by Lee C Conley
The red pennons of Arnulf’s banners flapped in the wind over the gates. The sky beyond was a dark backdrop of billowing plumes of thick smoke. Fergus felt a doom had come to Ravenshold.
The hound Arnulf had named Fear crept up next to him and sat down beside Fergus. It seemed anxious for Arnulf’s return and looked out down the slopes before trotting off to sniff around at the gates.
***
A distant horn sounded from beyond the rampart. Faces turned in surprise.
‘Lord, men are coming,’ called one of the warriors standing on the palisades. ‘There are banners.’
Fergus questioningly looked at Engle nearby, and then they ran up on to the platform over the high gate and looked out into the valley. Indeed, banners were approaching, carried through the valley by men glinting with steel, men dressed in mail. Warriors of Arnar were coming.
‘We sent out riders, lord,’ said Engle as Fergus watched the men coming closer, ‘to Weirdell and the other villages too. I sent a man to Eymsford, too, lord, as I knew you were with Lord Arnulf in the passes. It seems help has come, it’s…’
‘My father…’ finished Fergus bleakly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A Plea to the Gods
The water felt barely warm. Jor had only thrown in a few pails of hot water into the old tub. The rest made up of cold water drawn from the old well in the courtyard out back. The old man kept a battered black iron cauldron full of water half over part of his big cooking hearth. The heat kept the water piping hot for most of the day while it was alight. But there was never enough water for her to make a bath as warm as she’d like.
Nym sat hunched for warmth in the wide half-barrel Jor had cut to use as his bath. She was nonetheless glad to bathe away all that muck and grime from off the muddy streets of Anchorage. It was one of her few little luxuries. At least there was soap.
She scrubbed and scrubbed with the small lump of soap. She sighed. Still, she could not wash away that feeling. Nym found she could not settle into the calmness the lukewarm bath offered.
Her heart fluttered with a strange feeling. Some dull nagging feeling somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She could not place it, perhaps regret or some guilt? What had she done for a lump of hack silver? Not for love, but for…silver.
But they needed food, her clothes were getting ragged. Her brother looked so shabby he easily passed as some beggar street child these days. Is that so inaccurate?
No, she thought in answer. They were not too far from becoming beggars, living on the streets.
Of course, they had always been able to come back to the old tavern keeper. Old Jor let them sleep in the tavern and gave them a meal, so long as she worked for it, serving his customers and cleaning his tavern, sometimes keeping an eye on his cooking hearth while he bustled about. But he did not pay silver, just a place to stay.
He was a good old man though, for the most part. His eyes did linger upon her a little too long sometimes. It would make her feel a little uncomfortable when she caught him at it, and she would make herself busy elsewhere. But she was not concerned. She had noticed many men looked at her that way now she was getting older. It was something she was learning a lot of men just did without even realising. The old man seemed trusty enough to her. He was always well-mannered and mostly cheery.
They did not spend every night in the tavern with Jor though. Her brother Finn was made to work in the back and kept out of the way. The old man didn’t trust him, and she knew he was not wrong to distrust her brother. Finn hated being stuck in the back at the tavern, kept away from the drunk folk and the fun. The old keeper didn’t want him out stealing from his guests. Jor would cuff him across the ear with a distrustful glare every time he caught him sneaking into the ale room and send him back off to chop vegetables by the hearth, or to roll in the heavy barrels of ale from the storeroom, generally just away from mischief.
So, young Finn spent as little time at the tavern as possible and was often nowhere to be found when Nym awoke for work. Her brother would skulk away when he had the chance and had taken up partial residence in the abandoned hovel down in the alley across the street. It was by the wharfs, and you could see the boats, close enough to hear the waves lapping against the banks of the river. It had become a good place to come this past summer, a place to watch the ships coming and going, a place to escape the old man’s chores. But the nights were drawing in. It was getting colder these days. And in the damp of autumn, the collapsing muddy hovel was becoming unpleasant to stay in. They would have to rely more and more on Jor and stay in the tavern.
She looked over at the silver laid on a nearby stool. It lay upon her new dress. She had bought it earlier. She had used her brother’s knife to slice a sliver off the lump to pay for it. It was a grey blue linen shift, and there was a tree pattern sewn into the hems. She had always liked trees, although so few grew near the town now.
She hoped she would look less of a waif in her new clothes. Nym looked back at the silver resting upon the folded linen. She decided she would try to hack it into smaller lumps, she thought it would go much further that way. Nym stared at the silver a long moment.
She had heard it was easy. The girls around the dock, the tavern whores, they had all said it was easy, easy coin. But none had told her she would feel like this. She could not scrub that feeling away. She couldn’t push the image of his grunting face out of her mind, the smell of his stale ale breath. It had been different before, with the other boy, a lad she knew by the docks. He was a ship lad. They had fun those few days he was in port. She wondered when he would come back, if she would ever see him again? His ship had long sailed on now.
That once fond memory now soured by the gut-wrenching feeling she now felt at this next experience. She had not even known the stinking drunk. She could not even remember his name, just his face. And how he had looked her up and over, and then led her away.
She had been told by one of the girls it was easy to just whisper your offer into a drunken man’s ear and most would likely take it. Silver, a few coins, it was easy, she had said. Nym never imagined, though, that it would be like this.
She shuddered. The water must be growing cold. She rose from the bath to dry off. Pulling the dress over her head, she belted her waist with a purple knot-woven cord. She lifted a bone carved comb from her bag and began to comb her hair, twisting long blonde locks and tying them back behind her head so some still hung loose down her back. A few teeth were missing but it was still a good comb. The comb had been her mother’s. It was all she had of her mother now. Both her mother and her father were with the gods, had been for some time now, since she was young.
She missed them. The old tavern keeper had known her father; he never mentioned it much though. She always supposed that was why he kept an eye on them, an old favour, so long as they worked their way of course. It was certainly better than the streets in winter.
Nym opened the door from the back rooms where Jor kept the tub and stepped into the tavern. It was quiet. Jor had closed up till all this trouble blew over. He didn’t want folks falling dead in his place, not good for business. Although, as he now often said, neither was closing. The old man sat before his cold central hearth staring into the ashes with a mug of ale in his hands.
‘Would you like to come in here with us, Jor? It’s warmer,’ said Nym with a gesture to the kitchen. ‘I’m all done in the back room now, too.’
The old tavern keeper looked towards her.
‘You look nice, lass. New dress,’ complimented Jor considerately.
‘Thank you,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Are you coming? Don’t want folk seeing you sat there by the hearth and banging on the door, thinking we’re open.’
Jor grunted.
‘It won’t help if they see you there,’ she added.
Jor slowly rose, steadying himself with his stump of arm. He made his way to join them around the cooking hearth in the backrooms. Young Finn sat by the hearth still trying to sharpen his l
ittle knife with one of Jor’s stones.
Jor settled with a grunt on a chair next to the hearth.
‘Won’t do,’ grumbled Jor, ‘no silver coming in. This best blow over soon. Ain’t no good for trade. I bet everyone’s suffering.’
‘Or dying,’ added Finn, not looking up from his knife.
The statement silenced the old man’s grumblings. Silence flicked over the room, an unwelcome reminder of the sickness and of the terrible deaths occurring even more frequently across the port town.
They had all heard the talk. The strange sickness was spreading quickly. Its victims meeting a gory and horrible fate as more bodies were being found, convulsed and twisted in final throes of agony, found blood soaked and bleeding from mouths and eyes and even from below. Folk were describing victims laid bloodied as if battle wounded, thought at first to have been murdered, but then no wounds were found, just blood.
More and more had been found this morning. Talk of sickness rippled a wild panic through the port of Anchorage. Folk were shutting shops and closing taverns early, some not opening back up at all today. Folk were leaving offerings to the gods at the ringed stone shrines on the hills and in the sacred groves. All praying for protection from the stalking gaze of Old Night.
One such ritual was being talked of this evening, a great sacrifice to appease the gods at the great stone circle. The acolytes of the shrines and priests of gods, witches, and holy folk with whom the gods seemed close, were all set to meet together at the great circle as the sun set. The high priests would do as they could, sacrifices and incantations, to try to appease the god of death and stay Old Nights wrath. Such a large and impromptu gathering was a rarity.
‘Come, we will be late,’ said Nym, pulling a dark woollen cloak over her shoulders.
Her brother’s eyes lit up beneath his black mop of loose muddy hair. He jumped up and placed his knife carefully inside his belt, eager to get out and amongst the people. Jor grumbled but also rose and swung on a heavy brown cloak.
‘What are we taking?’ asked Nym.
‘Ale, lass. What else?’ replied the old tavern keeper. ‘You will need to help me with it though, boy,’ he said, addressing Finn. Fin’s face fell, and he frowned up at the old man as Jor began to carefully peer through his shutters onto the street outside. Nym thought the old man looked nervous.
‘Is that all? No goat or even a chicken?’ asked Nym.
Jor shrugged. ‘I ain’t got coin for it, lass, not as it’s been. I keep ale. My best is what I shall give to the gods.’ He paused. ‘And what are you giving, lass?’ he snapped at her.
She could only open her mouth in reply. She held up her empty hands and looked to the floor, crestfallen.
‘That was cruel,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘The offering is for all under this roof. Don’t you worry, lass.’ He forced a smile and looked nervously out into street again. ‘Don’t like this, not with all this talk of death and plague.’ He shuddered, ‘Should stay away from it all. Maybe the gods won’t notice us.’
‘I thought we needed them to notice us, Jor,’ replied Nym. ‘They will stop it if we honour them.’
Jor grunted. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I ain’t never seen the gods do anything much but take, lass. They might listen, but they will still take, take our crops, our livestock, our blood, our ale,’ he said with a tap on the small barrel of his best dark ale. ‘Aye, we will see,’ he said with an absent tug on the wolf claw charm about his neck.
They joined the streams of folk making their way to the evening ritual. The people of Anchorage filed through the streets towards the circle of the gods in their hundreds. It seemed most of the town had turned out to honour the gods, to appease the immortal lords in hope they would lift the curse that had befallen their town.
Folk walked cloaked and wrapped against the chill air. Jor guided Finn as he struggled with the wooden barrow loaded with the small, but still heavy, keg of best ale. The street led onto the mud road south. The road led off towards Lord’s Grove and the old stone circle.
Two large stones guarded the entrance into the groves. Stood at each side of the road, the ancient worn rocks were topped with a heavy lintel stone to form a great stone arch. It hung low over their heads as they passed below. Nym paused beneath and stared up at the heavy stone nestled above her, its majesty taking her breath away for a moment.
‘Move along, girl,’ came a gruff voice from behind. Jor nodded in apology to the impatient man and hurried her onwards with a guiding hand on her back.
Walking through that ancient portal felt to Nym as if they had passed into another realm, a realm of the watchful dead, a place where gods strode the between the rocks and the trees. She hoped her parents were somewhere amongst the boughs watching her.
The light of the day was dying, the sun hung low over the horizon in a clouded sky, casting a long gloom amongst the trees. The circle of gods could be seen rising over the old groves and barrow mounds ahead.
The old stones of the gods circle were akin to the ancient rock of the entrance arch. They had all stood since long before the people of Arnar had settled here, an ancient place of reverence to a forgotten people. The folk of anchorage had adopted the site, had erected new stones. Stones to honour newer gods, cut in their likeness. Others carved with images of ships, of men and heroes, of beasts from legend and with swirling spirals and woven patterns.
Folk had raised cairns and mounds to honour the dead. Burials dotted throughout the groves around the gods circle, the final resting places of the town’s ancestors, stone piled tombs of the wealthy and the great.
Crowds were gathering and many people lined the edges of the outer ditches encircling the stone ring. Bonfires and torches flickered to life amongst the stones. Only just kindled, the flames flickered underneath piles of wood. Soon they would grow to be roaring infernos, lighting the evening gloom, and bathing everything in a ruddy flickering light.
A chorus of drummers pounded out pulsing rhythms accompanied by the low throaty melodies of a lone piper playing the bone flute. Nym took her place amongst the crowd beside Jor and her brother to watch the strange assembly of masked figures moving amongst the stones. Horns sporadically sounded out their braying calls, joined with the hypnotic droning, but still strangely melodious voices of the waiting acolytes and priests as their songs reverberated out from the circles centre.
There was an almost carnival atmosphere. Nym peered about the folk stood nearby. The people of Anchorage stood clutching possessions, precious things to be given up to the gods. A wretched looking woman hacked out a cough to her left. The crowd backed away from her half-expecting him to fall to the floor dying. She sneered at the folk stood nearby and wrapped her dirty brown cloak tight around her.
Nym nervously looked at the other faces stood close by. She noticed folk had brought their sick, their afflicted loved ones, hoping the gods would lift their dire maladies and make them well again. She closed her cloak around her protectively, her only shield from their pestilence.
She pulled her brother close and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He was not best pleased, wanting to be free to mingle among the crowd, most likely looking for mischief, but he did not object to her protective embrace. Perhaps, she thought, he believed her to be scared and thus allowed her to take comfort in his closeness without protest.
A fanfare of horns silenced the murmuring throng. Nym searched the circle’s perimeter with curious eyes. It appeared the horns were announcing the arrival of a procession which had appeared along another track coming in from the stone tombs to the west.
The procession passed through the gap in the ditch and made its way towards the brooding majesty of the waiting standing stones. At the procession’s head, a group of masked characters wearing skulls as masks. Most notable was one wearing the skull of a stag, its antlers branching out tall and wide from the figure’s drawn hood, a high priest representing the god, Hjort, the Hart of Horns, the great stag of the summer forests and the hunt
. Beside him the less grandiose and menacing skull of a wolf tucked beneath a hood. This one Nym knew was Varg, the hunter, lord of war and winter.
There were maiden priestesses dancing, said to be the virgins dedicated to The Three. Amongst them shuffled wise aged crones and other priestesses of The Three, some bearing the swollen bellies of those with child.
The manic grinning masks of the trickster god, the Lord of Fools, bobbed and capered menacingly. There were eagle masks bristling with feathers signifying the lords of the sky. Serpents of the great seas escorted a beautiful woman who walked in the nude, the high priestess of the spiteful sea goddess. As the nude priestess drew nearer, Nym suspected she appeared much younger than she truly was.
A solemn group of black robed priests appeared. They wore human skulls beneath their hoods and each carried a flaming torch. They were known to most, the Keepers of the Dead. In their midst strode the high priest of Old Night, the god of death. Adorned with bones hanging from his robes, he wore a macabre necklace of skulls and carried a twisted elm staff that hung with yet more bone fetishes. Nym was not close enough to hear, but she imagined this terrible figure clattering loudly as he walked with each ominous and measured stride.
These Keepers of the Dead were known to be grim men and women who were dedicated to honouring the death god. They kept and revered the bones of the ancestors and were tasked with tending the crypts and barrows that lay scattered throughout the old groves. Carried with them, they had brought the revered bones of the honoured dead, and with these bleached relics they would perform the rituals of the dead at the ancient standing stones of the gods circle.