A Blink of an Eye

by Troy A Hill

  “Lead on, miladies.”

  We climbed the hill to the grove which stood within the walls of the fort. I looked back down at the keep. Folk of the caer headed into the great hall to break their fasts. Their laughter and chatter drifted to me through the air, along with the scents of bacon and hot bread. They’d eat their fill, then go about the day’s work and return in the evening to eat and sit by the fire and listen to the girls play the harp.

  Wherever we went and whatever dangers awaited us, I knew that I would come home to Caer Penllyn when we finished.

  Gwen touched the tree. The red slit crackled open. I stepped through the portal into the mists on the other side and glanced back. Pedr’s eyes were wide and he swallowed hard. I raised my hand to wave him in. He shut his eyes and took the step as he crossed himself.

  Our journey through the mists of the Otherworld was only a few moments, led by the raven sent by the goddess. Pedr glanced around the entire way. When Gwen opened the rift between the worlds at the end of our short walk, he paused, then crossed himself and hurried through.

  Southern Penllyn was just as fog-shrouded as Bleddyn’s hill fort. Once he had stepped out of the tree, the guardsman squared his shoulders with a slight quiver. He glanced around for the landmarks he was seeking, then pointed towards two distant hills that faded into the fog.

  “The first village they attacked should be down that path,” he said. “Your Penllyn folks know this area better than I, but I believe I’ve got it right.” The cart path wound away into the misty landscape. I awakened my connection to The Lady. Gwen’s golden cord to the goddess hummed as well. I kept my preternatural senses sharp for anything unusual.

  After half a league, the abandoned houses of the village appeared out of the mists. The mud brick and timber homes, with their thatch roofs and rough wooden doors, felt forlorn as we approached. Sheep, swine, and other livestock grazed in the quiet fields with no herders in sight. What struck me odd was the lack of bodies, of bones. There should be signs of a battle here—casualties. The village was just… empty.

  We drifted through the buildings. Benches and worktables were overturned. I spied a puddle of dried blood where someone had likely fallen. But no sign of their body nearby.

  “You weren't here when the dead first attacked?” Gwen asked the guardsman.

  He shook his head. “No. I was in at the next village down the road. The people from this village ran to find us. The dead followed them and attacked us there.”

  “We’re near the borderlands, here, aren’t we?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He glanced about, as if looking for shadows of the dead, then crossed himself again. “I’ve ridden this area with Lord Dewi enough to know. The borderlands should be half a league that direction,” Pedr said as he pointed towards the east.

  I reached out with my magical and undead senses but found no one, alive or dead, in the immediate area. I peered closer at the dried pool of blood. Two trails of magic met there. One shambled towards it from the borderlands. The other trail began at the blood pool and fell into step beside the first trail. They trundled down the cart path towards where Pedr indicated the next village lay.

  Gwen knelt next to me. I used our mental link to show her the threads I was detecting. She paled, then trembled.

  “The person who fell here… they walk again…” she sent across our mental link as she wrapped her arms around her chest. “The newly dead walk with the ancient dead.”

  “Will you be able to handle this?” I asked.

  Gwen tucked her bottom lip behind her teeth. Her earlier comment that the undead didn’t bother her seemed weak.

  “I have to,” she sent, “don’t I?”

  “We know the shifter had magical help last night,” I sent. We’d tracked and fought a shape-shifting bear, only for him to vanish in a cave with no outlet. “And now we’ve got dead walking again. Would that be a druid?”

  “None are left, that I know of,” she sent. “Even Myrddin, who was more wizard than druid, is long passed from this world.” She stared at the blood pool for a moment. “Whoever is behind this has power. A lot of power. I’m not sure even Myrddin could have made the dead walk again in numbers like this. And from the empty graves we tracked before, there could be hundreds.”

  We followed the cart path for the next hour, each lost in our own thoughts. The trail of undead magic followed the path. The fog still hung in the air, but thinned by the time we reached the next village. It too was abandoned. Sheep and an odd cow or goat roamed the empty streets.

  The homes in the second village were wood and stone, similar to the last village. Everything was similar. Including another pool of blood, and some overturned tables and stools, pushed over by the undead horde, no doubt. But here, we found flights of arrows stuck in the earth where Pedr and his men had loosed volleys at the undead. A few fragments of bone, chipped off by the arrowheads, was all that we found. No dismantled skeletons lay about. No pools of blood.

  “Did you lose anyone in this village?” Gwen asked.

  “No, milady. Once we saw how many there were, we ordered the entire village to retreat to Nant Bywyd while the men and I fought as rearguard.” He stood straight, all business about him. What I expected from a leader of a cantref’s guard. “We knocked apart at least a score of the old fighters. There should be bones here. I don’t see bones nor their weapons about. It’s as though they pulled themselves back together and walked away.”

  “Let’s go on,” Gwen said and pointed down the path towards Nant Bywyd. I could see the trail of residual magic the undead horde had left as they shambled along.

  As we walked, I asked Gwen to translate the village’s name for me. There were still holes in my vocabulary of the Briton language.

  “Nant Bywyd, dearest, means ‘Life spring’ or ‘Spring of Life,’” she said as she inserted Latin phrases to help me. “After Einion and Dewi built the hill fort there, Brin was added to the name.”

  “Ironic,” I said as we walked several paces behind Pedr, “for the ‘Spring of Life’ to come under attack by the armies of the dead.”

  An hour later, the undead trail veered off. We called Pedr back and followed the branching trail.

  We came upon another patch of blight. Where the grass should have been green and verdant, it was instead brown and dead. We knew what we would find here. Graves. But this site didn’t appear to have been a hill fort as the others had. Instead, it was on a small rise. Pedr watched as Gwen and I knelt near the centre of the area. About a dozen of the ovals of dead grass stretched around us on the hill. Gwen and I each sent our magic sense down into the earth.

  I let out a slow whistle. Gwen looked at me.

  “Sorry, I’ve been around Bleddyn too much.” The Lord of Penllyn liked to whistle as he carved his dolls.

  Below the brown, dead grass, we found ancient graves, now empty. One, however, remained occupied. Rivers of magical threads ran through this grave and vanished.

  “You remember you told me my magic might be better suited to grave-walking instead of tree walking?” I sent.

  “Yes, dearest,” she replied mentally. “Whoever is behind this can travel as we do, but they use graves as portals.” Another quiver ran across her shoulders, despite the look of concentration on her face.

  We had seen similar evidence the night before with the rough shapeshifter that had been slaughtering villagers and livestock along the borderlands. We tracked him, gave chase, and thought we had him cornered in a cave. A crypt with only one way in. A single corpse was entombed there, lifeless. The shifter, however, was nowhere to be found.

  Pedr, who had made a circuit of the area, came to see what we had discovered.

  “How many of the ancient warriors assaulted your village?” Gwen asked.

  “About three score, perhaps a few more.”

  “I count about that many paths out of the grave below,” I projected to Gwen. “Plus something else. I’m not sure what, though.”

  Gwen pal
ed as she grappled with the idea. I wasn’t sure I wanted to consider it, either. But we had no choice. That’s what the trails of residual magic showed us.

  We continued to search the area but found nothing else. Pedr looked at us with a cocked eyebrow after he completed another slow circuit of the hilltop with the ancient graves.

  “We need to tell Bleddyn,” Gwen sent. “Can you accompany Pedr, and relay information to me while I’m at Caer Penllyn?”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “You retreated that way? How far?” I asked Pedr as I pointed down the trail.

  “Nant Bywyd is another league that way.” He gestured down the cart path. “Lord Dewi and Lord Einion pulled all the displaced villagers into the hill fort. They’re crowded in, but they’re safe.” He drifted off down the road, his eyes scanning the grasses to either side. The odd boney foot print showed in the mud of the road every few paces. Pedr’s hand twitched nervously near his sword hilt. I didn’t blame him. After the run-in with the skeletons Emlyn and I, then Ruadh and I had the night before, I was on edge, too.

  “Why is Lord Mechain pulling in Penllyn’s people?” I asked Gwen.

  “With Seren marriage to Lord Dewi,” Gwen explained, “each was given land by their parents. Those holdings are on either side of the border. Lord Dewi oversees Lady Seren’s lands for her.” Gwen scowled as she mentioned him, then blanked her expression before Pedr could look back at us. “I really should head back to Caer Penllyn and tell Bleddyn what we’ve found. He may want to send more men this way. Sawyl’s party may not be enough.”

  “Is Sawyl likely to come up behind us?” I wasn’t sure of the geography here… well, I wasn’t sure about it in most of Penllyn. My only exposure had been two rides out of the Caer. Once for the trip when we were attacked by the rogue werebear, and once to attend Rhys’ funeral at the abbey.

  “This road,” she gestured at the wagon wheel ruts that comprised the road, “is an offshoot from the main road to Nant Bywyd. With our delay exploring these villages, and walking, Sawyl should arrive at the Brin well before we do.”

  Gwen glanced around, probably for a tree to open her own portal.

  “Why don’t we head on towards the brin,” I suggested out loud.

  “That way your passage back won’t leave an imprint close to this area,” I added just to Gwen. She raised an eyebrow at that suggestion.

  “I never considered my own magical imprint,” she said.

  We walked the cart path in silence after that until Gwen pointed towards a grove.

  “I detect no magical traces here, and we are far enough away from the last undead portal,” she sent. “I’ll carry our report to Bleddyn.” Then she added out loud, “You and Pedr will still go to see Einion?”

  “Yes,” I said, then shifted to mental contact. “I’ll contact you once we arrive.”

  Gwen nodded, then held up her cross and pushed energy into enough for it to glow. Only then did she open a slit in a nearby tree and stepped through.

  Pedr shook his head and stared at the tree where Gwen had disappeared. Magical travel sounded good when we thought we were the only ones who could use it.

  3

  Glyphs

  Pedr and I walked on. Neither of us had much to say, and we kept to our own thoughts. Our destination was the village on the Penllyn side of the border. Dewi’s brin, or small fort, was just across the border-stones on the Mechain side. Pedr had explained how Lord Dewi and his father had spent the last two years constructing the brin on the Mechain side, up the hill from the village that was tied to Seren’s lands.

  After an hour or two, the buildings of the village took shape before us. The area seemed deserted. I lead us towards where I sensed the people. Before we got to them, Pedr pointed at a doorway to a small house. It had a glyph scrawled on its frame. Another had been scrawled on the stone in front of the door. It appeared to be a three-petalled leaf set inside a sun, like the Celtic artwork I had seen. I sensed something odd, a type of magic about it.

  For magic, I knew I wasn’t the expert. I reached out to Gwen.

  “Show me,” was her reply. After a long pause, she responded.

  “Try to open the door, dearest.”

  I reached out my hand, but couldn’t grasp the handle before my arm tingled and stopped moving.

  “It’s a glyph of protection,” Gwen sent after I explained. “Whoever sets them, can key the glyph guard against a specific types of beings.”

  “Undead…” No wonder I couldn’t cross it.

  “Do you have your cross with you?” she asked. I fished it from under my woollen dress. “Good. Fill it with energy from The Lady, like you did with the spectre. If I’m correct, you won’t need much. Put it into the cross and hold it before you.”

  I did so and let a trickle of energy flow from the goddess into my holy symbol. Not even enough to make it glow. But I could feel the tingle of the magic. I held my cross in one hand, I reached out with my other and grasped handle. The door swung open, and I stepped across the threshold into the building. Pedr followed a few steps behind me. He glanced at the holy symbol in my hand.

  “You can never be too careful with the undead about,” I said. I fought the urge to chuckle. Pedr, unaware of the irony in my statement, gave a nod of agreement.

  I glanced around the room. The house seemed orderly. The bed and other furniture was well kept. Still, the home was eerie as it sat empty. As we exited, I again used The Lady’s magic to offset the ward that kept the undead at bay.

  Pedr stopped a few steps away, with his hand raised. He gestured to his ear and pointed down a side path. I listed and heard the wail. A female voice sobbed in the distance. Damn. I had been so distracted with the glyph barring me from the house I hadn’t paid attention to anything else. I left my link open to Gwen and ran towards the sound.

  I raced down a string of winding roads through the large village, following the wails. What I saw at the end of one dirt road stopped me in my tracks. Four horses stood in the narrow street before a house. The dreaded sign of the Witch Hunter Guild was branded on a leather bag tied behind a saddle. Iron manacles hung from one.

  The female voice shrieked.

  “NO… NO… NO…”

  “Confess. You are a witch,” a deep male voice, oddly familiar, boomed out of the window.

  The woman shrieked in agony. I charged towards the sound. There was a half-drawn glyph on the threshold stone. It had been scuffed by passing feet. I reached towards the door handle, Soul in hand. I pulled energy from my demon and kicked open the door. It splintered where it was latched and struck the wooden wall behind it with a loud, bone-rattling crash.

  Time slowed for me. Four men stood inside the house. Stretched across a table, a woman lay. Reddish-brown hair covered her face. Her arms were tied, spread apart, to the legs of the table at opposite corners. One man to my left had his blade out.

  Another man stood behind the woman and pressed her head down onto the rough wood. I recognised him. Two crossed baldrics with a sword hanging on each hip. Osbert, the Witch Hunters’ sword master. He twisted a screw on a contraption clamped tight to the girl’s fingers. Two wooden blocks. One above her hand, one below. They squeezed her flesh and bones.

  In front of the table, to my right, a third man, who wore leathers like the others, started to jerk his sword from the sheath. Another man stood in the far corner. I’d leave him for Pedr. There were three immediate threats.

  The first was to my left. His sword arced at my head. I ducked under it and flicked my sword up. Soul’s pommel struck him on the chin. As he dropped to the floor, the other man sliced his blade towards me. I pivoted on the ball of my left foot and stepped inside his reach. My right knee, with extra help from my demon, connected with his family jewels. His sword clanged on the wooden floor as he grabbed his groin and his mouth opened in a shriek. Soul’s pommel connected with his head. He collapsed like the first man.

  Even though they swung to harm or kill me, I didn’
t want to take their lives. Guilders in Penllyn, caught in the act of torture, was a matter that Lord Penllyn could use to drive them far, far away from me. Living guilders would be preferable to dead ones for the trial I expected.

  I jumped on the table, one foot on either side of the captive girl. I towered above the guild’s swordmaster. My demon still lent me speed and power as I sliced my blade towards Osbert. I forced her to slow down. Soul’s edge halted against the guilder’s neck. Osbert’s hand still pushed on the girl’s head. With my demon’s aid, I had moved before he could so much as flinched. His eyes were wide. Unbelieving. But still wild. This one was definitely on the crazy side. I’d need to be careful with him.

  “Release her now,” I said flatly.

  His eyes flicked towards the fourth man, whom I had left for Pedr. I strained my ears for the sounds of the guardsman’s sword and footfalls. He was too far away. The other man swung his blade in an overhead blow. Stupid. I dropped from the table and used the Witcher’s own momentum, with guidance from Soul, to pin his blade to the table. My free hand crashed down on his sword hand and pinned it. Soul rose then fell pommel-first onto his forearm, just beyond the table’s edge. I felt one of the bones in his arm snap as I pulled his sword from his limp hand.

  He screamed and collapsed. Before his knees touched ground, I was on the table again with both blades crossed at Osbert’s neck. His hands were on the hilts of his weapons, but he didn't get them clear of their scabbards. More preternatural speed I didn’t remember asking for. I’d worry about my demon later. I had an Osbert to deal with. Since he had been the one using the torture device, I wasn’t concerned if I brought just his head back to Lord Penllyn.

  “Free her,” I said in a low, flat tone. "Now!" Both my blades slid and drew a red line on either side of his neck. I could smell the scent of fresh blood as it started to ooze from the cuts. My demon began a little song of hunger. Fortunately, I was still far from needing to feed. Heavy panting approached from behind. Pedr stepped into the room. Finally.