by Ulff Lehmann
“Keelan, this’ll be your first real battle, stay alive,” she snapped at the young woman who brightened instantly, and was on the ground, spear and shield in hand in an instant.
“Yes, ma’am!” Gwen said, and Anne could see how the squire struggled to restrain her excitement.
Lord Cahill asked, “Ready?” Then, after receiving her affirmative nod, said “Good, let’s go.”
They took off through the ruins, following the general direction the score of warriors had taken a little while before. On the way Anne saw more evidence of Ralgon’s path of destruction, though, thankfully, there were no corpses littering the street. Briefly she wondered what had happened to those Kirrich warriors unfortunate enough to be slaughtered by this animal, and couldn’t find an answer. Lord Cahill was preoccupied, and the others, having arrived with her, were no help either. From the look of him, she considered Ralgon perfectly capable of hacking his enemy’s remains to pieces.
When they passed the last building, before she even saw the warriors hidden among the craggy rocks, Anne realized she had erred at least in this issue. Whoever had built these cairns had firsthand knowledge of Chanastardhian burial rites. Sure, they looked crude, probably housing more than one body apiece, but they felt… right, fitting. Who had built them? It mattered little, though she was relieved to know that this hooded stranger had not just cut the dead to ribbons and discarded the remains. Then again, maybe the victims had merely died and been buried, who knew? Some cairns were smaller, built for individuals instead of mass graves; in wake of the stray attacks that had been reported, Braddan Kirrich and his troops had in all likelihood erected these.
Then, with a surprising suddenness she was pulled off to the side, into a crevice. Silently cursing her own lack of focus, but retaining her silence, she regarded the Danastaerian noble who had tugged her out of view.
“What’s the sign?” Lord Cahill asked.
“Single trumpet blow.” Her reply came just as hushed.
“Well then,” the noble whispered. “Grab a few of your warriors and make a lot of noise, and then sound the signal.”
She gave a brief nod in reply and hurried off, hunching until she reached Dubhan, Connar, and Natheira. In quick words she explained what was expected of them, scowled at Dubhan’s disappointed expression, and then moved on back to the ruins with the three warriors behind her. That she had to be the one to play bait had never occurred to her, it wasn’t truly honorable. But, she reminded herself sternly for hopefully the last time, neither was desertion.
One set of footsteps behind her halted every few yards. She turned and saw Connar had fallen behind. Right now, he was scanning the horizon, most likely for any signs of the heavy Horse. As a hunter, his eyesight was keen, and his experience at tracking gave him an extra advantage in most situations. The others halted beside her, hunched down behind the remains of a cart. Connar took his time. She didn’t see his face but knew the expression he made whenever he scrutinized an area, the intense concentration, the lids closed to razor-fine slits, his lips pursed.
Finally, the hunter turned and caught up. “Kirrich keeps out of sight,” he reported, voice even.
Behind her, she heard Dubhan’s distinctive snort. “Look at that,” the old warrior muttered, delighted.
“What?” she hissed, glancing back at him.
He had crept a little further, and now was peering into the nearby ruin. “Enough stuff here to make a lot of noise,” he replied in a whisper.
They hurriedly joined him, and she inspected the building the same way Dubhan had done by peering through a torn part of the wall. Inside, piled against a wall were the wooden tower shields Kirrich infantry preferred. There was no sign of the weaponry and armor. Most likely the Danastaerians had scavenged everything metallic and left the shields behind, seeing no real use for them. For their distraction these would certainly work.
With a grim smile she approved, and moments later they each had a shield in hand and headed for the square.
Even at a distance the sounds of battle seemed intense. At first there had only been the thunder of hooves pounding the frozen ground, the shrill cries of horses and riders, and the clash of arms. Dubhan returned the horn to his pack and looked at her. Anne knew how he felt, all of them were people of action and this passivity went against every instinct. She also knew that even if they managed to rush back to the ambush, the battle would likely be over by then. A shake of the head earned first a scowl, and then a resigned sigh.
The Chosen and Ralgon had trundled over, and while Kildanor looked tired, the other’s features were still hidden beneath his hood. Ralgon slumped on the central well’s wall and pulled back the cloth covering his head, revealing his bald, somewhat gaunt cranium upon which hair was patchily growing. He scratched his scalp and regarded her. A wry, sad smile formed on his lips, never reaching his eyes.
“Shun me,” he said, “it’s what I’d do.”
The Chosen wiped a hand over his face. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just…” he faltered.
“What? What am I?” Ralgon retorted. “I saw the corpses. Scales, I buried the poor bastards.”
“We still have no idea what is going on!”
“What is going on?” Ralgon’s voice was a mix of hysteria and fear. “I tell you what is going on!”
“Not here,” interrupted the Chosen.
It was then, when the bald man snarled at Kildanor, that she saw the deep hurt and worry in his eyes. Ralgon looked about, as if searching for something. “I shouldn’t have come.” He was oblivious to their presence. Even the noise of battle perturbed him little. “Cahill shouldn’t have had me come!”
“We needed Mireynh to know you are here!”
“Well, it worked; only thing that is wrong with all of this is that I feel worse than I did when I saw Hesmera.” He looked east. “Sir Úistan and his men shun me, and rightfully so.” He took a deep breath. “I thought I was ready, but how can I be ready when I’m in control only half the time?”
What the Scales were they talking about? It sounded as if this man had done murder without being in command of his senses. Anne had seen berserkers—they all had. Highlanders who first drank themselves into a furor, and then rampaged through enemy lines, not much control there, she knew. Was this what they were talking about? She doubted Ralgon was aware of or cared about their presence. It seemed as if he was talking to himself, with the Chosen providing apparently much needed reason.
Beside her, Dubhan shuffled his feet. She looked at the old warrior; he returned her stare. It spoke of the discomfort she also felt. They were privy to a conversation that should have been private. To the east the ring of steel on steel and the cries of wounded and dying slowly ebbed away. Though curious at how the talk would proceed, Anne heeded her gut. It was wrong to spy on this, even unintentionally. If Ralgon had been in full control of his mind, he would have been aware of his surroundings and the audience. He was not, and although he showed no true interest, the Chosen was, and tried to compensate for his companion’s lack of well-being. Again, Kildanor glanced their way, his eyes speaking where his mouth could not.
Anne nodded her understanding, and said, “Come on, let’s see what’s happening.”
CHAPTER 14
Drangar Ralgon was a mystery, had been a mystery since Kildanor had first laid eyes on the closing wounds. Injuries that had killed the man, and yet he was alive, sitting here on this walled-in well. The Chosen knew what he had seen, not just the torn apart bodies, but also the almost senseless assault on a splendidly maintained shield wall. He had seen Ralgon coated in blood that had evaporated, closing his wounds in its wake. Things he had witnessed only once before.
During the Demon War.
By now he was convinced that a connection existed between the Fiend and the demons he had seen. Ealisaid had explained things, the forcing of potential into fact. For a moment, when Drangar had freed himself from the demonic yoke, the surge of bloodmagic had returned, and the mercenar
y’s wounds had closed. Had he not seen Drangar swoon, he might have said the man was perfectly capable of harnessing his life force into magic. The visible cuts and bruises, however, told him otherwise.
Ralgon was no demon. That much he was sure of. Exactly that much. How the feline creatures had gained a foothold in the mercenary’s mind was a good question. An even better question was why. The connection between demons and man hadn’t truly been severed when he and Caretaker Gail had entered the spiritworld, and he was certain that one minuscule thread still remained. Unnoticed by the Chosen or Drangar, the Fiend bided its time, waited for the right moment to seize control once more. Gone were the naïve attempts to explain facts as miracles. Maybe Drangar was blessed by a deity, Lliania most like, but it mattered little for none of the gods did much to help the poor sod.
Even the theory about Drangar possessing the knowledge and the skill to perform bloodmagic was ludicrous in light of him fainting whilst healing himself.
He did not regret his decision to help the man solely out of friendship, but now he didn’t just want to see him safely to the Eye of Traksor. Kildanor needed to find, and fight, the source of this threat.
The four Chanastardhians across the street, the well and truly battered shields cast aside, looked as if they were trying to not pay attention. He couldn’t blame them, would have stared as well had he been in their place. In terms of etiquette Ralgon cared little about who was privy to his thoughts. It most likely had to do with his two years of isolation. Talking to animals only blunted one to the proper time and place for speaking one’s mind.
“I think in a way Lord Cahill understands,” he finally suggested.
As expected, Ralgon’s head snapped up. “You’re joking, right?” The twisted grimace of his face resembled a mismatched figure: half snarl, half resignation. “How the Scales can he understand when I can’t? And don’t tell me you can also.” A sigh, and then his face relaxed. “I tried to make sense of it last night, I mean after I found the teeth marks on these scraps of cloth. I thought maybe, just maybe, I had done something fair, in the end.
“That maybe those poor bastards had tortured some hapless soul.” Silence followed. The struggle inside was evident on Ralgon’s face. He made a motion to rake through nonexistent hair and hesitated, probably remembering he had none. “I wanted to find a reason for what I did.” His voice sounded pleading. “Maybe, had they tortured anyone, what they received would have been justified. Even in the village my fury had reason. Lliania shat on me; I judged a High Priest with no interference of Coimharrin’s. I hoped what I had done here was something like that, divine will or whatever you wanna call it. Nothing! Senseless!”
This at least explained the almost frantic search for clues regarding torture. Ralgon had wanted to purge the guilt, and Kildanor wondered what he would have done had their roles been reversed. He was at a loss; there were no comforting words, no pat on the back to make things easier for this shell of a man. Another glance at the Chanastardhians showed they had drifted off toward the din of battle. Turning back to Ralgon hammered in the realization that a Chosen of Lesganagh, a warrior, a defender, and a killer, was not the right person to give advice about matters of the soul. Had he been asked to reveal tactics, or even provide protection, the answers would have come easily, but here there was nothing he could do.
The group of more or less allied forces left Ondalan shortly after noon. Thanks to the ambush and the archery skills of Lord Cahill’s retainers, they had suffered few casualties. With firewood a rare commodity in the treeless foothills, the Danastaerian dead had been interred alongside the enemy warriors in the cairns their countrymen had erected. Now they made their way through the swamp.
It seemed as if winter had waited until this very moment to lash out; snowflakes were everywhere, limiting their vision to a few yards. Thankfully they had crossed the Dunth at the onset, a little later, and to traverse the ledge would have been to slide into the cold waters of the tributary.
The white stuff only melted in the higher reaches of the Shadowpeaks, feeding streams that usually only trickled down the cliffside. When they hit colder areas some of these froze, while others continued on. Before long, Kildanor knew, the face of the mountains would look like a single wall of ice. Down here the snow blanketed the already frozen marshland, hiding all sorts of nasty surprises, and still they had agreed that by traveling close to the crags they would be protected from the snow on at least one side. Closer to the river visibility would diminish to the point where any step might lead to broken legs or drowning. Here, underneath the slowly freezing cliffs, it was only broken legs, and even these could be avoided if one stuck to the path of planks that crisscrossed the marchland. Fortunately, Sir Úistan’s archers knew their way around this place, even with visibility as bad as it was.
Most of the time they rode or walked in single file, which kept conversation to a minimum, and soon, after crossing the first of the two tributaries on their way, even those hushed conversations died under the permanent onslaught of wind and snow. The going was slow, even on the wider strips of firm soil. As predicted, Ralgon was shunned, but the man also isolated himself from the others.
Kildanor didn’t know if leaving the mercenary to form the rearguard was a good thing. Left to brood, who knew what kind of mad ideas he’d have next. Still, even his tentative attempts to start a conversation were rejected. After a while he merely turned to see if Ralgon was still with them.
A cloaked and hooded figure leading a horse slowed its pace until it was beside him. Only when the figure spoke did he recognize Úistan Cahill. “What the Scales is going on with him, Chosen?” the nobleman asked without preamble. Of course, he was talking about Drangar. “No, let me rephrase that. What the bloody Scales happened to him in the village?”
He couldn’t tell if Cahill noticed his shrug. Revealing the truth might upset the band to the point where Drangar would be cast out, so he lied, “No idea, milord.”
“Come on, man, he ripped a woman in two and tore open the chest of another,” Cahill grunted. “What he did is not human.”
“Not the first impossible thing he’s done,” Kildanor said.
“Explain.”
The Chosen didn’t like being ordered around by anyone who was not the First or Cumaill Duasonh. Cahill was the leader of this expedition, certainly, but he treated Kildanor as if he was one of his retainers. Shunting his ire aside, Kildanor said, “He died and came back, for starters.” This time he intentionally omitted the honorific, if Cahill noticed at all, he couldn’t tell. “Then the entire affair of him breaking through magical bonds by sheer force of will.”
“So…”
He denied Cahill the chance to continue, thinking it best to speak about the conclusions he had already dismissed. At least they made sense. “He used magic to escape that cage, channeled his own life force into tearing through that cage. He says he can’t remember using magic, and I believe him, but some part of him can, and does call on it quite well. It was that primal part of him that butchered the Chanastardhians.” He paused, glanced back at the snow-shrouded figure stomping determinedly through the ever-higher piling snow. “He is struggling to understand, same as you are.” In this wind it was impossible to tell sounds apart, so the conversation was probably safe, although he doubted Ralgon would care had he heard them.
Cahill made a sound that could have been a snort, he wasn’t sure. “So, what are you telling me? Should I worry? Is it safe to keep him in my house? Provided we make it home, that is.” Was Sir Úistan really asking him for advice? “Please, I don’t want a potential monster in my home.”
“Everyone can be a monster,” he stated. “Under the wrong circumstances.” The memory of his brothers’ betrayal was there, still, but the pain was missing.
“Well?” Sir Úistan asked as if he hadn’t heard his words.
“You must have heard of the Scythe before he came to stay as a guest,” he said.
“Aye.”
“So, you already knew what Drangar Ralgon was capable of, not only considering the tales of his battle prowess. After all he killed a woman who was friend to both your wife and your daughter, and you probably know that there wasn’t much left of the person Hesmera.”
“Aye.”
“So why do you worry now?”
“Because he convinced my women he did not do it, claiming something had controlled his body,” Lord Cahill replied, a note of doubt creeping into his voice.
“Well, he claims the same thing now. As long as he isn’t angered it’s safe.” Safer at least, he added silently.
“You think he just needs friends to talk to?”
“Maybe.”
Before nightfall Dewayn and Morwen guided them to a cave. At first the Chosen had frowned at the hole in the rock. Then, as horse after horse was led inside with no apparent end in sight, he understood that the cavern behind was in no way represented by its entrance.
He entered last, following the brooding Ralgon. Inside the snow had only penetrated the first few feet, forming a by now well-trod ramp leading down into the calm interior. To Kildanor’s surprise it was stocked with enough firewood to heat an entire village all winter, and soon all of them were huddling near the flames, trying to warm and dry their bodies. Steam rose from moist clothes, both worn and laid out in front of the fire. Wind-driven snow had penetrated everything.
Even the horses huddled close. Rubbed dry, they were slightly more resilient than their riders, who were glad to have a little extra heat in their backs. As the fire grew in size, it didn’t take long for this part of the cave to become almost too hot for comfort, and after the last shadows had given way to night Kildanor regretted the lack of a window.
Ralgon stared into the flames, a hand absently scratching his charger’s muzzle. Occasionally the mercenary stole a look about, eyes searching the faces of those in his field of vision. Always they lingered on somebody, and Kildanor had to turn and try to imagine the line Drangar’s eyes were drawing to find who he was looking at. Of course, he had noticed the sudden hiding of the face, the drawn-up hood, but never in his life would he have thought it had been because of the girl.