The Fire Sword

by Colin Glassey

  The edge of the forest was alive with movement. Under the trees, more than one hundred boars were walking about, rubbing their tusks on anything they chanced upon, grunting challenges to the sky. Younger boars ran around in the field close to the village. Some rooted through the dirt, while a few approached the wall.

  Four or five men of the village had bows, and they fired arrows at the boars. The boars made difficult targets as they rarely stopped moving, especially when they were close to the humans. Then he heard the distinctive twang of a Kelten longbow, and one boar keeled over with an arrow in its head. Sandun saw Jay and Ven kneeling on the roof of a house, and then Ven loosed his bow. The arrow sped into the flank of a boar. It squealed in pain and ran around in circles, biting at the arrow in its side, till it fell over on the ground.

  Sandun found more roast boar to eat and drained several mugs of fine water from a clean water barrel as the sounds of the wild boars grew louder. Everyone inside the village was excited; everyone was yelling at the pigs and cheering on the archers.

  The scent of blood in the air, the sound of injured or dying boars, the deepening night, the smell of food from inside the town—all this drove the boars into a frenzy of running and snorting. Some of the boars circled around the town, looking for openings in the log barricade. Wild boars rooted through earth with a speed like nothing Sandun had ever seen before. He ran up to the top of a log wall and stabbed down at a boar that was trying to dig its way under the bottom log. The animal twisted and screamed as he stabbed it again.

  Damar, standing beside him, used his long cavalry lance and slashed its throat open.

  “They have broken through by the south wall!” shouted one of the villagers.

  Sandun and Basil rushed over. Numerous fires had been lit near the barricades set round Essebeg. Women held flaming sticks in the air while the men and older boys tried to shore up a broken wall with sticks driven into the ground. A squealing boar, its white tusks at least six inches long, was dodging blows as it scooped up mouthfuls of wheat from a pile of grain.

  Gorgi, now with a helmet on, hurled himself at the animal, his wide-bladed spear quick in his hands. Gorgi showed real skill as he dodged the boar’s slashing tusks and gutted the animal with a swift thrust. He rolled away from the boar’s dying counterattack. Sandun and Basil pinned the beast to the ground with solid spear thrusts of their own.

  The battle with the boars continued for nearly an hour. It was fun, Sandun decided. The villagers had seen every trick of the boars from decades of experience and by watching, the Keltens soon got the hang of defending the log walls from the hungry brutes. After an unusually wild attack, there was a sudden lull in the assault.

  Sandun climbed to the top of the log and balanced using his spear while he looked out. At the edge of the firelight, he saw a giant boar standing. It was a mountain of an animal, with tusks at least a foot long. It gazed back at Sandun balefully and then opened its mouth and bellowed, its horking roar echoing off the cliff.

  As though summoned by the call, a strange light appeared, a glowing shape in the forest, coming towards them. The light was not that of fire, or of the moon, or the stars. It reminded Sandun a little of the ghosts he had seen coming out of the dead city more than a year ago. He felt his throat tighten, and a sudden chill spread through his body. “By Sho’Ash—what is that!”

  In reply, several of the village men all said the same thing: “Ghost Wolf. Ghost Wolf has come.”

  Sandun kept his eyes fixed on the unearthly light. “What is the ghost wolf?”

  Gorgi said, “Ghost Wolf is a spirit, drawn by the sound of fighting, by the scent of blood. Old White Snout often follows it. Ghost Wolf never stays very long. Where is the shaman?”

  “The shaman is here,” said an old woman who Sandun had not seen earlier. She wore many strings of coins around her neck, and on her head was a tall hat. She clutched a staff in her hand as she shuffled past the bonfire.

  Ghost Wolf drew closer, slowly moving across the field, approaching the village. The shaman began chanting in a sing-song voice, using words Sandun did not recognize. He saw that a giant boar, apparently White Snout, was following Ghost Wolf, picking its way across the field. The other boars had fallen silent.

  As Ghost Wolf drew nearer, Sandun saw it was not shaped like a wolf. It was more like a ragged hole torn out of the night. Also, as it came closer, he found it looked quite different from the hundreds of ghosts he had seen outside the dead city in the Tirala Mountains. Instead, on the other side of Ghost Wolf, or inside it, Sandun could see strange, intense colors like the flashes and flickers from particular rare beetles: green, violet, and burnished gold.

  Kagne, next to him, whispered, “It’s beautiful.”

  It was beautiful. Sandun became mesmerized by the unearthly being.

  “What do you mean?” Sir Ako said roughly. “It’s just a marshlight, a will-o’-the-wisp.”

  “You don’t see the colors? The moving patterns?” Sandun asked him.

  “No, just a faint glowing shape, drifting over the ground.”

  As Ghost Wolf passed over the dead animals, it seemed to pause. Sandun saw that its colors changed as it did so. The villagers lifted a bucket of mash, which had already been prepared, over the barricade. The hoary old boar, White Snout, turned away from Ghost Wolf and came close to the wall. After staring at the men with its pig eyes, the old boar put his head down and drank up the offering with a loud, sloppy tongue. The only other sound was the chanting of the shaman.

  Ghost Wolf drifted around the town, and the shaman followed along, on the inside of the wooden walls. Sandun, Basil, Kagne, and Gorgi followed the shaman. Ghost Wolf did not fully circle the town but halted when it reached the lakeshore, and then it began to retreat, northward, beside the lakeshore.

  “That’s it,” Gorgi said. “Time to celebrate!”

  The wild hogs seemed to have given up their assault and vanished into the forest—or at least they could no longer be heard. But Sandun had no desire to stay inside the village and drink. Instead, he set his helmet down and said, “I’m going to follow that thing, Ghost Wolf.” It attracted him; it was an intriguing mystery.

  “I’m coming with you,” Kagne said.

  “Go ahead,” Gorgi told them. “You won’t find anything. Others have followed it before you. Ghost Wolf disappears soon after it passes under the trees.”

  “Don’t you want to stay and eat these tasty boars?” Basil said with a plaintive note in his voice. “More might show up later?”

  Sandun pulled at Basil’s arm. “Come on, this is a mystery. Stay for more gamey boar meat? Not I.”

  Reluctantly, Basil followed Sandun and Kagne as they climbed over the piled tree trunks and trailed Ghost Wolf along the lakeshore. It moved at a walking pace, and although he could have moved closer, Sandun maintained his distance.

  “What do you think it is?” Basil asked softly. “A marshlight, as Sir Ako says?”

  “I’ve never seen a marshlight, but this is…so strange. It has colors, brief flashes of vivid green, red, occasionally yellow. Don’t you see them?”

  “No, it glows, that’s all. Much like Piksie mushrooms I’ve seen growing on dead trees.”

  “You see the colors, don’t you, Kagne?”

  “I do. Just as you say, striking flashes of strange colors. Amazing!”

  Ghost Wolf moved into the forest, bobbing over fallen branches, avoiding tree trunks—as though it were alive. Gradually its glow faded, but the flashes of vivid colors continued—undimmed and, if anything, more visible than before, at least to Sandun’s eyes.

  “It’s gone,” Basil said with frustration. “I can’t track it any longer. No sight, no smell, no sound.”

  “I still see it,” whispered Sandun.

  “As do I,” said Kagne.

  “Why do you see what I do not?”

  San
dun had no explanation, but he followed Ghost Wolf deeper into the forest.

  Pursuing Ghost Wolf became quite difficult. The darkness under the forest was blacker than night, and the farther they went, the more branches and fallen trees hindered their way. Sandun had set his money pouch aside when he put on his armor. Now it was too late for him to go back and fetch his glowing orb from the pouch. Yet without light, they couldn’t chase Ghost Wolf for fear of losing an eye to a hidden branch or falling into a pool of mucky, stagnant water.

  Lacking any alternative, he drew his sword, Skathris. To his relief, it was glowing brightly enough to see the sticks and branches ahead of him.

  Kagne whispered, “It stopped.” He was correct. Ghost Wolf had stopped. The color flashes became more frequent. Now there were more blue colors than green. Sandun waited to see what Ghost Wolf would do.

  Behind him, Basil cursed under his breath. “Why doesn’t my Piksie knife glow?”

  “Let me have it,” Kagne said quietly.

  “It’s glowing now. What are you doing?”

  Basil’s Piksie knife was glowing in Kagne’s hand; the light was faint, but there was no doubt.

  “I…I can’t tell you what I’m doing. I can’t describe it.”

  “Ghost Wolf is moving again,” Sandun said. Holding his sword aloft, he forged ahead. Behind him, he could hear Kagne and Basil struggling to follow by the dim light from Skathris and Basil’s stone cutter.

  Maybe it took an hour, perhaps a bit less, as the three men made their way, following no path, pursuing a mystery in the night. It was getting late, and Sandun was getting tired. This was a pointless waste of time, he told himself. How long was he prepared to follow Ghost Wolf? Till midnight? Till morning? Could Ghost Wolf be seen under sunlight? He was about to give up, about to stop. But he didn’t. He kept going. Kagne and Basil trailed behind him with no complaints, no questions.

  Rocks appeared amid the trees, and a faint shimmer ahead outlined the black trunks of the pines and their branches. The ground became soft, and rivulets of water reflected the yellow light from Sandun’s sword. Then they were at the forest edge and in front of them, soaring high, was a cliff of stone. Sandun heaved a sigh of relief. He knew where he was, as he could see the stars. A cool breeze came down from up high.

  Ghost Wolf kept going.

  Not directly up the cliff, but it followed a path of sorts between boulders, heading up.

  “In for a penny, in for a crown,” Sandun said.

  “Where is it going?” asked Kagne.

  “We are about to find out,” Basil stated. “Somewhere up there is its home.”

  Sandun realized they were climbing up an ancient stairway, hundreds of years old, shaped not by nature but by hands. He sped up, closing the gap with Ghost Wolf. He felt confident that Basil was right and they were about to discover…something. The stairway leveled off to a platform carved into the cliff face.

  The platform or ledge was mostly devoid of loose debris; apparently someone had been taking care of it. Ghost Wolf approached the cliff face at the edge of the platform, and then it paused. Sandun approached slowly. Twenty feet away, then fifteen. What was this place? What did it mean? Was Ghost Wolf aware of them?

  Ghost Wolf seemed to contract, fold in on itself, and then it moved up to a small half circle of black shadow on the rock and went inside.

  “There is something on the inside of this rock,” said Kagne, with wonder in his voice.

  “It’s a door,” Sandun said softly.

  “A door in a cliff,” said Basil. “I’ve seen this before.”

  “Piksies?” Sandun said. “No. That can’t be. They never lived in Serica, did they?”

  Moving closer, Sandun saw a small bowl placed on the rocky shelf below the semicircular hole. The opening that Ghost Wolf had gone through was about five feet off the ground and about the size of a fist. Sandun picked up the bowl and smelled it. It had contained some sort of fragrant liquid as recently as a month or two ago. Someone living in Essebeg knew about this place, but apparently no one had made the connection with it and Ghost Wolf.

  Sandun lifted Skathris and slowly pushed it into the opening. Skathris went in, up to its hilt, without obstruction. Taking it back out, he examined the rock door by holding the sword up close to the stone. If it had been made by Piksies, there was little chance of finding a way through. Aside from the hole, there was nothing, no indication that anything was on the other side.

  “No way to get through that,” said Kagne.

  “What are you holding in your hand?” asked Sandun.

  “Basil’s knife…oh. Stone cutter.” Kagne looked at the knife and then at the stone door.

  Basil said slowly, “Are you really suggesting that we use my Piksie knife to cut through a door that hasn’t been opened for who knows how long so that we can keep chasing this Ghost Wolf into its lair? Are you completely mad, Sandun?”

  “With your permission, yes,” Sandun replied evenly. “I’d like to use your stone-cutting knife to widen this hole and see what lies beyond.”

  Basil sat down and held up his hands in a mute appeal for reason.

  It was near midnight; the stars burned in the sky. Sandun struggled out of his armor and laid the pieces down in a pile near the door.

  “Why not?” asked Sandun. “We may never come this way again. You do realize we are likely to fight a huge Sogand army in a week’s time, yes? I don’t mean to be gloomy, but crows are likely to be picking at our bones before the month is out. So I say again, why not? What do we have to lose?” Despite Basil’s concerns and even his own words, Sandun was unafraid of the future.

  “When you put it like that…” Basil trailed off. “Go ahead, Sandun. You are probably correct. Whatever is inside this hill, whatever Ghost Wolf is, it can’t possibly be more dangerous than going into battle against ten thousand screaming Sogand warriors.”

  Basil stood and then picked up the bowl. “I’m going to get some water, but I’m not going any farther. I don’t know exactly what’s inside this mountain, but I can tell you this: nothing is alive on the other side. Ghost, demons, or spirits, that’s all you will find.”

  “Or angels,” said Sandun.

  Basil looked up at the cliff, and then he went down the ancient stairs.

  Sandun took the stone cutter from Kagne and tried shaving a piece of stone from the opening. The knife cut through the cold stone like cutting through an apple. Sandun tried to keep his cuts to straight lines. He remembered the way the old Piksie, Ruthal of Gate Town, had used the stone cutter, making triangles and pulling slices of stone away from the door. They fell to the rocky ground and chipped or broke apart. The stone cutter whined as he cut, and it slowly grew hot in his hand. By luck or coincidence, the door was not quite as thick as the blade was long.

  As he worked, he wondered why no group of men with picks had broken in this door. Was it a secret known only to a few? Was it dangerous? Perhaps Ghost Wolf could attack people and had done so in the past? Perhaps this was an ancient tomb, and the door concealed nothing more than old bones inside a short cave?

  Basil came back up the stairs with a bowl full of water. Sandun handed the stone cutter to Kagne and thanked Basil for the water.

  “What’s on the other side?” Basil asked.

  Sandun took Skathris and extended it through the enlarged but ragged opening. The pale-yellow light of his sword illuminated a low passage that went straight back into dead black.

  “It’s a passageway. Can’t tell how far in it goes. Does it look familiar?”

  “I recognize the darkness,” Basil said drolly.

  “Ha-ha.”

  By rights, Sandun should have been exhausted—he had been worn down making his way through the forest, but no longer. He was running on a second wind; his heart was racing, his mind alive with ideas and speculations. Kagne set the stone-cut
ting knife down and sat beside them. “It’s hot.” He pointed to the knife. “When we clean the jagged edges, we can get through the hole in the door.”

  “By the Spear, are you…” Basil stopped and then said, with resignation in his voice, “All right, you two can chase that ghost or spirit or whatever.”

  “One of us has to stay behind just in case,” Sandun said. “If we are not back by dawn, find the others. I would try and avoid spreading the news of what we have found and done to the people of Essebeg.”

  “You think this place may be—sacred? Forbidden?”

  “I do,” Sandun replied.

  “We could come back tomorrow, with food and rope,” Kagne suggested.

  “I think…I feel we have to go now, this night. Or we lose the chance.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Basil.

  “Doesn’t it? Didn’t Gorgi say Ghost Wolf only appears once a year? Perhaps it hides, far away.”

  “In that case, we have lost it already. It’s been half an hour or more since it passed through the hole.”

  “I feel it is still near. There is something special in the air tonight,” Sandun said earnestly. “We must seize this moment now!”

  He picked up the stone cutter and widened the opening with more careful cuts. “There. I’m going through. Are you coming with me, Kagne?”

  “Yes, but can I carry the knife? Basil?”

  “Go on,” Basil replied with resignation. “What a strange night this has become. Sho’Ash guard you.”

  Forcing his way through the opening, Sandun found his sword illuminated a section of corridor previously hidden from view. It paralleled the cliff face, somewhat like a guard chamber. At the far end was a pile of leaves, brown with age, thinner than paper. Along the floor, rusted pieces of metal lay strewn about. Spearheads? Daggers? Impossible to say.

  He made his way down the corridor, which kept straight for hundreds of feet. Irregularly, along the walls, rock seemed to have flowed out through cracks in the stone. The floor stones were rarely cracked and showed little sign of age or use. The corridor started out uncomfortably low, and the ceiling became a bit lower as they moved farther from the entrance. Sandun had to hold his left hand over his head to make sure he did not bash his brains out on some unseen dip in the rock above him.