Mark of the Witchwyrm

by Steve Van Samson

  This mental wallowing was akin to torture, though it had served one other purpose. In the captain's core, a fire had sparked to life--one stoked by unearthing and owning his greatest shames.

  "There's more ahead!" Kro shouted. "Look there! The blood goes into the thorns."

  The captain shifted his gaze to the man in the hood. Seeing Kro's face after so long had been like seeing a ghost. The man looked diminished and Galttauer knew why. But whatever animosity remained between the two men was a secondary concern. The witch was what really mattered and she was running scared. Scared and bleeding. That was something. It had to be. This time would be different. This time would pay for all.

  "Into the thorns?" shouted the captain, approaching the ragged hole in the Moat. "What the hell is this? Surely the beast can't really have ripped a hole straight through?"

  "Well... yes and no," answered Kro. "Technically I did most of the ripping fifteen years ago."

  "But," Galttauer's eyes widened. "Why? How? Where we are, the Moat must be five hundred feet across!"

  "More like eight," answered Kro with a shrug. "As for the why... Best to blame necessity."

  The captain said no more. Discourse with Tenebrus Kro had always been the mother of his most legendary headaches, and their years apart had changed nothing.

  With a sigh, Galttauer looked back to see a storm moving in fast from the south. The wind was kicking up snow, making it hard to see.

  "There's a razor gale coming, sir." One of the four guards indicated the sky.

  Without looking up, the captain turned to the guard, flashing his trademark expression. That quizzical smirk that had come so freely once. In better days. "I know," he said. "I can smell it"

  But it wasn't the weather Henric Galttauer was smelling. That scent on the breeze was born of the sea. The end was near. Of the world. Maybe of everything.

  12 - 5

  It looked as if the wall of thorns was yawning. The illusion of an ugly, lop-sided maw was completed by broken timbers to approximate teeth. Kro frowned miserably. It was hard to believe that not so long ago, the entrance had been so perfectly camouflaged that most eyes would have passed right over it.

  Most--but never those of the man who put it there.

  Dread hung over the three companions. None wanted to go on but want had become a luxury.

  Down the thorny corridor they plunged, six horses and seven riders, following the occasional fleck of bright yellow-green. As before, the light changed two times, first dimming under a bramble ceiling, then brightening as the corridor opened upon the secret glade. The one time sanctuary was such no longer. The wagon was destroyed. Crumpled inward, probably from a reptilian footfall or the lash of an enormous tail.

  The purple tapestry that had covered the wagon's side flapped in the breeze. Anchored there by only a single point.

  Upon his silver mare, Kro trotted over to the wreck. And as an errant breeze billowed the cloth up, he grabbed it. He held the faded tapestry, just remembering and regretting. Using both hands, he flattened out a portion to see the old symbol of the serpent devouring its own tail. The ouroboros had seen better days, but that was true for every man present, and the girl--perhaps her most of all.

  "All journeys end at the beginning."

  "What's that?" As Belmorn asked, Rivka peeked out, her eyes mimicking his question.

  "Just... something my father used to say." Inexplicably, a faint smile crept into the corners of Kro's lips, behind his eyes. "Doesn't matter how long it takes, every journey is a damn circle."

  Belmorn dismounted with a rude thud. Storming over to the still-attached corner, he ripped the tapestry free.

  "What are you doing?" Kro couldn't help but feel outrage at this final and wholly unnecessary insult.

  "Calm down." Belmorn didn't even look up. "Just putting this to some use."

  Biting wind pulled the ends of the blackfoot's haresh. Without another word, Belmorn gathered the faded tapestry into one hand. Then he looked back at the girl.

  Rivka was shivering. Her eyes were glassy, haunted. They swept across the empty glade, from wall to wall and then to the gaping tear ahead. The opening that had not been there before was wide enough to drive a pair of side by side wagons through.

  "They're gone," she said flatly. "The Pershten. Just like..."

  The sentence was left incomplete.

  Upon riding into the clearing, the first thing Rivka understood was that the Morgrig gang weren't the only ones who had vanished that night. Bror and the rest were gone--utterly and without a trace. Surely forced through the witch-door, into that mysterious unknown Kro called the Without.

  "I know, girl," was all Belmorn said. "I know. Here. Take this. You're freezing"

  Rivka allowed the large tapestry to envelope her. After the process was complete, she cinched folds around her head like a second hood. The cloth was so large, it had to be wrapped around her three times. Peering out from the purple folds, she offered the blackfoot a faint smile. Then she pinched a bit in one hand and brought it to her nose.

  "Smells a bit like fish."

  Belmorn raised an eyebrow. "Smelly and warm or frozen. I'd say you're old enough to choose."

  The girl hugged herself, pulling the old cloth tighter around her body.

  "Good choice."

  As he said this, she caught the briefest hint of a smile before he turned to face front.

  Behind them, the captain emerged slowly from the dark corridor. The expression on Galttauer's face was consternation. She imagined it would have been no different if he had just ridden out onto the surface of the moon.

  Again her mind went to the occasions when he had turned his attention her way. Offering her the odd bit of crust once or twice but never lifting her up. Never wondering if his sacred duty as protector of Roon's citizens might extend to her too.

  She had learned many lessons out on the cobbles. All hard but necessary if she hoped to make it through another week, another winter. The world was rarely the way stories made it out to be. Perhaps that was why she had latched on to the one about the un-killable warrior who had battled a demon for days with a sword through his chest. Because real people never lived up to your expectations.

  "Henric." The voice was Mr. Kro's. "Shouldn't the first of your scouts be here somewhere?"

  The captain's black cape flapped like the wing of some enormous bird. He turned to regard the four men he had left.

  "Not here, there." The captain nodded in the direction of the northern opening. "They are making a chain for us in the High Veld. In case the sky makes good on its threats." His icy blue eyes glanced at the darkening clouds overhead. "And I think we can all see that it will. Past here, the first of my men should not be far."

  "Kro," For the first time, Belmorn sounded impatient. "Before we go, is there anything you need here? We could search the wagon. There may be something--"

  "No," answered the grim voice of the alchemist. "Nothing." He looked to be tasting bile. "Henric," he said at last. "Storms in the High Veld hit hard and fast. If you do lose sight of us, I think I know where she is going."

  "What?" The captain raised an eyebrow. "Kro, you insufferable thorn in my ass. Why didn't you say so before?"

  "Because I wasn't sure before!" Kro pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not sure now--but it makes sense. Why wouldn't she go back there?"

  "Where, damn you!" The captain roared.

  "Where this nightmare began. The first place she ever saw."

  "He means Jayce." Rivka's voice was small but it rendered the three men who heard it, utterly speechless.

  PART THIRTEEN

  OLD DEBTS

  13 - 1

  Beyond the wall of thorns sprawled an alien landscape.

  Those strange rocks Kro had called giant's teeth had been replaced by a flat ground, covered in a thick layer of snow. Beholding the whiteness was difficult. Especially with the cold, lashing winds.

  "Razor gale!" shouted Kro from the back of his mare. He re
ached beneath his cloak and pulled up a maroon scarf. "Cover your faces!"

  Wrapped in her massive, purple tapestry, Rivka shivered, tightening her fingers around the handle of her knife. She was yet unsure if she possessed the courage to use the thing, but the act of gripping it was a comfort. And she had lived long enough with too few of those.

  Looking west, she winced as the wind slashed at her eyes. In the far distance, she could barely see the misty outline of the castle-shaped mountain. Far closer was a curved line, stretching from north to south. This of course was the real road. The path you were supposed to take through the Moat.

  That road, she knew, led to the skeleton of a once bustling, mining town called Jayce. When Rivka's uncle was alive, he used to talk about going back. About how one day, someone would come to help Galttauer and his armored guards to set things right. And that together, they would wipe the witch's mark from the land.

  Then, they could go home again.

  Hebrecht Pesch had been a good man. A careful man. For a long time, Rivka had believed his every word. In the end though, he too had left.

  There had been an argument, shouting outside her front door. Then sounds of an altercation--groans, the heavy SLAP of flesh on stone. After that, Rivka was alone. Good and truly. Right up until the night she was nearly killed with a piece of exploded sword.

  "So that's it, then. Mount Einder." Belmorn shielded his face with an arm. "Damn thing does look like a castle."

  Rivka looked past the storm clouds, to the tall spires stretching into the pre-dusk sky. Mount Einder. The road wound around and toward it, across the High Veld and eventually to the drop off. To World's Edge. Beyond that, there was only blue. A vast ocean--uncrossable, or so she had been told. Her uncle used to say that the sort of bravery it took to sail those waters had drained from the world. Abandoning it, just like all the Gods.

  "You okay back there?" Belmorn's voice cut through the whistling gale.

  "Yeah!" she yelled back, though only inches away.

  The man turned in his saddle to face her. "Rivka, you know we are headed about as far away from safe as one can get. Are you sure you don't want to ride back to Roon with one of those armored guards?"

  "Are you kidding?" she exclaimed. "I'd rather have stayed with that plant-thing than one of those inbred goons."

  Wearing a faint smile, Belmorn turned back and said no more. Rivka took a deep breath and held it, pressing her cheek into the black fur of the riverman's cloak. The movement of the adamandray was rhythmic. The freezing air whistled past and over her, but Rivka felt warmer than she had in a long time.

  Belmorn squinted, once again glad for his high collar. The powerful winds gave the snow little chance to settle, let alone accumulate. The gusting swirls also blew away things like tracks.

  The witch blood was becoming nearly impossible to spot.

  Belmorn turned to look back at the captain and his men, but saw nothing. It was as if a blizzard had swallowed them, except the snow no longer fell. The sky was a furious color as it gathered the most vibrant hues for the day's final hurrah.

  "Kro!" shouted Belmorn. "You sure about this? I can hardly see!"

  "Sure?" Kro shouted back. "Sure is for trackers, Belmorn!"

  "That right? And what are you supposed to be again?"

  "Told you before... I never figured that out."

  "It's fine!" Rivka's voice joined the cacophony. She had a corner of purple cloth against her cheek. "Razor gales never last long. I know where we are. Just keep going!"

  "She's right," called Kro. "Jayce isn't far, now."

  Struck by the resolve of the young girl, Belmorn looked behind again, squinting through the gale. "Kro! I don't see anyone behind us," he roared. "Where is Galttauer? And where in hell are his damned scouts? We haven't seen a single man out here!"

  "Don't know. Maybe a foot from our faces. Impossible to see in this fucking mess." Kro was shouting as loud as he could now. "Stick to the plan. If I'm wrong... if the witch isn't in Jayce..."

  Belmorn said nothing. Not of their current predicament nor of the rising dread in his throat. The unthinkable possibility that the creature had not retreated to Jayce or any other place they could reach without the aid of witchcraft.

  13 - 2

  Henric Galttauer was alone. The razor gale had swallowed his men, the blackfoot, the child--even that blasted loudmouthed Kro.

  It had been sometime since the group had set out from the hollow in the thorns. But the storm had hit fast--stealing sight and sound and all sense of direction. A blast of cold wind pulled the captain's cape from one side of his saddle to the other. It had been a long time since he'd faced the open fury of the elements like this, but Galttauer was no fool. Before leaving the thorns, he had ordered his men to put on their helmets before doing the same.

  Away from the whipping wind, he turned. The captain's helm was a flat, unpolished steel and adorned with winged wolves on either side. The eye openings were large, fierce looking and connected via a V-shaped gap. Through this, he narrowed his eyes, forcing them to remain open. Searching for anything dark within the blinding white noise.

  There!

  Squinting hard, the captain pulled on the reins. Unless the gale had stolen his senses, there was a rider ahead! And for a single moment, Henric Galttauer's relief bordered on delirium.

  "You there!" He waved, hoping beyond hope that the darkish blur would take the form of one of his men.

  As the silhouette took shape, two eyes flashed in the white gloom. They were perfectly round, catching the light as if made of glass. Without warning, the wind relented. Breathing, as these storms sometimes did.

  The man ahead sat strangely in his saddle, seemingly favoring one side of his body. His face was hidden--not by a Roonik helm but a mask. The sort that doctors were known to wear. Over his shoulder hung three stolen quivers and a pistol. There was blood on his arms, across his chest. Red in its most vibrant form. As he beheld the color, Galttauer found that he couldn't breathe.

  "You must be him. The man who used to protect the end of the world." The masked rider spoke in an accent Galttauer had never heard before.

  "Where are my men?" Galttauer bellowed.

  "Oh... around."

  "Do they live?"

  "Some did. When I left them, but this weather possesses even less mercy than I do."

  "Impossible! Those men... they were thirteen of Roon's bravest. They could not have been defeated by one man."

  The rider's head settled into a new angle before replying. "Thirteen you say? I admit, I did not keep count, but that is a very unlucky number."

  "You lie! It's not possible!"

  "Wrong, Captain. You see, a brave man will take on any foe, but a smart one will aim for the horse. Speaking of which, yours looks stronger than this last one I took."

  The black stallion gave a snort. Right then, it was all Galttauer could do to force himself to remain calm.

  "Who the hell are you? Morgrig? Or just one of his dogs out for blood?"

  "I am no one's dog!" For the first time the masked man sounded angry. "Morgrig was a means to an end. A way to get close and stay close until my true enemy came home. You should have stayed behind your door, Captain. If you had, your men would still be alive." The masked man hissed, nocking an arrow. "Now... where is Mr. Kro?"

  In his fist, the handle of Galttauer's greatsword seemed to be humming. Who this man was, he didn't know, didn't care. Everything that happened next, did so in a flash--the span of a single crack of lightning.

  Galttauer charged. The speeding arrow shaft flew straight and true but connected only with the furious slash of Roonik steel before spinning into the haze.

  After a surprised twitch of the head, the masked rider drew back his bowstring once again.

  13 - 3

  The first indication of a settlement was a single wooden pole. There was a strap of cloth nailed to the top--probably the remnants of an old banner or flag.

  Belmorn tried to determine
the color, but the razor gale prevented this. Suddenly and with all its remaining might, the storm exhaled. Voices were swallowed in the shrieking gusts, but the horses pushed forward as one. It had been Belmorn's suggestion to tether them. Connecting Kro's mare to the back of Magnus' saddle via a length of rope. This simple solution had kept them together as the Roonik men were swallowed one by one by the raging white void.

  Reaching the pole, Belmorn dismounted, as did Kro.

  When he moved to help the girl down, the vast cloth wrapped around her was pulled by the wind. Cloth billowed and flapped like a great purple wing, but as they had so many times out on the brackish course, the blackfoot's reflexes took over. His hand shot out, grabbed the cloth--stopping it from taking Rivka with it. Then he successfully lowered the girl to the ground.

  With Kro's help, he reclaimed the massive purple thing and pulled it over the horses. Working quickly, Belmorn tied off the fabric, securing it to his saddle's many square rings. The three wrapped their arms around the pole and each other with the horses and tapestry for a shield.

  They had become a massive purple blob possessed of not one horse's ass, but a pair, utterly at the mercy of forces beyond their control.

  Beneath the cloth, time passed strangely. For a quarter of an hour or more, all Belmorn, Kro and Rivka could do was hold on and wait. More than half frozen, each hung on to that wooden pole for dear life until the fury of the storm was spent at long last.

  When the end came, it was abrupt. With a final lick of wind that faded out over the tundra.

  Tentatively, Belmorn lifted a flap of cloth to peer outside. Fighting an onslaught of shivers, he said, "Looks like it's over."