Forsaken

by Jon Kiln

  Berengar exchanged a look with Nisero, and they approached silently. The girl opened the door on the low light inside and they entered together.

  The captain thought he would have beaten his children for just being out at night, much less bringing home armed strangers from an army of a foreign land, no less.

  The cottage appeared empty of other people. There were tables and hanging pots. Large stone columns held up thick, wooden rafters. Skins lined the walls and a great hearth provided warmth. Berengar did not recall seeing the smoke rising from the fire burning before them.

  The girl crossed the room and piled sticks into the large mouth of the hearth. She had to lean almost completely over the stone base to reach. She used an iron shovel to shake in dried patties of dung from a bucket.

  The men crossed the room. Berengar saw water dripping off his frozen clothes from the heat. He pulled at one of the belt clasps of his light armor, but it was still not thawed enough to unbuckle.

  “Where is your family?” asked Berengar.

  “They are out. They will be back soon. My mother will be.”

  Nisero coughed and sniffed. “Do you have brothers?”

  “I have many, but the ones that are alive are far away. They will not be back tonight. My mother will be back soon. My father later.”

  Berengar was concerned about that. “Will they be angry we are here?”

  “Yes, but you are a guest, so they will not make you leave.”

  “Will they try to hurt us?” Nisero asked.

  “No, but no talking when they are here. They do not like your king.”

  She walked away from the hearth.

  Berengar tried the buckle again and the leather came apart. He laid his leathers out next to the fire. He unbuckled his sword and tried to unsheathe it, but the metal was frozen into the scabbard. He laid it out on the stone as well. “I hope they do not seek to harm us until my sword thaws free.”

  Nisero struck his hilt against the stone. “I don’t feel good about this place.”

  “Don’t strike your sword to try to free it. It may shatter from this level of cold. Also, I don’t see that my choices today have left us with any other options tonight, Nisero. For that I am sorry.”

  “You could not have known the condition of the bridge, sir. It was hidden below the ice.”

  “That’s the very thing that ice does,” Berengar said.

  The girl returned to the hearth with two fur blankets. She left them at the men’s feet and went to ladle out stew from a pot.

  Berengar removed the rest of his clothes and boots. He laid them out by the fire, and covered with the blanket he sat as close as he could to the flame. Water seeped from his clothes, but the heat was enough that he had no desire to move.

  As Nisero undressed, the girl gave Berengar a bowl with a large, wooden spoon. He took a bite of the steaming stew. The seasoning was scarce and the beans were bland. He thought he tasted a hint of ox’s milk, but he forced himself to eat slowly. Even the flavorless stew made him want to shovel the food down.

  Nisero covered himself next to the captain and took his bowl from the girl. The look on his face did not read that he was enjoying the food as much as the captain. He still chewed slowly. Nisero began to shiver and Berengar felt safer already.

  The girl sat at the far end of a table and stared at the two men.

  Berengar scanned the room. He saw pallets for sleep along one wall, but no sign of weapons. The family members either had them with them or had none. He still found it odd that this child was left alone in this of all regions.

  Nisero spoke low. “Do you think she tries to poison us, sir?”

  “The quickest way to see to our death would have been to leave us outside. They could run us through after we were unconscious from freezing. It would not have been long.”

  “Did you notice the tapestry?”

  “No.”

  Berengar turned his head and looked up. He had missed the pigments in the low light of the hearth when they first entered. With the higher flames, it was more clear. Unlike the other skins along the walls, this one was a painting of a man. He wore dark fur, had a long beard, and an animal skull with curled horns for a helmet.

  Berengar looked back at the girl, wrapped in her own dark fur blanket, sitting in a chair staring at them. “Do you think she is Solag’s daughter? Are we waiting on the audience he sought all along?”

  “I’m hoping not, but there is a striking resemblance to Holst’s description in that crude drawing.”

  Berengar dropped his spoon back in his bowl and set it aside. He tried his sword, but it was still stuck.

  He looked back at her eyes and pointed above his head. “Who is that?”

  She stared a moment longer and then said, “That is the thing under the beds of bad children.”

  “Have you ever seen him under your bed, dear?”

  “I sleep on a pile of straw and I am good.”

  “Why is this on your wall?” Nisero asked.

  “My father says we must show respect to things that can hurt us.”

  “Is that Solag?” Nisero asked.

  She stared for a while. “We call him Zulag.”

  Berengar thought that perhaps it was a difference in dialect, or that this was some demon or god in the region. Solag could be taking on the persona of some dark deity to convince people to worship and obey him. It was not uncommon for his kind.

  Nisero said, “Is Solag or Zulag your father, your grandfather, your uncle, one of your brothers or some other relation to your family?”

  The girl shook her head. “We are humans. That is a monster.”

  The door to the cottage opened and a figure entered. The hood pulled back and the woman with wild, straw hair shouted in a high voice. Her language was the same words Berengar recognized earlier from the girl, but did not understand their meaning. Nisero opened his mouth to speak, but Berengar put his hand on the lieutenant’s arm and shook his head.

  The girl and the woman exchanged words for an extended period. The woman stared at the men and turned away. The woman spoke again. She hung skins across the rafters creating a curtain and moved about behind them.

  The girl spoke in the language the men knew. “She says you may stay the night and you will be fed in the morning as the gods demand, since you were already admitted. But then you will leave us. Lay down and go to sleep and don’t speak.”

  She left her chair and went to one of the pallets behind the curtain of skins.

  Berengar and Nisero stretched out naked under their blankets. The captain tested his sword and saw that it would draw. He slipped it under the blanket. His exhaustion overtook him.

  ***

  He heard the shouting before he fully awoke.

  “Captain?”

  Berengar opened his eyes and saw a bearded man standing over him. He had a sword pointed at the captain’s throat. The man’s beard was blond and he was stripped to the waist. He did not recognize the man’s words. Berengar looked up and saw the mother holding a knife to the lieutenant’s throat. She was also naked to the waist. Her breasts hung exposed over the lieutenant’s face.

  As the man stopped talking, the little girl in her blanket stepped around the man’s legs and said, “My father says he wants to know which master you serve. You should speak now even though I told you not to.”

  “Tell your father,” Berengar said, “that we serve the king of the great kingdom to the east. We are his Elite Guard.”

  “I don’t know all those words.”

  “Tell him as best you can, girl.”

  She spoke a series of words. The man looked down at his daughter and back down at the captain. Berengar moved his hand under the blanket to the hilt of his sword. He prepared to swing.

  The man spoke a string of syllables. The only one Berengar understood was Solag. The captain tightened his grip on the hilt.

  The girl said, “He wants to know if you serve Solag.”

  Berengar noted that she pr
onounced it Solag instead of Zulag. He was sure his answer would be wrong and he would have to move faster than the angry father. He hoped Nisero was ready. Berengar decided to tell the truth and begin the fight. “No, but we are on our way to kill him for what he has done. Can you tell him that?”

  “I know all those words.”

  After she spoke, the father pulled his sword away from Berengar’s throat. He took the captain’s hand and pulled him to his feet. The blanket fell away and the captain stood naked holding his sword. The man kissed Berengar on the cheek and spoke.

  The girl said, “My fathers says you are his brother and friend, but you need to put your pants on.”

  Chapter 7

  : The Way of Blood

  Nisero’s leathers were still damp, and felt cold against the restored warmth of his skin. The mother returned behind the curtain with her knife. The little girl stayed beside her father at the table, nearest the fire. The men stayed stripped to the waist and sat across from one another. Nisero left his shirt and other clothing to dry further. He wrapped himself in the fur blanket as he sat next to the captain on the bench.

  The father and captain both eyed Nisero as he sat. He sensed that they were judging him for not staying exposed as they had. He was wrapped up like the little girl, and wasn’t sure if he was breaking some custom of this outlying region. Whether he was insulting them or insulting himself by doing so, Nisero did not care. He still held the memory of the frigid water in his heart and in his bones. Even though he could tell his skin had returned to flush beside the fire, the memory made him feel cold, and he stayed wrapped in the blanket he had been given.

  The eyes left Nisero, and the captain spoke. “Ask your father why he wishes Solag dead, but has a picture of Zulag above his fire?”

  The little girl stared for a moment. The father looked down at the girl and mumbled something. She kept her eyes on Berengar. “Are Solag and Zulag two different things?”

  Berengar looked at the bearded man staring down at the girl and then he did the same. “Is that question from him or from you?”

  “It comes from me. He does not understand you. Only the boy children in our family learned your language. I learned it by listening to them. Now they are gone and I am all that is left.”

  “Where did your brothers go?”

  The father growled out something next to her ear.

  “He is mad that I’m not making sense of your words. Which question do you want me to ask him?”

  “The first one.”

  “No,” Nisero said, “ask him both questions, please.”

  She looked at Nisero and then spoke to her father. Nisero understood the names Solag and Zulag. The father looked at the men and down at his daughter. His eyes narrowed and he looked back at the men. His words came in broken phrases. Nisero did not know how to read the emotion in them.

  When he stopped, the girl translated. “He is happy about you coming because Solag still needs to be killed. Zulag is already dead. The picture of Zulag is up for the same reason my brothers are gone. He did not want me to know the truth, but you have forced him to tell it.”

  Nisero tilted his head when she did not continue. He looked at Berengar next to him, who said, “What is this terrible truth, girl?”

  “We keep the skin bearing Zulag, and sent my brothers to serve the son of Zulag, both to keep us from being murdered ourselves.”

  Nisero looked up at the skin and horns drawn on the rough, almost childish, visage of the bandit. He opened his mouth to ask the question of the captain, but Berengar voiced the words first. “Solag is the son of Zulag?”

  “Yes,” the father said in a single huff that sounded as much like a bark as it did a word.

  “Did you understand me?” Berengar looked from the father to the daughter. “Did he understand me?”

  She shrugged. “That was all of your words he knew and all of them he could speak. Do you have other questions?”

  Berengar rubbed his mouth with both hands. “Are your brothers working with Solag? Do they serve him?”

  She translated everything except the name. The father looked Berengar in the eyes and closed his fists together. He spoke with the same broken emphasis as he had before.

  His eyes stayed on Berengar as the girl spoke. “They serve the … I don’t know the right word. He called Solag something dirty. They serve him as his slave warriors. Many of Solag’s fighters are slaves. The rest are his family and people. My brothers are the slave ones. There are three of them.”

  Berengar swallowed and looked down at the table. “Were your brothers with Solag, son of Zulag, in his last campaign into the kingdom to the east?”

  “I don’t know those words?”

  “Were your brothers with Solag when he went east and then returned this way again a day or two ago?”

  “I don’t know what east is.”

  Berengar sighed and pointed toward the door of the cottage. “Solag went to where the sun comes in the morning. Then, he came back here to where it goes at night a day or two ago. Were your brothers with him when he took this trip?”

  Nisero looked over to the fire where he left his sword. The father had his on the table and the captain had his on the bench beside him.

  The girl spoke and the father answered softer than before. He would not look at Berengar. Nisero did, and he saw fire reflected over the captain’s eyes from the hearth, but he swore it was coming from inside the captain instead of as a reflection.

  “He said, no. They were part of the group that stayed here. My youngest brother came to warn us that he saw Solag on the high road. My mother and father went out to see my other brothers before he returned. Solag is moving to the mountains now, but has stopped to camp.”

  “Is your father telling me the truth?” Berengar asked. She turned to speak, but the captain said, “I’m asking you, dear. Are his words true in this?”

  She stared at Berengar. “This is the first time I heard where my brothers went, to the son of Zulag.”

  Berengar licked his lips. “Did you yourself see your youngest brother?”

  “Yes, before my mother and father left.”

  The father looked at the girl and spoke in hisses.

  She said, “What do you want me to ask him? He will be angry if he knows what we just said.”

  “Tell him, if Solag needs to be killed, tell me where he camps right now.”

  The girl turned to her father. After she said the words, the father smiled. He spoke and waved his hands.

  “He is the way the sun goes away,” said the girl. “They broke the bridge and dropped rocks to make the ice stop on the river. They left the road and wait in a high place for someone. My father will draw you a map to … the way that is … I don’t know the word. It is this.”

  She turned her hand over and pointed at her arm.

  Berengar glanced at the lieutenant and back at the girl. “Your wrist?”

  “I don’t know. The place they camp is called the way of this. The inside here.”

  Nisero looked down at her wrist and her finger tapping. “The bone? The blood?”

  “The like water, but the color of the sun before it goes away.”

  “The Way of Blood,” Berengar said. “Tell your father I don’t need a map. I know where it is.”

  Nisero turned in surprise towards the captain. He was not expecting that.

  The girl spoke, but before she was finished, the father reached out and grabbed one of the captain’s wrists. Nisero jumped to his feet, but the father spoke in the same sputter of phrases he had delivered before. Nisero clinched his fists, but waited. The father held the captain’s arm as his daughter translated.

  “My father asks that you not kill my brothers. He will give you what you need to know them. Kill everyone you must. Not them. He will give you things to use. Food and things.”

  Berengar looked the father in the eyes. “Yes.”

  The father nodded and let go of the captain’s wrists. He proceeded to gathe
r rope and weapons in a bundle held together by sewn skins. The captain tried more than once to have the daughter explain that they needed food and other equipment, but the father waved her off every time she tried to speak.

  Nisero whispered as they dressed in clothes that still held a touch of dampness. “You don’t want to wait until morning, sir?”

  “Not one bit.”

  They belted their swords back in place as some of their last remaining original gear, and accepted the bundle. They offered back the blankets, but the father pointedly waved them off.

  “He said to wear them like the animals do to stay warm,” said the girl.

  “Thank you,” nodded Berengar.

  The father spoke again and the girl said, “You promised. Do not kill my three brothers. You promised.”

  “I did.”

  The father continued and the girl translated. “They will wear red painted skins tied around them here.” She pointed to her left elbow. “That will mark them. The bandits are camped along the here of the way.” She pointed at her backbone.

  “The ridge,” the captain said. “I know the place. I remember my promise. Thank you. Tell your father thank you, and his sons, your brothers, will be free of the monster Solag soon.”

  Berengar left before waiting for the translation or another response. Nisero followed him out into the wind and felt the cold bite back into his body like he was just emerged from the river. The junior man pulled the fur blanket tighter like a cloak as the captain shouldered the bundle.

  “Do you wish to split the load with me, sir?”

  Berengar shook his head. They used the proper trail to descend from the hidden perch of the cottage. “I’m fine. Just be ready to kill everyone that lacks a red-dyed arm scarf, and help me find Arianne in their midst.”

  “You know this Way of Blood?”

  Berengar sniffed and stared at the trail in front of his feet in the dark. “All warriors do, don’t we?”

  “Are you avoiding my question for a reason?”

  Nisero waited several steps for a response and opened his mouth to repeat and press the matter. Berengar replied first. “I was part of a campaign that crossed the border. We put down a group of bandits that were attempting to form some manner of confederacy among themselves. Our battle was at this ridge and cliffs they call the Way of Blood.”