by Ty Johnston
The way was crooked and boring, high stone walls all around, the only light coming from directly above.
But then there was a flash of golden light across Guthrie’s vision and the path ahead changed.
“I do not remember this,” Guthrie said as he tugged the reins of his horse, stopping the animal at the front of the line of riders.
The trail had opened up as it had not before, and the sergeant was positive they had not traveled as far as the shallow cave where he had rested with Werner. Besides, the presentation before him here was much, much broader than where the cave had rested. The walls to Guthrie’s right and left extended further in those directions, creating a giant bowl in the middle of the mountains. The land ahead was smooth, the stone floor reaching at least a hundred yards across to a rising natural bulwark of broken gray rock. Embedded within that distant wall was an opening shaped like a doorway, twice as tall and as wide as a man, to the sides of the entrance carved into the rock life size figures of mighty warriors in armor with humongous swords gripped in their hands raised over their heads. Even at a distance Guthrie was able to tell there were a handful of words carved above the dark opening.
Zanbra rode up to the sergeant’s right, Kroff to the left.
“You never described anything like this to us,” the Sword pointed out.
Guthrie shook his head as if trying to joggle his memory, but to no use. “It was not here before.”
The two knights glanced at one another across their traveling companion.
“There is powerful magic here,” Kroff said.
“No Dartague wyrd woman could have done this,” Zanbra said, “not alone, not without much aid.”
“Perhaps several wyrd women working together?” Kroff offered.
“Perhaps,” Zanbra said, then she clucked at her horse and slowly rode forward.
Guthrie and Kroff followed.
The sergeant leaned over in his saddle, looking for further sign of the tracks they had followed, but there was little to be seen on the smooth stone floor of the natural arena. There was not even snow here, and Guthrie noted the temperature seemed somewhat warmer than what he would have expected.
At his side, Kroff prepared one of the smaller crossbows of iron those of the Gauntlet carried, and Guthrie retrieved his own standard issue crossbow. There were no signs of an enemy, but it was best to be prepared. Riding at the lead, Sword Zanbra showed no such caution, but continued to trek straight across toward that mysterious opening.
Time seemed to stand still then. The sun above did not appear to move. There was no wind. Sound seemed distant, the clopping of the horse’s hooves not seeming natural, but more like echoes of themselves. The very air was still and heavy, as if the riders were moving through a thick mist, almost as if passing through thinned water.
When they reached the center of the giant bowl, Guthrie glanced back. The opening to the trail was gone, only a complete wall of rising rock behind them. There was no way out for them now. If an enemy should appear, the only option would be to fight.
Those of the Order did not look back, continuing to ride ahead, the sergeant keeping up with them.
The distance they had set out to traverse had appeared to be only a hundred yards or so, and that across land so flat one could have skipped a rock across it, yet the way forward seemed to take forever. To Guthrie, it was as if a thousand years had passed. He felt himself growing old, growing tired, his skin feeling dry and brittle, his bones heavy yet thin within his arms. Once he reached out and grasped Kroff by an elbow and the Spear looked to the sergeant with a thin smile, but there was no outward reaction, no sign Guthrie was visibly changing, and Kroff looked as himself, older than Guthrie but not ancient. It was a strange ride.
Guthrie also wondered at the possibility of magic surrounding him. He sensed no magic. His special sight picked up no auras anywhere within his viewing. There had been that brief glow when they had first entered the region, but nothing since. Had they crossed some magical barrier? Had they been carried to another place, perhaps another time? Guthrie had next to no knowledge how magic worked, but it was obvious he was not on the same path he and the captain had traveled.
Finally, after what felt like ages, the three riders drew near the large opening in the wall of rock ahead. They halted their steeds and stared up at the giant carved figures of the warriors dressed in ancient armor of a style not worn in thousands of years, at least since the great Trodan age.
Zanbra lifted her head back and stared up at the carved words above the entrance, her eyes following the line of text as if reading.
“Do you know what it says?” Guthrie asked at the woman’s side.
“No,” she said, sliding down from her saddle to touch the ground, “but I recognize the words as old Pursian.”
“How old?” Guthrie asked.
“At least two thousand years,” the woman said, rummaging in a saddle bag. “Today’s Pursian tongue is as far removed from those words as our own would be from the language of Almighty Ashal himself.”
The sergeant looked to Kroff, saw the man was also removing himself from his saddle, and decided to to do the same. Once on the stone floor, Guthrie looked to Zanbra and saw she had removed a large basinet helmet which she promptly placed over her head, her features shielded by the helm’s closed facing.
Her words sounded hollow when she spoke. “I lost track of those ahead of us when we entered this valley, but this is no natural place. We should be ready for anything.”
Kroff lifted his own, similar helmet from the back of his horse. “Are we entering this ... place?”
“It is an old temple, pagan, and yes, we will enter,” Zanbra said, pulling her long sword free of its sheath on her belt. “I will take the lead. The two of you stay behind me with bows ready.”
Seeing the others preparing no light source, Guthrie retrieved a torch from within his own saddlebags, dropped to a knee, and went to work with flint and steel in scraping sparks onto the oiled head of the torch. Within a few seconds he had a small flame burning. When he looked up, he found the two knights waiting for him. Now with their helms covering their features, Guthrie could barely tell the difference between the two other than Zanbra’s dark tresses trailed down from beneath the back of her helmet, and she carried her sword in both hands while Kroff hefted is crossbow.
The torch in one hand and his bow in the crook of his other arm, Guthrie climbed to his feet.
“Are you ready?” Zanbra asked with impatience.
“What of the horses?” Guthrie asked in return.
The woman’s helmet twisted from side to side as if she were looking for something, then the visor shifted to stare at the sergeant once more. “We shall have to leave the animals loose and untended.”
It was not the best of answers, but no one would argue with Zanbra. The only other option would have been to leave someone behind, and that was too dangerous for a variety of reasons. No one would be safe on their own, and those entering the mountainside might need all the help they could get.
“Very well, then,” Kroff muttered. “Let’s get on with it.”
Zanbra’s right gauntlet motioned from Guthrie to the opening and the sergeant moved to one side, holding the torch above their heads. The Sword readied her weapon before her and with caution made the first step into the darkness.
The glow of Guthrie’s torch illuminated a dozen or so steps ahead, revealing more flat ground of stone unnatural in its smoothness, a more natural-looking ceiling of craggy rock overhead just out of reach, and walls to the left and right obviously made by men as evidenced by the large, ancient bricks used, the mortar between gray and dusty. Zanbra showed no patience, no want to wait for the others, and continued forward to the edges of the darkness. The sergeant and the Spear fell into her wake, Guthrie with his torch high and his right shoulder brushing against the wall there and Kroff on the left with his crossbow raised to his shoulder and ready to strike.
The way was straight with
no offshoots. They moved slowly, wary, for some few minutes, going deeper and deeper into the mountain’s side. Then Zanbra came to an abrupt halt, throwing up a hand for the others to do the same.
“What is it?” Guthrie whispered.
Zanbra reached back and gestured toward the torch, which the sergeant handed to her. Turning to face forward once more, the woman squatted, extending the light ahead of herself. Guthrie glanced to Kroff, but neither man could see one another well in the gloom.
Finally Zanbra stood and returned the torch to the sergeant, then she took several steps forward before halting again, her sword pointing from a hand at her side. “Here.”
Guthrie and Kroff moved forward, the torch extended. What they found was a dead man, the fellow obviously Dartague and huge in height and girth, his arms full of muscles. He was dressed in heavy furs, even his feet wrapped in bear skin. Next to him lay a sizable club, the weapon too large for any lesser man to wield with success. The club had been slashed through by some sharp, mighty blade, cracking the wood down the center. A single stab wound to the man’s chest still showed blood, now drying, and a strip of red across his throat congealed at the edges, the depths of the cut lost in shadows.
“Someone had to be pretty tough to tackle this big brute,” Kroff offered.
Zanbra snorted, gave her companions a moment longer to stare at the corpse, then she spun away and returned to trekking in the darkness. As always, Kroff and Guthrie followed.
As they made their way forward once more, Guthrie wondered how long the Dartague warrior had been dead. The blood on the man had not dried completely, so possibly his slaying had come within the last hour or two. Mystery was building upon mystery. Where were the Dartague who had camped within the valley, and where were the hundred riders they had tracked? And how had the huge opening appeared in the middle of the mountains, giving existence to this tunnel they now traversed? It was obvious someone had been here, the lone dead Dartague for one, but also the man’s killer. Would there be others ahead? There had been no sign of horses nor of a sizable group, so it seemed unlikely all the Dartague and those riders had come this way, but Guthrie did not think it likely he and his comrades could have missed a turnoff or the tracks of such large groups going off in another direction. Nothing was adding up here. Magic. Guthrie was hating magic more and more all the time, and was sick of it.
A barking sound from ahead brought the sergeant out of his thoughts. He came to a halt in the near darkness along with his companions. It had been words spoken in anger and loud, harsh and guttural, not recognizable due to distance and the echoing qualities of the tunnel
The party paused, Zanbra leaning into the black ahead of them. She looked back to the others but said not a word. Kroff shrugged in return. Guthrie merely stood his ground.
Turning ahead once more, Zanbra waved the others on and they moved forward, this time with more urgency than before.
They did not go far before more words came to their ears, a conversation taking place somewhere in front of them. Zanbra quickened her pace, ignoring her jangling armor echoing along the tunnel’s wall, with Kroff and Guthrie forced to keep pace.
She only slowed when a light appeared in front of them, the dancing glow of a torch revealed at a bend in their route, the only change of direction they had witnessed so far within their confines.
“You betrayed me,” a man was saying in the Dartague tongue from around that bend. “For that I should strip the flesh from your bones while you are alive, your baby still inside of you.”
“Please, Lord Verkain,” a woman pleaded, and Guthrie recognized the voice as belonging to the wyrd woman Ildra, though he had never heard her in such a panic. “I did not know this was not the place you sought. You told me of a statue of a warrior, and all I could think of was the two ancient fighters on the wall outside.”
There was a chortle, a chuckle filled with little mirth. “You expect me to believe you?”
Kroff edged forward but an upraised fist from the Sword caused him to halt. He glanced to Guthrie who shrugged before leaning closer to Zanbra.
The sergeant’s words were whispered. “The woman, she is Ildra.”
Zanbra nodded but took no immediate action.
“I was your student for years,” Ildra was saying from around the corner. “Why would I trick you? You took my own skills in the magical arts and raised them to a level unknown by any other wyrd women, by any other Dartague. Without you, I would not be where I am today.”
“True,” the man called Verkain said, “but perhaps you have grown greedy in your quest for power. Perhaps you believed you had more to take from me.”
“But why bring you here?” Ildra asked, her voice still begging. “This is only an old pagan temple, where I sought to birth my child, nothing more. I could do you no harm here.”
“You have separated me from my men, and from your own people,” Verkain said. “Perhaps you believed your champion would best me at the entrance, slay me while you were here, ready to spill your cub into the world? Nothing else makes sense.”
“But I knew not you were with your men, my lord! Only that there was to be a rendezvous with one of your officers. I did not know it would be with you personally! And how could I know you would follow me here?”
There was quiet then, followed by a scuffing of leather upon stone, likely boots scraping the floor. Sudden movement.
“Please, my lord!” Ildra shouted. “I told you no lie!”
There was the shifting of movement, then a hardy grunt and a cry of anguish.
Zanbra rushed ahead, Kroff and Guthrie right behind her.
The three took the bend in the tunnel without stopping, making enough noise there was little doubt they would be expected.
Zanbra sprang into a sizable chamber, square with torches ensconced upon the walls giving light. In the center of the room was an altar of sorts, made of smooth black rock more like glass than stone. Stretched out upon this altar was the wyrd woman Ildra, her furs thrown back to reveal her swollen belly, her face an open cry of pain, her eyes closed, her mouth wide. Standing over her was a tall figure in black plate armor, his left hand a fist gripping a dagger thrust into the woman’s chest and spreading red across her naked form.
The black helmet of Verkain snapped up to glare at the three newcomers. “You have no place here!” he shouted, then yanked his dagger free of the wyrd woman, spurting blood across his plated chest. With a flip of his hand his dagger shot forth like an arrow, launched toward Zanbra.
The Sword dropped to one side, the flying dagger bouncing off her right shoulder plate as Kroff grunted and loosed his arrow, the dart shooting straight and true.
Only to burst as if slammed against some invisible wall in front of Verkain.
The lord in black chuckled and stepped back and away from the bleeding wyrd woman, nearly disappearing in the room’s shadows.
“Take him!” Zanbra cried as she lunged to her feet and tromped forward.
Guthrie hesitated. Despite the Sword’s order, he was not sure of what to do. Verkain was king of Kobalos and the three Ursians found themselves not in their homeland and with little or no authority over the royal personage before them, if he really was the Kobalan lord. True, war was afoot, but Ursia was not at war with Kobalos and the three had no direct evidence of planned treachery between the Kobalans and the Dartague; it seemed Ildra had been a student of Verkain’s, but the king had spoken nothing against Ursia itself. There was also the matter of magic. Both Ildra and Verkain gave off the bright glow of strong magic, and Guthrie was not sure how to thwart this.
The sergeant’s hesitation nearly cost the two knights their lives.
Kroff dropped his crossbow and unsheathed his sword, charging ahead with Zanbra at his side.
From the shadows, Verkain could barely be seen raising his arms. He shouted a harsh word, a single syllable so loud it was impossible to tell exactly what he had said and he thrust his open palms forward.
The knight
s reacted as if each was struck by an unseen hammer, Zanbra knocked off her feet to slam onto the chamber’s floor, Kroff hit so hard his helmet sang out and went flying from his head.
Guthrie’s only thought was that the Spear’s crossbow had been useless. He dropped his own weapon, and instead of drawing another he jumped forward and flung his torch at the Kobalan king.
Verkain howled as the burning ember crashed into his chest, sending up sparks. For a moment he swayed back on his feet as if he were about to fall, then he cursed and vanished completely, leaving a spiral of gray smoke in his place.
Seeing their immediate opponent was gone, Guthrie helped Zanbra to her feet as Kroff stood to one side shaking his head.
“Damn ringing in my ears won’t go away,” the Spear said to the others as they gathered before the altar.
“Lucky to be alive,” Zanbra commented as she stared down at the bleeding wyrd woman.
Guthrie’s eyes followed. Ildra was still living, a wound the size of a nail’s length in her chest above her stomach. She was sputtering, a red froth forcing its ways between her lips. Her extended stomach was quivering, the child within kicking, perhaps dying.
The wyrd woman’s head lolled to one side and she stared at the Ursians. “Pl ... please,” she muttered. “Save my baby.”
No one moved.
“What do we do?” Guthrie asked, his voice little above a whisper.
“We cannot save the woman,” Kroff said, “but perhaps the child is another thing.”
Zanbra held up a hand to block her companions. “No. Let the child die with the mother.”
“Forgive me, Sword, but the baby is no maker of magic,” Kroff told his superior.
“It is the offspring of a wyrd woman,” Zanbra said, her eyes narrowed upon the visage of the dying Ildra. “It will likely be a child of magic.”
“We have no way of knowing that!” Kroff spouted.
“To hell with this.” Guthrie moved around the other two, taking the initiative. Whether the baby would grow up to be a wyrd woman or some powerful mage was beside the point as far as the sergeant was concerned. This was a child, a baby ready to be born. He could not stand by and watch a little boy or girl perish before his eyes when he could do something about it.