Madger’s ax descended on the troll, her swing awkward, but deadly. The heavy blade chopped through the troll’s arms as he raised them to try and shield himself, and partially cleaved his head. She had to step on the body to hold it down as she jerked the ax free. It hadn’t satisfied her bloodlust.
“Lass,” Kharick called from behind her.
Madger turned to the dwarf, her weapon held at the ready in her hands across her body. Still in a blind rage, not fully comprehending what she’d done. Blood dripped from the ax blade onto her hand, and a memory of her hands covered in her clan’s blood sent a tremor through her, breaking the hold her wrath had on her thoughts.
“We need to get the children away. Let’s salvage what we can.”
Madger glanced back at the fires and the dwindling sounds. She might be able to catch another one or two of the darklings, but Kharick was right. The children had suffered enough loss, it was better to care for them now. They would find a way to track the group of darklings later and kill them all. With a nod, she followed Kharick back to the house.
Madger caught sight of Gerran as she ducked inside the house again. The bloody ruins of his corpse made her take a shuddering breath. Gerran had been killed. He had been killed while hiding those children. A momentary flash of her brother’s corpse in the boys’ sleeping room assaulted Madger’s mind, and she shivered.
Kharick gathered up the children, urging them to grab blankets and food. “We’ll get you away, hurry.”
They shook and cried, looking wide-eyed between Madger and Kharick, noting the blood splattered on them and coating their weapons.
Madger blinked and forced herself to come out of her shock. Kharick couldn’t do this all on his own. “Now,” she ordered, and the children hurried to work.
Madger snatched up a bed sheet and piled her extra clothes that Gerran ordered for her, inside it. Her brother’s stiff poncho was in the corner and she swallowed back a sob. She added it to her pile and went about pulling some of Gerran’s books, food stores, cooking, and eating utensils.
Madger added her father’s flute to her bundle, glad she’d wrapped it and tucked it in her waistband. It was pure luck she hadn’t broken it during the fall from the cart. Once she had the supplies gathered, she tied the corners of the bed sheet together and hooked it over the end of the ax shaft so she could shoulder it.
Kharick found a satchel and hurriedly filled it with items from the trunk where he stored his belongings. He nodded to Madger, and they left the remains of their home, ducking out into the smoke-filled night, herding the children in front of them.
“Not a word, not a whimper,” Kharick said as they left.
They kept to the narrow streets and the smoke billowed dark around them, hiding their escape. The screams were distant now, on the northern side of the town, the poor section. There was less to loot there, but more people. They hurried south, away from the noise and around the charred buildings already burned out. The bodies left on the streets were covered in blood and soot. Most were the citizens of Pero. Only two were darklings. Anyone who was still alive had already fled the southern side of the town.
One body caught Madger’s eyes, the meat still sizzled from the fire of the house it had tried to crawl away from. The body bore Risa’s shawl. She pushed the children in front of her, blocking their view.
They slipped away from Pero, leaving only their footprints in the snow. Kharick led them to a small stand of trees a mile away; he didn’t dare try to push the children any further. Their crying had stopped and they shuffled along in their wet cloth shoes with distant eyes. The night had dropped the temperatures lower, and he knew they had to be freezing, even with the blankets wrapped around them.
A mixed stand of trees sheltered them from the wind. Kharick settled the children under the boughs of a cedar. “Gather some wood and make a fire, lass. I’ll get some pine limbs to bed on.”
Madger left her weapon and went to gather fallen timber from the dormant deciduous trees, while Kharick turned back to the children. “You three stay here and stay close.” He tugged a blanket around them tighter.
“Kharick,” Jula called, making him turn back around to her. “What’re we gonna do?” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “Where we gonna go?”
“We’re gonna get warm, lass. Then we decide where to go.” Kharick said. He moved to a nearby pine and started hacking off low limbs with his ax. He heard the three starting to mutter between themselves, and took a little comfort, they were all talking.
Madger returned with a heavy armload of wood as Kharick finished laying out a blanket of pine limbs, thick with needles. “Sit on here.” The children moved onto the bedding, and Madger snapped several dead limbs and built a fire with a spark of her magic. “Take off your shoes and warm your toes,” Kharick instructed them. As they did, he looked over them, none appeared too far gone to the cold.
Madger sat on the pine needles and produced some bread from her makeshift sack. She broke it into three pieces and handed it to them. To the north, they could faintly see the glow of the fires still devouring the town. Was the Ancient punishing her? Cracking a cruel joke? Taking away the home she had found and the people who had accepted her in their midst, with little more than wary glances. Perhaps she was cursed? She looked over her sad company. No, they all were.
“What now?” asked Rosth. He held Jorn against his side as the smaller boy continued his little hiccupping sobs.
Kharick rubbed a hand over his head. “The closest city is Morex. But we’ll have to swing west and take the river road north to reach it.”
“That will take us past Pero,” Madger said.
“We’ll swing wide around Pero.”
Madger frowned. “You said Pero was too big for darklings to attack. Too many people to fight.”
Kharick gave a purposeful look to the children and made a little motion with his hand for her to be quiet. Madger followed his look and let out a sigh. She’d wait for them to fall asleep.
None of them slept much that night. If one child fell asleep, another was crying. If one began to cry, another joined. Madger eventually gave up and curled onto her side under her dark cloak.
When she woke, the sun was beginning to breach the horizon. Sharp rays cut through the tree trunks, driving away the night. The children had all finally fallen asleep, holding each other under several blankets. Kharick didn’t look like he had slept at all. His heavy eyebrows sagged miserably, and she couldn’t see the glint of his eyes, but he moved when she sat up.
“That was a big raid,” Kharick whispered. “Ya be right, lass. That be no little band of darkling bandits. Someone be organizing them.”
“The duke…” Madger wasn’t sure what the duke was supposed to do, but he seemed important to the people of the lowlands. “The duke will send warriors to kill them?”
“Aye.”
“I want to go. I want to help kill them.”
Kharick’s eyebrows sagged further, and his beard rustled as he worked his jaw, as though he was chewing on the problem. “You killed one, lass, but you are no trained. We need to get the kiddies safe first. Then we think about revenge.”
Madger huffed, but agreed. He wasn’t a mountain giant man, she didn’t have to comply, but he made sense. She grabbed the kettle she had salvaged from Gerran’s home and left to fill it with snow. When she returned she stirred up the coals of the fire, added wood, and put the kettle on top. She noticed she grabbed Gerran’s tea supply in her rush to snatch up everything edible. Swallowing back a sad little sound, she added the leaves to the melted snow.
The children woke as the tea brewed. Jula’s lower lip pouted out and she began wailing, which started Jorn crying and Rosth sniffling and rubbing at his eyes.
“Hush,” Madger said. “I made tea. You will drink it. And then we’ll go to Morex.”
“But it’s Gerran’s tea!” Jula yowled.
“He would want us to have it,” Kharick said and moved over to the girl. He wrapped
an arm around her and rocked her. Soon the two boys were on the other side of him, clinging to him like he was a rock in the rapids of a river. “We’ll have some tea and some sausage, then we’ll go to Morex.”
Madger pulled the only cup she had saved, a little clay thing that was chipped now. She poured the tea and handed it to the children.
After they’d eaten, Kharick helped tie their dried shoes on their feet. She looked from the poor shoes to Kharick. They both knew the children wouldn’t be able to walk long in the snow with them. She went back to her pack and searched for something more substantial to wrap their feet in. The only leather in it was her brother’s poncho.
Madger reached for the ram’s skin and her hand shook. Could she really destroy the last thing she had of Merion? He would want her to. He loved children. She pulled it out and Kharick helped her make wraps for the children from it.
The children spoke little as they walked to the west, and by midday, they were exhausted. Madger picked up Jorn, since he was the smallest and the weakest, and carried him on her shoulders. By evening Jula was lagging behind them, so Madger handed Jorn to Kharick and picked up the girl. They only had a few more hours of daylight and needed to use all of it to get closer to Morex.
There were no trees for them to sleep under that night, the wind whipped across the open plains of the lowlands, sending stinging ice crystals stabbing at any exposed skin. Madger laid out her oilcloth cloak and Kharick did the same. Between them there was enough to keep all five of them off the wetness of the snow. There was no wood for a fire and Madger didn’t know how to craft a magical one and sustain it.
They all piled together, Madger on one side and Kharick on the other, with the children between them and tried to sleep under the blankets. The blankets were damp though, from shielding the children for the past night and day. Exhaustion pulled them all to sleep.
Chapter 10
309 Br. winter
“It’s important to have good relations with your neighboring countries. Not only for trade, but also for criminal matters. It’s best not to allow thieves and murders to shed their wrong doings just because they crossed a border. In the northern continent, only the Unclaimed Lands do not share in this agreement.”
-Border Guard Taul Jimar of Brenack
M adger’s dreams came again, but the blows always seemed so real. Someone shouted her name. Her stomach clenched, and blood filled her mouth as she retched. She rolled to spit out the blood, not wanting to hit the children or Kharick with it.
“Up!”
Madger’s eyes snapped open, and she saw several figures above her. It was still dark, and she wasn’t sure who they were. She wiped at her mouth, clearing away the blood, trying to give herself more time. Her mind muddled with the dream and the confusion of strangers around her. The children and Kharick were gone from beside her.
“Up!” the person ordered again, and a foot stomped down on her ribs.
Madger’s breath escaped her and she wheezed in an attempt to breathe again. The coppery taste of blood and sour bile was still fresh in her mouth and the pain from the blow radiated along her ribs. She was pulled up by her arm and she managed to get her feet under her. Finally, she drew in a little air past her bruised ribs.
She caught sight of Kharick then, just beyond the shadowed group of darklings pulling her up. He was over the shoulder of an orc, his head bloody from a blow. Kharick’s hands were bound, and she couldn’t see if he still had his weapons. Three more darklings stood near the orc, two dark elves, and a troll. The three children stood among them, tied to each other, trembling.
The two brutish orcs who’d pulled her up bound her hands together as well. Five more darklings were near her bedding, two were going through her belongings, another was rifling through Kharick’s, and one had kicked over the small satchel the children had gathered.
Too many to fight. She’d never fought or killed before the attack on Pero. The bloodlust that had clouded her mind was a foreign thing. If she gave the darklings too much trouble, they could kill her and take Kharick and the children.
Kill her.
Madger swallowed back the sharp thought. She couldn’t leave the four of them alone. Whatever little help she could offer, if the time came, she owed Kharick.
The dark elf gave more orders, and the darklings who had been going through their supplies picked up the bundles and took the bags with them. They even picked up the ax Madger had taken from the dead orc in Pero.
Kharick woke as the sun rose and was dropped by the one carrying him. He fell into line after he caught a glimpse of Madger and the children. Allowing himself to be led by the leash attached to his bindings.
The evidence of a mass of people moving west became apparent, the snow packed by dozens of pairs of feet. The children began falling, and when Jorn didn’t get up, he was cut free from the other two. Jula and Rosth began to protest, but an ominous raise of a hand from a dark elf silenced them. The darklings started forward again, leaving the little boy to die.
“No!” Kharick pulled back against the rope holding him. “You can no leave him!”
Madger saw him fighting and took it as a sign to struggle as well. The lanky troll who’d been leading Kharick, spun and smacked his head with a cudgel. Kharick dropped without a sound. Jula and Rosth dropped to their knees, howling and screaming.
“I’ll carry him!” Madger cried. She stopped struggling and hoped the darklings understood the Merchant language beyond the few words they’d spoken to them. The dark elf who’d menaced Jula and Rosth, picked up Jorn and handed him roughly to Madger.
The trail they followed had to be made by hundreds of darklings, enough to destroy Pero. As they traveled along the route of disturbed snow, more darklings joined them. Eventually, Kharick had to heft Jorn onto his back, and Madger picked up Jula. Rosth was the biggest and oldest of the three, and had been keeping up so far. The darklings allowed the two to be carried and retied the bonds accordingly.
The snow slowly gave way to hard crusty ice, the dry prairie grasses became sporadic tufts, and the dirt disappeared as a rocky desert took its place. The wind howled over the flat land, an icy chill eager to freeze any exposed skin, but little snow covered the gray stone. The scent of the sea started to carry on the wind after a week of crossing the cold, gravely desert.
“What’s that smell?” Madger asked.
“Salt water, lass. The ocean, bigger than any lake or river you’ve ever seen.”
Jula sat up taller on Madger’s shoulders and tried to see what Kharick was talking about. She’d heard stories of the ocean, but had never seen it. One of the dark elves cuffed Kharick to silence him. The blow came close to Jorn, the boy only avoiding it because he’d flinched away. Madger pressed her lips into a thin frown but didn’t say anything else. She didn’t want a chance of the darklings striking Jula if they tried to hit her.
The land ended at a sharp cliff, and the sea roared below it, buffeting the stone with waves reaching halfway up the sheer face. Madger stared at the water; it stretched as far as she could see, in every direction beyond the cliff.
Not far from shore, Madger noticed a massive, strange creature bobbing in the ocean. Square, pale, wings rose straight up from its body, and it seemed to not have any joints to move. Was the thing dead as it rode the waves?
Kharick hissed under his breath, “Slavers.”
Madger looked at him in surprise, she had heard the term slave before, understood what it meant, but didn’t know how he could be so certain. A scream broke over the sound of the waves, and she leaned forward, looking past the edge of the cliff. There was movement along a distant beach made up of broken rocks from the cliff side. As they walked further, there were more darklings, and prisoners from Pero. Carts and wagons hitched to draft animals were on the beach as well. The plunder from Pero was heaped in the wagons. She bit back a curse and glanced at Rosth and Jorn. They’d carried them all this way to be slaves.
Their captors led them to a narr
ow path cut into the cliff wall. The wide-bodied orcs had to press their backs against the cliff wall as they descended the thin path. Uneven steps were cut into the stone, and some were covered in lichen and bird droppings, making the surface slippery. The sharp drop didn’t disturb Madger, her life living in the mountains had made her confident on stone ledges. Her narrower frame allowed her to walk down the steps without pressing herself against the cliff. She kept a firm hold on the back of Rosth shirt as he walked in front of her, and Jula clung to her neck. Kharick was a mountain dwarf, used to craggy climbs, and Jorn buried his face in his back with a whimper as they descended.
Three humans in garish costumes were on the small beach, the fabric loose and brightly colored. The men exchanged coins with the leaders of the darkling group. A wider path the wagons had used, lead away on the far side of the beach.
The women captured in Pero sniveled and cried as more brightly clothed men tied groups of them together. A rope was wound around each woman’s waist and tied off to the next. Madger recognized several of the people. The plump vegetable merchant woman, Varik and his son, and Bauren the butcher, were among them. Each group of ten they linked together was then loaded into a hollowed out wooden structure, and two of the men beat at the water with sticks.
There were few men from Pero and even fewer children. The men were all young and fit, their shirts had been stripped away, and they shivered in the cold breeze that whipped over the ocean. The children were all old enough for labor and stood huddled together, crying for their parents.
Madger grasped tighter at Jula’s legs, hooked over her shoulders, and looked at Jorn on Kharick’s back. The two were the youngest here. Rosth was almost as tall as the other children, but he was far skinnier. Kharick glanced back at her, the same desperate anxiety glinted in his eyes. His eyebrows drew down, and his beard shifted as he chewed on some invisible thing in his mouth. Madger hoped he could crack a solution soon. So far, everything she’d done with the darklings had been from following Kharick’s example. If he decided to fight, even against these odds, she would join him. But they would be knocked out at best.
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