by BJ Hanlon
Whooping calls came from the Foci warriors. Their weapons sang through the air cracking and cleaving bone and muscle.
Edin ripped his weapon free and spun. For a moment, he saw a thick clawed hand was coming to rake his gut and tear out his insides.
Then a burst of wind slammed into both of them. Edin went with it, he fell to his side. The dematian chattered and cried out, surprised.
Edin wasn’t. He kept rolling and came up slashing his blade up and out across his body. It ran across the dematian’s chest sending blood spraying into the night.
He brought the blade around again and took off the head.
Edin turned to see there were no other dematians. Dorset stood over one, his chest rising and falling rapidly. The two warriors had slain the other three.
Henny yanked Berka out of the shadows with Arianne right behind. She held her bow nocked with an arrow and moved like a huntress.
Edin glanced around but couldn’t see the young woman.
“The girl?”
“Ran off,” Henny said. He pointed through a pair of buildings.
“Damned monsters,” Dorset said but Edin was already running. He ducked between the buildings and down a small side yard. He leapt a picket fence, scraping his fingers on the arrow-like spikes. He saw tracks, bare feet that led to the left, and followed them. A moment later, they were nearly impossible to pick out. He ran through a small yellow grass yard with brown bushes and rotten tomatoes on the ground.
The tracks were gone.
Edin spun in a circle, “Hello? Don’t run, we’re here to help.” His voice was louder than he’d wanted and seemed to carry through the neighborhood.
He heard movement behind him and turned, brandishing his blade. Fokill appeared, he was huffing and looking around.
“Anything?” he whispered.
Edin shook his head.
A creak sounded from the way they came and he saw Henny trying to get over the picket fence. The rest of the group jogging toward them.
Berka disappeared.
“Where’d he go?” Edin asked as Henny approached.
The big man was rubbing his head. “Don’t know.”
Edin groaned.
“We should get inside somewhere,” Arianne said. “I don’t want to be fighting these things in the dark.”
“But Berka…”
“He made his choice, if he gets caught I don’t care.” Arianne said. Her words were harsh and bitter. She was right though. But if he got away…
“Where to?”
“The tall buildings near the river. Warehouses. There’s an inn there as well,” Fokill said.
“Doubt the proprietor is in any position to accept guests,” Edin said.
“I am certain he is dead,” Fokill added without understanding the sarcasm. “There are rooms and beds and a second story that would give us a better viewpoint.”
“We are too open here,” Dorset said seemingly agreeing. He and Fokill had been whispering a lot lately.
“Let’s go,” Edin directed. “Fokill, lead.”
The pale Foci warrior nodded. They crossed the long grass-covered field spliced with picket fences.
Edin took the rear and moved slowly. With Berka gone, they didn’t have to hold onto the rope, though if he found a weapon, the Por Fen monk would probably attack him, Arianne or Dorset. The latter made him worried the most.
Frost-covered leaves sparkled dimly in the faint moonlight. They moved carefully; the town seemed completely deserted. They kept nearest the cottages as best they could, sprinting between the separate standing homes when there was no fence to stop them.
Fokill turned left between another pair of cottages. The smell of rotting flesh came from one. As they stepped into the street, he saw a giant black and gray mound at the center of a large intersection. They moved closer to it.
When he saw what it was, Edin felt sick. He wished he would’ve thrown up all of his food outside of the city.
Ash covered half charred arms and legs that hung out of the pile like some sort of macabre wintertide tree. Scraps of burnt clothing and broken weapons were scattered about the ground like trash.
His constant dream, the nightmare of being burned alive by the Por Fen, ran through his mind. He grimaced and coughed and had to cover his nose. The odor was putrid and he felt like something was still burning deep within the mound.
He didn’t want to breath, didn’t want to swallow. He thought that if he breathed in a flake of ash, he could be breathing in human flesh. Edin shivered as Arianne turned and drove her head into his chest. She stifled tears on his cloak as flakes of gray and white ash floated around them like a blizzard.
Edin wrapped his arms around her and let her sob into him.
“Many dead,” Fokill said.
Edin wanted to say obviously, but that felt wrong. This whole place felt wrong. He swallowed and wondered if that girl’s family were somewhere in there among the dead.
“The inn is there.” Fokill pointed toward a two-story building on the other side of the street and about fifty yards deeper in the city. Beyond it, he could see the glow of the moon reflecting in the river.
“Go,” Edin whispered.
“I can’t stay near… this.” Arianne said looking up at him, her eyes unseen in the darkness.
Edin squeezed her. “It’s the safest place we have.” He almost had to carry her across the street, circling as far from the mound as possible. As they did, Edin too had to look away, he couldn’t bring his eyes to stare at such a sight.
Fokill led them to a door with scorch marks and blood near the entrance and paused tilting his head to listen for any movement.
“Wait,” Fokill said and nodded to Yechill.
With weapons drawn, Yechill went in first followed by Fokill. They disappeared inside the darkness like two wraiths. He couldn’t even hear their footsteps as they searched the floor.
After a few minutes, they reappeared. “In.”
The room was dark, but he could make out shapes. Overturned tables, broken glass, shards of wood, and bent metal weapons. They moved quietly and began to close the few remaining open shutters. Edin, still holding Arianne, didn’t help.
He hadn’t seen her like this before. The tough and strong princess breaking wasn’t something he was prepared for. A hollow, scared feeling came over him.
“We go up,” Fokill said after a short conversation with his tribal brother.
Edin nodded.
“They could use some light,” Dorset said. “Your ethereal orb perhaps.”
“Go with them,” Arianne whispered, her sobs gone.
He squeezed her, “I’ll be right back,” Then he began to move toward a set of stairs to the right. Edin summoned a small ethereal ball barely the size of the nail on his little finger and led the way.
At the top was a long hallway with entrances to rooms on either side. Some were open, others closed. A dark red stain ran down the center of the hall as if someone, still bleeding, had been dragged down it.
They began searching each room, blood splattered the walls and the leftover belongings that were scattered everywhere: clothes, coins, portraits of loved ones. The place was busy when they were attacked. And it seemed they were surprised.
He found himself clenching his jaw and fighting back tears as they reached the second-to-last room. On a chair in the corner was a small dress fit for a little girl. It hung over the back as if it were waiting to be put on.
“They slaughtered them,” Fokill said.
“It’s genocide. They’re trying to wipe out all humans,” Edin replied.
They moved to the final room and tried the door. Edin pushed into it but felt something heavy blocking it. A barricade of some kind. Edin pressed his shoulder into it, no movement. “Is anyone in there?” Edin whispered through the door. No answer. He glanced back at the two warriors, their faces expressionless.
He slipped back into the room with the girl’s dress and glanced out the window. About th
irty yards away, he could see the black river. It was barely sparkling with the low moonlight.
Edin leaned out the window and spotted a small wooden beam, barely two inches thick that ran below the sill and across the back of the inn. He glanced up and saw a second beam above the windows.
There was no movement out there save the water rippling the moon’s light. Did they have to search that room? Edin played with the thought for a moment. If something slipped in it could shred them before anyone knew it.
“Go to the door,” Edin said and sheathed his sword. He pulled himself up on the sill and positioned his toes at the edge facing inward. Gripping the top rail, he stepped down. The height was near eight feet, stretching him like a torture rack. Carefully, he began to shimmy across the beams. Edin thought of what he would do if a dematian spotted him stuck on the ledge of a building with nowhere to run. Did he jump?
Glancing down, he felt a bit of the old nausea returning. It was twenty plus feet to a sloping hill that ran toward the river. Edin took a breath.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw cellar doors angling into the building.
Edin returned to what he was doing. It was slow and sweat beaded on his head as his fingers began to ache. Edin moved half a foot at a time. He tried to keep calm but his muscles began to burn.
As he moved closer, he could see the shutters were closed. They were thick and swung outward. Edin held on with one hand, his fingers now burning and slipped his hand around the top of the shutter. His fingertips found a small gap and he tried to pull it open. It bucked slightly and shut again slamming his fingers between it.
“Ow…” he muttered and looked back at the other window. It was too far away to go back. He couldn’t hang on that long. Edin turned back to the closed shutter, his heart thumping loudly and his muscles screaming. Was it a hook latch or something else? He glanced down again and then at the black water behind. Still no movement.
Edin pulled himself closer and summoned a small ethereal knife.
The light was blinding. If a dematian was looking, it’d be like shouting out his location.
Edin rammed it into the gap between the two shutters. It sliced through the center and he made a quick circle. The left shutter caught a wind and blew into him. It was soft but startled him.
Suddenly, he felt his grip failing and reached out with his free hand as he started falling back. He grabbed the top of the shutter as it blew open and he swung out. The wrenching of the hinges echoed through the night as his back crashed into the wall with a thud and the shutter squealed.
He tensed and looked down, his body trembling as he saw the hill ready to come at him hard and fast.
Something to the east caught his attention. Far in the distance, he could see an orange light in the blackness. A fire dancing high between thin trees. He pictured a group of tribesmen dancing around, drinking cocobo and having a good time.
The shutter began to swing forward again and he saw the black gap beyond the window. Edin reached for the open sill as the shutter creaked.
A loud crack and nothing was holding him.
For a moment, his heart dropped to his stomach. Somehow, his body reacted and he reached for the windowsill. A last grasp and he flung his fingers over the edge as the shutter dropped like a stone and hit the hill with a snap.
He took a deep breath with the hard wood digging into his fingers. Edin threw his other had up and gripped as his dangling feet hit something and a clack came from it. Edin scrambled his toes and felt a bit of relief as they found purchase. But for a moment as whatever was below, another set of shutters he guessed, began to creak. He didn’t have much time.
He glanced at the windowsill and the black opening. Edin took a deep breath and stared. Why didn’t he have one of the Foci do this?
He sprung up as the shutters snapped below. Using what was left of the strength in his arms and his feet scrambling up the wall, he cleared the windowsill and dropped inside.
Edin came down hard, thudding against the hardwood floor. Breath flooded from him in a gasp as he rolled over and his legs flopped down slamming something. A knock came at the door and he heard his name.
“Moment…” Edin wheezed. Edin closed his eyes and imagined he was in some comfortable place, his bed back in the Reaches or with Arianne at Erastio’s Rise.
The smell hit him then. An outhouse mixed with a slaughterhouse. Despite the cold, he could hear flies buzzing about his ears. Edin pulled his legs back and sat.
In front of him, on a bed, he saw a pale face, eyes open and staring at him. Even in the dim light, he saw they were dead eyes. An old man, spectacles pulled halfway down his nose and wisps of gray hair protruding his head and from wide nostrils.
Edin reached back and felt a wall. Using it as a brace, he stood. Next to the old man was a woman of similar age. Both of their wrists had been cut and beneath the man’s fingers, in a pool of frozen blood was a white handled razor.
Stifling a gag, he stumbled toward the door blocked by a chest of drawers. It was heavy and Edin took a few minutes to move it. The furniture’s legs scraped the wooden floor loudly.
Edin stepped into the hall and quickly closed the door. “Don’t go in there,” Edin whispered and walked past the two Foci. He went downstairs, the Foci’s footsteps behind him were as light as a dead leaf on live grass.
On the main level, the rest of the group was seated in darkness. No one spoke. A cold hearth sat off to the right and a stack of wood was piled next to it. Edin knew it was a bad idea.
Henny asked “how is it?”
“Safe,” Edin said as he sat next to Arianne, “for now.” He didn’t want to tell her about the blood or the elderly couple that killed themselves before they could be slaughtered by dematians.
“Can we use the rooms?” Dorset asked.
“I don’t think we want to,” Edin said keeping his eyes in Dorset’s direction. “Maybe we can find blankets and pillows. There is a cellar door out back as well.”
“Stay with me,” Arianne whispered.
“We can scout it,” Fokill said.
“It’ll be dark and only Edin can summon the ethereal light,” Dorset said.
“I don’t know that we need to,” Edin said. “If the only entrance is out there, it doesn’t pose a threat. We stay here. Barricade the doors.”
They curled up in corners after the doors were barricaded and the shutters sealed. All the shutters but the one in the galley kitchen that Edin had used as a springboard.
Henny found a bottle of booze. It was gin unfortunately but they passed it around. It warmed the tired and scared company almost as good as a fire.
They set watches on the second floor moving between different rooms. Ones without evidence of slaughter.
Sometime when it was still dark, a hand ruffled his shoulder. Edin glanced up from his dream about a dark and frightful cave to see Yechill standing above him.
“You,” was all he said.
Edin nodded and pulled himself away from Arianne.
She groaned and rolled over to look at him. “Where are you going?”
“To take watch,” he whispered.
She sat up and wiped her eyes and whispered “I’ll join you.”
They climbed the stairs and took positions near the center of the hall. Edin sat on a small end table and looked out over the street. Arianne sat on the bed behind him, the blankets were bloody and someone had thrown them into a corner leaving only the bare bed made of cotton.
“I’m sorry I broke down,” Arianne said. “It won’t happen again.”
Edin turned toward her, she was grim faced and her eyes downcast as if she were embarrassed.
“Do not worry about that. What happened here…” Edin shook his head. “This will happen again and again.” He looked out the window to the starry night and wondered if dawn would ever come.
“Did you really see thousands in your vision?”
Edin nodded. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, he thought, “they
swarmed like rats from the city during a fire.”
Edin knew he should be fighting, instead, he was on an expedition into uncharted lands to search for something seen by a tribal shaman.
Finding the stones. That was necessary… Flow with the Spirit; The Wind and Flame; Earth, Bolt and Water; Ecta Mastrino must tame.
But what of the rest of the prophecy. Those who have once before, must again be allied. Who were these allies? Mundane and the magi, maybe, possibly all of Bestoria.
He already destroyed the possibility of an alliance with the Duke of Dunbilston when he killed his son. They all wanted to kill him anyways. There was no way that the Por Fen Inquisitor would okay an alliance with magi. Even if it was to save the world.
Something outside roused him from his thoughts. He saw movement, a figure fluttering through the shadows like some beast stalking its prey.
Edin lowered himself off the table and crawled to the window.
“What is it?” Arianne asked.
The figure paused beneath an overhang near the body mound. A moment later, a second figure followed, running through the bare street toward the first. He saw soft, reddish hair flowing behind.
The first figure pointed toward the inn. They were humans. Though in the shadows, he saw the white fingers.
Berka started to walk slowly toward the wall. The man was large, tall and thick. His hood was up and he carried a large greatsword. “Berka?” he wondered.
The man was halfway to them when Edin heard a loud howl. Not like a dog or wolf… it was unlike any howl he’d ever heard. Low and rough like sandpaper on strong wood.
“What was that?” Arianne asked behind him.
The man paused, he glanced back toward the second figure and waived a hand. Edin barely made out him yelling “run.” It was Berka’s voice.
That moment, he spotted dark shapes a few hundred yards east. They were beyond the pile of burnt bodies and prowling. Weapons glinted in the moonlight.
The first figure stood at the center of the street as the red-haired woman ran past him. It was the girl from before.
“Go open the front door,” Edin called out yet trying to keep his voice down. “Now.”