Return to the Land of the Free E-Book

Arthur H. Filter

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Death to the Immortal Realm
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 671

Beschreibung

A Medieval Fantasy Tactial Action Adventure. A soldier, a spy, a witch and a wildman must liberate a wild frontier fortress-town that has been taken hostage by savage creatures. In a wilderness beset by warring factions, foes must be forged into allies to save the lives of thousands caught in a deadly trap. Yet our heroes are but pawns in a secret game, threatening to tilt the balance of war and peace at the bleeding edge of empire. Return to the Land of the Free transplants the questing adventure genre into the harsh beauty of the historic Baltic European landscape and its primordial inhabitants. Crafted for fans of old-school fantasy and popular role-playing games.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

I : Pact

II : Song

III : Landslide

IV : Escape

V : Contraband

VI : Reckoning

VII : Torturer

VIII : Message

IX : Endeavour

X : Departure

XI : Deerhead

XII : Hounds

XIII : Monument

XIV : Hulk

XV : Oracle

XVI : Scavengers

XVII : Atrocity

XVIII : Trial

XIX : Hospitality

XX : Power

XXI : Division

XXII : Prayer

XXIII : Prey

XXIV : Knight

XXV : Speakers

XXVI : Return

XXVII : Raid

XXVIII : Savages

XXIX : Weapons

XXX : Authority

XXXI : Ambush

XXXII : Massacre

XXXIII : Flight

XXXIV : Grave

XXXV : Damnation

XXXVI : Three

XXXVII : Charge

XXXVIII : Life

XXXIX : Death

Acknowledgements

I : Pact

The sickly light that escaped the slime-choked ruin flickered across the surface of the brackish moor waters like tortured will-o-wisps. The shadows inside the half-drowned ancient structure danced in maddened frenzy. A bestial scream of agony scattered all the lurking amphibians but one green-eyed lizard.

“You are weak, Harrovech, WEAK! And they can smell it!”, the massive hunched-over figure croaked. Tiny worms squirmed inside her lone blood-shot eyeball as she cast a malicious sideway glance. Variola’s bark-like skin somehow appeared both flaking dry and shining greasy at the same time. Her long clawlike fingers ripped another tooth from the maw of the mammal that wriggled in her iron grip, making it squeal once more in bestial agony. She flicked the bloodied tooth into a bowl.

“Lose another mound, Harrovech, and your second will be adding your hide to that vein cloak of his!”, agreed Scrofula. She was gaunt compared to her wife-sister, except for her bulbous sagging forehead. Both giant hags stood hunched over in this hall from whose fractured ceiling hung obscure plants, skinned animals and bone fetishes. Both were draped in black and brown rags, clattering with each step from the tokens and amulets they wore, busily working their perverted alchemy.

Harrovech kept his arms crossed in front of his chest, making a show of defiance. He was powerfully built, the very picture of a Barrowman warlord with muscles like steel ropes under his thick gray skin, yet even at his towering height he was barely as tall as the hags. He suspected they had once belonged to the old people. Maybe they were the only ones left. Maybe they once belonged to his own kind. Noone knew. He hated being in the presence of The Rotten Three, or what remained of them, either way.

“Our only weakness is our numbers. If we had only-“

“BUT YOU DON’T!”, Variola interrupted him. “You grovel, you plead pity, like a paltry babe crying for its mother’s teat. Excuse after excuse for your limp-dicked folk. Pathetic!”

He had known that he would be showered with insults. But in contrast to his predecessors, he had learned to shun the arrogance that had already cost them too much too often. He gritted his teeth. They had summoned him, after all. They wouldn’t have done so only to spite him. There must be a reason. So he stood rigid as they poured further insults on him and his entire race while they worked the shallow cauldron in the center of the hall.

“But for once in your pitiful life, Harrovech,” continued Scrofula, “you might be of use.”

“To you, that is. How?”

The hags looked each other briefly in the eye. He didn’t like the smirk on their cracked lips.

“Urghyn!”, they said in unison and spat at their respective feet.

“Urghyn?”, he echoed.

“Are you deaf, you donkey? Yes, Urghyn.”, again they spat.

“What about it? Pyrexia- “

“HOW DARE YOU SPEAK THAT NAME IN HERE!” “DO NOT SAY HER NAME, WORM!”, the furious hags shouted him down, both ejecting spittle.

“…the steel men that killed your third are long dead.” They hissed at the mention. It was almost true.

“Still there are too many upon the hill and inside their walls for us to wipe out. We easily pick off the ones that wander, but to overrun them…we would lose too many. It is an important mound. But not so important to risk everything on it.”, the Barrowman objected.

“Shut up, brute, and listen.”, Variola spewed, “You don’t understand. As expected!”

Harrovech clenched his jaw shut. Anyone else…

“We compensate for your pathetic scarcity. We give you the lizards of Vol, the blood-hunters of the heath, the frog-men, the ape-hounds of the hills, the Bone-Drinkers, all the scum and cut-throats of the Weald. You and your ilk get to push them around to your liking. But you follow OUR command!”

“Which is what?”

Variola shuffled her hulking hunchbacked mass close to him, the unbearable acidic stench of her breath biting into Harrovech’s face. “Crash their gates. Capture the hill and the men crawling all over it. Hold the red fortress at its peak. Make their own walls a cage. Eat some of them if you must, but leave the fattest to us until the black moon of Jhar is in the sky. Then we will descend upon the hill of Urghyn-”

“…and that’s all you need to know, toad! Just capture it until then, and don’t let the human filth escape. We have need of them.”, Scrofula finished.

“How many can you summon?”, Harrovech asked with a furrowed brow.

“Many hundreds. Enough bellies to catch the men’s arrows for you, and enough to pile up their corpses to let you scale the walls. Then, enough to keep the humans subdued.”

“And they will follow?”

“We command, they follow! And…to ensure your success, we might even grant you…a boon…a fraction of our power, for the time being.”

He sneered. “To take the mound…and for what in return?”

“Always asking for something in return! This generation is hopeless!”, Scrofula moaned as she dropped some squirming thing into the boiling cauldron before her. “Ech…in return, we waste our time and aid you with your little mounds, this once. Not that they matter.”

“Speak not such drivel. You know their worth. Their meaning. Their power!”, he angrily defied the hag, pointing an accusing finger at her. That took some nerve.

“Yeah yeah, to the ones underneath. And to your foolish slave people. DO as we SAY! And we will gift you a ghost fence around each of your dirt-piles from here to the Teeth in the far south. A one-time magic each. If it breaks, it’s your problem again.” The hags turned back to their alchemy.

Harrovech considered. It was an unbearable risk. He would have to put all his warriors into one place. Should they fail, it would wipe out a generation of an already fading people. It would leave many mounds to be defended by the old and frail. If he failed, they would curse his name in perpetuity, or until their disappearance from the world altogether. But to wither, to not take action, to flee from strife, that was a fate worse than death.

“I accept.”

“For once, you say something that isn’t stupid, frog-face!”, Variola commented.

“Step over here, Harrovech.”, Scrofula beckoned him towards the cauldron with her blood-splattered claw-like hand.

He stepped up to the shallow black iron pan whose thickly viscous bubbling content made even him dizzy. Variola, the obese hag, filled a ragged ladle with its obscene content, and held it out to Harrovech. “Drink!”, she commanded.

He took the ladle, dripping a fraction of it onto the slimy stone floor, where it hissed and bubbled on contact. He took a deep breath, then swallowed the vile mixture in a single gulp. It burned his throat. He fought against throwing it back up, his mighty frame immediately trembling and sweaty.

“What…”, he paused to force the disgusting slop back down, “…what does it do?”

“Oh, just makes sure that you survive.”, Scrofula chuckled.

“Survive…what?”

“Our blessing.”, Variola said, and extended her claw to stab the Barrowman warlord in the throat with immense force. He shook, and collapsed unconsciously onto the floor, sprawled out, but with no blood leaking from him.

“You know, you might have waited with that until we got him onto the bench. Now we have to carry him all the way over there.”

“Oh don’t be so lazy and help me!”

They rolled him over, one grabbing him by the shoulders and one by the feet, and carried him to a crudely made table, roughly dropping him onto it and strapping him down with leather bindings.

“It needs to soak”, Scrofula commented.

“Like I don’t know that”, Variola snarled. They hobbled away from the unconscious Barrowman.

“I hate having to put the success of the gathering into the hands of this moron.”

“Of course. But think of the result.”

“The clout.”

“The Blood-Mages of Gor will adore us!”

“The Shadow-Slavers of Equinox will abhor us!”

“Every witch and warlock, foul beldame, sorcerer and necromancer worth his salt, following our summons to attend the event of the century.”

“Except…Hathus, of course.”

They both spat.

“Of course except for him!! Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid vial. He’s not invited! Everyone else…”

“The applause.”

“The admiration in their beady little eyes.”

“And with us, back at the top of the social hierarchy…”

“…every black mage and devil-botherer aghast at our brilliance…”

“…and finally, enough fresh man-blood at our disposal for the accretion…”

Simultaneously: “…a new third.”. Frantic cackles.

II : Song

Tonight was going to be a profitable night.

Low voices and the smoke of oil lamps and pipes veiled the patrons of the teahouse. New arrivals approached the basin at the center of the cylindrical structure’s ground floor to wash their hands in the clear water that cycled through the elaborately decorated blue-gold fountain spire. The singer sat on the basin’s rim, his legs folded, the expensive sitar on his lap. He inconspicuously observed the comings and goings. Tonight, there were few foreigners, and those mostly kept to the cheap ground floor seats, while the richly cushioned balconies were filled with Azure.

Some patrons threw him small coins, mostly the square copper pieces with the Redeemer’s banner stamped on them, a KANON silver appearing here and there. He bowed in the style of a slave of the Azure, which belied his expensive silken dress and lack of a collar.

He played their old songs, operating the sitar with casual ease, strumming rhythms and humming melodies that his masters would have heard a thousand times and would not spend another thought on, something pleasant to fill the air like the fragrance of their lamps or the smoke of their pipes.

Another lone patron entered from outside. They were wrapped in gray and brown, marking them as a foreigner. No Azure would wear this. They shook some of the red desert sand out of their robes, then approached the basin. Pale hands dipped into the water, the visitor not looking up to meet the eye of the musician. The veil would only be lifted once seated. The visitor turned their back to the bard and walked upstairs, out of his line of sight.

He continued the long, meandering song till the end, then paused to sip from a tiny cup he had hidden at his feet. A gentle plop caught his attention, and his eyes found the center of the ripples on the water’s surface. A coin had been dropped into the water from the above balconies. One story up, probably. Through the warp of the flowing water, he lifted the metal disk.

The twin Inexorables were stamped onto the silver coin. Common elsewhere. Not here.

He quickly pocketed it. Nobody seemed to have taken note. Where the yellow eyes of the Azure looked out from their blue garments, none considered him more than furniture. He had dreaded the moment. He had prepared, repeated the elaborate sequence over and over, until he could produce it without flaw. He firmly gripped the wooden instrument’s slender neck.

The song he played was an original. It was dressed in the guise of a traditional dance, but an attentive listener would grasp an artificial element in it. The rhythm just a little too uneven, the vocals more pronounced, the melody too complicated, individual notes sharper at higher pitch than would become the drawl of the desert lords’ songs. He played it in full, no longer casual, pouring his entire attention into it. He ended the song, and quickly lapsed into a simple bridge of repetitive chords. He scanned the crowd, veiled in their plumes of smoke, illuminated by tender glow, impossible to read, but seemingly indifferent to him. He breathed. He hadn’t for most of the song.

Another plop. He glanced at the coin. Gemini, once more. Nervously he plucked the coin from the basin and shook the water from his hand. He lazily plucked at the strings for another few seconds, then faded over into another performance of the song he had played moments ago. It was complicated, and halfway through, he messed up a sequence. Only a few chords mixed up, a word swallowed, but enough to ruin it. He hesitated, then picked up the song as if the pause was intended. He finished. Nobody seemed to have minded.

He took another sip from his drink. No more coins. A slave-girl hurried a tray of steaming-hot, fragrant cups past him. A blueveiled patron left and threw him a copper coin, so he gave a formal bow to his superior. He had contradicted himself in the second performance. Surely, they must have noticed?

Another plop. Gemini. He pocketed it quickly, and performed his own song for the third time. He thought he caught the yellow eyes and red skin of an Azure staring right at him for a moment. They didn’t usually look straight at him, they found humans distasteful. He completed the song, realizing he had rushed it a bit. But no mistakes this time. He quickly started one of their best-known ballads, a slow, longing piece from the time before Hammad had been theirs. It calmed his own nerves. He casually glanced at the entrance area. No gray robed traveler exiting yet. Surely, it must have been enough.

Plop. The ripples on the water translated to shivers up his arm and down his spine. Gemini, silver. The ballad finished, he reached for the coin, hesitated. A minor tremor in his finger. He took a deep breath.

Once more, his song. He played everything in a heightened way, as though explaining something to someone in a tone of annoyance. He noticed he had played too loudly when several glimmering pairs of eyes, reflecting their lamplight, brushed over him. He continued on with his song. He heard a complaint in their voice, “again”, was in there. From a few floors up, someone dropped a silver coin of the Redeemer into this pool. He noticed he was sweating. He finished the song, and immediately turned into a dull thrumming rhythm that signaled the return to the conventional style. That was it. He wasn’t going to do this anymore. That had to be enough.

The droning rumble of his deepest frets continued on, as he noted a gray-clad figure descending the staircase from above and moving towards the door. He looked away and let the note ring out. He realized he hadn’t picked up the last coin. As he leaned over the basing to reach for it, he saw two blue figures looming over him in the reflection, red faces peeking out from under dark blue turbans. He hesitated, then snatched the silver Redeemer coin from the water and looked up, the local coin in his wet palm.

One of these two Azure stepped around him. He turned his head to follow the towering figure and barely caught a glimpse of the gray shape opening the door to the outside. His eyes moving upward, he met the glare of the yellow eyes, set in deep sockets of a hard face. Only now did he note the color. This was not the traditional sky-blue from which the Azure had inherited their name.

The woman with the straw hair made another mistake. She turned around and looked straight at the musician. Two Azure loomed over him, dressed in the dark blue of the Redeemer’s cut-throat zealots. What the Seneschal would call “secret officers”. Their word for it meant “apart”. One of them, his back turned to her, grabbed the musician by the throat. The other Azure looked up and directly at her. She turned and passed through the iron-braced portal into the cool outside of the desert night, but not without their eyes meeting for less than a heartbeat. She closed the door behind her and picked up a brisk pace. Black pit, she cursed, she had to away from here without falling into a run, or she should would attract even more attention. Quietly, she hummed the tune she had heard four times to herself.

Few lights spilled onto the street. She had little experience with the sprawling quarters of this city, but towering over its squat, flat houses stood the Ziggurat of Hammad, which was illuminated throughout the night, and she remembered the angle and rough distance from it where she had left the beast that was already packed for her departure. She sucked in the cool nightly air through her veil and crossed from one side of the street to the other to disappear in an alley when she heard raised voices and rapid footfalls from the direction of the teahouse. She left the street and broke into a sprint. In her mind, the musician’s song echoed on and on. Had she doomed him?

For an hour, she rushed through the streets of the foreign metropolis, empty at a time when no one respectable was still about, praying that the locals were already asleep, climbing over low walls, ducking into obscure passages, certainly not finding the shortest route to her destination. She stretched her legs into a stalking gait to make her footprints appear that of a native. Costumes would not work here, she realized, as her stature would not pass for that of the tall, slender Azure. Nervously, she scanned the skies for movement, but in the dark, it was hopeless.

She had to stop her zig-zagging course when a local stood blocking the passage between two squat houses. She jumped him, knocking him over the head with the butt of her knife, then hurried on. Few armed Azure enforcers patrolled the streets – this was not the kind of quarter where a thief would find rich pickings – and the ones who did wander warned her off with the flicker of their oil lanterns. Each cone of light meant capture, torture, death.

Despite the chill, she was drenched in sweat by the time she arrived where she had tied down the trotta, that thick-skinned horse-like creature with the short trunk. It had fallen asleep, and by the time it was roused, it surely must have wakened the neighbors with its grunts and gurgles. She quickly exchanged her robe with a differently shaded one stowed in a saddlebag, then pulled on the reins to stop the beast from sniffing for nearby ants, climbed onto the saddle that was hung with leather pouches and finally got the vile thing to stand up fully and stomp in the direction she had intended. Startled, she suddenly realized an Azure, leaning against a nearby fencepost, staring at her. She froze – him, unmoving. She noted his gaunt face. His mouth stood open. He was draped in rags, no veil over his face. His red skin seemingly turned to black and brown. She was fairly sure he was dead. He didn’t move, and when she urged her mount on, his head didn’t follow her.

On the horizon, the pitch black of night was already diluted by first blue. She had wasted more time than she had intended, and kicked the trotta into a quicker pace. Over the beasts’ rumbling, she repeated the song back to herself, and once more scanned the sky, to be entirely sure it was empty.

The neighborhood she’d traversed slowly faded out, and gave way to the scattered huts that made up the outer rims of the sprawl that was Hammad, until the desolation of Sariat-al-Sawt began to stretch out before her. Now here came the truly difficult part. She steered her mount onto a gently rising dune and stopped to turn around. From her elevated position, she glanced across the flat rooftops and lone spires of the city’s edge, still dwarfed by the imposing ziggurat looming beyond it. The Redeemer’s fortress.

While the windows of the houses were dark, a dense cluster of lights moved horizontally through the outermost streets. At that speed, they must be mounted. And they turned not just from left to right, they were moving outward. Toward her. She turned the trotta around, its webbed feet steadily moving across the fine sand, and pushed the animal to race west. The intimidating solitary vastness of the desert stretched out endlessly before her. She had enough water for a few days, and the stinking creature could go a week without. Whether it would last her to get to the shore in a straight line and get aboard a boat was on the optimistic side, but not hopeless, and therefore within the parameters she had been instructed to operate in.

By the time the first rays of the merciless sun crept over the horizon, she quietly sang the bard’s song to herself, wondering if he would live to see the dawn. She resolved to beat herself up over needing to hear it too often when she was on a ship. She realized that she had made a mistake that had cost them dearly, and that she would see the singer’s accusing face in her dreams.

III : Landslide

The gale rushing past the mountain cave created a low whistle, like some ungodly wind instrument.

“Do you think it’s true what they say? That wizards were once human?”

“Not sure.”

“I’m not buying it.”

“Maybe it’s a Nechonos thing. They got all sorts of freaks over there, I heard.”

“Eat and shut up, you two!”, Haaken interrupted the men and scratched some crumbs out of his long mustache. “And mind your tongue when she comes back in here. I don’t want any bad blood on this trip. We’re almost finished, this is our last chance to rest before we split the stone, so sleep as much as you can. We have to act fast tomorrow, like we talked about. Hit them hard, take what we came for, leave. And we’ll have to get away from here quickly, before their scattered hunting packs return. Last comfortable rest for some days, until we get back to the mining town.”

“Comfortable would be with a fire.”

“None today, Ansel. Sorry.”, he shook his head.

The two soldiers grumbled but continued to chew on their salted meats and dry biscuits in silence. They had set aside their chain armor, oiled their metal fighting, climbing and mining equipment, and were now sprawled out on blankets on the floor near the mouth of the cave.

Haaken wiped his dusty hands on his deerskin pants that were covered in abrasions from working on his knees for much of the day. His left thumb was all black and blue. He hoped it wouldn’t impair him tomorrow. They weren’t exactly engineers or masons, so they’d taken longer than they’d hoped, but the result would make the fighting that much easier. The Volstokin they’d brought along was still on guard duty just outside. He had been much less helpful than their prejudices made them expect, given the material. His squat shape, almost as wide as it was tall, cast a rectangular shadow from the sunset that was sending the day off, and his long beard flapped in the wind like the hairy banner of some deranged herald.

Another shadow shifted across the stone wall that was painted pink-red with the dying light, and Candle entered. She moved very slowly, as if dead tired, even though she’d had to perform no physical labor like the three men inside the cave. The room quieted. They weren’t talking much with her around. She was slumped over, in a way that unnerved the men, her body bending in ways that should not be possible with a normal skeleton inside of it. She sat down on the floor, somehow folding her legs, draped by the long black robes she was wearing. The only visible parts of her body were her cloth-framed eyes, the lower half of her face and her hands. The last two showed weirdly distorted pale skin, warped over her flesh and lacking any hair. There seemed to be no nose under her mask, and her eyes were large and bulbous. Otto had first suspected her to be a leper. Haaken had forbidden further speculation on the matter.

“No campfire?”, Candle asked. Her voice gave no indication of her grotesque appearance.

“I’m afraid not. We don’t want them to smell or see the smoke. They haven’t noticed us yet. Better keep it that way.” She didn’t answer, but curled up quietly into a heap. She didn’t complain much, as opposed to the two men. Otto, watching her out of the corner of his eye, shuddered and turned over.

Haaken called for Gudyr, the Volstokin, who entered. In contrast to the one they called Candle, he might have passed for human, though he wasn’t. The limited height, pale purple-blue skin, the prodigious hair growth except for the top of his head and the neck extending forward instead of up gave away his far-northern heritage. They were all gathered now.

“Final words. We go ahead as discussed. We start early, so the sun doesn’t cast your shadows into the ravine. Myself, Otto and Ansel will await in the valley below, at that elevated position to the southeast, and we will just hope that nothing hits us there.” The two soldiers nodded.

“Fighting is easier when you drop something on their head first!“, Haaken lectured. “Gudyr will strike the wedges while Candle will take the sound away, just like today. The big rock cracks, landslide crashes into the gulch from the west, the river follows, chaos. Any ones that run, we three pick off with arrows. Once you’re done up top, you two take a wide berth and circle around, past the pines, and meet up with us down below. Make sure none of those troglodytes are in our rear. We group up, once the landslide has settled we move west along the southern slope to their cave. Myself, Candle, Ansel go in. Otto and Gudyr stay outside to secure our escape. We take the thing – assuming it is in there - get out, hurry to where Teagan is camped with the horses. We get back to town, restock, and off to Throyce. Questions?”

“To keep the silence, I need to be close.”, Candle remarked, all eyes turning to her. “When the boulder breaks, I shouldn’t be on top of it anymore. So, the last few strikes, they might hear. And then they’re warned.”

Haaken nodded. “You two will have to coordinate. Work as long as you can, but don’t take unnecessary risks. If they hear a hammer-strike or two, there’s no helping that. It’s not long enough for them to leave the ravine anyways.”

Otto chimed in. “What if we three can’t hold our position?”

“Fall back to the passage up top. Wait for the others to meet us. If that becomes too much, fall back to the pines. If they drive us all the way back there, we’re doomed anyways, but at least they have to fight uphill.”

They seemed in agreement.

“Right. Sleep now. Tomorrow will be hard work. Gudyr, you wake me when I should take over the watch. No fire now, and no fire when we get in that cave. The Seneschal said the thing would burn easily.”

Quiet agreement. They rolled up on the blankets that were spread over the rocky cave floor, while the Volstokin stood guard. The three men fell asleep quickly in the way of professionals that made most out of those rare opportunities to shut their eyes.

Haaken woke the others as the sky first brightened. Only a few clouds showed on the eastern horizon. The sun had not yet risen, and the valleys around them were still bathed in deep shadows. They packed their sparse belongings, squeezed themselves into their leather-strapped chain shirts, binding their weapons tightly to their bodies, as to make as little sound as possible. No words were spoken. The three soldiers descended from their resting spot along the narrow trail towards the valley and were soon gone from sight.

Candle was left alone with the Volstokin. He had donned his armor, ready to relieve the trio once they joined up, but it would make his immediate work that much harder. She climbed the spot they had worked, the enormous boulder at the ledge that overlooked a steep drop into the gulch below. Water pooled next to it, and once more they were lucky that the wind pushed the dust, left from working the stone, away from the valley, not towards it. Candle dared a brief glance into the gulch below. The troglodytes were already awake, gathering outside the cave and fighting over scraps of bone and sinew, leftovers from last night’s hunt. There were a few dozen of them at least.

The duo waited some time to allow the others to reach their position. The Volstokin already placed the metal feathers into the holes they had worked into two intersecting lines, and waited for Candle to contribute her special part.

Finally, she lowered herself in a jointless motion onto the ground and placed her hands on the stone. Her fingers traced symbols on the ground, and she focused hard to match the exact pronunciation required to evoke the words of power. Her litany of words of the first language soon began to fade out, as did the trickle of the water, the howling of the wind, the song of distant birds…the world became quiet. Perfect silence engulfed her. It once more took all her concentration to maintain the dome of silence she was projecting. The Volstokin tapped his foot, clapped his hands, gave a soundless shout. Pleased with the result, he took the long-shafted hammer and began pounding on the metal feathers he’d inserted. He went back and forth for some minutes, hitting the bolts.

Candle felt a tremor in her legs. A minor shift in her position. She slowly looked up from the complicated incantation. The Volstokin hammered the feathers once more, and rapidly, a crack appeared along the length of the giant boulder, running from the pool to the edge. Candle’s already bulging eyes went wide, and she slowed her silent chant. A hint of sound crept through to her ears. The Volstokin also seemed to notice. Cautiously, she let the spell fade out, and raised herself to her feet. She carefully stepped away from the boulder, which had cracked along its entire length. Water had begun to run in between the two halves, and a trickle was escaping on the far end. She assumed that the creatures down below would take notice now. Gudyr struck the feathers that ran at right angles to the crack, frantically and with great force, and with the spell faded, the echoes of his strikes escaped into the mountain air. Immediately after, a terrifying roar echoed from the valley. Had they really noticed so quickly? Another crack, and the farther half of the boulder split apart as well. With the water no longer pressing against the outer parts of the stone, a grinding sound announced its immediate departure. With it, the rest of the boulder began to shift.

Gudyr still stood on the far side of the stone. He dropped the hammer and made to jump over the crack towards Candle, but as he made the leap across the water, already in his armor, he landed short of what he intended and slipped. Heavily, he fell on his face and stomach, driving the wind out of him. The quartered parts of the boulder gave way, and his legs were sprayed by the rush of cold water that now violently filled the space. With one hand, he grabbed onto one of the protruding meal wedges.

Candle froze in shock as the Volstokin was nearly flushed off the ledge by the diversion of the river. She stared as he clasped his thick hand around the bolt, only to have his legs dragged by the stream. Debris was washed along with it, striking the short, stout legs of the warrior.

What could she do? Panic seized her. Gudyr roared a grunt of exhaustion and pain. She had to help him, but how? She wasn’t strong enough to pull him.

As the armored Volstokin was shaken by the rushing water, a crack formed along the width of the remaining half of the boulder.

Candle leapt towards the ledge, fell to her knees and plunged her hands into the water, only a step away from the struggling Gudyr. She recited a new litany in the first language. She had done this before, but never at this scale. As she performed the spell, she felt her body heating up. No other place to put the heat. The water grew colder and colder, and as she forcefully dragged the heat out of the water, her entire body began to steam. She squirmed as the burning, intense heat tried to drag her attention away from the spell. She felt the water around her boiling hands harden as the heat was extracted from it, and turn to ice. The stream halted on the frozen ledge. The Volstokin pounded the ice across his legs with his fist until he could free them, and crawled onto the two remaining quarters of the boulder that were now frozen in place. As he glanced over to Candle, steaming like a hot coal thrown into a barrel of water, she swayed, fighting for consciousness in the murderous heat of her body. Gudyr struggled to his legs, grabbed her by the shoulder, her body hot to the touch, and hurled her back away from the quarter-boulder they were standing on.

As her limp hands left the water, the heat rapidly rushed back into it, and with a great booming thunderclap the ice behind the Volstokin exploded and blasted him forward, away from the last remainder of the boulder that now collapsed down the gulch, followed by a vast burst of water.

Haaken, Otto and Ansel had relocated their quivers to their hips for rapid access, readied their bows, and waited for the pounding of stone and water that would soften their targets. They had hidden themselves well behind a fallen-over tree that formed a barrier on the raised ledge they had chosen, less than a hundred feet from their targets, and hopefully shielded enough from the eastern wind to cover their scent.

In the narrow valley that stretched west to east, the sun cast its first crimson rays from the east, illuminating the dark shapes that moved across the pale, dusty stone. The troglodytes had risen early, and were quarreling over the bones of whatever beast they had butchered the night before. The victors hopped away with their trophies, and broke open the bones with their wide maws to suck out the marrow. Their weapons were primitive. Wooden axe-clubs with flint wedges driven into them, flint points on their spears. But their expertise with these crude weapons, and their sheer number, the three soldiers understood, made them utterly lethal.

As they waited in silence for the ledge above to pour out a surprise, they beheld a procession of the troglodytes exit the cavern on the southern flank of the gulch. Several of the humanoid creatures spilled from the cave, and following them was an individual that was covered in colors. Haaken squinted to make out any details. There were rows of beads of whatever make, strung across sinewy strings wrapped around this troglodyte’s body, all ashimmering. The creature walked slowly, but with purpose.

In its thick arms and claw-like hands, it carried what Haaken perceived as a banner. Atop a wooden pole sat a cross-beam. At its very top was mounted the desiccated head of some poor bastard that had been caught by the beast-men, his skullcap removed and some thorny shrub planted inside. Below the severed head’s silent scream hung a colorful but ragged textile covered in beautiful, intricate patterns, suspended on hooks to connect it to the edges of the crossbeam. The trophy banner held high, the procession ceremoniously stomped across the troglodytes’ lair.

“Son of a bitch”, Haaken hissed.

“Don’t tell me that’s it.”, Otto whispered.

“Must be.”, Haaken whispered back. Surely, it must be.

“What do we do?”, quietly, from Ansel. The plan was shot.

“If it’s out there, it’ll get torn to pieces. Sun, burn them all! Shit!”, he cursed. “We make a ruckus. Now. Clearly, it’s important to them. If they’re attacked, they’ll secure it. Get it out of the way.” He tried to sound more confident than he was.

“But then they’re all up in arms against us.” Ansel snapped.

“Not for long. Boulder is coming down.”

“When?”

“Trust in the process. Shoot. Shoot, damnit!”

Haaken yanked the string and arrow back, chose a target at random, and fired. The long arrow hit the troglodyte in the neck with a meaty thud. It spun its wide-mawed head around, releasing a primal scream. Two more arrows followed, on different targets, one killing for certain.

“We have their attention.”, Ansel hissed between gritted teeth. “Calm down.”, from Otto.

A great uproar shook the beast-men into a frenzy, and while most of them either grabbed a weapon or leapt across the rough terrain towards the archers’ nest, the individual with the banner turned and sprinted back towards the cave. Haaken took some solace in that. They fired another volley of arrows, and struck down more of the creatures, which only enraged them more.

“Retreat?”

“HOLD!”, Haaken barked and loosed another one. The troglodytes were now swarming the valley floor, some of them armed with jagged pieces of broken bone, the first few trying to hurl a spear at the yet too distant humans, but the low sun blinded them in their aim.

A loud crack boomed across the valley, and some of the beastmen turned around. The landslide had begun, and enormous boulders tumbled down the high, steep slope, crashing into it and breaking into smaller fragments, and those were followed by a rush of water from above. Calamity poured down the gulch, and within seconds, the falling rocks bludgeoned the slowest troglodytes to death. A panic seized them, and they began to flee east, towards the opening of the gulch, towards the sun. Another volley of arrows forced them between hammer and anvil. More water poured down. The soldiers loosed as quickly as they could, there being many moving targets to choose from. As best as Haaken could tell, the standard-bearer had escaped.

But then the landslide stopped. The water subsided. Two dozen of them were already squashed by the boulders, but as the rock slide halted, so did many of the troglodytes. Haaken, Otto and Ansel stared in disbelief as the outpour slowed to a trickle. The troglodytes, uncertain of the situation, continued their assault eastward, toward the raised position of the men. Had they miscalculated so badly, Haaken asked himself. His hand grasped for his sword. It would not take them long to close in on their position.

An explosion, far louder than the previous crack, reverberated through the valley. A hail of stone burst forth, raining down in a wide radius, followed by a violently torrential stream of water. This demanded another look from all but the most frenzied troglodytes, and their vast mass found itself pelted by the outpour of rocks, and drowned by the rushing waters.

“Closing in! Swords!”, Haaken commanded, and the trio dropped their bows, donned their shields, and formed a narrow shield-wall. They dared not yet leave their raised position amid the pelting of the falling rock. A few frenzied troglodytes closed in, but their uncoordinated approached was quickly cut down by the steel of the soldiers. The beast-men were strong individually, but their numbers dwindled rapidly, and the three men deflected the stone axe chops with their overlapping shields. Beyond their melee clash, the flood of water and stone carried the mass of the troglodytes to their graves.

Gudyr supported the barely conscious Candle as they staggered downhill. He had poured some of the cold water on her, and her dark robes were soaked. They were slow-going, and several times he feared that she would fall over. Her seemingly boneless physique made her sway back and forth with every step, but she kept moving at least. Having almost been boiled, Candle barely noticed their surroundings, and staggered frequently.

Having taken much longer than they had planned for, they passed by the grove of pines, where they had to rest for a few minutes, and continued their painfully slow passage towards the bottom of the gulch. They traversed the pass that the three soldiers had taken, and now found themselves face to face with the devastation they had wrought.

The valley was covered in a merciless outpour of rubble large and small and a steady waterfall at the far western end of the gulch flushed the stinking detritus of the troglodyte camp eastward. From their vantage point, they beheld the three soldiers, positioned in front of the elevated entrance to the cave, surrounded by dead bodies. No living beast-men were to be seen, but they had to wade through a scattering of chopped-up monstrous corpses to catch up with their allies.

“What happened?”, Otto demanded.

Gudyr retorted with a barrage of curses in his native tongue.

“Not now. Are you well?”, Haaken indicated the witch.

She managed a distraught gurgle.

“Alright. Change of plans. Otto, you and Gudyr stay out here with Candle. Ansel and I go in by ourselves. I think we know what we’re looking for and there can’t be that many left. You wait at that ledge, better vantage there. Stay hidden, don’t pick a fight if you don’t have to. We don’t come back out anytime soon, you leave. Understood?”

Otto snorted and crossed his arms, but nodded assent.

“Let’s be quick about it”, Haaken said and followed Ansel into the cavern.

They had placed Candle with her back resting against a tree trunk, and she slowly came to her senses. Otto and Gudyr were holding bows at the ready. She looked at her hands, where several blisters had formed on her already tormented skin. Her throat was parched. Otto noticed her sitting up, and handed her a flask to take a much-needed sip of stale, warm water. Now, it was bliss.

She leaned back, staring at the sky. Everything hurt. She almost dozed off, when a clatter announced the return of Haaken and Ansel. Both were covered in blood, and Ansel was clasping his left forearm.

“Not as bad as it looks”, Haaken commented. “That cut needs bandaging.”

Gudyr took to wrapping a strap of cloth tightly around Ansel’s wound, while Haaken dropped something in front of Candle. She sat up to look. In front of her lay a colorful piece of fabric, purple interwoven with blue and silver, intricate patterns on it, but covered in dust and grime, its edges frayed, and as she laboriously unfolded it, she found much of it missing. The piece that remained was maybe a meter on one and two on the other side, when the original would have been maybe twice that.

“Is that it?”, Haaken pointed at it.

“Uh…I think so?”

“Think fast. Is that it, or do we have to go back?”

Her head swam. “Give me a moment here.” She fully unrolled the woven item, and the carpet revealed another corner where the hooks that had been driven into it had torn out a chunk. “Looks bad”, she commented, and crawled onto it.

“But is it what we came here for?”

“Yes.”, she confirmed.

“Authentic Redeemer war gear then, yes?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Alright. Let’s get out of here before they come back. Are you good to walk? No one in need of urgent care?”

Ansel gritted his teeth in a grimace, inspecting the impromptu bandage Gudyr had applied. “I can walk.”, he moaned.

“Just…real quick…”, Candle mumbled. Her head still spun, her skin itched all over, she was drenched in sweat, but the novelty was too much for her to leave be. She sat on the carpet, her legs folded unnaturally tightly under her, and touched the silvery inlays.

“We don’t have time for that.”

“Just…”, she whispered, and spoke a few words in the first language. These, her master had made her repeat over and over and over before she had left for Throyce. He had been unwavering in drilling the spell into her, and she recited it with great care. The soldiers stood around her, uneasily looking around, uncertain of what was happening.

She felt something shift in her stomach. The tattered edges of the carpet twitched, and gently straightened, bent upward, an inch off the ground, before quickly falling flat again. She looked up at Haaken, her unnervingly bulbous eyes wide with excitement.

“It might still work.”, she explained. “But it’s secured. There is a lock, and I don’t have the key.”

A bestial primal roar echoed through the valley.

“Shame. Now get up. We have to run.”, Haaken growled and pulled her up.

IV : Escape

The Hatajagan sailor looked the Redeemer’s coins over with a dubious expression on his face. His jet-black skin and long black hair were coated in a fine dust. The pattern on the sails of his one-masted freighter matched that of his shirt. Gruffudd looked him in the eye.

“It is enough.”, he insisted.

“Yeah, I don’t know. It says on your face that you are a slave.” They spoke in the Azure tongue.

“Yes...”

“I don’t need any trouble. If you’re a run-away, I don’t want to get blamed next time I come around here for helping their slaves escape. I would never sell anything again. Higher risk makes it more expensive. I don’t like it.” The sailor waved his hand as if to repel a bad smell.

“Did you read the rest?”

“What?”

“Did you read the rest?”, Gruffudd repeated and leaned even closer toward the merchant. His skin was sun-tanned, but it was obvious that he was no native of the desert. His jaw was framed by a short red-brown beard, his scalp bald, and from his forehead to his chin ran green letters in the vertical writing of the Azure. He was lean but muscular, and dressed in the shabby remainders of most of a robe that was dyed in the expensive blue of the desert’s masters.

“I don’t read their language so well”, the merchant shrugged. “But I know that word.”

“It says I am free.”

“The Azure don’t free their slaves. You still have manacles around your ancles, by the way!”

“I am free.”

“Somehow that makes it even worse.”

“How much more do I have to give you to take me on your ship?”

After enacting the ancient tear-jerking ritual performance of the starving tradesman on the verge of bankruptcy, the Hatajagan finally produced an offensive factor by which to multiply Gruffudd’s initial offer.

“I have this.”, Gruffudd grumbled, and handed several more golden coins to the merchant. It wasn’t quite enough. The Hatajagan inspected them individually.

“You said you had no sailing experience. You’d be a burden on my ship. I would need to buy more expensive drinking water from the locals. Just to cover th-….MADNESS!”, the merchant exclaimed, glaring at something behind Gruffudd.

He turned to look. The narrow strip of houses beyond the docks could barely be called a town, and the crude fences beyond it barely fulfilled their purpose of stopping the dunes from swallowing the harbor village altogether. Almost tumbling from atop such a dune was a figure clad in a gray cloak, carrying by themselves several bags slung over their narrow frame. A bunch of locals rushed to aid the arrival. When someone came in alone from Sariat-al-Sawt, the desert of death, Azure custom dictated they be helped to a drink of water. This lone traveler had obviously not carried their cargo all the way by themselves, maybe lost an animal, and slid down the lower part of the dune in a show of exhaustion.

“…anyways…”, the merchant concluded, “this is not enough to take a risk with you.”, and handed the coins back to Gruffudd. “Maybe wait a few days for the next ship.”

The man with the green writing on his face took the coins back and stuffed them into the leather pouch on his belt. “You are greedy.”

“No. I am entirely reasonable. Good day.” He returned to his freighter, where crates of assorted goods were being loaded.

Gruffudd found himself abandoned at the pier. No other vessel here was going where he needed to, most of them were scrappy dinghies for short-distance fishing. His face betrayed no emotion, but his clenched fist spoke of the frustration. To be so close to finally leaving this desert hell, to shake off the grasp of the Azure, and failing at the whim of the foreigners who merely passed by. Unable to fulfill his purpose, he felt lost. He sat down, putting his head between his hands. After all that happened, his fortune was still at the whim of others.

A murmur of voices caught his attention, and he observed the gray-clad figure that had arrived from the murderous sea of sands. They had shed most of their cargo, only carrying a single pack on their back. Now that the polite thing had been done, Azure and foreign vendors assaulted the new arrival with sales offers for fish, fruit, and amphoras of miscellaneous ointments. The traveler shooed them away and in the swaying steps of a drunkard or a victim of heat stroke struggled towards the piers. When no sale was made, the sellers peeled off like dry skin.

The figure grasped for the veil across their face and pulled it down for a labored breath. Gruffudd glimpsed a foreign face with messy, strawy hair poking out from under the cloth wrappings. The face of an adult woman, not entirely different from what the women of his native land might look like. The exposed strip around her eyes had been burned red by the sun and whet by the sand, while her sweat-dripping jaw had retained a paleness atypical to this domain. Her eyes briefly flashed across his face, but didn’t linger.

Laboriously, she approached the only long-distance ship at port at this moment, the freighter with the blue-yellow-colored sails. Gruffudd observed her speak with the merchant. After a brief exchange, she handed him something. Gold? The Hatajagan bowed, produced a wide smile, and gestured her towards the ship. So it wasn’t so difficult. The woman fought her way up the wooden plank that connected ship and pier.

Gruffudd approached the captain once more.

“I want to go on the ship.”

The merchant rolled his eyes.

“Too late. I only had the one space. Just sold out. Better luck with the next ship. Now leave.”

“I give you all the money I have.”

“Don’t care. Go. Go away.”

A raspy voice called down to him. It used the old tongue. “Green-face. Do you speak this language?”

He looked up. The woman in the dusty gray robes was leaning on the bulwark, coughing. There were a thousand times a thousand ways to speak the old tongue. There was no one correct way, yet her pronunciation was off by enough to tell him that this was not her native language. She spoke it with force, keeping the language at a distance, like the few invaders he’d heard that had attempted to command it.

“Yes.”

“Any more than yes and no?”

“I speak this language better than you ever will.”

She smirked.

“Can you fight? With your hands?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to go to-“

The Hatajagan merchant interrupted. “Excuse me, what is this?”

“Just a moment, master sailor”, the blonde woman replied in Azure, then continued in the old tongue.

“-you return? To uh, Gyrrloe?”

He hated hearing her say it. “The lost lands. Yes.”

“…if I pay for you to come on the ship, will you fight when I tell you to?”

“If they won’t throw me overboard because of it.”

“Oh, no. No no, not the men on this ship. Just some Blue, maybe. Maybe no fighting at all.”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “Master Sailor!”, in Azure words. “How much for the man with the green face to come aboard?”. She pointed a shaky finger at Gruffudd. The merchant leered and named a bonus on top of Gruffudd’s entire funds that went even beyond the price he had claimed moments before. Gruffudd gritted his teeth.

The woman hesitated. “I see. How about instead I give you two more of the coins I have already given you” – a quick flash of gold across her fingers – “and I don’t point out to the Azure here that I can hear from below deck the kind of expensive songbird that they really hate having smuggled out of their lands, and you let the man get on the ship?”

Gruffudd had not heard the merchant silent for so long.

“…I accept.”

“What was the bird’s name again? Really, one can easily hear it from where I stand. It’s very distinct. They might even catch it over there, with those pointy ears of theirs.”

“So be QUIET about it!”, the captain barked back. “You! Money!”, and after Gruffudd handed it over, “Get on. We are leaving now. Stay out of my way. You are lucky, slave.”

He took a deep breath to calm his anger at the insult, then silently ascended the plank towards the ship, as the captain shouted orders at his crew to hurry with loading their purchases. They were to set sail right away.

“Why do you help?”, he asked in the old tongue the woman that now sat on the deck, her legs sprawled, her back resting against the bulwark. She looked on the verge of falling over.

“My generosity knows no bounds. Also, they might try to kill me.”

“The Azure, or the sailors?”

“Both.”

“Mh.”

“So if they try to do me harm…do you have a weapon?”

“No.”

She pulled a long knife from somewhere inside her robes and held it out to him, handle first.

“I have another.”

He took it and secured it on his belt, making it plain to see.

“If they try anything, cut them, yes?”

“Yes.”

She nodded.

“I am going to have a little rest now.”, she said.

He leaned his tall, angular frame down and passed her a bulb of liquid. “To drink.”

She hesitated, but slowly took the bulb, took a much-needed gulp and handed it back. It was bitter.

“Thanks, Greenface.”

The hectic loading of the ship finished, the freighter unmoored and slowly drifted away from the lone harbor, away from the vastness of the desert of death, toward the vastness of the White Ocean. The current that brushed against the shore here soon picked them up, to carry them along the infamous trading route, leaving the coastal town behind them. The straw-haired woman tried to recite the tune back to herself, but at the moment, just sitting and breathing in the shade of the blue-yellow sails fully occupied her. The sailors passed her by with indifference, as they would with another piece of cargo.

She heard footsteps approaching, and painfully cracked open one eye. Looming large before her stood the man with the green face.

“Yes?”, she croaked.

“These ones are not looking for me.”, he said, and nodded towards starboard.

She struggled to her feet and leaned on the bulwark, squinting at the shore. The figures at the pier were too small to make out in detail from here, but astride their mounts, the dark blue of their robes and the glistening steel of their curved blades that they raised above their heads left no doubt in the woman’s mind for whom they had come. Her lead was smaller than she had hoped. If her trotta hadn’t been eaten, she might have made it without them seeing the ship leaving. She sat back down, quietly cursing. The uniquely patterned, fully unfurled sail of the vessel might still be visible to them.

“They cannot reach us now.”, the Ryddau observed.

“Not them, no. But they might send another ship. One that is faster than this. It’ll take them some days to catch up. But when they do, they might stop this ship. Search it. Sink it, if they want to.”

“Because of you?”

“…well.”

“Mh.”

She was waiting for the inevitable question of Why, but it wasn’t coming. She was alright with that.

“I will tell you if I see a ship following us.”

“Yes. Good. Thank you.”

“Mh.”, he turned to leave.

“What do I call you?”, she spoke to his back. He stopped.

“Gruffudd.” It had been some time since somebody had asked for a name. Slaves are not named.

“And I will also tell you when I see a ship chasing this one, Gruffudd. You said those weren’t after you. You still have manacles around your ankles. And I can read what it says on your face. They did not write that on your skin voluntarily.”

“No. They did not.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“My name is Octavia.”, she offered.

He snorted derisively, as if she had spoken a curse. “KANON?”

“Me? No.”, she smirked. “Only the name.”

Gruffudd stepped out onto the deck and into the chill of night. The smell of the sea felt alien, as did the swaying of the ground, yet it was a relief from the stench of sweat and the confines below deck. They had been travelling for several days, and Octavia had helped him break the rusty manacles from his ankles.

His eyes scanned the dark horizon in vain. Once, they’d caught a glimpse of white sails on the horizon behind, following the same ocean current, but none had yet tried to close in on them. One of the few night watch sailors passed by him, paying him no heed. To them, he was a slave, beneath notice.

He followed the sound he’d picked up towards the main mast. From atop the crow’s nest, he heard a voice singing a song. It was foreign and awkward, and he was not much appreciative of it. Up above, he caught a pale forearm dangling from the wooden outlook, and knew it wasn’t one of the ebony-skinned sailors from far Matajaga.

“What did you say to the fish men?”

The song stopped. Octavia’s head emerged, looking down. She always looked tired, he’d found, and her strawy blond hair was poorly cut short. “Huh?”

“WHAT…wait…”, he stopped yelling and climbed the ropes wrapped around the mast with ease, settling on a spar. “What did you say to the fish men? The ones who stopped us earlier today?”

“Oh! They’re not fish men. We call them the Living, no idea what their own word is. I told them that there’s a boat full of armed Azure following us, and that they’ll refuse to pay the toll. You know, for passing over their homes. The captain paid. I said those Azure were out to sink ships. I reckon the Living hate that it when heavy stuff drops on their houses. Not worth the plunder to them.”

“You can speak to them as well?”