by Elí Freysson
Elseth visibly focused and her light hovered around the fallen trees. It had nearly completed a circle when Irina saw it catch on the mass of black teeth that seemed to make up most of the demon’s head.
It reacted to being spotted with another blood-chilling roar and plunged its arm through an opening.
Those sharp fingers grazed the side of Irina’s face. She fell up against a rotten stump, Elseth yelped and Kent thrust at it with his spear. He hit and the demon angrily tried swatting at him, resulting in another spear-hit.
Irina got up and swung the knife at the oversized limb. The warped, rough-textured “flesh” gave way with another sharp hissing sound and the arm was withdrawn. That rattling sound accompanied snapping foliage away into the forest.
Kent guarded one entry into their hut and Jon guarded the other. For a few moments no one did anything other than stand perfectly still and listen.
The forest was silent.
Irina touched her face and in Elseth’s light she saw a modest amount of blood on her fingers.
“We won’t lose it now,” she said. “It has my scent. We... we have to make it to that river.”
“You don’t... you don’t think it might be gone?” Kent asked, quite audibly rattled.
“It’s angry now,” she told them. “It will either attack again or just lie in wait. We have to run, while it still at least pretends to be gone.”
“How far is it to that ferry, Kent?” Jon asked.
“If we sprint for dear life, if Elseth provides good light, and if we’re lucky, we might make it,” the man replied.
“Well, then let’s do it,” Jon said.
Kent ducked his head and exited on his side of the mess of trees. Irina followed him and again Jon was the last. They’d taken a few steps when the demon’s roar almost froze her muscles in place.
When was I ever a quitter?! she asked herself, seeking to summon fierceness to counter the demon’s influence. She sprinted as hard as she could, trusting in luck to steer her feet past roots and rocks. If she ran any slower she would die anyway.
Elseth did provide a strong light, almost bringing daytime to a small circle about them, and so Irina saw the trail a few breaths before Kent leapt down onto it. Over her own strained heart and lungs and the demon’s next roar she also heard the din of a river.
She looked back, saw the demon’s head snap a thick branch that was in its way, and leapt down onto the trail.
“Almost there!” Kent shouted desperately.
Her body was all pain, protesting this abuse and demanding she stop. But it would be too cruel to die so close to an escape. She wouldn’t accept it.
A bend in the trail brought the river into view. And there was the ferry, attached to a rope fastened on either side.
Kent leapt out onto it, almost falling over due to his abrupt stop, and brought the spear tip down on the loop anchoring the ferry to a post. It was cut apart and only his hand around the crossing rope prevented the ferry from floating away from the shore.
Elseth ran onto the ferry and half-collapsed against a handrail. Irina was right after her and did collapse. She looked back at Jon. He’d fallen behind a bit. And the demon would reach him in a few steps.
Jon stopped and turned. The demon lunged at him with unnatural speed, strength and reach. But Jon had a warrior’s training and sidestepped the swipe with quick footwork. He then slashed at the monster’s leg in passing. The powerful blow would have severed a human limb. Instead it merely tripped the demon over and sent it into the bushes lining the trail. It sprang up again, but Jon had bought the moments he needed.
Kent began pulling on the crossing rope with all his strength and Jon leapt out onto the ferry. Irina and Elseth joined Kent in managing the rope and the moment Jon regained his balance he added his own considerable strength to the task.
The ferry moved along and sped up as they arrived at a coordinated pace of pulling. But it wasn’t enough. The demon waded in after them and the river seemed to be neither deep nor powerful enough to sweep it away. It would catch them and the fang-filled horror it had for a head opened in a triumphant roar.
Irina picked up the knife where she’d dropped it on the ferry floor and put the blade against the rope. She began a frantic sawing motion. The spot she was cutting at was of course moving away, but the knife made the task blisteringly fast.
“What are you-” began Elseth.
The rope snapped. The current took hold of the ferry as each half of the rope was snatched away from its mooring and they were carried away from the demon.
It tried to follow but it seemed to finally reach a depth it could not readily handle. It hesitated and that was all the lead the loosened ferry needed. They drifted out into the centre of the river and a sudden downward shift in the landscape brought them into a harsher current.
The four of them were shaken about. Irina drove the knife into a floorboard; Jon presumably wanted to keep such a special tool. Then she simply held on for dear life as they passed through this rough chapter.
Water splashed onto them, and Irina realised that Elseth had let her spell go out.
“Elseth!” she shouted. “Light! We might hit a rock!”
The woman steadied herself against the handrail with some help from Kent, then summoned another little ball, keeping it ahead of them. It came just in time to give Irina a mild shock as they passed right by a rock.
There was of course no rudder and no oars; all they could possibly do was lie down and paddle with their bare hands. So they did just that.
Irina liked to think it made a difference, gradually moving them to the bank and into calmer waters. It seemed they even managed to shift direction swiftly enough to take only a glancing hit from another rock. It did suffice to spin the ferry around and give them all a good rattle.
But after that the river went into a turn and the water on its inside was calm enough for them to push to shore. The ferry came to a mild stop in the sand and for a few moments everyone simply savoured being alive.
The quiet was broken by Elseth’s somewhat hysterical laughter.
“Adventure!” she shouted, holding her arms up from a lying position. Then she laughed some more. It was her usual reaction to getting close to death; half celebration, half coping mechanism.
Jon pulled his green knife out of the ferry’s floor and sheathed it.
“I think... it should be safe for us to rest here.”
“Yes,” Irina agreed. “We should probably talk.”
2.
They stepped onto land and pulled the ferry in more securely.
“So,” Kent said as they walked inland. “Demons still roam the land of my birth.”
“A rare few,” Irina told him. “Almost always in isolated areas like this one. But they are being whittled down.”
The man simply nodded without looking at her. Irina put it down to memories.
“Well, this was a new experience,” Elseth said and let out a weary breath.
“We do tend to collect those,” Jon said with some self-depracation.
“Do you folks think it’s safe to light a fire?” she asked. “I am soaked.”
“We did drift a fair distance,” Jon said reluctantly. “But... I don’t know.”
“It should be fine down there,” Kent said, and as Elseth started a little light Irina saw he meant a depression in the landscape, largely surrounded by trees. “Help me gather dry wood.”
They did. Irina started tending to this very familiar task once again. She moved sluggishly from a combination of exertion and chill. And with danger passed for now her thoughts were turning chaotic again.
Bors and Ana would be looking for her. Her companions. Irina stopped with a bundle in her arms and leaned up against a tree. She closed her eyes.
It had only been earlier this night that the three of them had chatted and agreed to share drinks at the inn once the initial search was completed. She shook her head and joined the others in the depression.
/> It was a decent resting place. She’d certainly experienced rougher ones. Kent was already at work with his steel and flint, beating sparks into a little piece of linen. She felt like offering to help, but he clearly knew what he was doing and soon had a tiny flame in the linen. He then transferred it to the wood, and after some more displays of skill a nice warming fire started coming to life.
They gathered around it and Jon and Elseth opened their packs.
Irina touched the left side of her face again. It was reassuring that the bleeding had stopped, but just as her muscles were now punishing her for the earlier exertions the cuts were starting to hurt.
“How do I look?” she asked.
She knew perfectly well that it was petty, in light of everything else. But nature had been rather kind to her upon birth and shouldn’t a certain vanity be a natural result of that?
“Three cuts,” Kent said. “Doesn’t look so bad. I’ll handle it.”
He took a small clay jar out of his own pack and poured a little bit of water into the contents. He then walked over and cleaned the cuts with water before sticking a finger into the poultice and applying it. It had a familiar leafy smell and settled with a semi-pleasant tingle.
“Thank you.”
“May it do you well.”
“Do you have an appetite, Irina?” Jon asked.
“I do, yes,” she replied and was handed a piece of salted pork and a bit of hard bread, followed by a wineskin. It was a poor meal in a town, but they were out in the wild and hunger made a feast of anything.
Elseth sighed with satisfaction as she worked through her own meal. Aside from that they all ate in companionable silence.
“Kent,” Jon said once all were mostly finished. “The river. Do you think we can risk floating along it further?”
“Maybe a bit further,” the man said. “But it eventually cuts to the west and passes through Vyslak.”
“And we will want to stay away from population centres,” Jon said. “Until we get to the border. Irina, do you agree?”
She took a bite of the bread to buy herself some time as she chewed. Then she washed it down with a sip of wine.
“Mistress Lumiara will have me hunted relentlessly until I reach the border, yes.”
“You don’t think she’ll follow you across?” Elseth asked.
Irina shook her head.
“No. I would be very surprised if she broke the treaty.”
“You are talking about someone who made you a slave,” Jon pointed out. “Who controlled your mind.”
“It was more like guidance,” Irina said. “I had my thoughts, but they were funnelled down a...”
She shook her head again, and touched her bare throat.
“Look, what is going on? Why are you here? And... and that knife?”
Jon and Elseth shared a look.
“I wish I could say we came for you,” Jon said. “But Prince Walder hired us again. He wanted us to free a slave of the Bright Lords and sneak them across the border. We weren’t expecting to encounter you.”
“It was quite a shock,” Elseth said with an awkward smile.
Jon drew the knife.
“The prince gave us this for the task. All I know is that it’s old and has something to do with disrupting magic. The theory was that it could cut through one of those collars.”
“That was a big gamble,” Irina commented.
“Well, that’s what we do, isn’t it?”
Jon smiled.
“But what does the prince want with me?”
“He wants a witness to the Bright Lords. And who better than one of their closest agents? There is to be a secret meeting in Ynglas, that little village, between Prince Walder and an emissary from East-Melgen.”
“About a joint invasion?” Irina asked.
“Well... a king’s son doesn’t discuss such things with the likes of us,” Jon said. “But why else?”
Why else indeed?
West, Mid and East had been broken up generations ago and the landscape itself had kept things that way. Mid-Melgen consisted of a peninsula, with its neighbours on either side. With no fleets to speak of none could invade another without also marching an army by the border of the third.
Irina turned to Kent.
“What about you? Were you hired at the same time?”
“Oh, no,” the man told her. “I was a forester for Lord Willem. Until the Bright Lords took over. They stripped him of his lands almost immediately. After that I wandered for a while.”
“You wandered for ten years?”
“Well, I stopped here and there for work, when there was work. Eventually I found myself in West-Melgen, and I met these two.”
He indicated Jon and Elseth.
“Fellow rootless drifters.”
“Hey now!” Elseth said with mock outrage. “We’re adventurers, my dear fellow!”
“You have to admit that the line between the two is quite blurry,” Kent said with a faint smile.
“So it’s just the three of you?” Irina asked. “Where is Derek?”
Their faces immediately answered the question.
“The life got him,” Jon said sombrely. “It gets everyone, in time.”
“Another one...” Irina said to herself. “What happened?”
“We were hired by a town merchant,” Elseth said. “A strange hound had been stalking him and his family, and he believed it was a sending from a farmer he’d quarrelled with. We went to the farm to talk to him. And... the merchant was right.”
“The hound leapt out at us before we knew it was there,” Jon said. “It got Derek by the throat.”
“May he find peace,” Irina said.
“May he find peace,” the others dutifully said in unison.
“This was shortly after I joined,” Kent then said. “I only knew the man briefly, but he made a good impression.”
He cleared his throat.
“But... what is this about the prince hiring you again? You two have never talked about the past much and that has always been fine by me, but now I’m caught up in it.”
Jon and Elseth looked at Irina and each other, clearly wondering who should tell the story.
“You were here when the Bright Lords took over?” Irina asked Kent.
“Yes. I even happened to be in the capital when it happened.”
Elseth’s eyes widened.
“We clearly need to talk more.”
“There was to be some big announcement,” Kent went on. “A lot of people gathered in front of the palace balcony before Lord Ilianach stepped out onto it.”
His eyes were lost in memories, staring back at one of history’s wild turns.
“It was all quite gripping,” Kent said. “Packs of demons still roamed, and there were areas people simply didn’t dare approach. But their momentum had been broken by saviours from beyond. And before our eyes one of them declared that the king and his nobles had failed. That their rule and their laws were concerned with their own enrichment. Ilianach said that his kind had been summoned to do good, and so they would.”
“What was it like?” Jon asked with genuine interest. “Witnessing that?”
Kent considered his reply.
“They say significance only becomes clear over time. If so, then this was the exception. The crowd was blown off its feet. Some cheered. Who had saved us, after all? Others were outraged. The Bright Lords were other, after all. Unnatural.”
“And what was your own reaction?” Jon asked.
“I suppose I was among those who couldn’t quite decide. Kings and lords are what they are; spoiled and arrogant. A rumour later circulated that the takeover had been triggered by the king attempting to purchase the loyalty of the Bright Lords, or trying to banish them somehow. But in the end reasons and feelings didn’t matter; what was left of the army was mostly on their side.”
He threw up his hands.
“And so goes the world. But I digress. We were talking about the prince and you th
ree.”
“Us four,” Irina said. “Derek was still with us. But... well, I don’t know about the East but the Western nobility was quite worried about the Bright Lords. They’ve dismantled the old systems of power bit by bit and complete control only took them a few years. Many Mid noble families fled to the West and pressured their peers and relatives into doing something about their seized lands.”
She was lost in thought for a few breaths. What had been the name of that inn they’d been staying at when the call came?
“There was a rumour that those priests and mystics who contacted the Bright Lords did so with a modified summoning pole. And that it still stood in a guarded room in the royal palace, serving as their anchor. Prince Walder wanted us to destroy it. It was supposed to send them back where they’d come from.”
She looked over at Jon and Elseth, in silent sharing of memories.
“We made it to the capital without incident and there we subtly asked about and prepared for the job. The act itself required stealth and that was always one of my niches within this group. So I went alone. Meanwhile the others were to stand ready to escape in case something went wrong.”
She mentally retraced her steps through those hallways, past bored guards and closed bedroom doors.
“What did go wrong, Irina?” Elseth asked gently.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Until I reached the chamber itself. Getting there wasn’t easy, but I managed it. And that was when the... the air grabbed me. Somehow. That’s how I can best describe it. I saw no trap and no guard. It was some manifestation of the power of the Bright Lords. And I couldn’t break free.”
She hadn’t thought of the desperation of that realisation in three years. Now it was back with her.
“I couldn’t. And they came for me. I was taken before Lady Lumiara.”
It had been her first real close encounter with one of the Bright Lords and she had felt very unprepared for such an imposing presence.
“I was afraid,” she admitted. “You two know what I’ve done. What we’ve done. But helplessness tests one in a very different fashion. And it wasn’t about death or pain. I’ve risked both often enough. And they don’t do that anyway.”
