“These are not mortal flames,” I grunted to Bellabel, “There is a sorcerer… on the other side.”
“Take the foul creature alive if possible, dead if necessary!” I heard a guard shout behind us. I peered back and saw that he was a green cloaked captain, with a horsehair crest on his gold helm, and a sword blade that crackled like a bolt of lightning. A rank of crossbowmen knelt, while another rank of crossbows stood behind them. Guards in heavy green plate were coalescing around them. “Loose!” the captain yelled. I whipped Bellabel behind me, between me and the flame wall. I heard the thunk of crossbow fire, then felt bolts biting into me. “Gllrrk!” I grunted as two took me at the shoulder and breast, another in the leg.
“Rothan!” Bellabel’s hands clasped me. “Rothan come, we’re going into the flames.”
“That’s death—”
“Trust me, now!”
She pulled at me, and I gave in. Perhaps perishing in the flames was better than letting these bastards take us. I grit my teeth and prepared for pain, yet I felt none. We plunged into the flames, blazing light all around us, yet I was not scorched. Bellabel walked in front of me, just inches away, and she held her hand out, parting the flames as if she were pushing through heavy curtains. I peered behind me and saw that the flames closed in behind us in our wake. Where we stepped, the ground was drained of flame, only to be swallowed again as we passed. The heat felt as if we were inside a furnace, yet we were alive.
I walked on in silent awe. It must have been forty feet or so before up ahead I saw Bellabel’s outstretched hand part the flames into clear air, to the other side of the gate. We emerged from the burning gate, to the sorcerer’s gape.
“By Akaraxis, are you a witch or a demon?” He asked with a scowl. “Either way, by Akaraxis, you must die!” He made a gesture, intoning some arcane words, and flames began spiraling out from his finger.
“No, by Akaraxis, I live!” Bellabel spread her hands in front of her, flame began glowing between them, almost forming a shield of a kind. As the sorcerer’s flames met her shield of fire, a great burning ball formed where they met. I could see how much she was exerting herself. I leered at the robed sorcerer, my fangs flashing with reflecting fire. I charged. A guard stepped in my path, slashed with his sword. Even wounded, I was still faster than anything my size should be, and I dodged his blow. I spun and my blade flashed. It cut through him at the waist, nearly splitting him in two. I kept dashing, the sorcerer’s eyes widening to terror as I came up on his side. He made to turn his fire on me, but he was far too slow.
My arm uncoiled like a kicking horse, my sword blade plunged through the lightest orange silk, through sinew, bone and organs as the sorcerer was cleaved open from ribs to shoulder. There were still three guards who had protected the sorcerer, two with spears, one with sword. I picked up the body of the sorcerer with one hand, and tossed it at them. They recoiled. I looked into their eyes.
“Run,” I growled. Sorcerer entrails at their feet, a city in chaos, a flaming wall behind me, and a hulking blood-drenched monster staring murder at them, the men were not such fools. They ran. They ran like they had been promised a cask of gold and a queen bride to the man who won the foot race.
I pulled the crossbow bolts from my body. It was a searing pain, and I actually felt the tips of the bones pass over different tissues of my flesh. I shuddered, by back a sailing hook as I tried to recompose myself. I felt a searing chill upon my wounds as they began knitting themselves together.
“How can you still stand?” Bellabel asked me.
My breath was ragged. “I have many questions for you as well.” I looked down at her, then to the flaming wall.
“I have been touched by a god, as you.”
“The heat from your body. Your power over flames. They come from your devotion to Akaraxis.”
“That is what I believe. But in truth I do not know.”
I nodded. “Come, we must press on, or we will not live for me to ask you more of it.”
We hurried into the city outside the walls. People hid, those that spotted me wailed in terror and ran. “Come, let us stay close to the shadows,” I said.
“If you take your normal form again, it would not terrify them so.”
“That might be unwise now. It seems when I withdraw my beast, I can fall into a great exhaustion.”
“Like back when you slew… those two gladiators, and saved me.”
“Yes, like that.” I pulled her close to me, and stayed in the alleys. We roamed through the outer city, spotting a furtive face now and then as they fled. It felt strange, to be among these simple dwellings and shops that I had only seen in passing. Brick walls with peeling plaster, sagging thatched roofs, crammed wooden houses, flimsy windows; this was the rundown part of the city, and ten times larger than the complex we had escaped from.
“What will we do now?” Bellabel asked in a whisper.
“A ship is our only chance. Even then… they might send ships after us. I wager I’ve slain half the guards in this cursed place, but there are always more. If they haven’t destroyed the ship my father sent to fetch me, that will be best. I will be more familiar to navigate it.”
“Are you a sailor?”
“Not truly, but being a northman still makes me better than many.”
We scurried on, until the docks were in sight. A kind of relief came over me, and as I breathed out I felt a rage leaving me. The fur on my body receded. My fangs fled and so did my strength. I dropped to one knee. “Bellabel.”
“It’s alright. We’ve made it. You don’t need the beast now. Take some moments to breath and rest.”
“No, they could be upon us again at any moment. And finding a ship, embarking into the sea will take some time. I might need to take a ship by threat of force… or murder. We must act quickly. Do you have any more wine?” I asked it half in delirium, before realizing it was impossible for her to have a bottle of wine simply lying about.
“I bet there will be some on a ship.”
I nodded, and took a few deep breaths. “Come.”
I staggered up and almost fell again but she gave me her shoulder to hold me up. We approached the docks. This is was just one of six docks that ringed the great trading port of Kenessos. I walked forward having to lean on the woman half my size.
"Don't worry, Rothan, we're almost there.”
The brine of the see wafted into my nostrils, the sensation almost burning. The sea and sky were a dark gray tinged with cobalt. Bright sails soared into the sky as dozens of ships waited in the water. A couple of ship hands spotted us. They scurried away without a word. A few ships seemed to be drifting closer to the docks, and I prayed that they were only trading ships and were unaware of what was happening here in the city.
I scoured the docks, looking for the smallest, fastest ship I could spot. Bellabel tugged at me. “Rothan,” she whispered, and I did not like the tone of fright in her voice. I turned. “Look.”
I saw that back in the outskirts of town, silhouettes were gathering. Torches began flickering, emerging out from alleys. These were not guards, they wore tattered clothes, butcher’s aprons, were armed with sticks, stones, smith hammers, meat cleavers.
“A mob,” I muttered. They began gathering by the dozens.
“There! There’s the demon, and his witch!” a crazed hag of a woman screeched. “They brought the wrath of the gods on us!” The mob shouted its approval.
“Come, there has been enough killing this night. And while these are weaklings, they are legion. I do not think I have even the strength to summon my beast again.” We ran onto one of the docks, its wet wooden beams ricketing under our feet. We ran and ran, the ocean shimmering between the gaps in the dock’s beams. Suddenly a ship drifted to the end of the dock were were running on. It came near a complete halt and a boarding bridge dropped from its side. Armed men in cloaks, carrying torches and swords began to unboard, and run onto the wet wooden platform.
“No, this can’t be.” I tur
ned back and saw that the mob was swarming toward us, pitchforks and torches rising up from their silhouettes in the night. And in front of us, warriors intent on our deaths. And I, I had barely the strength to stand.
“Akaraxis, help us,” Bellabel said with closed eyes, despair wrestling on her face.
I only looked at her, knowing that the gods had helped us, each once, but that they, as from the beginning of the world legends told, had fickle hearts toward mortals. I stepped in front of my Sarathean concubine, and drew my blade toward the approaching warriors. Let it be said that I died with a weapon in my hand, felled by a near dozen foes and not a mob.
“Rothan!” one of the approaching warriors called.
“One Eye?” Now as he neared, I realized it was his long hair, the gleaming metal in one of his eyes, the bow he was so proficient with. Other northmen were with him.
“By the gods, I knew it! I knew you lived!” he said as he looked me up and down. “We must flee.” He turned to Riggis. “Get them both on the ship,” he said. “You two, with me. We’ll cover their backs.”
Riggis, now wearing a helm with a long curved horn, led me and Bellabel up the boarding bridge and onto the ship. It was a Skaldean galley with twenty four oars and three sails. I stepped onto the wet surface, felt my dizziness worsen as my heightened senses felt the rocking of the ship. “Come,” Riggis said to me as he motioned for me to move.
I slumped on a bench, barely able to even sit upright. Bellabel sat next to me. “We’re almost safe. Just hold on.”
Riggis walked off with the eagerness of a sailor under siege. Moments later, One Eye and his two men boarded. “Pull the bridge up!” he commanded. “All men to oars!” Men scurried about, their mail slithering against leather and furs. Massive veiny forearms gripped every oar on the ship, and backs began bulging as men’s rowing increased its rhythm. “Ready sails! Ready sails!”
One Eye came to me. “Your wounds…”
“Fenris,” I answered.
“You must tell me all the tale, once we are out of these Imperial waters.”
“Will they send ships after us?”
“Yes. Once the chaos of their burning city is quelled.”
“...You? You set it on fire?”
“We needed a distraction. But now, we must ensure our flight.” He spotted a ship hand and yelled to him, “Bring me the runed flask!” The sailor scurried down to the cabin and back, handing One Eye a flask with runes engraved upon it. “If we live,” One Eye said to me as he held the flask in his hand, “you will have to thank the Jarl’s court wizard along with Fenris.”
“I will have to thank many.” I glanced at Bellabel. “But what is in that flask that could help us now?”
“Another god, you might say. A much smaller one.” He uncorked the flask, and spoke, “Unwe of the Yearning Waves, in the name of the wizard Dorgramu the Binding Hand, I release you from his bond in exchange for your service.” The flask began to pour forth a kind of vapor, like the mist that pools on Longbeard Bay. This vapor rose in clouds, then took form. A woman emerged with a shining fishtail for legs, scales glittering like the sea at noon. She had a great tusk rising from her forehead, and a large fin, or a wing perhaps, that sprouted from her back. Her hair was long thick threads of kelp and covered her naked breasts. Her entire form was somewhat translucent as if the vapor she emerged from could not entirely hold itself as flesh. The sea elemental gazed at us for a moment, then down at One Eye.
“What would you have of me, mortal?”
“Grace us with your fog that we might conceal ourselves from our enemies, grace us with your winds that we might outrun any who pursue us.”
“I shall do this until the sun rises, and no more.”
“That’s a fair bargain.”
“Then it is done.”
She rose into the air, her form expanding, swelling as clouds gather before rain. Out from her mouth, billows of fog began pouring forth, engulfing the ship.
“By the gods,” I said as I saw how all around us the night seemed to turned to day with a billowing mist. Just as she began merging into that mist. I saw this bottled god wave her arms like a girl waving goodbye, and the sails of our ship rounded under the force of a gale. The ship churned water, foaming it as it tore through the sea.
I began thinking that perhaps I should reconsider my lack of faith in gods, or at least the truth of their power.
“These last days...” I muttered as I felt a sleep begin to fall over me like a blanket made of lead, “shall be quite the tavern tale… if I live to….” I could not finish my words as I sank into Bellabel’s arms and into a sleep so deep it felt like oblivion.
6
Light pounded through my eyelids. “Rothan,” a soft voice called. “Rothan.” I woke to see a face far too delicately formed for the cramped, damp cabin of a small running vessel. “Finally, you’re up,” Bellabel said. Light of the late afternoon slanted through the open cabin door, straight into my eyes. I blinked hard and turned away. “I was worried. I’ve had food ready for you, but you went on sleeping, right through two days and most of another.”
“I turned into a monster and killed some thirty men. I earned two days’ sleep.”
“You did.” She smiled. “You earned more than that.” She pattered my neck with small kisses as I lay there, then caressed my shoulders. Her touch relieved all manner of aches that thrummed in my body.
“As did you.” I pulled her close to me, my lips kissing her on the temple. “By all the gods, Bellabel… what are we?” I shook my head. “Are you a sorceress? Why did you not tell me this?”
“I am no sorceress, but I simply… can control fire. More like, I can command fire as a man can command a farm beast, a horse, a dog. I can summon it or cast it away at will. It is a secret I’ve told no one. Not a single soul besides my adopted mother. Already, I have always been controlled, possessed by others like a thing. Giving one more reason, I always feared what would have been done to me. Since I was a child, I never feared fire as others did, but instead was drawn to it. Candles and cooking fires never hurt me. Hot oil did wound me some, but only after a long time of plunging my hand into its broil. But flame itself, it never hurt at all. I found I could control it, could shape it, even summon it. Because it was fire and not some other force, I believed this was Akaraxis favoring me, so I began worshipping him. The foster mother who raised me…”
“Geyah.” I remembered her telling me.
“Yes, Geyah, she told me never to tell anyone, no matter what. Even when Imperials came for me, I did not resist them. They said Geyah had no legal right to me, as no one in town had witness that I was her daughter, and so I was property of the Empire, to do with as they pleased.”
“But you could have burned them all like roasted pig.”
“Even if I had dared to resist, I could barely summon a candle flame then. Even now, I do not practice as some wizards take magic as their craft, it is only something I do alone, as a child might play with a doll. I only play with fire when I am sad, when sometimes... I long to burn the whole world away, and every memory with it. Forgive me, I speak nonsense.”
“You speak true.” I pulled her close to me, and let her rest her head on my chest.
“All I know, Rothan, is that night you won me, I felt fear, but I also saw something… uncanny. When I was making my oblations to Akaraxis that day’s dawn, my oil lamp fell. It had never fallen my entire life. As it fell the oil trickled all along the ground, around me. When I stood, there was a burning line that pointed northward. I took it as some evil omen, and so I feared what would happen that day even more. But now I realize, Akaraxis was pointing me northward, even as we make our way north now. So when you won me, and I found that you were a northerner, I felt something stir inside me, that it was destined, that the gods had a hand in it. How else do you explain it, Rothan, that two of us who have been touched by gods, came together in such a place, when both of us by mortal measures should be dead?”
“
I have no explanation, Bellabel. I am no wizard nor a seer, nor taken the words of them to heart. Perhaps it has been my folly. For I too saw something uncanny, that last night we were together in the coliseum. I saw you aflame. That is why, unlike any other night, I felt unnerved lying in bed with you, as I was foreseeing my failure in the combat the next day and the great doom that would befall you. But now I see, it was the gods showing me that you burn, and are unharmed. They were showing me that I should not fear the next day.”
“Rothan,” I heard One Eye call as he entered the cabin, “you live. I have never seen a man have so many lives. But then again… perhaps you are more than a man.” He stepped closer until he stood before me. “Please, rest,” he said as I made to rise. He pulled a small stool, rested one leg, his arms crossed atop it.
“The way my head aches right now, I feel a man as any.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Are we out of danger?”
“Nearly, once we have crossed the whole of the Moaning Gulf, we shall be.”
“And Eric… he is gone.”
“We recovered the body. Its being treated with black salt, that his mother and father be able to put him to the pyre.”
“The Jarl will have my head, and rightfully so.”
“Eric insisted to come. It was his greatest wish. And… Jarl Bardawulf is not of mind lately. His illness keeps him bedridden most days. I know not how he’ll react.”
“Still, to have Eric die because of me…”
“The risk of glory is death. Eric had a warrior’s heart. Perhaps not a soldier’s, but a warrior’s, yes. These are the harsh truths of war, Rothan. You know them better than most.”
“You see twice as other men, with half as much,” I rued. “What happened, when the Orc slew me like a wolf does a rabbit?”
“I… was without my bow, and could not climb as Eric did. Guards came upon me. Tor, Riggis and I drew daggers. There in the stands, the screaming crowd all around us, we fought our way past the guards down to the arena. Tor died in the fighting, but in the chaos, the Orc’s master withdrew it to its cage, and the night’s spectacle was called to a close.”
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