by Alex Sapegin
“No problem. We’ll take the loads off the animals.” Andy began to undress. Lista put his clothes in one of the saddlebags without a word.
“Commander, what are you doing?” the Viking said, surprised, his lower jaw hitting a boulder on the ground. The northerner’s eyes made an attempt to pop out of their sockets and go into orbit.
“Slaisa, you haven’t told him?”
“What for?”
“Judging by your betrothed’s reaction—you should have told him! You can pick the ants out of his teeth and shake the dust out of his beard yourself. Put all the things on me. Il, tuck this berserk’s jaw back into place. He’ll start collecting stones and flies in that gaping mouth. And you, young lady,” Andy turned to Tyigu, “hop on me”. There was no need to tell her twice.
Olaf regained his senses as a result of a group effort. However, he was stuttering and staring at the dragon right up until that night. The guy was super shocked.
They had wild goat kabobs for dinner made from the result of Lista’s successful hunt. It was soaked in red wine vinegar and sprinkled with white pepper. Everything that wasn’t fit for the kabobs was gobbled up by the commander in two easy bites. Instead of skewers, they used sharpened raw twigs from the wood of an everlasting tree. Despite all his apprehension, the Viking’s jaw worked perfectly, a finely-tuned machine, as he gulped down the scrumptious chunks of meat. His apprehension had impressed itself upon the young man’s mental health—his eyes seemed to gleam in a foreboding way. Tyigu, as usual, asked for a story. The others gathered ‘round and immersed themselves in the world of Narnia. The girl had been sleeping for a while already, but the fairy tale went on. The storyteller could see by his listeners’ eyes that it would be best not to stop in the middle. Otherwise, they’d torture him cruelly to find out what happened in the end.
By the evening of the fifth day, they reached the outskirts of the small village of Belogorsk, which was built on the old caravan road. The hasses, who were once again carrying their cargo, without holding back, passed by the village and stopped two leagues farther on on the bank of a mountain stream.
“Tomorrow we’ll be waaay over there,” Andy took the little girl by the hand and pointed to the cupola of the church that was visible twenty leagues from the stop they were at.
***
Andy didn’t feel like waking up at all….
He had taken his turn standing watch during the night, thrown a “spider web” beyond the borders of the camp, and plopped down on his side. The naive lad actually dreamed of catching some z’s, you see… when the sleepy Tyigu came out of the tent.
“I’m scared to be alone,” the girl rubbed her eye with her little fist. “Can I sit with you?”
“Yes.”
They took the sleeping things from the tent. In fifteen minutes, the fidgety little live wire was sleeping sweetly, cuddled up to the dragon’s warm side on a camel blanket spread out on the floor, using a rolled up blanket as a pillow and covered with Andy’s wing. The dragon was afraid to move, he so didn’t want to wake her, but she kept tossing, turning, and constantly kicking in her sleep.
Olaf went out to the “dog’s” watch. He tossed dry twigs into the fire, stretched and yawned contagiously; watching him Andy clicked his teeth after a big yawn. Thirty seconds later they changed places; the dragon yawned, and the man followed. After five minutes of each yawning in turn, Olaf quietly swore, spit, and went off to tour the perimeter. Lista snickered from her tent, who had been watching the alternating yawns by the males in their group from an open tent window.
“Go to sleep already,” Andy barked.
“Right away,” the orc answered and closed the curtain. Andy, just like a big animal trap, clicked his jaws together. A loud, uproarious laughter came from the tent.
The flame, dancing inside the circle of large rocks, made the shadows move, threw myriad blood red sparks into the sky, and created a rhythm of the crackling of the logs. The flame jumped from branch to branch, and new red petals began to curl up in the intoxicating dance. Andy fell asleep to the fire’s pleasant warmth and choreographed etudes….
His internal alarm clock made him open his eyes two hours later, at six thirty in the morning. Olaf, with his hair all sticking up like a sparrow ruffling its feathers, was sitting before the fire sanding a carved wooden sword. A morning chill blew from the narrow river valley, covered in a blanket of fog. One of the orc women beat a ringing signal on the pot near the river. Andy raised his head from the ground and breathed in deeply. The wind brought the scent of Ilnyrgu. He realized Lista and Slaisa were still sawing logs. The sound of Ilnyrgu splashing and snorting happily reached the dragon’s ears. Olaf, who’d heard the sound of the splashing water, awkwardly shrugged and threw a couple of fat branches into the fire.
“How are we going to make our way today?” the northerner asked Andy.
“On our legs,” Andy said. The Norseman snickered.
“Seriously?”
“I’m serious.” Tyigu started moving under his wing. “Half the way, up to the cliffs, we’ll go the usual way: I’ll carry the load, the hasses can have a break. The second half of the way, we’ll switch. It’s not worth frightening the people who live in the temple with the sight of a cart-pulling dragon, or even anyone who doesn’t live in the temple; I don’t know what buildings are there. We should ask the locals what to expect.”
“Go ahead and ask them,” Olaf grinned. “They’ll hide in their houses and not even stick a nose out. To them, we’re wild bears or mrowns. And they also say that Norsemen are barbarians….”
“I managed to learn something from the local women yesterday. There’s an abandoned temple to the One God there,” Ilnyrgu said, coming back from the stream. A few ice-cold drops of water fell from the orc’s wet hair onto Andy’s wing, still spread out on the ground; he got a shiver all over the membranes of his wings. He recoiled. “Not exactly abandoned, of course: someone lives there, whether it’s priests or monks…. You won’t get anything more out of the locals, not even under torture. Our redhead was right: they’re wild.”
“It is what it is. Too bad there’s no other way. The road to the new highway starts at the monastery. Let’s say two days keeping going straight, and we’re in Troid,” Andy mumbled pensively, raising his wing. Tyigu turned away from the beams of the rising sun and tried to catch hold of Andy’s membrane. “Il, go wake the sleeping beauties.” To Tyigu: “Come on, honey, time to get up.” An unhappy grumble came from under the improvised blanket. “Uncle Olaf made you a new birch sword.”
The grumble stopped suddenly. The girl pushed the wing away and turned to the northerner, who was holding his right hand behind his back.
“Show me!” the child’s eyes shone joyfully.
***
Despite the long, difficult road, the day flew by. The monastery, visible from the camp, was not as close as it seemed. The natural hills and valleys in the landscape made the actual distance on foot a lot longer. To get on a convenient path that led to the religious abode, they had to huff and puff along for a while, moving over sharply inclined slopes and narrow valleys all overgrown with underbrush. There were a good number of rocky cliffs with debris falling down too. Andy filled the role of the ground-clearing bulldozer. He soon tired of wading through a continuous carpet of woven swampy rosemary on the slopes. Ilnyrgu came after the dragon. He’d given her all the control threads of the free tracking modules. Every other league, the group stopped for three or four minutes and the mages, with both hands and both dragon’s paws, put up voluminous “spider webs” to check whether some kind of danger lay ahead. It searched for people in particular, but for the time being they’d gotten away with no adventures. There was no need for extra supervision. The second half of the day was even more fun. Andy changed hypostasis and immediately felt all the delights of the hiking trip he’d been previously spared by his scales. When you have a tail and are covered in armor from head to toe, clouds of gnats, mosquitoes, blood-sucking flies
, gadflies, and ticks don’t cause any particular discomfort. It’s just a slight humming in the background; barely notice it. However, once he had become a human again, oh how all the above-mentioned members of the insect world rejoiced…. He got the impression that the winged blood-suckers choose the spot on your body they’re planning to bite ahead of time, then stick their stingers and prickers all the way in. Scare-away spells and magical lotions didn’t work on them. On the contrary—they bit and stung all them more. He was beginning to understand why the monastery was deserted. The monks were more ascetics than masochists. There were no idiots who would agree to feed the innumerable hordes of mosquitoes and other such evil pests with their own blood among the religious. Andy looked at his companions with pity. He forgot about the little villains quickly after turning into a dragon, yet they…. Olaf seemed swollen, as if he’d just come from a week-long bender. While they were making their way to the foot of the bald hills where the monastery was, they had all worked themselves into an exhausted mess. Their legs were giving out from under them from fatigue. Their rear ends and inner thighs ached, chafed in the saddles. They all wanted to crash and zonk out.
“Welcome, pilgrims, to our humble home.” A monk came out through the small wicker gate to meet the tired travelers. He was wearing a baggy gray tunic with a hood. The garb of the servant of the One God reminded Andy of Catholic monks’ habits that he’d seen in books and films, tied around the waist with a rope. The monk, removing his hood, was an older man with a pleasant round face and lively, kind eyes. Thin wrinkles ran from the corners of his eyes to his temples. The man, rubbing his spiky gray hair and glancing at the Wolf, asked: “what brought you to us?”
Ilnyrgu tapped the sides of her hass with her heels and rode forward. That morning, at breakfast, they had decided that the Wolf should play the role of the mistress or a lady of noble origin, traveling with her son on urgent business from Ortag to Troid. They came up with the most prosaic excuse for their traveling through the woods—actually, they didn’t have to come up with anything: a revolt had occurred, and there were many bandits on the highway. The rest of them played the roles of her companions. Andy, who took on the form of a Snow Elf, kept a little to the back. After taking on the form of a bodyguard, he decided not to change form again. A Rauu-bodyguard with blue eyes with no whites would cause less questioning than a human bodyguard of that description. Keeping behind and a little to the right of the orc, he apprehensively examined the high stone walls spanning the monastery grounds. It was a real fortress that, with enough provisions, could withstand a long siege. Desolation reigned all around. The ubiquitous wormwood and birch trees had had time to put down roots in thin slits; their green tops were visible in the most unexpected places.
“We would like to stay the night with you, and we’re prepared to make a substantial addition to the monastery treasury,” the orc said.
The monk nodded at her words and examined the group, smiling a fatherly smile at Tyigu, who was sitting proudly in front of Lista, sharing her saddle. Andy felt as if he were burned with boiling water from the old man’s gaze. Oh, he’s not looking at us just out of curiosity; we have to be extremely cautious. He squinted at the monk: what a kind mask, sickeningly kind. His attempts to solve the puzzle using true vision were for naught. The monk’s aura was lit up with soft colors of calm and polite interest. Why then did the guy literally reek of trouble? Andy sniffed the surrounding air. There was a strange smell hovering around the abode, a smell that was somehow familiar.
“The residents don’t need money,” the clergyman said, smiling with just the corners of his mouth. “Who needs it here? The mrowns or the bears? Brothers can provide everything they need for themselves. What’s more, we have several excellent hunters among the brothers, whose secular skills have come in very handy in their new venture. Merchants along the highway willingly buy what they hunt. I see two of you are mages,” the monk said, more stating than asking. “In exchange for your overnight stay, the monastery would kindly ask you to charge two small amulets with mana.”
“I don’t know whether we’ll have enough energy…,” the orc bargained with him.
“You will.” The monk waved his hand dismissively. The crystal “amulet of accord” hanging around the man’s neck lit up light green, showing that the speaker was not lying. It was very hard to fool the magical knick-knack. “I don’t think you’ll have to spend much strength on it. Do you agree?”
“If that’s all….” Just like Il, Andy too was searching for a hidden agenda in his words, and couldn’t find it. The religious was telling the truth. “We agree,” the warrior orc said. The crystal flashed brightly for a split second and glowed steadily light blue.
“Please follow me.” The monk went through the gate. The travelers didn’t see the satisfied smile flash across his face that was met with a nod by the gate guard.
Jumping down from his hass and passing through the wicker gate, Andy found himself in a small walled-in courtyard. A real prison cell. There was a gallery for archers along the tops of the walls, from which you could fire at invaders storming the monastery. But the gallery was empty; nobody was aiming at them with bows—this inspired optimism. The scent from the street grew stronger. The wicker gate in the gates shut behind them with a bang. The hasses’ hooves went clattering on the stone pavement. Andy became tired and apathetic; the scent got even stronger. At that moment, a switch went off in his brain. His memory, prompted by a bad feeling, obligingly served up the memory of a certain two-chamber cage he’d been forced to sit in, along with an old orcish shaman. The smell was the same as that from the smoke from the bulb thrown at the feet of the reckless slave by that butthole mage. Andy wanted to cry out and warn the others of danger, but instead he just quietly laid down on the ground, followed by the rest of the group.
With an ear-splitting screech, the inner gates opened up, and the courtyard was filled with a dozen mighty monks with stretchers, their faces covered with wet rags.
“Take this meat away,” the “clergyman” said in a commanding voice. The assumed film of paternity fell from his eyes, turning them into sharp, cruel points. The monk, smiling a poisonous grin, eyed the orc. “Put these two in the preparation room,” he pointed with his hangnail covered finger at Ilnyrgu and Andy. “The rest in the brig. What a strange family. And our second elf in two days….”
We fell for it, Andy managed to think before giving in to the dark nothingness.
***
“You awake?” Through a blurry film that covered him from all sides, Andy examined a man with a smooth bald shaven head. “You just lie there, don’t struggle,” the man said, and something wet and unpleasant touched the prisoner, who was constrained by metal handcuffs.
Andy blinked. The whitish blur became clearer and soon cleared up entirely. The prisoner made eye contact with the monk who’d met them at the gate, in whose gaze he could read the sentence issued to the naked elf, bound in notrium. The monk, whose spiky gray hair had been switched to a smooth-shaven head with runes drawn on it in black pencil, twirled his brush in a little bucket of ink and began to draw some sort of symbols on Andy’s cheeks.
Andy jerked his head back and got a punch in the jaw.
“I said don’t move!” the monk whispered, “or I’ll have them fix your head in a vice.”
Okay, so civility was out the window. How were the others, Andy wondered. Tyigu? What have these beasts done with her? Andy felt his chest literally weighed down from the onslaught of worry. Mighty Twins, we’re in a bad way! Judging by everything, it would appear that the people who had captured them crossed their prisoners off the list of the living, and if he recalled the glance this cur in a habit had cast at the she-wolves, nothing good was awaiting them before death. Grrr, grr, GRRRR! If only I could get loose! Andy clenched his fists in futile anger. He could do nothing now. Cursed notrium! The enchanted metal reliably blocked all his access to the astral; he could only clench his teeth, clench his fists, and plot his revenge.
“Angry? That’s good,” the monk said, drawing the next in a series of signs on Andy’s face. He turned his head towards an assistant who was holding a tray with tools on it. On the back of his head, Andy saw the symbol for Hel. Helrats! Black Servants of Death. It was a forbidden cult, pursued by law enforcement in all countries. They were scum; they’d perverted faith in the Twins. The dirtbags had come up with a very effective cover. No one would ever think of looking for priests of the accursed cult in a monastery to the One God. They were really in it up to their ears now. Excepting some sort of extraordinary occurrence, the entire group could be written off for fertilizer. Any other fate was highly unlikely. Gosh, how could I have been clever enough to stick my head in a sul’s mouth? The helrat finished with his right cheek and started on the other side; Andy caught a whiff of a whole slew of stinky scents, one of which was most unmistakably foreign to a human. His nostrils involuntarily flared. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was the scent of a dragon…. “Anger strengthens the runic connections. The madder a person, oh, I mean elf, gets, the faster his mana and life force are drained from him. We have some candidates for ascension to Hel, but they cannot meet the goddess today for a few reasons. They invaded the peaceful life of the monastery too unexpectedly for us, yes, too unexpected. And indeed the brothers outdid themselves when they greeted them. Hmm, what am I saying? My point is, we don’t need just strength—we need your strength sucked out of you in a peculiar way and put into a statue of Hel.”
“Shushug dung.”
“Now, now, no need to get nasty. You yourself agreed to charge a couple small amulets with mana.” The priest grabbed Andy by the chin. “Did anyone force you to walk through our gate? No? Excellent. The ritual and the spell require certain agreement, no matter how it’s attained. Make a note of it: I didn’t tell you any lies. Your friends were able to spend the night here. It’s of no consequence that their chambers may not be to their liking.” Andy gnashed his teeth from his contempt and boiling hatred of the man. “You’re not putting any energy into charging the amulets. I’ll have to work for you. What’s the trick?”