As Vagabonds or Kings

XVIII : As Vagabonds or Kings

Upon a scarp they meandered, to pick of yarrow and foxglove. Day was young, with wisps colder than was the season entitled. Below, a short stream dove past their bank, sprinkling its stone, then down to a rift where it fell noisily and was not seen again. Beyond was a final sward, and beyond that was Eritle, high on its cliff.

The furrfiends elected to stall, so as to collect ingredients for all their makeshift additives, to treat injury or aggrandize it. Ulf indulged them, then scavenged amidst his silences the insight that any furrfiend that survived their earliest treks became quite adamant and adept herbalists. The flesh of man could not withstand the grime of beasts unsupplemented. Infection did more to a mind than pain, so did fiends become nomads, and nomads become screamers, in the fringe of the deadliest planes. Ulf laid cold eyes against Eritle’s crags, whilst they stuffed petals and stubs into their cloaks.

Eventually, Horral glanced up from his bend and saw with what zeal his dark accomplice eyed their venture. He grinned, perhaps at the romance of Ulf’s appetency, then offered a gaze of his own to the old town of rains and fogs. It was a good omen that they arrived on a dry day.

“No less worthy of us than it was a month past,” said Horral, a jest blooming on his tongue. “The Crown of the Wilderwheats. Magnificent little hump, no?”

“Crown, he says,” said Eidrik. “But each goer I’ve hassled calls her the Bucket. She’s good for little, besides catching rain.”

“But good for less, now,” said Horral, soured by a sudden plight. “The sigil of Galehaven flies. And with it comes more than flag-bearers.” A mood fell snappish over them both. The sigil of the Clergy lurked beyond sight but was fat in their focus all the same. “Keep your head low as you walk the roads, Ulf,” warned Horral. “They’ve raised cages all about. You’re bound to get blood in your eye.”

“Aye,” said Eidrik. “And they waste little time in picking their prisoners. It’s a welcoming lot, in Galehaven’s irons.”

Horral steered his choler towards Ulf, firmly enough that it could not be spurned, nor mistaken. “Horrid, isn’t it?” asked the furrfiend.

“They go above ground,” said Ulf, hardly discernible above the flap of his cloak. Hardly attached to current affairs. “I have seen gaols where that is mercy.”

“And mercy is the right of Galehaven, is it?” asked Horral. “They may serve it where and to whom they wish—death to the naysayers? To the slur that is otherwise?”

“Until those come who can stop them.”

Horral stood quiet a moment, letting the unfeeling truth grope his hairs, seeing the detached outlander, feeling the yarrow butt against his shins. Unless the march was arrested, indeed would its perversions stretch forever. He tried to picture who held the calibre of fortitude to see that road split. He could not resist the vulgarity of the image. He longed to embody it, to die for it.

“That,” said Horral, “I’ll drink to.” Already he could taste the first tankard of Ellimon’s Bale, and how sweet a wayward month would make that first bitter, watered-down sip, so thick your lips second-guessed its nature. Cheap and perfect, he thought.

“I’m sure Gaerhild’s missed you,” said Eidrik, still thoroughly engrossed in his inspection and its pluckings. “It must weigh on her, all that ale in your leave, unspent…”

“You were always her favourite. You and her both have that scruffy, ‘speak to me and I’ll cut you’ way about you.” Then he turned to Ulf. “Come to think of it, she’d like you too.”

“I am not here for drink,” he answered.

“Ah, yes,” Horral chuckled. “I nearly forgot, you drink only the blood of your enemies.”

The Northman did not answer. Horral fought the question alone: Why had Ulf Eldric come to Eritle? The town owed its own artistic callousness between its fellows, where rain sobbed for those too stern for it, and ale alone smudged the cruel plainness of it all. Drunkards might misinterpret the fogs as bright and inviting and go desirous in the wet spectacle. Ulf did not share the common want for solitude nor hold fears of the life unfenced. Horral’s thoughts brought him to road-breaks and he grew fretful.

“But why are we here, Northman?” he asked, pensive and aimed upon the cliff. “This is not a chance picking of yours. I’ve my doubts that here sits the hill you plan to settle atop, to raise little northmen in hail. Surely, there is a reason lost in this clump of wood and rock. Must it be private from us?”

“Only whispers,” said Ulf, with a short shake of the head. “Tell of red riders, headed north.”

Then Horral’s thoughts dropped from his skull down his spine, until his feet were heavy, and stammering he turned to Ulf. “Red riders?” he asked again.

“Only whispers,” Ulf repeated. “But this town is not so vast as to hide its answer. By night, perhaps you can decide for yourself if it is reason enough.”

“You said red riders, Ulf,” said Horral in blunt urgency, whilst toggling between dread and the optimism of disbelief.

Ulf tired of his alarmed fellow already, of fright’s wide-eyed vestige. “You fear not the lair of a svarkahl,” said Ulf, “but at coloured garb you quiver? Yes, red riders. And a good enough man said they rode north. He guessed Eritle, and seemed worthy of trust.”

“That you may trust a thing made not of steel is its own discovery, but I pray you do not mean the Red Riders? Surely not. No, certainly not the Crimson Clad?”

The name was a bell in the outlander’s mind. It lifted him into reflection. There was a stutter of stoic expression in which he toiled after a ringing clarity, a retreating cackler. His chin descended, his eyes recovered their future.

“Crimson…” whispered Ulf. “Yes. It must be.”

Horral was flustered, grumbling amidst the daunting sonorities of terrible doubt. He rubbed a fist against his temple, stepped quickly to and fro, then tensed as if bracing for an impact, under the study of a catapult.

“All-Father’s twelve…” he said with a sweat. “What creature have I found in you, Ulf, who speaks the dialects of dead cities and sends himself upon wardogs? You are a fool or after death, and then the greatest of fools.” He stamped about again, and Eidrik was his worry’s shadow. “The Crimson Clad are never prey, Ulf! Not some strawman troupe for you to test your mettle against,” Horral warned. “They are the burning fist of Galehaven, the High Ovalin’s wolves, and it is for them that fear of blood’s red is lesser than iron’s.” His concern darted against the town again and his mind filled with its people: clumps of witless onlookers in the cavities of clueless thought. “But for what would they seek here?”

Eidrik rose from his labours and came stern before the Northman. “You’re a dullard, and ill-fated, or you’re lying,” he hissed. “Perhaps you’ve made fools of us all the while, and unwittingly we’ve harboured an initiate north. Is that the truth of you and your prowess, outlander? You seek a place in the rank of real devils?”

“It is not for you to judge what I seek,” Ulf dismissed.

“No,” said the furrfiend, as he tapped a finger to his looming axehead, an ammolite eagle on his shoulder. “If you belong to them, Ulf, I will let my axe pass all judgement. I will strip the blue-gold from your vein.”

Ulf stood unchanged before the threat. “It is not in you to stop me,” he promised. “But be at ease. If they are here, it will not be with worship that I reveal them.”

The vow drew Eidrik from his temper. He nodded and the softening of his eyes sufficed for apology. At a short distance, he loathed his impulse; the enemy inspired ruthless creeds of short verses. It was shameful to indulge violence on their account. Horral was no less disturbed.

“So it is true then,” he said, slapping his sides. “You aren’t here to rally with them, only to kill yourself. A fine relief, that is! Fine indeed! Now tell me how an outlander, from the damned Gargantan no less, finds cause against a plight of Arakvan? When have they roamed so far north as to wrong you? Or perhaps you’ve lied again and you are not from afar at all? Perhaps you hail from the town next over and your garb is dyed cotton.” Exasperated, Horral bundled all frustrations against his pounding chest. “It’s funny that I can know nothing of you, and yet see you now and name your fate.”

“Careful, Horral,” said Ulf slowly, now impatient. “I have come far. That is no lie. And that distance has not been made for an elder to so quickly spurn it, to instead weave his own prophecies. Speak not of fate to me, Horral. I have outlasted it.” He gazed again at Eritle. “And now the time of these red riders has come.”

Eidrik almost laughed in his stalk. “Never have I heard a death wish so fetching.”

“You keep your right to take leave of us after this labour is seen through,” said the old fellow. “You’ve all right to take it now if you wish, and perhaps it is for our sake and yours that you should. But I must know, Ulf. I must know what has brought you here. And I swear to never leave your side till that answer is mine. Dogged I will run you through the hills, and dogged I will die if that answer is not made mine.”

There was no response. Horral looked at Ulf and Ulf looked far beyond him. A man of barriers so broad and so many, his heart was almost imperceivable to a mortal eye. Scars promised grit, the glare’s tenacity was testament to experience, the otherworldly flaps about him and the gnarled blade at his hip proved his homeland enough, but as to him, his purpose that conjured and endured the hardship of homeless venture rode a hopeless guess. Beyond harm he was, but so too did the Northman forgo his comforts and his brotherhoods. His shield was the half of humanity he split away and what remained was of will and rancor, as well as the most ceaseless wants of man. Resolve was human enough. Desire, perhaps the most human thing of all. Horral did not dare believe that there could be nothing else. He knew the barriers could not be bashed askew or blown past. They would lift only if Ulf felt the urge to show what laid below.

“I had a wife, once,” Horral confessed, as he turned to Eritle. The winds struck him, their cold like a warning against truth. Even Eidrik found suspense, knowing Ulf’s disdain for a heart’s revelation, but Horral spoke on. “Knowing as you are,” he said, “you might’ve guessed it in one as old as me. It was no noble tale, and that of course you know. I loved her,” he shrugged. “I hope, still, that she loved me. And the time came as it always does when love is cut short.

“Weren’t beasts, nor a thing as wretched in its dignities as the Crimson Clad. Only bandits, and an ordinary pack. Came upon the home when I was out doing… this. This killing we do, that you once named the underbelly of the awful.” Horral laughed and it was short and dry. “It was in that pursuit, meagre as it might be, that she was lost to me. And I returned as I imagine so does everyone who has their heart taken. Weeping and stomping, wishing it otherwise. If beasts were the underbelly, then the sight of her… laid out there… That was the very eye.” His gaze greyed. “It’s a hard thing to forgive. And foolish and proud and wrathful, I walked after them, away from my lands, my home, whatever I could say I knew. Through death and burnings I followed, deep into woodlands at the cusp of foreign lands. And each day, every night, I reaffirmed the bloody vow. Through tears, I affirmed it. For vengeance, as burning and death met worlds old and new. There I was, running and tracking to quench the little fury, while I gave away hearts and minds and so many miles to the beasts. To the plagues. I surrendered my people for my pride, to again sleep soundly.

“It was not mighty or valiant to kill in her name, Ulf. It was a sad little thing, and it was not until my legs gave out behind them that I saw too it was selfish.” Horral tilted his head, still wondering which path climbed and where in desperation’s valley he stood. “I came home and there went vengeance. So my life was saved. Countless others, too, only cause my blade stayed most where it was needed.” Then he turned back to Ulf, and Ulf beheld a gaze more vital, more drained of joy than any he had seen on Horral before, even while he laid murmuring madness and leaning into death. “And it is not to shame your hunt that I speak,” said Horral, “if it is indeed a hunt that has brought you here. It is not to further burden you or make you doubt yourself, or turn you to the belief that revenge is never right, for I cannot say in good conscience that it is not.” Then that hardness wavered, and in its place was a longing that outlasted a thousand agonies and still held no answer. “But you carry on, and long you’ve carried, from the high North that most journeymen have never seen, all the way to lowly, broken Arakvan, all in the name of finding some cur dressed in red.” He chuckled again, but it was a sound without feeling. “And you haven’t looked back. You haven’t faltered. The sun rises and it is late in your leave. Shadow returns and on you carry till dawn again. And that is a thing I cannot name. That is a will I cannot fathom, Ulf. And I must know. I must understand why where I turned back, you marched on. I must know your reason, and call it vanity, but even if only to know mine was not wrong.”

His last words bled remorse. There was a grief in the air that knew no scent nor temperament, and yet chilled that band all the same. They were all, for a time, slaves to the anguished plea; thralls to the vacillation of an elder mind, rotting and yet unsure, even as its road neared its end.

Ulf dwelled on his words. There was a flicker in his left eyelid, a lump that moved through his throat, then he was stern and distant again. He gazed still to Eritle and still the winds brought the cold. Then his lips came apart.

“They took much from me, Horral,” he confessed. “There is nothing right or wrong about it. They bled me, so now I have come south to take their heads.” The telling was bleak, low, surmounted nearly by the call of gales, then his head dropped to Horral and he spoke clearer. “You should have kept on against your wife’s killers, Horral,” said Ulf. “You should have hunted until your legs snapped then further still. This land is dying with or without you. The people suffer, when you aid and when you run, and the day after it happens again.” His cloak wrapped around him in the breeze, engulfed his form in shadow. Ulf was the sigil of the deep again. “The least you could do,” he vowed, “is stop those whoresons from seeing that day come.”

Horral was alone with his worries, insulted by their weight before the outlander, but at his visage almost humoured. “Heh,” the old furrfiend breathed. “And then she would cheer?”

“Then you would bury them.”

Somewhere in the distance, a blair hog howled.

“I will aid you against all manner of beast, Ulf, if that means still that you’ll hear of my wish,” said Horral, collected and of frank demeanour. “But I will not aid you in claiming the life of a Crimson Clad. Their deaths are not easily forgiven, and none such as I could undo the evil that they are.”

“And that is why you turned,” answered Ulf, “where I marched on. It is not strength, Horral. It is simply a matter of what you need and what life will give you, then, when it holds its hand, a matter of what you will take. That is the way of our world. And if it were otherwise, then I would certainly not belong.”

“You need a good mirror, Ulf,” chirped Eidrik, eager to free them from their bleakness, “if you think you belong.” He walked farther, past the pair and down towards the stream, with his pockets full of flowers cloven and killed, colours in fade. “But you did save us in the Cleft more than we saved you, and so when they dump your body from the rocks I will run down and fetch it, then bury you as if you were any other.”

“But first,” said Ulf, “these red riders shall die.”

By even the meeker standards of Eritle’s ilk, who for hours hid in congested straits while rain soiled their clutter, could not deny the expanse was crowded. Derelict yet essential stores privated their freedom of movement and at a slant between stacked shelves were they left to make their beds, atop the flatter, more solid boxes. It was a musty lair. Dust reigned, though cobwebs sought ardently to usurp. Centerground sat a wide bucket, to catch the leakings of the roof. Light fell from its slits in the gentler times of day. To maintain the illusion of the attic’s abandonment, they lit no candles, guarded their dark anonymity. Pressed against the boards, they caught the blue spotlight of the storm or its boom.

The west wall managed daylight’s widest gleam, bringing brilliance between the crack and across their floor, to burn the creep of dust. Parted from the light in the west corner, a helmet of glamorous red sat atop a barrel. It was of a biting wolf, with a dark faceplate where its throat laid, though now was the plate slid up to its slot and the throat wide and empty. From the plate’s cover were the wolf’s eyes made black. Some demonic taint twisted it, adding to its gaze good malice and a cut to its cheek and a fork to its snout.

Seated right of it on a box was a man, wearing a dark and damp cloak. His eyes were fat and brown pools that seemed so stern they were obsessed with all they fell upon, yet in deranged fashion, like everything he saw he wished to exploit. They aimed down, at a mace in his fist. Delicately he fingered its edges, with caution fit for the handling of a newborn. The armament was made of carogain: an eastern metal used to forge chains. Its head was hollow, caged by curved blades sharp enough to rend flesh but firm enough too to bash a shield aside. It held in its centre a splendid gem of blue. The air around it seemed cold to the touch, to the inhale.

Arawn walked in, slipped between the clutter. It was of no surprise to find him in his corner brooding, dreaming of battle. Stubble covered his face. A nubby, flat nose made his breaths loud and coarse, compared quite contrastingly to the usual quiet of his peers. His lips were cracked and small, and his chiseled, beaten face wore an irritation that smiling could not cast off.

She went to the opposite wall, where she had fashioned a little lounge of flour sacs, atop a tipped bookshelf that served as a mattress. There she laid, and from the crack between her lay and the wall she picked up a book. It was an old, ragged tome found with what the last vagabonds left behind, wielding scriptures of ignored myth and buried custom. She had made it through four lines before Odr the Toothed drew her away.

“I thought about it more,” he said, without stealing his gaze from the carogain. “This relic… rather than a bond—or a barrier, as he might call it—I think it’s a weapon.”

Arawn made no effort to veil her disinterest. “It’s Veidt,” she said. “Of course the relic’s a bloody weapon.”

“It’s different this time, Arawn. He contracts fucking Aelsen? Keeps even us in the dark? What I wager, and better to bet your damned life on this, is that he’s found it again. It.”

“Keep saying it,” said Arawn. “Doesn’t mean I’ve got any better idea as to what you’re talking about.”

“His little obsession!” said an eager Odr, leaning forward and now removed from his mace. “That same bloody dream from all those years ago, before we were called what we’re called, or before the realm knew we even existed. Back when we were his little secret, he’d speak of it, yes? He’d speak, on and on, like some shaman who could not wake from their vision. Last time it was nothing, but I wager this time it’s worked. He’s been digging, Arawn. Deep, into the bowels of the underearth, exhausting what funds the Father gives him, putting his very namesake in jeopardy. I think the fool found it again. I think, this time, he found what he dragged us-”

The trapdoor opened. They could not see who entered through the clutter, but they heard the steps, broad and heavy as they were, then soon an obelisk of jade came to glare at them through the shelves. It was Veil, cloaked and firm of eye.

“Veil,” greeted Arawn. “Finally found some way to pass the time, on your walk? Or are you keeping it for yourself?”

He walked past them both, gazed out the slit of sunlight and upon the streets. The town snored in early day. All was quiet without a storm, as if under a clear sky its people were without identity. Flogged and miserly so long, they forgot how to compose themselves without the hardy commandments of clouds; how to walk toward what they craved and how to wish for better.

“Word south,” said Veil Nadaar. “We are to ready ourselves for the escort. The High Ovalin believes it will be of short time until our trophy is heaved up from alow the land.”

“Is that what he thinks?” mocked Odr. “By that account, it’ll only be a few more months.” He spat phlegm upon the wood, where it pooled and stayed. “Could have at least sent us down there with Aelsen. Could have given us some fucking thing to do.”

“No,” said Arawn, shaking her head. “He cannot risk us, and the underearth is of a thousand daggers. Even if a claw never finds us, the walls breathe. That is no place to find our doom.”

At that, Veil tilted his head, murmured to himself. “As fine a doom as any other.” Then he looked to her and spoke louder. “A finer doom than we may wish.”

“I’ll say this,” began Odr. “If there’s a stump in any of this, if this relic doesn’t find us right or we don’t find Veidt… He might burn down Eritle himself, just to find a clue in the ashes.”

Arawn fell dour. In the space between the lines of her book, in the blur of unfocus through which fantasy sprawled, she beheld a future of fire and wroth. “If we fail,” she thought, “it will not be taken lightly. Darr breathes heavy on his neck already. He will not stomach a setback, not when the stakes are so high.”

“What’s the worst he could do to us?” Odr asked. “Have us killed? We do his killing. He’ll shout a while, do that thing where his eyes chew on you, then find some dungeon dweller to pick at.”

“You think if he ordered Osi to butcher you that you would emerge from it?” laughed Arawn. “You’d be mincemeat by one swing of his arm, then a portioned supper in two.”

“I don’t fear Osi. He’s big, and strong, and slow. I’ll run a lap around him then bury my mace in his skull if he proves a lapdog to the very end. Though of him I think better than that.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“If you’ve faith in him, put it in nothing but his power, and that you must fear. We all should,” she said. “There’s skill, then there’s monsters.”

A moment was spent, then Arawn nearly leapt from her lounge, startled, as she found herself under the full weight of Veil’s intrigue. There, in his dark head, stabbed two eyes of gold, and they fell like shackles upon her.

“You are wrong,” he said. “There are only monsters. And do not again name fear in me. It is an insult to the boy I was. To the boy I left behind.”

It was a greater comfort to silence herself than grant to his tenor another word. Odr hopped between them, unbeknownst to Veil’s wickedness or Ander’s grizzly recall, hushed as it was. There were terms like ransom between them, though Odr was amiss in his ignorance.

“Mad,” he scoffed. “The two of you, fucking mad. I would sooner be trapped in this crawlspace with bloody Osi. Least he speaks clearly. It’s no riddle to learn his wants.”

A squeak was heard from below. Through old cloth-tossed chests was a scutter. A runt quickened on long arms, under which webbed dark skin like feathers beneath the wing, catching the wind of the rush and readying to glide.

“Now what are we to do about old Aelsen,” Odr continued, “if the cur grows keen on keeping his claw shut? There’s chance he finds this relic and figures it’s better off in his estate, than back in the Isyncra. Veidt’s without right sympathy for rats, and Aelsen missed Njall. Could be he’s grateful for us letting the rope slip, if it comes to that. Mayhaps it’s better that it does.” Odr leaned forward, eyed the runt darkly, then snatched it off the ground. “And to be candid, we’ve a fool in our lord for trusting him. Ervellyn, with what names he’s foraged, earned such in the Spire Mines, that we know. Keeping workers from running with their reapings and whatnot, and they only saved themselves the haul on account of the bolt he’d put in their backs.” He squeezed the runt in one fist and watched its body bend. A high, smothered squeak bleated out. It did nothing to quell Odr’s grip. “What is it about downing miners that earns him his lick of trust? Veidt has some lordly vision, indeed he must, for I can’t see what he sees in the bastard.” Odr grabbed a little legs by the foot, then pulled. The skin stretched until the fur began to tear, then further still he tugged, as a crack sounded and a squeak chased it. “You ask me, I’d say-”

A scale wrapped around Odr’s throat. Before the shock could settle in his eyes, Veil heaved him upright and bashed him against the wall. His grip crunched into a fist. The runt broke free and scurried off. Odr’s feet writhed just above its flight, desperate again for the ground’s closure. His hands touched and in doing so pleaded to the wrist of Veil Nadaar. Odr was of good and firm stature, able to rend flesh or lumber barehanded if duty called for it, but in the clutches of Nadaar he seemed a plaything, and a measly one at that. All his power was pinned and left to quiver. In a heaving effort, Odr tried again to breathe, but the vigour—the violence—in Veil’s eyes made him hold his breath.

“Would you kill a beast,” asked Veil, “only cause it walked on four legs?”

Odr tried to answer but all words were welled at the throat. Something in his comrade’s terror dissatisfied Veil deeply, so with a frown he flung Odr sideward, where the Toothed scraped against the wall and into a bookcase. It rocked, but Odr caught on and rose, gasping against it. He found Veil’s back, whilst the kinnit peered inquisitively out into the sunlight once more.

“There are many enemies on our path, Odr,” he said in command. “Do not make foes of what walks away.”

Arawn returned to her book. The ragged pants of Odr the Toothed were a fine ambience for her reading. Something about hearing him weak calmed her, or perhaps it was merely a comfort for Veil’s wrath to be set on another, as there was no greater safety than in his shadow. The attic was quiet from then on. Odr went about muttering and waiting, and making mean faces against the wood in great indignance. Veil continued to eye the waking day, digging for some verity within those golden rays and amidst the downtrodden people beneath. Eventually, his vigilance wore, and raising a deep hood he gave his cloak to the pair, and vanished back behind their wall of bookshelves. In his absence, Odr came tall, breathed loud, sprawled in his lay and forewent any effort to hide himself or conceal his unrest. After chewing his words for a time, he gave a glare to Arawn.

“Any of that reassuring to you?” he asked. “Have you more faith now in our brave leader? ‘Do not make foes of what walks away’,” he muttered. “I swear, he’d sooner kill us than a rabbit, if it meant that rabbit could snack on our flesh.”

“What do you expect?” asked Arawn over her book. “Men like you have made his every year a torture. Made him cruel and unforgiving, to last the night into tomorrow. When ever has a rabbit slighted him?”

“He’s more than reimbursed for any of that, and you know it,” Odr snarled. “Most kinnits die at birth. Gouged by the mother, revenged by the elements. The rest trudge on to join the Baelgarth or march themselves off a cliff. And here he stands, First of the fucking Crimson Clad, wealthier than some lords, and still he rues and grudges and suffers us his temper.”

“It’s surprising.”

“His gall? It’s plain madness!”

“His restraint,” Arawn corrected. “If I were a kinnit, strong and quick as him, as bloodied as the world made him, I would have done away with the two of us a long time past. If I wore scales too, my hand wouldn’t have left your throat, Odr.”

Then the attic was quiet again, until Odr threw up his hood and, daydreaming of a morning ale strong enough to bring him elsewhere, took leave of Arawn and her scrutiny.

Eritle’s mornings were idle, comprised of the uniform skulk toward labours, leaving some expanse untread in the backroads of the cliff. There, in the vacuum, lurked the phantom, with an image averse to early day. Ulf was then surveyor of the desolate, slipping through broken walls and peering past battered doors. It was in short, studious time that the town’s innards were canvassed and their passengers stained to his eye. The effort achieved little exposure, for him or his query. Waking folk could glimpse a corner flicker, a shade that trawled for the avenues of morning’s neglect, then the cloak tugged and the visitor was unreal again. There sprouted up an eeriness, that morning, over Eritle. A suspicion without a name or a substance tainted the town’s guardians. There was a trick of the light, a shadow astride amongst them, at a time too bright for dark to live.

If they were here and the town was not yet trembling or groveling in their wake, surely they had hid themselves, thought Ulf, and done so well and deeply. Their rank implied too great a proficiency to succumb to sloppy tactics. If they possessed any wit, they would adopt a point of vantage through which they could toll their surroundings, dissuade the sniffers. They would perch high enough that the beasts of Argolan would not trouble them and force the red spectacle.

Ulf mounted a wagon, kicked off its helm to reach a low roof, then swung himself to it, and from there leapt to a greater height. He breached the rooftops, rather soundlessly. It was only the caged of Eritle, thrust so far above, that could behold him. They were without diversions to gawk at beside their scabbed arms and aching bellies. A few Patched and addled hangers did find his traces and laughed, with all the spirit of a pestilent wilderness. Bars shook to greet the banshee come to haunt them. They shriveled in their iron. Ulf paid them no heed, but did marvel at the cacophony that fell over the streets, the awe he inspired in the mind adrift. Eritle was a town bewitched at dawn, loud and eerie, like to signal a barbarous troop’s onslaught. The guards could glance above and only guess: an eviler force lurked in their sky.

Ulf witnessed a father in a yard urging his boys indoors, hearing of the sightings and fearful of a snatching. He heard, in a window ajar below his creep, a woman and her mother speak of ill tidings, the coming of grim weather, and their shepherd rumoured to flap in the open airs. The window soon slammed shut. Hours felt his search before the streets began to clear, to the indoors and their warm prayer that might subvert the early curse. Ulf saw a guard stance himself in the square’s heart, before the Amber Falcon, and gaze above skeptically, before a cold took him, and rubbing his arm he fled to the tavern. To company and ale.

In an hour of little alarms and hastening superstition, Eritle was made his. Ulf was discontent aboard his measly conquest. The town earned a power to better conceal itself, to grant a thicker wall between him and its beastliest secrets. As he stood there, prowling atop the square with only the marble Falcon to oppose him, his scowl was snagged with the show of teeth. His lips seemed so decayed they could too be fetid. Then into sight strode familiar company. Eidrik and Horral passed by the square. They appeared sullied by its loneliness, its swift gloom. An air scratched at the old man and he rubbed out a chill from the back of his neck. Suddenly his head switched and raised, meeting Ulf plainly at his rooftop. There was a shared remorse for an uncertain thing. The furrfiend frowned and nodded shortly, then was gone toward Ellimon’s Bale, with Eidrik in tow. On, the outlander carried, from roof to roof, over cage and its neighbour, while the hill bowed to him.

In such a skittish locale, they must have laired in most unassuming arenas, beyond visitation, so to the grimiest and most ancient of squalors did Ulf then habit. He found basements beside gutters half-submerged in rain, and through their shattered windows he slid to stand in floods knee-deep. There he saw the ruins of poor, beloved furniture afloat and the soaked remnants of a clan that time subdued. Out he climbed, then high again, to the barred backdoors of homes locked tight. He forced their wood apart, and with a blade half-drawn sicced his sights upon narrow crawls of dust, on furnishings cloaked in white cloth. In the quiet of that home, he paused and sat himself on an ottoman, shrouded for burial. There, he lingered, and put his head in his hands.

“They have to be here…” he told himself in a whisper, shaking the words out from his jaw. “Here… here, they have to die.”

A moment of silence overwhelmed him, without the sound of his steps or that of battered wood to hide the quiet. Thoughts breached him, of failure or vanity, and his solemn hope came quivering and wide-eyed.

“They must be here,” he said again, though louder and with a force in his throat.

He could not dare be wrong. They could not elude him. He would not allow it. Ulf gave a growl of revolt, of stirring frenzy, and found himself standing, with his blade drawn, and a chair shattered before him. Through the walls, the neighbours spoke and puttered, as in the old home against their side they had heard a ghost awake. A lantern arrived to topple the incoherent dark and honour the ruffled dwelling, but the woman wielding it instead found a door snapped, hanging from a lone hinge, and an utterly empty house beyond.

Watching her from above was Ulf, his anger stifled at the rooftop. The lantern could reveal nothing. Her imagination would poison her and Ulf would arrive under the pillow. He wanted to whack the blood from her neck to save her such irresolution.

The search found distance and he drew itching to the town’s brim, where in the folds and narrows of the rock he sought the deeper, the more uncanny revelations. He bounded over crags, across steep crawls, to undo what the hill would dare hide. Then, he stumbled upon it, between a roar and a cheer: an old home, cobbled upon the cliffside, lower than the lowest lip of the higher homes. It was wood slacked gauchely upon stone, a cave with man’s walls, dressed in the dimness of rock. Here, they must have laired, he thought, and so fury gripped him, upon the precipice of discovery and thereby that of bloodshed. Ulf blasted the door to splinters with one boot and passed through.

The encroachment of rock confined the once-home to a single chamber, tiny and with tattered walls, peeling away. The earth erupted through parts of the floorboards and dents laid where the stone sank. There was daylight’s vent then the dark, peppered with debris. A stained sleeping roll and a sac of half-eaten fruit and old bread were propped near the centre. An old painting of a farmhand leaned against the left wall: dirt caked his grin and in one bloodied fist sat a rake. A great tear took the painting’s heart. A woman sat upon the sleeping roll.

She was bald, with red blemishes across her scalp as if it was pulled at with scissors. Her coat was sized for a larger frame and its stomach jutted in, loose around hungry ribs. Her eyes were blue and knowing, though twitched then with unrest. She was scrawny for the most part, but some dormant athleticism did perk about her joints. Her nails were chipped, lined with dirt, and bloodied. She was startled, then furious.

“Who are you?” Ulf demanded, with his blade away but his focus a sharp armament.

“No one who owes answers to a trespasser,” she said, “that much is certain.” She did not rise from her seat, either as an embellishment of bravery or an apathy for threat or an utter carelessness for what advantage sitting robbed her of.

“Being where we do not belong,” began Ulf, “in that we are akin. With your nails full of blood’s filth, in the coat—thieved—that hides the whine of your gut.” He took a step nearer, loomed a stride away but a body above and in doing so blocked out the sun. “You belong here no more than do the rats,” he said. “But they hold no secrets, and so now I ask you again: Who are you?”

“Quick work, outlander,” she grinned. “I’d be impressed, had you enough tact at least to ask hard questions with a ready hand.”

She dove sideward, grasped a chunk of hardwood and jerked an arm against him. The volley was quick, hard, and as it sped towards Ulf’s temple he knew too that it was precise. But what was flung wood to a man of the North? In an instant, his blade was out and slashed the chunk aside. Her watch glowed and seemed flattered, but not surprised, and longingly she looked upon his gnarled sword.

“Is debris to be your weapon, girl?” asked Ulf. “I would tell you that is a means to a quick death,” he said, again sheathing his blade, “but my quarrel is with none who would walk unarmed. I leave you and your rats to the quiet of mercy.”

“That sword…” said Ander. The roll of her tongue knew confidence, slithered at ease, and it unnerved him. “Not Arakvinin, and I have not before seen furrfiends bear such fanged steel. You are from the North, aren’t you? The White Gargantan, as it were…?”

Then Ulf came completely still. Harrowingly, he crept atop his shoulder and squeezed her in his sights. Her petty barrage was no assault, but a bait given and nipped at, he realized; only to satiate her curiosity, to spot his dexterity and guess at his heritage. He was more offended than impressed.

“Wiser than befits a vagabond,” he admitted, looking pointedly around their cavernous chamber. “But wit will do naught to aid you in this squalor, when the cold comes.”

“And is that why you’re here, a giant in little Eritle?” she guessed, stalling his departure. “Fleeing the snows? Did you run all this way in fear of the cold, man of the North?” Her head tilted then, as the throb of some ploy. “Or perhaps something else back home drove you off, eh? Perhaps something tragic?”

Then did Ulf quiver in his mercies, to question their soundness. He considered granting her vulgar wish, truly and in a rattling quiet, though settled for words. She bore affinities she loathed, strength that calloused the hand’s caress, and in that were they compatriots. In that, and in nothing else.

“I stand here, with you, in this vagrant mire for there is no home,” he declared. “You know this. I see it in your eye, as clear as I hear you starve. You have seen wayward folk for a lifetime.”

“Have I? And here I thought I was known only to rats…”

“Your skin is unailed, yet your head shaven. As true as a scar, that is the mark of a heart changed.”

“Or perhaps I couldn’t keep the hair out of my eyes.”

“Or perhaps it was tears that laid in them,” said Ulf, now tall and warning in his wager. “Something tragic, you say?” He stepped forward again, then lent her a full watch. “You have your power and lay it in dust. Wit, but here do you lower yourself to the ruse, to the mockery of a menial cowering. And if we are so keen to guess at each other, then I see now you have a past, sought so desperately to elude.” He looked down upon her as if she were an exhibit, apart and harmless, seen a hundredfold before. “Yours are the hands of a fighter,” said Ulf. “These, I know. Charred, scathed. On your scalp sit the scars of a razor. The cutting was your own, quick and clumsy, as if the touch itself you dreaded.” Sternly, he shook his head, to condemn a strategy once tasted and then expired. “Now, here you sit, in a ruined heap, concealed and quick-tongued, to speak to me of fear! Of flight.” Ulf turned back to the door. “You are its avatar.”

Arrogance and insult was all she heard, and together they cheapened each insight his keen guard gathered. She considered the providence of his yammering but could not surpass their vicious naivety, so up she lurched.

“And who are you then, outlander?” asked Ander. “What title meets the man who begs the insights of vagabonds, afraid and fleeing as they are, in ruined homes?”

Ulf caught duplicity, among the echoes of stone.

“Aye, I know what you seek,” said Ander, with a mean smirk. “You’re searching for someone on the hill, clearly enough. The blade names it a hunt.”

“What do you know, girl?” he asked. “Speak.”

“What does it matter?” Ander chuckled. “What man could place their faith in rat-friends, afraid of their own hair? What mighty ghost of the Gargantan could grow so desperate?”

“I forgave your earlier slight against me,” Ulf cautioned, “for to cut you down would waste time.” The Northman turned on her and brandished his wicked steel. “Now, your every hour obeys my hand. The jests end. I’ll have my answer, or you’ll see what ire foments to your North.”

Ander saw her reflection in his crooked sword. It was a ghastly and morbid return. The sword itself belonged to the realm of beasts, she knew, and perhaps its wielder shared it with them.

“A fine blade that is,” she said admiringly, before remembering his threat and the amusement of it. “Tell me, outlander: Do you think a fighter comes unarmed, to a home unlocked, because she fears death?”

“It does not matter what you fear,” he countered crudely. “You will scream as loud as any other, when steel slips under your flesh.”

At that, she laughed. It was a firm reminder of the other fierce and proud wanderer the town had brought to her. “Aye,” she reminisced, “there’s only one person in this piss of a town who could match your vigour. I wondered as to why he’s here, though I think now that he’s here for you. Yeah, it’d figure. But I know that you must be here for him. The pair of you might be the only things of interest Eritle has left.”

“Speak,” was Ulf’s command. A darkness flared in his gaze.

Ander saw the hilt rattling, felt the hunger bloom. The hunt was dire to him, and she believed it could be crucial enough for him to forgive a slaughter of the cliffside.

“A kinnit,” said Ander, smiling wide. “A beast-man.”

Obsession clenched Ulf, wobbled his bones and emboldened the eye, set burning colour through the violent iris. He took a knee before her, to carry his glare a breath from Ander’s skull he could so readily cleave. “His skin…” he asked, demented in his want. “Is it scaled? Grey. Green.”

“You wouldn’t rather learn of his hair?” she joked. “I thought that to always be your first wonder?”

“Is he a wyrm-man?”

“You know the answer, outlander,” said Ander, now frank. “Of course he’s your hunt. To read so much in me but stand blind to the obvious… nor is he alone, though I think you’re just deluded enough to not wish it otherwise.”

“Where are they?” he snapped.

“Ire, indeed. He’s out brooding behind the brothel, if he goes everyday to where once I saw him. Speaking grandly of sunsets and the rain and whatnot.” Ander shook her head. “Vanity and dreamspeak. You share that flair for the grim and embellished, Northman. Even if only in bawling.”

Ulf was upon the door again, eager for carnage.

“What?” chirped the bald woman at his back. “No coin for the vagabond? Being without a home, you’d think you’d harbour more appreciation for the craft, no? But wyrmish and scaled and grey-green as he is, this foe of yours knew greater humanity.”

Despite her tone and taunts, her aid was great. Ulf felt some slight debt to the woman, if only for the sourness through which she persevered. He slowed in the doorway and turned to look upon her once more.

“Take payment in a fortune, girl,” said Ulf. “You jest, to hide from the world. But when it’s come to you with blade and want, unarmed you bait it. You jeer and hope with a grin that wrath takes me. You chatter, and hope a smirk might make such dejection false. As you sought once to be cast off from the fighter’s long road, now do you search out your death, as I do the kinnit’s. Soon, indeed it shall be yours. From the wrong words spoken on the wrong eve of a terrible awakening, and you will discover through blood how dearly you wish for life. Then time is spent. Then, death is come.”

“Close enough, I ‘spose,” said Ander with a shrug. “But life can prove so bland. Awfully so. Plain, and dragging, and forever. It’s really only the good in life I’d ever wish for.”

“Then go find it,” was his firm dismissal.

Now, her smile did fade. The words struck her and compelled her into silence. He vouched earnestly, foolishly. The order of the outlander was self-evident and unflinching. She considered frustratingly the impossible, with his dark oath unfurled before her: that goodness could be uncovered with a walk, on a whim, with only the will to seek it out and endure what defended its finding; that her in her cliffside hut was a coward in the hideaway, turning deaf ears to the chorus of faraway salvation, to save the trouble of a stroll. In that vain regard she found trembling upset.

“Have you found it!” bit Ander. “Eh? Will you find it at last in Veil Nadaar? Or perhaps when he is gutted and a slime by your feet? Then—tucked-tail stray of the North—speak to me of the will to carry on, when your blade dulls and your mind rots!”

Ulf’s head rose. Nightmares took his eyes. He saw only wood and rock, but in his mind danced a hundred lights.

“Veil Nadaar,” he said, enraptured. “So that is his name…”

“Hrm. You’re both only other ghosts Arakvan’s yet to shed away,” Ander snarled. “But the time comes. Like a storm over Eritle, I know it does. The power and evil in you… it is soon to find its mirror, outlander.”

“My mirror?” Ulf said, finding her again. “My mirror! I do not lack for truth, girl, nor pretend to mistake what I am. My mirror is everywhere. In your flight. In his sin. In every shadow of day I see the pools of myself, the drips of the selfsame evil you denounce, and it is for that that I know it is a common thing. That I am. It is for that that I know that our world, as vagabonds or kings, is wrong.”

“Enough,” she ordered. “You and your bombast. It’s never any fun calling men wrong when they relish it. Like thieving bread off barons, what bloody difference does it make?”

“Goodbye, vagabond,” he said in farewell and, once more, made an effort to leave, but she murmured to him and to herself, as if only to voice thoughts aloud, and the want in her voice stilled him.

“And yet you spared me,” she said, lost to a mind’s fog, “when sense should lay me dead. As did he, a kinnit all the same. Does it help men like you, I wonder, pretending at evil? Does it make the things you tell yourself you must do any easier?”

“Look around, girl,” said Ulf. “If it was all pretend, Arakvan should have burned away centuries ago, and me and Nadaar should have long turned to ash.”

Ander shook her head, hearing deceit. To her, it was nothing more than a terrified lie, plain as the day bleeding into their cave. “Calling a day evil does not lighten its darkest hour. You are what you do next, outlander.”

She looked away and her mind was rid of him, but in the shadow of her words he lingered. He could not find the strength to step, nor voice a rebuttal in its stead. He was made naked before her, grappling with an indefinable guilt. For a very precious instant, his blade seemed to be a remarkably, terribly heavy thing. For an instant, though Veil’s sins were of a greater weight. Ulf stepped through the door and, in his wake, Ander muttered to the earth below.

“Now who is running?”

That space, behind the brothel and to the tip of the bluff, dragged him fast. All efforts of stealth were relinquished. His cosmos snoozed upon the cliff’s lip and no other gravities could hold sway. He crossed townsfolk that shuddered at his garb, his skin, who parted from him with distrust or terror to the safest pockets of their sodden mound. A guard too beheld the Northman’s stalk up the cliff, and did contemplate action but saw a fervour in the gaze of the stranger that arrest could not effect. He did not dare cross the stranger of Eritle.

At some point, a surprise and greeting found Ulf that he either did not hear or refused to entertain. It was not until the scalded bone of Horral’s worse hand came upon his shoulder that Ulf slowed, and in seeing the wound slapped on his garb gave Horral a crude, perturbed stare. The old man laughed and stole his grip away, then returned the burnt knuckles to a new glove.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “I’ve found that to be very good fun. You should have seen the horror Gaerhild met me with!”

“Now is no time, Horral,” said Ulf, gravely.

“Ah,” the furrfiend realized, as his humour died away. “So what then? Have you so soon found what you seek? Can this town truly hold them?”

“I doubt all of their number rests here,” said Ulf. “But some do, yes. They will not evade me another day.”

“Then I trust you understand what this means, Ulf? This is no minor quest, what you embark on. If your blade does find them, never again will it rest until all of their number is slain, and then longer still, until even Galehaven’s gaze is escaped. And that is no minor endeavour, Northman. Not minor at all.”

“Do you believe caution will stop me now, Horral? Do you think, after I’ve come this far, a stern word will turn me away?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head glumly. “I know very well that nothing can turn you away. Nothing of mine, in any case. And so I know also that this may be a third and last goodbye.”

A hand reached towards Ulf and some sensitive affection swirled in Horral’s eyes. Ulf took his hand and felt himself taken into a fist, hot and fond. Horral tugged him into a hug. Discomfort crawled up his back and was then slapped away. Ulf did not realize until release that the grip was gratitude’s. He looked into Horral’s face curiously, then nodded, then walked away.

“But you must know,” said Horral, at the last. “If it is the Crimson Clad that has wronged you…”

“Yes?”

“They do the will of another. All answer to one. If your vengeance is meant for them, then your vengeance is best spent far from Eritle. Far from all of this.”

“Name him.”

“Veidt,” Horral cursed. “Veidt Ovalin, a High Lord. The red riders do his will, and whatever they have done to you, it was done to further his desires.”

Ulf bulked with fury. “Then he will die next.”

“You’d better set your sights south, outlander,” said Horral, with an uncertain grin. “Veidt lairs in Galehaven, aboard its greatest spires. These are not roofs breached alone, mind you. But there are others you may find, in the gutters or the shadow of a keep, who would see your will done.”

“Speak plainly, Horral. While there is yet time.”

“You haven’t heard?” asked Horral, bolstering into a hearty guffaw that shook his gut and brought his arms up around it. “There’s revolution in Galehaven!” he laughed. “She is a city of dreams, after all!”

Ulf was quiet, and Horral soon remembered what was expected of him. To be solemn again was his show of respect.

“I hope to one day meet you there, Ulf,” said Horral. “I hope we may stand in its streets, and together carve our way up to where those lords lair. To perhaps bash chains along the climb.” Then he shrugged and headed back towards the door of Ellimon’s Bale. “But what is an old man’s hope, in times so awful?”

Again, Horral laughed, but Ulf was stone. He watched the furrfiend walk, all the way until the door of the tavern swung shut behind him, then his gaze fell to the mud. For a moment, the mission was in the playful mind’s jeopardy. He guessed, he shut his eyes to watch that loosened brim of his head. Yet when they opened there was mud and he in its murky blotch: crooked and browned, torn between dirts. Need was remembered. To carve away and grind to dust. Ulf Eldric turned apart from Ellimon’s Bale. From Eidrik, Horral, and Gaerhild all, then wedged his way again to the cliff’s top. To the highest terrace of little Eritle.

_____