Firemoon (7 page)

“No-one lay back down,” he continued. “The howl had cut too deep. Some rose from their beds and started to light fires or barricade doors and windows. Therefore people in the inn heard it clearly when a man came springing from the east, exhausted and crazed with fear. He beat on the door and wailed in despair.”

A stick in the fireplace cracked loudly.

“People were hesitant to let him in. Some suggested that he was some sort of fiend, come to lure people out into the night. Others feared attracting whatever had caused such terror. Still, the innkeeper found his heart as the man leaned onto the door and begged to be let in. He pulled the bar away from the door but just then the howl sounded a second time and froze the blood of the bravest. The guest beat on the door one more time.”

The old man banged his staff on the floor.

“But then fled when footsteps approached. The innkeeper opened the door and so people saw a gigantic hound run along the road after the poor man. It had a short, black coat with longer legs than a man and a terrible maw filled with dagger-like knives and a dark fire emanated from its eyes. The innkeeper and his guests shut the door again and barricaded it with everything they could lift, but the hound stayed on its prey and caught him off the road. The man’s screams haunt all those who heard them to this very day.”

The room was silent for some time. It seemed to Katja all the Shades had heard the story before but it still had an effect on each one.

“Was the man from Bag River County?” Serdra then asked. She watched the old man.

“There was no way of identifying the body,” he replied.

Serdra nodded.

“So you want us to look into the matter?” Katja asked.

Njall cleared his throat again.

“We wanted to ask Maron for men Bag River people would not recognize. Who could not be traced back to Blossoms and who would vanish from the land once they had the information we need.”

“Migrants,” Katja said. Such agents were often called by that name.

“Yes,” Njall said. “But perhaps you two can take on that task.”

Serdra was silent. Katja knew she was considering the situation carefully but Njall grew rather awkward. Perhaps he worried he’d been too bold.

“You are right to be cautious,” Serdra said to the dark man. “Poking around a Brotherhood territory is dangerous. Normally I would only do it myself if there was great need. But if there is a Brotherhood stronghold to the east of here it may well have something to do with this hidden, looming threat. So it may be worth investigating.”

“But what if the war begins while we are mucking about in that county?” Katja asked.

“That is a possibility,” Serdra said. “But in that event it’s possible we would do the most good to the east, as in Baldur’s Coast.”

She was silent again.

“Are you expecting any news?” she then asked the Shades.

All looked at Ebba.

“Quite possibly,” she said. “I am in contact with a farris from the north-eastern fort. His son is apparently on his way south from the border fort, and he should be able to bring some news of the situation there.”

“When do you expect to know something?” Serdra asked.

“In two days.”

Serdra nodded.

“Then we will hold off a decision for two days.”

She stood up and looked at everyone, including Katja.

“Let us all be on guard until then. Sleep light. Do not drink enough to be dulled. Keep weapons at the ready and have guards posted at night. For I sense battle beyond the horizon. Something awaits us. Or comes for us.”

--------------------

Vajan returned to his room and immediately stripped off his sweat-drenched shirt. A tub of warm water awaited him as he had instructed, and he dipped his hands in and began to wash off his efforts.

He had been training Kolgrimur’s fighters lately and the day had been spent on one last drill before embarking. It was a wearying and frustrating task. Sure, they were
competent
. There were plenty of
competent
people in the world. His friends had been
competent
.

Roras, Karl, Hong and Torbergur.

They had been good comrades and hard-working underlings, and competent. Roras had even possessed a rare gift that had usually been quite useful.
Competence
had not sufficed. He alone remained. And that had been a close call.

Kolgrimur’s men were
competent
, but no more than that. They were accustomed to their leader’s policy of patience and had not fought in foreign wars or spent their youths preparing to fight for what they wanted. Since he had to rely on them for a dangerous task it irritated and worried him how easily he usually out-sparred them.

Aside from the fact that most of them disapproved of him as much as others, though they were a bit more subtle about it. And he had to damn well contain himself and refrain from breaking their teeth with a wooden sword. He was all out of friends within the Brotherhood of the Pit.

The familiar footsteps approached and there was a knock on the door.

“Come in, Kolgrimur,” Vajan said and continued washing. He did not look up as the door was opened.

“News just came,” Kolgrimur said. “All is proceeding as planned. You will head out tonight to do the job.”

“Good,” Vajan said with full sincerity. He thirsted for real fighting. “And do you really intend to join the Savaren brat if his plans come to fruition?”

“If he seizes power then he seizes power,” Kolgrimur said calmly. “But if not he will burn a second time and I will get what I want without losing anything important.”

Vajan snorted and stared at the silver lamp hanging on the wall.“I never liked him.”

“He no doubt dislikes you as well these days,” Kolgrimur said. “But now prepare.”

“Will do.”

Kolgrimur left and closed the door behind him. Vajan looked at the weapons and armour he had arranged neatly on a bench.

“Will do.”

--------------------

Markus Bern was cheerier than he had been in a long time. He looked over the tent camp that had been put up around Lorin City. It was almost time. The war was beginning. Soon all would be ready and this mighty war machine would march south under King Valdimar’s banner.

Markus would get to participate in enlarging the realm, enlarging the nation that had raised him and bring new wealth north to his family and neighbours. If Pine City surrendered he would get a plot of land. If they had to take it by force he would get to loot for one day after Valdimar’s flag was raised.

So either he would get a portion of the Golden Plain’s bountiful soil and settle down in the sun, or return home with gold and silver and war stories.

Not bad for a young baker’s son.

He giggled a bit foolishly. His turn to stand guard was coming up but he could still feel the wine in his blood. A campaign required more than soldiers, and the camp housed a great number of followers who offered almost any service imaginable. Brewers and prostitutes were no exception and the second half of the day had been good to him. But now dusk was settling in and the peace was over.

“The peace is over,” he muttered to himself and laughed at his own choice of words. That was true enough.

He was drunk enough to pass between two tents standing tight together rather than just go around one of them, but sober enough to slide nimbly under and over and between the ropes.

The yellow tent, often called the woven palace for its size and ostentatiousness, belonged to Duke Lorin who led the army. It stood in the centre of the camp like the dot of an archery target and Markus now stood about thirty meters away from it.

The tent had undergone a slow, strange change in men’s minds over the last few days. What had begun as an occasional rumour and nonsense had become a certain dread.

The story that passed between campfires in the evenings said that strangers, wearing no uniforms and with no entourage, had entered the camp some days ago and been last seen vanishing into the duke’s tent.

Since then the man had barely been seen. The orders needed to make everything ready for the campaign were still delivered to captains but supposedly indirectly, from his scribe. He was apparently still in the camp, as his private bodyguards still guarded the tent in their yellow tabards, but their numbers had gone down to two. Two human statues who barely spoke except to tell people the duke was busy.

Markus couldn’t help but look.

One of the yellow bodyguards stood at the ready with his spear and shield, unrecognisable and faceless in his helmet. He couldn’t tell whether the man was staring back.

One could, however, see a tiny bit of light inside the tent. It couldn’t issue from more than a single candle.

People had stopped jokingly arguing about who those guests had been. Now there were quiet whispers about strange noises. And unexplained unease and nightmares among those sleeping in the tents closest to the woven palace.

Most captains had tried to suppress such talk whenever they heard of it and told their subordinates to not let nervous tension make fools of them. But if anything, the stories just intensified with each passing evening, especially when word spread that the captains were themselves ill at ease.

Markus shook all this off and strode over the muddy street, determined to hurry to his task. He felt something as he came to the row of tents in front of him. He didn’t know what it was, but something made him look to the side.

Four men were walking towards him, or rather the yellow tent. In the front were two men of about fifty years in dirty, everyday travelling clothes. Behind them walked a tall, bald man with piercing eyes and a sword in his belt. By his side was a man completely hidden by a white and golden robe.

The bald man looked back and forth in the manner of a bodyguard and his gaze settled on Markus. The darkness beneath the white hood also turned his way.

Markus instinctively shrank back as if someone had jabbed a burning torch at him. He hurriedly strode between the tents and stumbled over the ropes. He made a clumsy way across before smacking into the ground beyond the tents.

He turned on his back and saw the four men walk past without paying him any further heed. The sudden terror that had flared up within began to fade.

What in the world had happened?

The young baker’s son stood up and brushed the dirt off as he walked off again, his legs weak and trembling under his weight. He stroked his face and sighed.

It didn’t matter what had happened, he immediately told himself. The duke’s matters were none of his business.

He would not participate in the rumours tonight. He would agree with the captains telling them to quit gossiping about those with power. It wasn’t good for the nerves.

Soon they would head south and the war would command their full attention.

5.

Katja opened her eyes. She reached for the sword and sat up.

Something was wrong.

They had kept a small light burning in the room they had been assigned and she saw Serdra get up with her own sword.

Katja threw the blanket off and swung her legs out of the bed. She stood up quickly but quietly with the sword in both hands and listened for a moment.

Given the state of the candle the hour was shortly after midnight.

“What is it?” she then whispered after hearing nothing.

“I am not certain,” Serdra replied. “But it’s something.”

The older woman strode to the door, pulled the latch aside and stepped out. Katja glanced at her shoes. They had both slept in their clothes but taken their shoes off. They would have to wait. Katja snatched her jacket off a stool and followed her mentor out into the hall.

Some danger loomed. She did not feel the burning power and un-nature that characterized demons and major sorcery, but something was very wrong.

“Rise!” she said loudly enough to wake people up but not enough for it to be heard well outside.

Patrekur and two other men had been given the task of standing watch at night after Serdra’s warning two days earlier. It was Patrekur who came running to them with an axe in his hands.

“What is going on?” he asked, rather too loudly in Katja’s opinion.

“Something,” Katja said and knocked on a bedroom door in passing. She hurriedly slid into the jacket’s sleeves.

Someone groaned behind the door and one could hear the voices of the household from various directions.

“Wake everyone and tell them to be prepared for anything,” Serdra said, and she and Katja walked to the front door.They locked gazes a moment to establish that they were both ready. Then Katja slid the bar away and Serdra opened.

They were greeted by the thickest fog Katja had ever seen. She walked out with fast, soft steps. Serdra followed close behind and they took up position side by side, so they could defend one another with the wall to their backs.

The fog swallowed everything. Trees and buildings a few steps away were little more than vague phantoms, and only familiarity enabled Katja to figure out her surroundings. The air was utterly still and the fog just hung over everything like a blanket, without budging.

Nothing happened.

Always these damned hiding games!
Katja thought and clenched her teeth. She could take the terror that came with combat. She
yearned
for that terror. But this uncertainty, this sneakiness that came with it all, that mercilessly stretched out the nerves without providing release, was a different matter.

She heard something. The fog smothered the sound and all its features but something made her look north.

Finally she saw something in the blackness. It was a yellow light, as if someone had taken a lamp up on a roof. The light grew in a few moments and a short cry carried to them from that direction. A roof was on fire.

Serdra began to walk towards the flame, but Katja looked over her shoulder after hearing something.

Njall stood in the doorway with an axe in his right hand and a candle in his left. He opened his mouth to say something, but caught himself and settled for looking at her with a fearful questioning look.

Serdra signalled for him to go back inside and used the stealth language to tell him to prepare a defence.

They walked north together. The visibility did not allow them to move faster. Katja wanted to run, people were probably dying a stone’s throw away, but they could run straight into an overwhelming force or pass an enemy without seeing him. They had to move carefully.

The Brotherhood
, Katja thought as they passed through a small vegetable garden.
It has to be. Or what? No Shades live there.

They heard footsteps ahead and another cry. It issued from a man’s throat and lasted a few moments before suddenly ceasing.

Just then they heard hoofbeats from the south-east. They turned and glimpsed another fire in another part of the village. More screams penetrated through the darkness and the fog.

This wasn’t an assassination. Blossoms itself was being attacked from all directions.

Serdra pointed south with a quick gesture and then immediately headed north herself.

Katja obeyed and took to her feet. She allowed herself to run now that she had passed through blindly. And she wanted to convert the tension into action.

She arrived back at the door and banged her fist on it once.

“It’s an attack!” she said sharply. “An attack on the village!”

She did not wait for an answer. The hoofbeats approached the south of the house and she ran around the west corner with sword at the ready.

The riders had vanished into the fog as she made it to the central street, but she saw yet another flame over the roofs to the south. Several more houses seemed to be on fire by the river. Perhaps the attackers had come over the south bridge.

Again she heard a cry and noise and tried to follow the sounds. She ignored the discomfort of r
unning in her socks and passed between the houses opposite Njall’s.

What is going on? How many are dead?
she thought.

The hoofbeats could still be heard somewhere close by, but she couldn’t determine where they were headed or what they intended.

The little village began to wake up to its own destruction. Katja heard frightened voices from inside of houses, heard doors and shutters slam, and a few people were already outside and shouting for their neighbours to wake up.

She heard frightened cries muffled by walls and heavy blows of metal on wood, so rapid that a single man couldn’t be responsible. Some place was being broken into.

Katja headed to the light cast by the expanding house fire and almost ran into someone. It was a man in a tunic and he thrust at her with something.

Serdra’s endless training had drilled the proper reaction into her bones, and she parried with her sword and struck him in the head. The blade hit his temple like a kitchen hatchet hitting an apple and he fell without a sound.

The slaying lit her blood up in honest and Katja ran towards the blows and the shouts.

Two men in tunics were breaking down a front door with large axes. The third one had a leather bag and was splashing from it onto another nearby house. Katja felt a strong smell of oil and immediately understood why the fires she saw burned so greedily.

The axemen worked together efficiently and the door was in its last gasps as the people behind it screamed and spoke over one another so nothing could be understood.

The oil man was closer to her and she would need to turn her back on him to attack the other two. So she began with him and sprinted over the few meters separating them with the sword raised for a blow.

He heard her at the last moment and looked around. He had time to take a step back and reach for a weapon in his belt, but no more than that. She split his skull and turned to the other two.

They whirled around and saw her illuminated by the flames.

“Here!” one shouted and they hefted their axes. They were heavy logging axes, not meant for combat, but would still cause grievous wounds if they connected.

Katja ran towards them out of fear of reinforcements arriving, in spite of the growing noise about them. One of them approached her and thrust at her with the long axe, as the other one approached her from the left with the weapon raised high.

They were competent.

The one opposite her tried to drive her towards the other man but she batted his axe aside and went to the right. She slashed and connected with his left arm but then had to evade the other one before she could deliver the killing blow.

The injured one lost the grip with his left hand but raised the axe with his right and threw it, as Katja tried to land a hit on his comrade.

The one-handed throw wasn’t particularly strong but she did have to evade it and the enemy facing her took advantage of it and made a hard advance. He swung and swung. The heavy weapon was a disadvantage and he tried to make up for it with fury and relentlessness. The other one drew some kind of large knife from his belt and approached fast.

Katja struck her opponent in the hand and he screamed and stumbled. She slashed him right in the neck and walked past him as he collapsed, and faced the other one.

The man with the knife didn’t like the look of things and fell back to the house they had been breaking into. Katja followed him, sword in hand and fire in her veins.

A broad-shouldered middle-aged man in a night robe appeared by the remains of the door with a hoe in his hands. The knife man didn’t look back and got the iron hoe in his back along with a scream of anger. He fell forward and the broad-shouldered man drove the tool down into the head of the man who had meant to break into his home.

He looked at Katja and the fires illuminated a face contorted by emotion. Katja was fairly certain he was not a warrior.

“Not bad!” she said, rather wound-up herself, and looked around. What was she to do?! She could glimpse silhouettes left and right, heard battle and horses, and still more fires were being lit.

“What is going on?!” asked a woman in the doorway and Katja saw more people behind her.

“Flee!” she replied. “Cross the river! The village will burn!”

She abandoned this conversation and headed south-east. She looked around a corner and saw more armed men in tunics come from the south. She saw two spears and more of these strange, curved knives. They were hunting. Three carried torches and they marched in formation, looking in every direction.

There were six of them, too many for her to dare attack, so she slid back into cover and pressed up against the wall.

Smaller groups sow chaos and people flee straight into the larger ones
, thought some part of Katja that kept calm in the storm raging in her mind.

She jogged to the west. Crossing the south bridge would be extremely risky. That left the west one.

How many have died?

She ran between houses and saw a few people in desperate flight to the north. Katja hesitated a moment by the corner and then saw three men in pursuit. They passed her without seeing her and she ran after them.

The two in the back had to slow down as the one in the lead followed the people through a narrow alley. She caught up with them there and slashed one in the back. The next one turned with an axe, but did not manage to use it before Katja severed his arm. He fell with strange sounds on his lips and the one in the alley turned.

He raised the spear above his head in the tight quarters. She attempted to advance on him but he thrust at her with great quickness and she fell back. The man had a longer weapon and a shield to boot. Approaching him like this was too dangerous.

She exited the alley and went to the back side of the houses. Katja heard him follow, but he lost sight of her for a moment and she used it to snatch up the axe one of his comrades had dropped. He came around the corner with the spear leading the way and probably assumed she lay in ambush, but the axe-throw still surprised him. The man lifted the shield in front of his head and so saved himself, but Katja moved closer, got a grip on the top of the spear shaft with her left hand and cut it in two.

He tried to strike at her with the broken shaft but Katja accepted the blow and advanced fiercely. She drove him before her and hit the shield again and again, while the man retreated along the alley and onto the street. There he finally lost his balance and fell backwards.

“Help!” he shouted but the word drowned in all the other shouts heard from every direction. Blossoms was dying.

Katja raised the sword for a fatal thrust and, as expected, the man put the shield over his upper torso. She changed direction slightly and drove the tip down into his thigh. He screamed and flailed and she used the opportunity to stab him in the belly.

She ripped the shield from clenched, dying fingers and held it in front of herself as she backed away from the man and looked around.

The flames were widespread now. She saw most of them as faint phantom lights through the fog. She braced for further combat at hearing someone approach, but it was a woman with a child in her arms who appeared, sped past and then vanished again.

How did this happen so fast?
And what am I to do?!

Katja turned in a circle in search of priority problems. In spite of all her training she felt a terrible powerlessness that grew with every moment she wasted as the village burned.

What’s best? What is most important?

The fleeing villagers couldn’t go north or south and the hoofbeats could still be heard in the east. That only left the western bridge. But what if they factored that? Then no-one would get anywhere.

The idea startled her and she ran to the west.

A few unarmed individuals appeared out of the fog by the bridge, confused, terrified and standing still. Children and women cried and Katja recognized Ebba. The woman held her right arm, which hung limp by her side and one the smaller Shade children clung to her leg.