Distant Worlds Volume 2

by Benjamin Sperduto

  “My apologies for that incident,” she said. “I trust no one was hurt?”

  Brynja grunted but said nothing. She still had a firm grip on her sword.

  “Forgive me, where is my courtesy? I am Agafiia, daughter of Jarl Habrec. I was beginning to fear that our call for help would not reach Erlinger in time.”

  “Had it not arrived when it did, it would not have reached him at all,” Brynja said. “My father rode south for war nearly four days ago.”

  “And Tuliak?” Agafiia asked. “The messenger…is he…?”

  “Take heart, he held onto life long enough to fulfill his task. His death was not in vain.” Brynja answered with as much sympathy as she could muster, though her voice was still cold.

  “Let us hope that it was not. Come then, we must get you inside the walls before it gets any darker.”

  “One of my warriors was badly hurt this morning,” Brynja said. “His lung may be pierced.” She looked up to the watchtower. “Is there no other way inside?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Agafiia said. “We can’t afford to have any vulnerable point in our defenses.”

  “And just what is it that this wall protects your people from?”

  Agafiia looked at Brynja and the color bled away from her face and her eyes widened.

  “We should not speak of such things in the open. Come.”

  Brynja gestured to their horses.

  “How are we to bring them inside?” she asked.

  Agafiia looked at the horses for a moment before she answered.

  “They must stay out here. We can’t allow any animals inside the walls.”

  Brynja was quick to connect the incident with Ilari’s horse with Agafiia’s words.

  “Because they go mad and turn on their masters?”

  “Why, yes! How did you know that?”

  Brynja explained what had happened earlier that day and Agafiia merely nodded as if it were a story she had already heard many times over. Rather than pressing the woman further, Brynja unsaddled her horse and helped the others tie their belongings together so they could be hoisted over the wall. After that was done, she signaled for them to take hold of the rope and one by one they were pulled up to the watchtower. Severian went first, carrying Casten under the crook of his massive arm as he was hauled up. Next went Kurgin and then Ilari. Agafiia offered the descending rope to Brynja.

  “Come,” she said, “we must see to your friend. Then, I am afraid I must bring you before my father.”

  Brynja heard the faint tinge fear in her voice.

  “This Razlada,” she asked, “he did not know to expect our arrival, did he?”

  “In truth, no,” Agafiia said. “You see, my father is a proud man, proud to the point of stubbornness. It was I who sent the message to your father, not he.”

  Brynja’s face hardened and she turned away from Agafiia before she said something she might later regret. She cursed inwardly, knowing that there were few things that a lord disliked more than having visitors arrive unbidden in the night.

  Agafiia led them down from the watchtower and they found themselves standing on a road of frozen mud that wound up the upper half of the hill upon which the town had been built. The town of Hillcrest itself seemed larger than the wall surrounding it had suggested from the outside. Its many buildings were built so close together that many of them appeared to touch one another and it was difficult to tell where one building ended and another began.

  The first houses and shacks lay no more than twenty feet from the wall and the uneven roads that snaked through the town were not arranged in any orderly fashion. Most of the buildings looked as if they had been built from materials that had once part of larger structures, as if the town had been taken apart and put back together many times.

  But for all its squalor, Brynja was most struck by the absence of activity. The sun had scarcely set and yet apart from the men who stood watch upon the palisade there was no one to be seen in either the streets or the homes of Hillcrest. As they passed the many small, one story houses on the outskirts of the town, Brynja noted that almost every window was covered by wooden shutters and she guessed that the bolt of every door was thrown shut as well.

  “Are there truly so few of you left within these walls?” she asked.

  “Fewer than in days past, for certain,” Agafiia said, “but we are not yet so few as to loose hope for our future.”

  “But your streets are so empty and I have yet to see a home that is not closed to its neighbors.”

  “Ah, yes. You must understand what it is like for people to live in fear, to be powerless. Our people fear the evil that darkness so often brings with it in this cursed place. It is that fear which drives them into the supposed safety of their homes when the sun sinks below the horizon.”

  “You must tell me of this evil you speak of,” Brynja said. “It would be well for us to know what it is we have come to face.”

  “Soon, but first we must see to your injured companion.”

  Agafiia was obviously familiar with the senseless winding of the town’s streets for she led them through the maze swiftly. Within a few minutes they came to a small house that was all but indistinguishable from the others around it. Agafiia knocked on the door and a moment later it swung open to reveal a young woman not much older than Brynja. She eyed them all suspiciously but seemed reassured by the presence of the jarl’s daughter. Agafiia explained who they where and told her of Casten’s injuries. She looked at the young warrior and asked Severian to bring him inside.

  “Lena has nursed many though injuries far worse than your friend’s,” Agafiia said. “He will be well cared for here, I promise you.”

  After Severian returned, Lena bade them good night and closed the door. Agafiia then continued to lead them through the twisting earthen roads of Hillcrest towards her father’s hall.

  “I would have my question answered now, Lady Agafiia,” Brynja said, more than a little impatient, as she followed her guide.

  Agafiia took a moment to begin, as if she needed to gather her courage to do so.

  “There was a time, many years ago, when Hillcrest had no need for the wall that has cut us off from the world. A time before the wolves came.”

  “The wolves?”

  “Yes. You see, they had always been a danger to the farmers outside Hillcrest. Most of the time they hunted in the forest, but every so often a sheep or a cow would disappear. It was simply the way of things in the wild, but my father never saw it that way. He hated the notion that there was something in his realm that he couldn’t control, so he and my brothers hunted the wolves down with traps, fire, and steel. For a time, that seemed to solve the problem.

  “But there was one wolf that was more cunning than the others. Its coat was as white as the new fallen snow and it had eyes that glowed like hot cinders. After it took over the local packs it actually began organizing them. The wolves started attacking not just livestock, but families and homes as well. You most likely saw a few of those farmsteads on your journey here.”

  Brynja nodded.

  “They even started attacking the town. It was like they had developed a taste for killing. That was when my father ordered the wall be built. It kept the wolves out easily enough, but it trapped us inside. We became prisoners of our own making.

  “No one really knew where the white wolf came from, but my younger sister Kalisa used to say that it was the spirits of the wolves my father and brothers had killed in cold blood come back to haunt them.”

  Brynja grunted uncomfortably.

  “My sister…she…she was different. She had a way of knowing things before they happened and was always looking for secrets that were better left forgotten. We were close, she and I. There were some who feared her and called her a witch, but I never thought ill of her because of it. Whatever else she might have been, she was still my sister and I loved her dearly.”

  Agafiia fell silent, as if too wrapped in her memories to find her voice in the p
resent. After a few seconds, she shook the sensation off and continued.

  “Kalisa died a few years after the wall went up. She never did get used to living inside the wall. Shortly after she died, my father called every man in the town to arms and marched out to hunt down the white wolf once and for all. When he came back three days later, he’d lost half his men, but not before he managed to kill the beast.

  “Everyone thought that was the end of it. Farmers moved back to their lands and we began to take the wall down. About a year went by without sight of a wolf, long enough for everyone to move on after what had happened. And then She showed up.

  “We don’t know where She came from, but some people thought that She was the white wolf’s mate. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that She was far worse than the white wolf ever was. The wolves came back, but they were bigger, faster, stronger, and even more blood thirsty. She wiped out the surviving farmsteads and nearly overran Hillcrest a few times before the wall went back up.

  “She’s the one that drives all the animals mad and turns them against their masters. No one has ever seen Her up close and we don’t know what She really is, but She appears in the form of a huge black wolf.”

  “A black wolf?” Brynja asked, her mind flashing back to a half imagined sight from earlier in the day.

  “As black as Her cruel heart,” Agafiia said.

  “So this is the evil that plagues your father’s realm? The evil that took the lives of his sons?” Kurgin asked.

  “It is,” Agafiia said.

  Silence fell upon them again as they trudged through the snowy streets.

  When Agafiia spoke again, her voice trembled with fear.

  “She has come to be known as the Wolf Queen.”

  Jarl Habrec’s great hall nestled snuggly within the heart of Hillcrest, but although the townsfolk undoubtedly considered it an impressive structure, Brynja and her companions found it rather quaint. Their opinion did not stem from any feelings of superiority or arrogance, but merely reflected the fact that they knew a great deal more of the world than the simple farmers of the town. Brynja had seen for herself the great northern cities of Egilsvar, Hakonsreach, and Valenhold, the sprawling ruins of shattered Koln, and even strange, towering palaces of Salistrayn, so the simple wooden feast hall did not impress upon her a sense of grandeur.

  Although the structure had stood for scarcely two decades, it looked more than five times that age. The exterior was pocketed with patches of rotted wood, as if the hall had contracted some foul disease that was slowly eating away its skin. Smoke rose lazily through the roof of the hall but there was nothing to suggest that Brynja and her companions would find warmth inside its moldering walls.

  A pair of haggard guards stood before the oaken doors of the hall and they looked at one another uneasily as Agafiia approached them. They appeared incapable of deciding for themselves whether or not she and her newfound allies should be admitted into her father’s hall. It was to their fortune then that before Agafiia could reach them the heavy doors swung open and the scowling Razlada stepped forth, flanked by half a dozen armed men. A dark, pernicious eye glared at them from the guard captain’s ruined face.

  “Stand aside, my lady,” he said. “Your father has requested that these usurpers be brought before him.”

  “Usurpers? You’re a fool, Razlada! Can’t you see that—?”

  “His majesty’s orders were quite clear, my lady,” he said, his voice straining to maintain a civil tone.

  Brynja stepped forward and met the captain’s baleful eye with a stern expression of her own.

  “There is no need for this,” she said. “My companions and I would be honored to stand before the jarl.”

  Razlada’s eye tightened suspiciously for a moment but then he nodded warily.

  “Your weapons,” he said. “I cannot allow you to stand before the jarl armed for battle as you are.” He signaled to the men behind him and they stepped forward with their arms outstretched. Brynja handed over her heavy sword and the numerous daggers she carried and then advised her fellows to do the same. Agafiia fumed beside her but said nothing.

  “Come with me,” Razlada said as he turned to reenter the jarl’s hall.

  The interior of the hall was in as poor a state as its exterior. Although a few small fires pushed the temperature above freezing, it was still far too cold to be considered comfortable. Even worse, the heat had melted the snow that had fallen through the numerous holes in the ceiling and large puddles of water, some of which were several inches thick, had collected on the uneven stone floor. A variety of molds and fungus covered the lower portions of the rotting walls and the air was stale and foul. The remains of a long table were pilled in the center of the room where it had been hacked apart to supply firewood.

  Jarl Habrec of Hillcrest sat brooding in a magnificently carved high backed chair at the far end of the hall. To each side of his throne stood a young man wearing chain hauberks and swords at their sides. They seemed far too young to possibly be the jarl’s personal guards but they watched both the familiar faces of Razlada’s men and the strangers behind them with equal skepticism, their hands firmly locked around the pommel of their sheathed swords. At the jarl’s feet lay a magnificent rug of white fur and on the wall above his throne the head of a white wolf had been mounted. The trophy was massive, with a fanged snout nearly as long as a horse’s and twice as wide.

  As the approached the throne, Razlada was sure to maintain a good distance between the warriors of Erlinger and his jarl. The guard captain was tense and his men emulated his manner. It was as if they expected their visitors to lash out at them at any moment.

  Although Jarl Habrec was no older than Brynja’s father, his body wore the weight of its years with far less grace. Whatever spirit he possessed in his youth was long since bled away by a sullen life of worry and woe. He regarded his visitors with faint, blue eyes that were as clouded as the skies of his cold, beleaguered realm.

  “Your majesty,” Razlada said with a bow of his head, “I bring before you the strangers who have come to us in the guise of friendship.”

  Jarl Habrec turned his weary gaze to each of the outsiders.

  “Do my old eyes fail me, Razlada?” he asked with a rattling, husky voice.

  “My lord?”

  “Five strangers you spoke of, yet only four stand here before me.”

  “One of my men was badly injured, your majesty,” Brynja said. “Lady Agafiia saw to it that his wounds were tended to when we arrived.”

  “Ah,” Jarl Habrec said. “And who is this that speaks to me without the courtesy of first giving me of her name?”

  “I am Brynja, daughter of Erlinger.”

  The jarl pondered her words for a moment before he spoke again.

  “Erlinger’s little girl, eh?” he asked. “How many bastard get does he acknowledge, I wonder?”

  Brynja scowled, but she managed to keep most of her temper in check.

  “I am his only child and heir,” she said. “The men who fight and die at his side have never questioned his word on that matter.”

  “How touching,” the jarl said. “And has your father raised you to follow his faithless ways?”

  Brynja had let the first offense go unchallenged.

  She would not do the same with the second.

  “Is it your habit to speak ill of those who have taken great risks to come to your aid, Jarl Habrec?”

  “It is my habit to speak the truth as I know it to be, girl. You will hear no kind words in this hall singing the praises of blackhearts and traitors.”

  “I’ve heard my father’s honor questioned too many times in this place,” Brynja said. “How is it that he speaks of so grandly of you while your thoughts of him are laced with malice?”

  “Erlinger honors oaths and friendships so long as it is advantageous for him to do so, manipulating those in his company to further his own ambitions. With one hand he will offer friendship and with the other driv
e a dagger through your back. I care nothing his words, for his tongue has been twisted by a lifetime of lies and deceit.”

  “You had best mind your own tongue, Jarl Habrec,” Severian, who had fought alongside Erlinger since Brynja was a child, said. “We who stand before you owe our lives to Erlinger many times over.”

  The jarl scoffed.

  “And you would not be the first,” he said. “I myself was once foolish enough to trust your master. For a time, I even called him friend. It was he who helped me gain this throne many years ago. But then he abandoned me to my enemies, to this foul evil that has laid waste to my lands for these ten years past.

  “And where was my friend Erlinger while death loomed over my people like a grim shadow? He was striking a killing blow to my cousin, Jarl Sejun of Kjellmor. When news of his siege reached my hall, I saw Erlinger for the scheming dog that he is, saw that our friendship was but a tool that served his own desires. With my sword alongside his, my cousin Sejun would not have fallen so easily, but Erlinger was cunning enough to know this and saw to it that I would be unable to ride to his aid.”

  “You judge too quickly, my lord,” Brynja said. “Jarl Sejun lay murdered and dead long before my father marched on Kjellmor. It was the sword of and ambitious thane that claimed his life, not my father’s. Even after my father defeated the usurper, he refused to claim your cousin’s throne.”

  “You lie!” the jarl said. “I see that Erlinger has indeed raised you in his own image.”

  “But I was there, Jarl Habrec,” Brynja snarled. “I was there when the walls of Kjellmor were breached, watched my father weep when Sejun’s body was burned with honor. Tell me, Jarl Habrec, is that the act of a faithless traitor?”