Erik heard grumbling, saw Threhof shaking his head as Beldar and Dwain spoke with him. Erik knew they wouldn’t agree. And he didn’t blame them. They were all tired and hurt and sick … and so was he.
“I go with you,” Bofim said. “I trust you, Erik. You lead. I follow.”
Demik stepped forward.
“Me too,” he said.
It was the last person, other than maybe Threhof, Erik ever expected to put his trust in him, but there Demik stood, ready to follow the young man.
“I didn’t think, in my lifetime, I would ever hear myself say this about a man,” Dwain said, “but I trust you as well, Erik. And yes, even if we save a single family, by An, even if we save a single person from those creatures, it is worth it. I am with you. Let’s find these families and offer them safe passage, with us, to Thorakest.”
“And what makes you think the guards of Thorakest will just welcome wild men into the city?” Threhof asked.
“As Erik suggested, can you imagine King Skella not welcoming those in need, especially those chased from their home by winter wolves, into his home?” Dwain replied.
Threhof simply shook his head.
Erik watched as Dwain looked to each one of the other dwarves.
“General,” Dwain said to Balzarak, “you are my commander, and I will follow your orders, but you know this is right. I believe we all do.”
Balzarak nodded slowly, reluctantly.
As soon as Balzarak relented, Erik turned to Wrothgard.
“And you, Wrothgard?” Erik asked. “What say you?”
“Truth be told, Erik,” Wrothgard replied, “I am tired, and I am scared. I never thought I would say this, but I want nothing more than to be in a warm dwarvish city, lying in a warm dwarvish bed, waiting to eat some warm dwarvish soup, but you have proven a man of integrity and leadership, despite your years. I am astonished, really, at how much you have grown since I have known you. And, even though I have many years of experience over you, I could see myself following your lead, my friend. So, if you say this is a worthwhile cause … if you say this is something worth postponing our comfort, possibly even giving our lives for, then I will follow you.”
Erik smiled for the first time in a while. He gave Wrothgard a quick bow. The soldier’s words made Erik’s hair stand on end, to hear this man say something like that. Erik never thought the day would come when such a man would pledge allegiance to him.
“This doesn’t mean, however,” Wrothgard added, “that I am not still your teacher and privy to giving you switches when you screw up.”
Erik bowed again, a smile still on his face. He looked about the mountain. He could hear Switch grumble and curse as they waited for Erik to find the way, and the thief’s complaining only made Erik laugh silently. His mood was improving.
“This way,” Erik finally said, pointing to a small hillock covered in berry bushes and shrouded by tall pines growing at the top of much larger hills on either side of it.
“You know the way, my friend,” Balzarak said. “You lead us.”
Erik led the company up the hillock, through the thick copses of berry bushes—some of which had little, pricking thorns that only made Switch complain more—and through a heavily forested area of the mountain. They had walked only for a while when Erik stopped. He stuck his nose in the air and sniffed. He could smell them, sense them. He knew they had been here, the winter wolves. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Was it wet fur? Their putrid breath? Their shit? Or just the scent something so evil leaves behind.
“What is it?” Balzarak asked.
“They’ve been here,” Erik replied.
“Men?” Threhof asked.
“No,” Erik said. “The wolves. The winter wolves.”
“Weapons,” Balzarak muttered, and Erik could hear the subtle clatter of men and dwarves readying their weapons.
They slowly walked only a couple dozen more paces when Erik knelt and squinted. He saw something, just behind two white-barked pines.
“A home,” Erik whispered. “Move slowly, quietly.”
It must’ve taken them some time to travel the short distance from this point to the home, but winter wolves were stealthy and cunning. To simply walk, bumbling and loud to a home might spell disaster as they walked into an ambush.
The home was a simple thing, with a base made of uneven river rock, walls of warped wood made from several pine trees whose stumps still jutted from the ground, and a thatched roof that now smoldered and smoked and slowly burnt away. An opening lay gaping where a door once stood and smoke seeped from there, as well as the single window, shutterless, and the many holes in the thatching.
“They’ve been here all right,” Switch spat. “This is flaming folly, Erik. We’re bloody done. We’ve found the Lord of the East’s trinket. We’re a day away from safety.”
Erik ignored Switch. He moved slowly towards the gaping doorway.
“He acts as if he didn’t hear a word I said,” Erik heard Switch say.
“He does that,” was Bryon’s reply.
“I’ll go in first,” Erik said to his companions. “Be ready.”
He didn’t wait for a response. Rather, he drew his sword, readied his tattered and broken shield, and walked slowly to the dark hole that was once a door of the home. He could smell fire and wet fur as he got closer. He could smell rotting food. He could smell blood and shit. The smells of death.
“Even in the deepest, darkest places,” he whispered to himself as he passed the threshold of the home, stepping into smoke-filled darkness.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Erik crouched low, shield in front, sword at the ready, just in case, in those few, tenuous heartbeats while he focused, there was something still in there that might attack him, but there wasn’t.
A pile of old thatching from the roof smoldered in one corner of the home, red heat snaking its way along the straw and leaving behind black and gray ashes, threatening to spread the fire to the wooden walls. Scattered logs from underneath the home’s kettle had apparently started the fire, with one wall already blackened. What little furniture there was in the home looked broken and scattered. And then Erik saw them.
Three beds lined one wall. Bodies lay in those beds. Erik’s stomach knotted. He stepped forward. Just two steps. A blanket covered the larger bed—the adults, the parents, perhaps—and an arm dropped from under that blanket, all bloody and bruised and broken. It hung there, from its shoulder for a moment, just by a tendon and some skin, until the strain became too much and the arm—now unattached—fell to the floor.
Erik felt himself gag. He stepped back. He didn’t know how many bodies, how many people lay in the home. He didn’t care. They were dead. Chewed on. Eaten. The scenes at a mining camp, burned and destroyed many months ago, rushed back to haunt him, the vision of women and children, faces frozen in fear, raced through his mind. And now this.
Erik spat the last of the vomit from his mouth, and his stomach settled.
“May the Creator welcome you with open arms,” Erik prayed as he stood just inside the doorway. “I am sorry, but I will avenge you. I promise.”
He turned to walk out of the home, but he didn’t feel good about his promise.
Chapter 25
“Erik, are you all right?” Turk asked.
“I’m fine.”
“What did you find?” Wrothgard asked.
Erik just shook his head.
“Can we go now?” Switch hissed.
“We must hurry to the next homestead,” Erik said, “before the same thing happens to them.”
“Flaming sheep guts,” Switch cursed. “What makes you think we’ll find anything different?”
Erik shrugged. “I don’t know. We may not.”
“We probably won’t,” Switch added, “so let’s turn around and head back to Thorakest with that scroll and our treasure.”
“Go,” Erik said.
“What?” Switch asked, a weird look of confusion strewn a
cross his face.
“Go,” Erik repeated. “Go. Any of you. Go if you wish. I won’t go back until I know every family has been checked on.”
“Give me the scroll then, and I’ll gladly go,” Switch said, extending his hand.
Erik didn’t respond. He just glared at the thief with a steely gaze.
“We are with you,” Balzarak said. “You lead. We follow.”
They walked perhaps a league, no more, when they came to another homestead, one that looked similar to the first. Only, this one was intact. They hid on a hillock, amongst a thick copse of pines, watching the home. Out front, in front of a closed door, stood a young man chopping wood. He looked to be about Erik’s age.
Another man, a little younger than the first, walked around the corner of the house, a bundle of un-chopped wood in his arms. Just off to the side of the house sat a small garden where a boy went from plant to plant, picking berries and tomatoes and long, green squash and placing them in a basket.
“Shall we go down there?” Wrothgard asked.
“We’ll just scare them,” Erik said.
“The longer we wait, Erik, the more time we give those beasts,” Turk said.
Erik looked at his dwarvish friend over his shoulder and nodded. He stood and stepped out in front of a tree. The boy in the vegetable garden dropped his basket and yelled something. The other two boys looked to Erik. The one chopping wood said something to the youngest one, who promptly ran inside. Then, he turned to face Erik, axe in hand. The other boy dropped his wood, save for a single piece, which he held as if it were a club. The door to the home opened again and an even older boy with a boar spear stepped out, followed by a large man—gray beard and dark hair—holding another axe.
They started calling to Erik, yelling and showing their weapons.
“Are they speaking Dwarvish?” Erik called back to his companions.
He could make out some of the words but couldn’t string together a full sentence.
“Aye,” Turk said, stepping out from their hiding as well. “At least, some form of it. Sheathe your sword, Erik.”
Erik complied while Turk called to the men, who continued to approach them. He heard Turk speak of peace and friend. The mountain men seemed to ease a bit, but they still held their weapons ready.
“Follow me,” Turk said as he strode up to the gray-bearded man.
Erik stood behind Turk as he spoke to the man. They seemed to understand one another, but the mountain man didn’t look none too happy about what Turk was saying. Erik’s understanding of Dwarvish was so new, and this dialect different enough, that he could only pick a few words and phrases here and there and eventually, just stopped trying to understand them altogether.
“I told him we have a whole company of men and dwarves waiting for us,” Turk said to Erik. “That will, hopefully, prevent them from killing us. I explained what we found at the first homestead. I told him we would escort them to Thorakest and help them, whether they want to live there, or somewhere else. This man, Angthar, doesn’t seem too worried.”
“Tell him they should be,” Erik said.
“I did,” Turk replied. “He says that is a risk they take living here in the mountains.”
“He clearly doesn’t understand,” Erik said.
Erik could see Angthar watching them as they spoke, and Erik could also see the man’s face contort into a pensive, concerned look.
“Winter wolf,” Erik said to Angthar. “Se understand? Winter wolf. Dey athen se.”
Angthar stared at Erik as the young man told him in his best Dwarvish that the inhabitants of the last homestead had been eaten.
“They are evil,” Erik said. “Minions of the Shadow. Tell him, Turk. Tell him.”
Erik raised his voice. It wasn’t from anger. He certainly wasn’t upset with Turk, but he had hoped that Angthar would understand his sincerity through his voice and his tone since he probably couldn’t understand a thing Erik said.
The boy holding the piece of wood as a club looked up at Angthar and took a step back, stepping behind the large man.
“Da,” the boy said.
Angthar was the boy’s father. Erik understood. And he saw an opportunity. If he could scare the man’s children, maybe he could convince him the right choice was to leave.
Angthar looked down at the boy, a head and half shorter. The man reached around the boys shoulder, pressed the boy into his body and patted him gently.
“Waten her,” Angthar said. He gathered his boys and ushered them into their home.
It was a long while, but finally, the door opened again. This time, Angthar exited the home with a woman wearing a dull blue dress slightly tattered at the bottom. Gray streaked the edges of her hair, but she still looked to be at least a dozen summers younger than Angthar. The boys were not with them. As she walked closer to Erik and Turk, she pulled a simple white shawl tightly around her shoulders.
“You speak Westernese?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Erik replied.
She smiled. “My husband recognized the language, as you spoke it to the master dwarf here. It has been many summers since I have spoken it.” She smiled again. “I met my husband many summers ago when he visited Venton. That’s in—”
“I know where it is,” Erik said.
“Yes, well, if you speak Westernese, I assume you would,” the woman said. “My name is Alga. We have seen some things lately. Odd things. Deer dead, but not eaten. Mountain troll scat—we hardly ever see that. And we haven’t seen any cougars. They stay away from our homestead, but they are common around here. And we see shadows, movement in the forest. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Because it isn’t,” Erik said. “Winter wolves—evil wolves—have been stalking these parts.”
“You have seen my boys,” Alga said. “I have another, younger one in the house, along with my two daughters. And I have another, my oldest child. She is married to a man, Lethgo, who lives in the next homestead. She has two little ones of her own.”
“So, will you go with us?” Erik said. He could feel himself losing his patience. He was trying not to. “Time is short.”
“I married Angthar and moved with him to his homestead, master soldier, because I was tired of the city, tired of people. This is our home, and we love it here. We have prayed that An protect us, and so far, he has,” Alga explained. “But we also know, it is foolish to ignore An’s promptings that sometimes come through other people. And as much as I love the seclusion of this forest and these mountains, I love my family more.”
Alga looked up at Angthar. She nodded to him with a smile, wrapping her arms around one of his and drawing herself closer to him. He nodded back.
“We will go with you, granted you take those in the next homestead with you as well,” Alga said.
“That is our plan,” Erik said. “We mean to visit all of them.”
“There are eleven in total that we know of, including ours,” Alga said. “You have already been to one—may their souls find peace in An’s presence.”
Turk whistled, and the rest of the company emerged from the forest. They packed up what few possessions Angthar and Alga had and made their way to the next homestead.
Each homestead carried on in the same way, but each one, as the number of mountain men and their families grew, seemed quicker to relent. Two homesteads, that of Alga’s daughter and the next one, half a league from hers, were small, younger families. But the rest were large with at least four children, some with grandparents and grandchildren, and one even with a weathered, old great grandmother and an infant baby.
One home had only a single inhabitant, an older man perhaps a few summers older than Erik’s father. He refused to go with them. Erik pleaded with the man, as did Turk. Even Alga and her daughter pleaded with him. He simply refused to go, caring little for leaving his home despite warnings of the dangers that evil wolves, mountain trolls, and anything else posed him.
“That is the last homestead,” Alga whisp
ered to Erik, pointing beyond two wide-trunked, gray-barked pines. “Just through there and down in a valley. It is a smaller family, I think, with but two boys and a girl.”
Erik nodded. He looked back at Wrothgard and Balzarak. The man and dwarf nodded back. Now, with some two score mountain refugees with them, stealth became less and less a reality for the company. So, most of them would hang back with the mountain families while Erik and Turk, and sometimes Alga, would go up to the homestead and speak with the master of the house, whom, in all but one instance, was the eldest man.
Erik, Turk, and Alga crept through heavy bush until they reached the two, large pines. The ground immediately sloped downwards and amidst a clearing, stood the last homestead, perhaps almost a hundred paces away. When the home came into view, Erik could hear a quick and sorrowful gasp from Alga.
“Look,” Erik said to Turk.
A small company of men surrounded the home. A large, long-haired man knelt, hands tied behind his back, while another man, hair close-cropped and gray, stood before him, hands crossed behind his back, pulling his purple cloak away from his steel breastplate. Enough trees had been cleared from the homestead that a sun spilled into the clearing and Erik could see the insignia on the breastplate as clear as day.
“A striking cobra,” Erik hissed.
The older man standing before the presumed owner of the homestead struck the mountain man hard with the back of his gauntleted hand. The mountain man rocked back before falling forward, straight onto his face. Another man—dark hair cut short as well—in a leather breastplate emerged from the home with an older woman, her hands also tied behind her back, her forehead bloody and bruised. He pushed her to the ground, next to the now unconscious man. Erik heard a muffled scream and turned to see Turk clasping a hand over Alga’s mouth. The woman didn’t struggle with the dwarf. Rather, she melted into his arms and sobbed, quietly.
Breaking the Flame Page 18