by Dylan Doose
The rabble began to grumble.
The duke’s man, Fabius, bellowed for silence.
“The healer who came from origins unknown to Dentin,” the duke began again over the few still doubtful voices, “the one who claimed to have intentions of healing my mother, was no healer, but a sorceress. A witch.”
Again the rabble grew restless, fear moving through them like a wave.
“I have been informed that this very harlot of the dark arts was responsible for the fall of Norburg, for she has a control over the rats— ”
The crowd cried out, and their voices overwhelmed the duke.
“Hold your tongues,” Theron ordered, and the noise died down enough for the duke to continue.
“The plague was a curse of her design. She now intends to turn her evil onslaught upon us.”
“You brought this on us!” came a shout from the crowd.
“You invited her here. Offered her shelter and succor!” came another.
“We are losing their sympathies,” Theron said in Ken’s ear as the duke tried to turn the crowd. “The duke is but a boy…”
“Then intercede,” said Ken.
“A fine idea,” replied Theron. “I am going to give you an introduction, and then you are going to explain what happens next.”
“What? You’re the leader, not me,” said Ken. He had no intention of leading a military effort. He had had his fill of leading men to the slaughter. “I will fight. I will die fighting. But I will not lead again.”
“I’m the leader in the hunt, Ken. We are coming to a great battle. I don’t know much about great battles, and I surely don’t know much about holding keeps. This is up to you, my friend, Kendrick the Cold, defender of Dentin. ”
“This wasn’t the deal,” Ken said. He was not feeling cold; he was feeling warm, and his palms were sweaty.
“Hold your tongues!” Theron roared again at the crowd of peasants.
In all his military life, Ken had never heard an officer or above command such a booming voice. It came deep from Theron’s belly and gave not the slightest crack; it was the voice of a mountain. The courtyard fell silent and Theron’s voice echoed in the valley beyond .
“It matters not what you believe,” the hunter began. “And it matters less where your duke acquired the news of Dentin’s incoming peril or why the witch came here in the first place. Whether you accept it will not change what is to come. If you are cowards, and you run, so be it. But if Dentin falls, wherever you go will crumble soon after. There is no reasoning with this evil. There is no hiding from it. We must stand and fight it. We must stop it here.”
“We are farmers, not soldiers!” a voice cried from the mob.
Ken stepped forward at this. “You will damn well be what you need to be, or you will be watching your families die, shredded by rats before your eyes.” There was a murmur from the crowd, but it was weak. “If we work together, if you follow the lead of Theron Ward, we will send the rats to the devil. We will send them with flame on their backs right to hell. We have a fort, we have bows, we shall set traps and fortify the walls with palisades, and, above all, we have tactics. The witch took Norburg from within. She will not be able to take Dentin from without.”
The crowd began to calm. They began to listen.
“Your duke says we have two hundred fighting men—two hundred fighting men in a fortress on a hill against a thousand filthy vermin is the best odds I’ve ever had. This victory is going to be a hand-wrapped gift, as long as you stand and you give these fucking devils a fight!”
There was a few whoops and hurrahs from the duke’s knights. Ken looked down at them. They were heavily armored and heavily scarred, a bit old, but they looked to be itching for a fight, a taste of their heroic pasts. At the cries of the knights, the men-at-arms and the archers took up the battle cry. Finally the peasantry joined in as well. Ken grinned at Theron. All right. So you got an army—time to put them to use.
After meeting with a group of the duke’s knights and assigning them the task of gathering weapons for the peasants and breaking the men and older boys into working groups, they returned to the duke’s study, cleared a central table, and spread out a map of Dentin. Theron’s party, the duke, and three of his knights crowded around.
“Dentin Keep’s dungeons—are they underground?” asked Theron.
“No, above ground,” said the duke. “The keep has no subterranean level, for it was built on bedrock, hence the low walls. It was impossible to dig a deep enough foundation for high walls. Nor did we need walls higher than we have, given our position atop this hill.”
“We are in luck, then,” said Ken as he remembered the rumbling ground in Norburg.
Theron smiled and shook Ken by the shoulder. Ken smiled back.
“I fail to see how low walls are good luck,” muttered the duke.
“It isn’t the walls. It’s the bedrock. The rats had tunnels beneath Norburg,” said Theron. “They dug their way into the dungeon. If Dentin is on bedrock, they will not be able to come from below. They will need to charge the fortified keep head-on.”
“So how do we go about fortifying the keep?” Aldous asked.
“Me and you, boy,” said Ken, turning to Aldous. He was careful not to call the boy “wizard,” for that would only undermine the confidence they had so recently won, and perhaps even see Aldous confined to the dungeon they had just been discussing. “We shall take every able-bodied villager, man and woman alike, and we shall gather wood from the nearby western ravine. We don’t know where the rats will be coming from, but they will likely surround the keep, so we will need to palisade the whole perimeter. Two rows of spikes will be ideal.”
“Understood.” Aldous nodded.
“What of Theron and I?” asked Chayse. Her asking him for instruction came as great surprise, but Ken gave it. “You and Theron go with the knights and men-at-arms and dig up spike pits round the keep’s outer walls, then return to the keep and help dig out a trench beneath the palisades.” Ken turned to the knights. “Each of you choose men to send out as scouts.” He paused. “Any sappers among you?”
“Aye, I was a sapper in the king’s army two decades past, long before I was knighted, but it was my work digging pits and bringing down walls that saw me through the ranks,” said a thick, white-whiskered man. He was studying Ken with a curious expression, as though he had a thought he could not quite put into words.
“Very good. Between you and the hunters’ expertise, you’ll set a good few nasty traps for the fuckers.” Time to set the duke and the fancy Fabius to task. “Your Grace, you must supervise your servants to get the biggest cauldrons from the kitchens that are still small enough to fit on the fire step. We shall use them to pour boiling oil on the rats as they make attempt to escalade the walls.”
“I will not supervise,” said the duke. “I will carry the damn cauldrons myself right along with them. This is my keep. These are my walls. My people.”
“I hardly think that the duke should—” Fabius began.
“Silence, Fabius!” shouted the duke. “Everyone must do their part—if mine is readying cauldrons, I am more than happy to oblige, and so are you.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The fancy bowed his head.
“We’re all sorted, then?” asked Ken.
“All sorted,” said Theron, and Chayse nodded.
“Ready,” affirmed Aldous.
“Aye, let us make this nightmare bleed,” said one of the knights, the one who had been studying Ken. He still had a strange and wary expression on his face.
Ken could not help but wonder if it was only a matter of moments before the man pointed a finger and revealed him as Kendrick the Cold instead of Ken the Monster Hunter. But he could not spend overmuch time worrying about that now. The witch and her rats would soon be upon them.
“There is no animal quite like the wolf, not in all the world. At least not that I have seen. Sure, there are beasts that are bigger, beasts that are faster, stronger, with
sharper teeth and sharper claws, but no creature has the same spirit as the wolf. No creature is so driven by love as the wolf.”
“Love?” the boy asked his father, who was puffing on his pipe by the fire, as he stared off into memory, fondling the dagger-sized white fang round his neck.
“Yes, my boy, love. They have a love of life, a fire to persevere that they share only with mankind, and I sometimes wonder if it is greater in the wolf. Once in my travels before I met your mother, three other adventurers and myself came across a small pack of wolf pups. Such beautiful white was their fur. When they saw us, they howled and yelped in fear. Far off in the woods came an answering howl. These pups, you see, my son, they were alone, five of them—they were alone and cold. They were hungry. The sight tugged at my heart. We stayed with the pups, gave them some of our provisions, warmed them by the fire as a man would with a domesticated dog. In the night she came, the wolf mother. Three legs and a bleeding stump.”
“What happened?” asked the boy.
“She was a great white wolf, near the size of a horse, fangs like daggers. She must have been caught in a trap when she heard her pups howl. She must have bitten off her own leg, for that is how much she loved them.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Pack Prevails
A ldous and Ken rode at the front of over three hundred villagers toward the ravine, pack horses and carts ready to be loaded with lumber and sent back quickly to the keep, where five of the knights would direct the placement of the palisades.
He could feel the witch’s tendrils worming into the edges of his own magic. He could sense her, feel her, and with that awareness came dread.
“Do you think we will win this, Ken?” Aldous asked in a hush, not wanting to alarm the villagers just in case Ken’s answer was too honest.
“Even if we do, by the end of it there won’t be much left of Dentin,” said Ken.
“What if the duke sent a rider to Aldwick? To Mavvern? To Baytown? To the bloody Imperial City?”
“He sent a rider to Baytown,” responded Ken. “For it is the closest. It will still take a messenger four days at a breakneck pace and going through three good horses, running them all to death. Then a force would need to be gathered and they would need to march.” Ken shook his head. “Best case, we will see the aid of a few hundred men in two weeks. Maybe she won’t strike before then— ”
“But she will,” Aldous said. “Her swarm and her men are close. She is not more than one day as the crow flies.”
Aldous realized that for the first time he did not doubt himself. He had seen the Emerald Witch as the Upir and the ghouls burned. And she had seen him.
Ken nodded, not doubting his assertion, and not asking how he knew it for fact. “She was likely planning this since the fall of Norburg,” he said. “I reckon the killing will be done before anyone from Baytown gets here.”
Aldous did not feel as he had in Norburg, or how he felt when Wardbrook was attacked. He did not have the fear like when they faced the ghouls. He was a wizard; he could control fire. He had done it once and he would do it again. But would it be enough? Would any of their preparations be enough? He did not know.
“Ken?”
“Yeah?”
“If I die, will you do something for me?”
“You won’t die, lad, not if I can help it,” Ken said.
“I appreciate that, but if I do…”
“If you do, then what?” Ken asked, his tone betraying irritation, a rarity to be sure. Aldous pressed on nonetheless, for he knew it was not that Ken was averse to making a promise, he was averse to confronting the thought of Aldous’ death. Aldous knew this because the feeling was mutual. It was mutual with all of them. The thought of losing any member of the pack was a simply sickening prospect.
“There is a man in Aldwick. His name is Morde De’Sang.”
“I know that name. The king’s lead inquisitor?”
“Yes.”
“What of him?”
“I’m sure you know what I am about to ask,” said Aldous.
“I’m sure you are right, lad, but it would be better you say it aloud, just in case I have to carry out the deed. I’m thinking you want me to kill him, but what if you want me to bake him a cake?” asked Ken with his particular smile. “I want to be sure I am doing what you said and not what you implied. ”
Aldous gave a small chuckle. “Will you kill him for me, Ken, if I don’t survive this?”
“Is he the man responsible for burning your father, and getting you into that bloody chapel of the Luminescent?”
Aldous thought of the man, tried to imagine his face when he barged into their home with his soldiers. He could not see it, though; he could only remember the name and the pleasure the man had taken in Darcie Weaver’s suffering. “Yes,” Aldous said.
“Aye, I’ll kill him for you. I’ll thank him first, but then I’ll kill him.” Ken reached across and slapped Aldous on the shoulder.
“Thank him? Why the fuck would you thank that bastard?” Aldous turned to Ken, brushing his hand away.
“Well, if he didn’t do what he did, then we would have never met. You would have never met Theron Ward.” Ken put it simply, and without emotion, as was his way.
“I wish I could have met you all on different terms.”
“A world of different terms would never have allowed us to meet. Had your father not come to such a fate, you would still be there with him, rich and happy, with fine young girls swooning to marry you.”
Aldous laughed.
“Had I not deserted,” Ken continued, “I would still be far out in the east, burning helpless families and crucifying princes. Maybe I would have hung myself by now. The point is, in a world of different terms, we wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be doing what we can to save the innocent lives of Dentin.”
Aldous stared at Ken for a long moment. He had a strange talent in delivering fact, a perfect and simple logic that seemed pointless to contest. Besides, Aldous didn’t want to contest it.
“When we first met, I was terrified of you, though your hands were chained and your back bloodied. At Wardbrook, I started to think you might have been a good man, a good man who has done evil things, but still a good man.” Aldous took a good look at Kendrick the Cold, his etched-stone features and his patchwork of scars across his face. He looked at his scarred arms in his shirtsleeves and his steel muscles beneath his mutilated flesh. This was a good man, a good man born into poverty, raised by hunger and loneliness and baptized in blood and slaughter, a man who chose a dark and twisted path for a time, but at the end of it there was a good man.
“What do you think now?” Ken asked. He scratched the back of his head and wouldn’t meet Aldous’ eyes.
“Now I know you’re a good man. I know it to be an indisputable fact.”
“I need a drink. It is too bloody hot out! Too bloody hot,” whined Theron.
“You are soft, brother. The sun has only been up for three hours and you are already complaining,” chastised Chayse.
“I am surprised to hear the great Theron Ward complaining so.” The gray-mustached knight, who had introduced himself to Theron and Chayse as Sir Elizure Crowle, chuckled.
“I am a gentleman turned hunter, Sir Crowle, not a laborer. I don’t have the emotional endurance to be digging like this under the hot sun.” Theron stared up into the sky for a moment, and hoped that his travels never took him far south, and certainly never to the deserts in the east.
“Your sister seems to be doing fine,” said Sir Crowle.
“My sister is a beast of burden,” said Theron as he wiped sweat from his brow. “She has the endurance of a mule when it comes to labor. I sometimes wonder if we are indeed kin. Ah, this heat seems to be jogging my memory.” Theron jabbed his shovel into the ground, resting one booted foot atop, and closed his eyes, putting his hands on his temples. “Yes. Yes, I remember… Mother and Father, they were speaking in their chamber… they thought me asleep, but I can s
ee it as clear as day, hear it like the raindrops on a lonely tavern roof.”
“Shut your mouth, Theron,” said Chayse, as she flicked a load of dirt at him, splattering his clothes.
“They said you were adopted,” he continued. “They were deciding whether or not they should ever tell you the truth, that you were raised until the age of five by a small herd of wild donkeys.”
Sir Crowle gave a good chortle. “You’re a horrible man, Theron Ward, a most horrible man,” the knight said good-naturedly.
“He’s nothing but a tyrant and a villain, my good knight, I assure you,” said Chayse as she shoveled another load of dirt at Theron.
“This is the worst day so far this season—so bloody hot I feel I may begin to hallucinate,” Theron said as he crawled from the ditch that he was digging and sat on the edge.
“Have you ever been to the great desert, son? The endless sands of the far east? When the king’s army marched on Kallibar, now that was heat.” The old knight paused for a moment and looked up at the sky. “Kallibar…” His tone was no longer one of good nature. He dropped his shovel and stared at Theron. “I recognize your man, Theron Ward.”
“Do you?” Theron asked, calm and easy. He did not stand from where he sat, but he became all at once ready for potential conflict.
“I’m afraid I do.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“He is a fugitive, a deserter, and a murderer.” Sir Crowle was as solid as stone now, his face stern and his posture rigid. “There is a bounty on his head in Brynth. You are aware you are keeping company with such a man?”
There was no one close enough to hear their conversation other than Chayse, who remained silent.
“I am.” Theron stood and stretched his arms then twisted at the hips, his eyes lazily half shut as he studied Sir Crowle. His mind was not as his body portrayed; his mind was ready for violence.