mission.”
“Fair skies, skeg,” Brant answered with a twitch of a smile, the words spewed with the force of a crossbow bolt.
“Hold on, eh?” Mihir raised his hands and inched up alongside the sergeant. “Couldn’t we use another arm, what with Chase and Iggy eatin’ dirt? A man who knows how to take down a Thrak especially, yeah?”
Brant’s eyes snapped toward Mihir. There was no hiding the man’s anger. “We don’t need—”
“What about the mission?” Damien asked, the question drawing Brant up short.
“Please, there’s no need to argue,” Gryl said, jumping in, “I’m not looking for work.”
“No?” Damien’s eyes shifted to Gryl. “Then the gurgles in your belly must be from the last feast you gorged yourself on, eh? I can hear the thing from here.” He motioned to the smallest knight. “Mihir here makes the best rat-gut gruel to be found this side of the sword line.” A slight grinned twitched at his lips. “You might even make a coin or two.”
Gryl just stared, saying nothing. Damien had the right of it. It would be another day or more before Gryl could trade the scalp for a meager sack of rations.
“You’re serious?” Brant asked, splitting his gaze between Mihir and Damien. When they both nodded, he raised his hands. “Fine, but if this dhongy herder slits your throat in your sleep, don’t come crawling to me for sympathy. And before you go offering the empress’ tits, he’s only getting one share of the bounty, and only if he earns it, you hear?” He shook his head and spun about, shoving Kel ahead of him. “Come on, boy. Let’s fetch the gear.”
“You with us?” Damien asked as Brant and the boy trudged off.
Gryl swallowed a sigh. He knew nothing of the men’s mission or who they were hunting, but the promise of food called to him like a sweet dream. His stomach speaking for him, he nodded.
Damien returned his nod with one of his own before traipsing off after Brant. Mihir came over to stand beside Gryl.
“That one there is Damien Kartain. The call him “The Ghost” because of all the folks he’s killed so be wary lest you want to spend all eternity haunting him.” Mihir stood stoic for a moment before breaking into a wide grin. “Though really, he’s not too bad. Brant’s who you have to keep an eye out for.”
Gryl forced a thankful smile, though it barely scraped his lips. He hadn’t been looking for company, preferring his own.
As if Mihir understood, he changed the subject. “You’ll like tonight’s stew.” He glanced about conspiratorially before leaning in close. “Found a mongrel buried in the snow not two days back. Skin was black from frost, but the insides were pink and moist.” Mihir chuckled and waved Gryl on.
#
Night fell just hours after the group gathered their supplies. They shambled on until the gloomy light just barely illuminated the horizon, and Brant called a halt. Gryl had been given the pack of one of the fallen knights, which was little more than a couple of ratty tarps and rolled sleeping gear. The men had scavenged the weapons and personal effects of the dead, but they’d left the bulky armor and the extra pack behind. Mihir shouldered the largest bundle of gear, the others carrying the same as Gryl, which told him the Shytan were little better off than he was. They were subsisting off the land just as he had been.
The group sheltered on the leeward side of a small hill nestled at the feet of the Jiorn Highlands, which rose up at a shallow clip for miles on end before dropping suddenly to the Boric Sea beyond. Gryl remembered the sheer wall of stone as the Avan ships brought him to Shytan, a shudder passing through him. At the base of the hills, the knights formed a loose circle of makeshift tents around a hissing circle of emberstones. Soft, gentle heat wafted from the piled, gray-black rocks, but the stones cast no light. Were it not for the frosted sheet of the earth reflecting the ambient shimmer of the skies, they would have been swallowed by the obsidian night. As it was, any further away than a few arm lengths and the men became deeper shadows amidst the black.
True to Mihir’s word, the gruel had been fantastic, though Gryl suspected the depths of his hunger held some sway. Regardless, he licked at the bowl, savoring every drop before reluctantly passing it back to Mihir.
The knight held a finger to his smiling lips and whispered, “Remember. It’s our little secret.”
Gryl nodded as Mihir went off to scrape the bowls clean with snow. He disappeared into the darkness, only his quiet humming and the crunch of his boots giving his location away.
Damien reclined on one of his tarps, the others set at his back to quell the slight breeze that snuck past the hills. He stared at the emberstones through the narrow slits of his eyes. His breathing, slow and steady, sent willowy tendrils of white drifting past his face. If he weren’t yet asleep, he would be soon.
Brant, however, remained wide awake. Kel hunched close to the stones while the sergeant sat with his feet extended, his legs stretched over Kel’s thighs, so his boots dangled off the other side. The boy had said nothing since Brant had ordered his silence, and Gryl never once caught him even looking his direction.
Brant had no such compunction. He stared with intense concentration, a look that would have warranted his death were the circumstances any different. Gryl’s gaze drifted over and over to the young boy as he fought the urge to challenge the sergeant for his boldness.
The vaguest of trembles shook through Kel as he huddled beside the emberstones. The twigs of his arms clutched to his chest, but there simply wasn’t enough meat on him to ward off the cold. His eyes were dots of white in the gloom. There was no mistaking the sorrow that cast a pall across his features. Whatever circumstance had brought him to the company of these men had done him no favors. Gryl sighed. Shytan was no less cruel to its children than Avantr.
“He’s a pretty one, ain’t he, skeg?”
Gryl glanced up at Brant, swallowing his animosity in order to remain silent but there was no hiding his confusion. It took a moment before Gryl managed to grasp the meaning behind the sergeant’s words.
“Kel here is like you—a skeg, but he’s from Andral, not that I suspect it makes much difference to you folks up north. Might be a few less dhongy where he comes from but they make up for it with goats. Ain’t that right, boy?”
Kel nodded, daring a fleeting look at Gryl before returning his eyes to the stones.
Brant lifted his feet and reached out, grabbing Kel by his collar. He tugged and the boy nearly toppled alongside him, the sergeant wrapping his meaty arm about Kel’s shoulder. “We saved him from a horde of berserkers not long back, so now he’s kinda like our little squire.” Brant chuckled as he squeezed the boy tighter into his side. “A knight in training, so to speak.”
Gryl met the boy’s eyes for just an instant before they fluttered away, a subtle hint of red coloring his cheeks.
“I see you watching him, skeg,” Brant continued, “but don’t be getting any ideas. Just because you both fell from frosty twats up north doesn’t give you any special privileges. This here’s my boy, nobody else’s.” The sergeant pulled Kel closer and stuck his tongue out, sliding it along the boy�
�s jawline. The slightest scrape of growing stubble whispered to Gryl’s ears just beneath the breathy whistle of Damien’s snores.
Right then he understood the knight’s hostility, and it sickened him. His stomach rumbled, not with hunger but with the sour churn of disgust.
Brant laughed and clambered to his feet, pulling Kel up with him. The boy’s chin hung at his chest, the knight’s arm still clasped about him.
“So you know, skeg, I’m a light sleeper. Anyone so much as rips a butt frog and I’ll hear it, so don’t you worry about nothing tonight.” His chuckles shook the boy as he led him toward his tent—Gryl only then realizing there hadn’t been one set up for Kel. “Hope you don’t mind a serenade.”
Gryl went to stand but a hand clasped at his arm. Fury warmed his cheeks, and he spun about to see Mihir standing behind him. The knight shook his head and mouthed a silent, “Don’t.”
Gryl reluctantly settled back, his fingers instinctively massaging the pommel of his sword as he heard Brant’s armor clunk to the ground. Mihir dropped down next to him. He said nothing, but there was no collusion in the man’s expression, which tempered Gryl’s fury, if only slightly.
A stranger to the ways of sex, his manhood cut away by the Avan Seer who’d inducted him into the role of Prodigy when he was just a boy, Gryl had no sense of the sergeant’s intent until he’d made it obvious. Brant had mistaken Gryl’s empathy for the boy as desire. The posturing had been his way of marking his territory.
A quiet gasp sounded in Brant’s tent and Mihir tightened its hold on his arm. Gryl hadn’t even realized he’d tensed, his hand sliding to the hilt of his blade. He drew a slow, deep breath and let it ooze from his lungs. Fingers twitching, he eased his hand from his sword as he got to his feet. He nodded to Mihir, unwilling to trust his voice to speak.
Gryl went to his tent and slipped between its fluttering walls, crawling beneath the threadbare blanket he’d been given. The steady slap of flesh on flesh floated on the night air, Kel’s muffled grunts almost a chant in stuttered rhythm. Gryl felt his scars worming across his skin, the sudden flush of his power begging to be set free. He clenched his teeth and covered his ears to silence the world. His hands still trembled, fury and weariness waging a war.
It would be many long hours before Gryl found sleep. His dreams were cruel.
#
The group was up at first light and on the trail shortly after. Gryl said nothing as they made ready, gnawing on the salted meat Mihir had provided to break their fast. It was hardly a meal yet it might well have been a feast as far as Gryl was concerned.
Brant met him with a broad smile as he climbed out of his tent and went about his preparations, casting amused glances Gryl’s direction at every opportunity. Kel had been just the opposite. He never once looked Gryl’s way, his chin seemingly woven to his tunic. He hurried to get ready and shuffled off the moment the group started on. Gryl’s anger, only muted from the night before, simmered as he fell in line. Though he still felt the tingles of weakness dancing through his skin, the gruel and rations had returned some measure of his energy. He glared at the back of Brant’s head as they traveled, Damien and Kel bookending him at either side.
Mihir hovered close to Gryl, making small talk as though hoping to defuse his anger. It worked, to a degree as he blathered on about the mission amongst the more mundane topics. They’d set out from Cantor, Mihir said, a small fort set upon the sword line, the group charged with returning the head of an escaped convict, though he knew little more. The constant prattle of the knight’s voice kept Gryl from dwelling on the sergeant and what he’d do to the man once he regained his strength.
The sun had crept nearly halfway across the sky behind its mask of gray and rumbling black clouds before Damien raised a fist to bring the group to a halt. Mihir’s voice in his ears, Gryl hadn’t heard anything until the talkative knight went silent. As soon as he did, a duet of raspy grunts resounded from somewhere ahead, distorted by the labyrinth of jutting, snow-covered stones that made up the gateway to Jiorn. The noise echoed through the afternoon still, striking a chord with Gryl. A tenuous hum danced inside his skull.
There were Thrak ahead.
Brant and Damien seemed to recognize it as well. They shifted their packs from their shoulders and eased their swords free of their scabbards. Gryl did the same, Mihir following their example a moment later. Brant handed one of the dead knight’s swords to Kel, but it was clear he was uncomfortable with it. It looked overlarge in his hand, his forearm sagging with its weight. Brant was heedless of the boy’s discomfort, though Gryl expected nothing less.
The sergeant crept along the narrow pathway between the sharpened stones that rose from the ground like fangs. The rest of the group followed, Kel hovering close to Brant despite the fear that stiffened the boy’s spine.
They wound their way through the rocky maze until Brant dropped before a jagged outcrop, staring at something just over the other side. Gryl squeezed in alongside Damien and spotted two berserkers digging at the snow at the center of a tiny clearing. One’s back was turned toward the group while the other sat facing them, though its view was blocked by its horde mate. They seemed oblivious to the world around them.
Brant raised a hand for the group to make ready as Gryl stared at the beasts, the pressure in his head growing. He had never seen the creatures so distracted before. He wondered if the Thrak were becoming as desperate as he had, scouring the land for sustenance as the Shytan population dwindled above the line, the populace either dead or having retreated. With only so much readily available supplies, he had to imagine the Thrak were beginning to burn through their food sources.
The sergeant gave him no more time to wonder. He slipped between the stones and charged at the berserkers, Damien and Kel in tow. Gryl hissed and ran after. Mihir was on his heels. The nearest Thrak stood and sniffed the air, whirling about just as Brant cleaved an oozing river across its chest. The beast roared and stumbled back, knocking the second one into the snow.
Damien and Kel dove on the berserker, flailing away with their swords as it lashed out at them with its claws, its bone blade swinging from a leathern hook at its belt. Brant and the other two drove it back, knocking aside its frantic attacks and meeting each with steel. The berserker bellowed, its voice echoing through the hills. The beast at its back scrambled and got its feet beneath it just as Brant hewed the leg of its companion.
The Thrak stumbled and fell to its knees, shrieking in rage and agony, spewing blood from the cavernous maw of its throat. Damien drove his sword into the gaping hole and twisted, ripping the blade free with a grunt. The Thrak’s scream melted into a wet gurgle. It fell back clutching at its spurting neck, convulsing as its life spilled from its wounds.
The second Thrak growled and spun. Without looking back, it darted up a step path that snaked its way up the hill.
“After it,” Brant shouted, the shrill edge of laughter tingeing his voice. The knight barreled up the hill after the berserker, Damien right behind with Kel a few short paces to their rear.
A crushing fist seized Gryl’s guts. His head throbbed, a sense of chaos warring for reason. He stumbled to a stop and stared after the fleeing beast, cursing his muddled thoughts. Mihir went to run past, but Gryl snaked a hand out and seized his arm, stopping the knight short.
The hum nagged.
“We need to help them,” Mihir said, though he did nothing to shake loose of Gryl’s hold. He remained silent for a short moment before asking, “What is it?”
Gryl ignored him, following the trail of the Thrak with his eyes. It had just slipped from sight behind a wall of rocky spires. Brant and the others were a short distance behind it, the berserker much lighter on its feet than its bulk suggested. Just as the knights and Kel dropped from sight behind the stone wall, Gryl’s mind slid the pieces into place. His eyes went wide as he surveyed the terrain.
“They didn’t draw their swords,” he muttered, the words tumbling from his lips in a jumbled hea
p.
Mihir yanked his arm loose in a panic. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Thrak never flee,” Gryl said as he slammed his sword into his sheath and bolted for the rocky face of the hill ahead.
“Wait,” Mihir shouted at his back. “Don’t leave me here,”
The words barely registered as Gryl leapt to the first of the rocks, his fingers clasping for leverage. Muscles screamed at the sudden exertion, flashes of pain spearing his shoulder blades as he scampered up the slick stones. The hum filled his head as he climbed, finally easing to a dull whisper as he grew accustomed to it. He had hoped to never hear its song again. The sound mocked him, as though laughing at his foolishness. He growled in reply as he made his way up the hill, each handhold an icy blade that threatened to rob him of his hands, but he pushed on.
His eyes traced the path he’d laid out from below, his body pulled along by the strings of his will, his fingers numb despite his gloves. He cared nothing for Brant and had no opinion of Damien, though the knight had offered him no offense, but it was Kel who drove him on. While death awaited the knights at the top of the hill, the boy’s suffering at the hands of Brant would be a pleasant dream compared to what was to come.
A Thrak loosed a roar above and Gryl heard the muted clang of a weapon slamming into the steel of armor. The harsh grunt of a man followed, the berserker shrieking its displeasure.
The trap was sprung.
Gryl clambered up the last few horse-lengths of the hill leaving spots of blood and pieces of flesh in his hurry as he slithered along the rock wall. Time had run out.
He grasped at the ledge and pulled himself over the lip of stone that separated him from the scene below. His heart wailed at what he saw—what he had hoped to never see again.
An Avan sorceress stood at the center of a blackened circle, its lines drawn with the cooling ichor of a Thrak berserker, which lay desiccated and discarded in the snow just feet from where the sorceress chanted. Glyphs and sigils painted in red ran the length of the inside circle.
