Habrec laughed.
“You are a foolish child. What pleasure Erlinger must have taken in molding you into such an obedient servant! Was he a harsh master? Or did you come to enjoy the torment? Tell me, girl, how old where you when he stole away with your maidenhood in the night?”
Brynja barely managed to restrain her anger, fighting the desire to lunge forward and stove the jarl’s skull in with the heavy mug that sat on the arm of his throne. It was a struggle that she had seen her father undergo many times before, for it was not out of character for lords and wealthy noblemen to believe that their wealth and standing gave them a right to belittle others without fear of reproach.
“Father!” Agafiia said, unable to contain her own considerable outrage. “Is there no shred of courtesy left to be found in this worm-eaten hall of yours?”
“Be silent, child!” Jarl Habrec said. “I owe no kind words to the emissaries of a traitorous brigand who would use your foolish cries for aid to slip murderers into our midst!”
“I swear to you for the last time, Jarl Habrec,” Brynja said through clenched teeth. “We have come to aid you, not seize your lands and throne.”
Habrec sneered at her.
“Oh, come now. Do you take me for a fool? How many spears lie in wait for your signal to begin the siege? Hundreds? Thousands? Eh? How many?”
Brynja decided at that moment that the jarl was clearly mad, his reason lost within a thick fog of fear and suspicion.
“Bah!” he said. “It matters little, girl. The darkness that dwells within the forest will consume them all by daybreak.”
“Father, this is madness!” Agafiia said. “Are you so blind that—?”
“Madness?” Jarl Habrec asked as he rose from his throne. “No, daughter, I am not so blind that I cannot see my own flesh and blood plotting against me! Seize them! Seize them all!”
Razlada shouted a signal to his men and they descended upon Brynja and her companions. Severian, Kurgin, and Ilari prepared to resist them but Brynja turned to call them down.
“No! We did not come here for this! I’ll not see us disgrace the will of my father by striking down those we have come to aid.”
Her companions stared at her disbelieving for a moment, but then allowed themselves to be surrounded by Razlada’s men. The ugly captain pushed Agafiia into their midst and then looked to the jarl.
“What is to be done with them, your majesty?”
“Take them to stables and lock them inside,” Jarl Habrec said. “Post a dozen men to guard them. Tomorrow they are to be hanged from the wall for—”
“Father!” Agafiia said.
“Silence! You are no longer my daughter! No child of mine would dare think of plotting against her own father! You will hang as a traitor alongside your fellow conspirators!”
Just as the jarl finished speaking, a sudden gust of wind swept through the hall as the heavy doors were thrown open from the outside and a terrified guard staggered towards them, his face twisted with fear.
“They come! They come! Gods save us, they are coming!”
His words swept the tension from the hall and tangible sense of horror descended upon everyone but the warriors of Erlinger, who did not understand the significance of the message. Jarl Habrec shuddered, his tortured face falling slack.
Razlada finally broke the silence among them, drawing his sword and barking to the armored men who stood guard over the jarl.
“To the hold, you fools! Get your jarl to safety!”
The two young men, whose quick but erratic movements betrayed their own feeling of panic, seized the jarl and half dragged him behind the throne. They threw open a trap door that led to an unseen chamber below the floor of the hall. Jarl Habrec muttered and wailed as the guards led him down into the darkness. The trap door slammed shut behind them, leaving Brynja and her companions wondering how it was that no one had disposed of such a niddering sovereign long ago.
Razlada gestured towards them and barked out orders to his men.
“You heard the jarl. Bind their hands and get them to the stables.”
“Wait!” Agafiia said. “Don’t be a fool! You know our defenses are stretched too thin. We need their help!”
For an instant, Razlada’s eye betrayed a glimmer of reason but it was quickly swallowed by a glazed stare of mistrust and he struck Agafiia down with his armored hand.
“Be silent, traitor!”
Brynja struggled to break free before a guard struck the back of her head with the pommel of his sword. She swooned for a moment, but managed to stay conscious. A warm trickle of blood ran down the back of her neck. Severian was prepared to throw off his captors and come to her aid until Brynja fixed her clouded eyes upon him and shook her head.
“So, there’s a little fight in you after all, eh?” Razlada said. “Perhaps there’s a better use for the lot of you yet.”
“Sir, shall we take them away?” one of the guards asked.
“No. I have a better idea.”
“Yes, sir?”
Razlada scarred face grinned sadistically.
“Bring them to the wall.”
When Brynja first followed the winding, snow covered streets of Hillcrest on her way to the decaying hall of Jarl Habrec, she had noted how desolate the town seemed to be. She had not expected Hillcrest to be a bustling city like the sprawling sores of civilization found in the great kingdoms of the south, but she also did not expect to find a veritable ghost town. Although Agafiia had claimed that most townsfolk retreated indoors with the setting of the sun, Brynja had not fully believed that so many people could possibly be cowering within the town’s crumbling homes.
But now the streets were busy with activity as guardsmen ran from door to door summoning every able bodied man that could be found to service. Brynja did not think much of their quality, for most of these recruits were either many seasons short of their prime fighting years or well into the winter of their lives. Fear was painted upon their faces as they scurried toward the town’s encircling wall wearing little more than several layers of leather and canvas clothing for protection. They were armed with a variety of makeshift and improvised weapons: scythes, wood axes, spades, pitchforks, and hatchets. A few of the jarl’s guards wore pieces of mail and carried swords of moderate quality, but most were equipped almost as poorly as the militia of rabble they had mustered to arms.
Razlada gave no indication of what it was that approached the town’s palisade as he led them to the fortifications. The ugly captain slowed his pace every few moments to bark orders to the otherwise unorganized militia, shouting and pointing to place his men where he needed them. It was obvious that he had overseen the defense of the town many times, for his orders were swift, precise, and clear.
All of the jarl’s guards had gathered along the wall. Each watchtower was fully manned and many of the remaining guardsmen stood upon a flimsy looking wall walk that was supported by wooden scaffolding built along the interior of the palisade. They were led up a rickety ladder onto the uneven planks of the wall walk and then to the nearest watchtower where Razlada ordered a guard to apprise him of the situation.
Still restrained by two men, Brynja gazed out over the sharpened points of the palisade into the darkness that surrounded the town. The thick clouds that had dimmed the sun during their travels now blocked the light of the moon and the torches of the watchtower and those carried by the men along the wall made it difficult to see anything more than a few dozen feet beyond the perimeter of the fortifications. Even so, Brynja’s sharp eyes detected movement just beyond the edge of the darkness and she could hear a low, steady growl that seemed to emit from many sources within the shadows.
Two of Razlada’s men had carried their weapons from the jarl’s hall to the watchtower and at his command they tossed them over the palisade to the snowy ground below. The one eyed guard captain ordered that the prisoners to be unhanded and he approached Brynja, grinning cruelly.
“Listen well, men,” he said
, calling out so that all the guards and militiamen nearby could hear him. “These brigands have come to us in false friendship, invited into our home by cowardly treason that would see your noble jarl run through by a usurper’s sword!”
Much of Razlada’s audience remained silent, as if they were not so ready to accept the captain’s explanation on simply the strength of his word. He seemed unaware of their hesitancy and continued.
“In the name of a faithless villain they ride, claiming to bring aid to our cause, but secretly lying in wait like cunning vipers for a chance to strike at our beloved jarl! And a chance they would have had, for the treasonous heart that slipped them into our midst belongs to the jarl’s own daughter!”
“You lie!” Agafiia said, nearly breaking into tears. “Can’t you see that my father has been given over to madness?”
“Silence her!” Razlada said. One of her captors clamped his hand over her mouth and restrained the jarl’s daughter before she could continue.
“Though these honorless dogs would not understand such things,” he said, seeing that Agafiia could no longer interrupt him, “we folk of Hillcrest cherish our oaths and see to it that they are fulfilled by those who have made them. These assassins thought to deceive us by promising aid and so we shall now hold them to that promise. Cast them over the wall! Let them stand against the evils of the wild as our first line of defense!”
Now a cheer erupted from many of the townsfolk, though it was difficult to know if their exuberance was born of their will to see justice done or the relief of seeing their defenses bolstered.
One of the guardsmen had already looped a rope around one of the sharpened logs that comprised the palisade and one by one, Brynja and her companions were led to it by swordpoint and slide down to the ground. Brynja was the last to descend and as she grasped the thick rope, she turned to Razlada to ask him one last question.
“What lurks beyond those shadows?”
“Why, your death, girl,” he said with a crooked smile. “What else did you expect?”
Brynja’s young, but hard face betrayed no fear. Her eyes seethed with loathing for the scarred man before her.
“Know that I do not take oaths lightly, Razlada of Hillcrest, and I swear that you will die by my hands, be that death in this life or another.”
Razlada opened his mouth to respond, but something in Brynja’s smoldering blue eyes compelled him to silence. Without another word, the young warrior vaulted over the palisade and slid down the rope to the earth below.
Severian, Kurgin, and Ilari had already snatched up their weapons by the time Brynja reached the ground and joined them. She quickly spotted her heavy broadsword and drew it from its sheath as she took it up. A few seconds of searching the snow produced two of her daggers, but she did not immediately see the others and she decided to abandon them. Her companions had already arranged themselves in a close fighting formation, backs to one another in a semicircle facing the wall of darkness ahead of them. Now that she was closer to the source, Brynja could better discern the source of the sounds she had heard while upon the wall. They were the deep growls of wolves but she could not identify how many fanged mouths they emanated from. Their number was more than Brynja could easily count.
“It seems the wolves do have a fondness for this country,” Severian said.
“How could these animals hold so many in such terror?” Ilari asked aloud with a glance back at the numerous torchlights upon the wall.
“Have you forgotten the words of Lady Agafiia so quickly?” Kurgin asked. “These beasts are no mere animals. And who can say what other horrors this Wolf Queen has given birth to in the depths of the forest?”
Before she could consider the question, something else drew Brynja’s attention. She felt her blood chill and her skin tingled just as it had the night before when they camped in the forest. Whatever it was that had caused her so much unease had returned, and this time it was not alone.
“There’s something else out there,” she said. “Something with the wolves.”
“What is it?” Ilari asked.
“I don’t know,” she said as she sniffed the frigid air. “Something foul.”
There would be no further consideration of the matter for just as Brynja spoke, a pack of wolves lunged forth from the curtain of darkness. The beasts were larger than any wolf she had ever seen, standing almost as tall as a man at the shoulder. Their eyes gleamed with an intelligence that was not natural for a mere animal.
This first wave of wolves scattered their defensive formation as effectively as a cavalry charge. As she leapt aside, Brynja managed to clip one of them on the leg as it barreled past her and it tumbled to the ground with a pained yelp. The nimble blade of Ilari fell upon the wounded beast as soon as the swordsman regained his own footing. Kurgin narrowly avoided the massive jaws of another wolf and only Severian refused to scramble out of the way of the charge. The giant warrior stood his ground and smote down one of the wolves with a single swing of his great warhammer.
The others quickly rallied around him as the wolves began to disperse their formation and come at them in a mass of fangs and claws. They fought wildly and with a frantic desperation that the wolves seemed unprepared for. For too many years that had assailed the cowering defenders of Hillcrest and they had forgotten what it was like to face such savagery in combat. Brynja’s thick bladed broadsword cleaved through the skull of the wolf before her while Severian’s warhammer splintered the skull of another beside her. Ilari and Kurgin were equally up to the task, the former’s curved sword whirling too quickly for the eye to follow and the latter’s bloody axe hacking and chopping anything within the warrior’s considerable reach.
A second wave of wolves followed the failed charge of the first, and then another after that until the bodies of more than two dozen of the beasts lie piled around them. After the third pack was struck down, Brynja and her companions were severely winded from the battle. It was one thing to fight against men, but the strain of facing an enemy that was swifter and stronger than them was quickly wearing them down. Each bore numerous cuts from the slashing claws of the beasts but only Kurgin had suffered a deep wound that was bleeding severely. The red haired warrior was beginning to stagger and his knees seemed ready to buckle altogether, but he did not fall. Brynja fought the temptation to glare back defiantly at Razlada, who watched them from the safety of the palisade. Surely he had not expected them to last so long.
Despite their success, Brynja’s spirits were not high. She knew that Kurgin was not likely to survive another wave of the beasts and if they were to lose one of their number the wolves would soon overwhelm them. Even so, it was not in Brynja’s nature to dwell upon such things. She simply accepted that she and her companions had come to what was to be their end, and she resolved to make it a noble one.
But the fourth pack of wolves did not emerge from the darkness as she expected. She could still hear the beasts growling menacingly but they did not advance. Then the strange sensation she had been feeling heightened and her heart nearly shuddered as she finally came face to face with the source of her unease.
Out of the black shadows of night stepped a figure that had the lupine features of a wolf, but it walked upright like a man. It was as tall as Severian and its thick, bulging muscles made the giant warrior seem undernourished by comparison. The creature’s lupine head and fanged jaws were as large as the great wolves that preceded it but its hands had jointed fingers like those of a man and with them it carried a primitive stone axe. Its green eyes regarded them with keen awareness and its movements were a bizarre mixture of those of a wolf and a human.
The man-wolf stalked towards them and held its crude weapon aloft as it unleashed a wild howl. Its call was answered by a feral chorus of howls from darkness and then more of the man-wolves began to step into the light. Brynja counted ten of the creatures before they charged forward to a cacophony of growling fury. Without thought and her reason clouded by her own battle lust, she rush
ed towards them with a fearsome cry and her companions followed close behind her.
Brynja ducked under the swinging axe of the lead man-wolf to thrust her broadsword into its gut and with a fierce twist, she yanked the blade out the creature’s side to disembowel it. The beast fell to the ground in the throes of its agonizing death and its companions seemed to hesitate, as if they had never seen the blood of their own kind. That hesitation cost another of the man-wolves its life as Kurgin’s axe chopped into its shoulder at the base of the neck, nearly taking off its head.
But the creatures found their courage as quickly as their overconfidence had been lost and they fought back ferociously. Brynja heard the bones of Severian’s arm snap as he threw the limb up in a desperate attempt to block one of the stone axes wielded by the man-wolves. With an amazing feat of strength, the warrior managed to swing his massive hammer with a single hand to smash in the chest of his assailant before collapsing in pain. Severian tried to rise, but another man-wolf landed a blow that crushed his skull and sent him tumbling into the snow.
Brynja saw Severian struck down but could do little to avenge him for the relentless attacks of the man-wolves pressed her defenses to the limit. She could not recall ever fighting anything so fast and so strong. The creatures were beginning to surround them and she found herself assailed from all sides. She parried, dodged, rolled, and scrambled away from their attacks guided by little more than her frantic instincts. Only her whirling broadsword kept her from being completely overwhelmed, for she managed to land nearly as many blows as she avoided, taking down a few of the creatures for good and wounding several more.
Kurgin, who was already slowed by a serious wound before the onset of the battle, could not withstand their onslaught. While his great strength could keep some of the beasts at bay, his reflexes were too hampered by injury to avoid their attacks. He was brought down by a horde of axe heads and claws that tore him apart. Ilari faired better than his fallen companion for a time if only because he was swift and slippery enough to elude their axes and evade their claws. He ducked through the ranks of the man-wolves, stabbing and slashing as he went, but the beasts pressed in closer as more of them charged forth from the darkness and soon Ilari was unable to simply dodge away from harm. The razor sharp claws of the man-wolves tore into his flesh and he disappeared beneath a sea of fur and fangs.
Distant Worlds Volume 2 Page 28