Defy, Sow, & Cinder

XIX : Defy, Sow, & Cinder

Alone, Ulf stood upon the terrace. The brothel was to his back, the cliff to his eye. Smothered laughs and cries emanated from within that infernal space, like the cackle of witches at their cauldron. The sky was endless and pink, unclouded to the east, but growing dark in the west, and ever expanding. Evening was upon Eritle. It was for hours that Ulf stood upon that ledge, listening to beds rock and bodies slam together, amidst a slow and grunted anthem. When he had arrived, the air was tame and blue. Now was it a fuchsia in blush and cold were its winds.

They would come, he thought, amidst the grate of teeth and the pivot of crossed brows. If his scurrying wardogs did not come of their own volition, then they would be forced through the beckon of blood and flame. Fate would find them at last in the plain revealed, the plain that answers awful sin. Already, Ulf longed to draw and wrack his foreign steel upon the gentle turf, upon the rock of the fall, upon all that coursed and staggered between. But he would wait. Long would he wait, until twilight arrived and starved, then longer again, to feel all that was long denied, all that was long sought, and to swamp the accursed cliff-heap in crimson blood.

“Perfect, you said…” Ulf muttered, to air and earth. “But at last, you see. Wrong again, and you will see. You will know.”

To and fro he puttered, anxious in all aimless heed. Rogue tufts of lawn went flat under him. The black of his cloak was adrift, as a rider of the prewinter-gale. At any stammer of sound, the deep brown of his glare fired off and rooted out its maker. The cliff was largely untroubled that evening. The guards, upon their besotted crusades for comfort, did not venture to the brothel’s rear, and those common folk that did stepped quickly to be rid of it, upon their finding of a shadow not quite apart from the apoplectic cracks of the clouds behind it. On that pink evening, Eritle’s peak was the lair of a monster. Argolan laid quite far below. The Northman stood as master over the unholy rifts of the hordes most nefarious. A king almost, at the command of unruly armies, but the sovereign of that misbegotten dusk waged his wars alone. Show yourself, he thought, all angst and malice. Come to me, heathen dogs. Show yourself!

But on evening waned, and in cruel disinterest denied him. The first shade of the coming night peeked its head, like a half-moon’s stain, muddying lush air with its pales and dooms. Tonight, all would be made right, he thought. Tonight, he would sleep soundly again.

Oh, how he wished to sleep soundly again.

“Doesn’t feel right,” said Horral, in his mug.

Ellimon’s Bale was a rowdy thing that evening. The tables were full, seeped in spilled ale, armed with lanterns to stave off the coming night, and in their flame drunk minds danced. Gaerhild sludged from table to table, refilling mugs and serving out stew. A chucked spoon had at some point struck another, like conscription into a juvenile game, then half an hour of turmoil descended upon the common room, until a fieldhand fell into the open fireplace, and in fury Gaerhild had every man with a red fist removed. A cluster of guards aided her with all the obedience of serfs to a king, and indeed was that the omen of a hearty night. Not an hour earlier, while Eidrik and Horral met again their many friends of Eritle in streams, a furrfiend strolled in with her fresh kill. A wolven horror, slapped over her shoulder, dripping across the cloak. There was an outcry to begone, but the hunter possessed an unseen wound and answered only the unasked questions, with a crucial whisper. An eventual warning of iron bade her out, but she did not desert Horral’s thoughts. There was a tragedy in her and her composure, the deflated countenance like the second stem of an endless growth, grey and sideward. Terrors, bested then besmirched then faced again. On it went, the great wheel that rolled down Eritle’s roads then back up again before dawn, crushing through the cabalder fogs. When at last the killer was cast out, Horral could not abandon the sight of her. Rubbed by the stranger and her resignation in the most intrusive, denuding of ways. She was a reflection of so many others he had seen go boldly into the fray, sprint only to be caught and sucked by the locust droves whose flutter was hope and whose clot was defeat. Horral wondered only when he and Eidrik would be overtaken too by such insipid submissions. He feared at what hour of the rebel’s night their surrender would arrive, and what blood they would wear across their backs when walking bowed through the heartsick gates. Again, he drank, not to be drunk, but to feel his gut squirm and his chest go aflame.

“Doesn’t feel right,” he said again, but quieter.

“She’s watered it down,” said Eidrik, finishing his drink. “You know this, old man. Gaerhild’s not one to give us-”

“No, Eidrik,” he interceded. “Being here… doesn’t feel right, does it? Not now. Sucking back ale, as he marches up.”

Eidrik rolled his eyes. “Should we send after him, find a bouquet in his colour? Maybe sing the mad bastard a soft farewell? In the old tongue, mayhaps. That, he might listen to.”

“We should be there,” he stated firmly, eyes forward, piercing the cabinet of spirits. “We should be standing beside him, if we are indeed true sons of this sorry place.” His head shook, sullied the ale’s spark, made him dour and sick-bellied. “That fool, in his vain angers, is soon to become this town’s champion. A champion of all the Wilderwheats. If into Argolan drip the right shades of red, even that of Arakvan. And he knows it not.” Horral laughed and drank. “All-Father, he knows it not!”

“A champion? Or a martyr? What would you have us do, Horral?” Eidrik’s voice fell low, in a wisp of caution. “Raise our blades against a bloody Crimson Clad? Against the High Ovalin himself?” His head shook. “Drown this dream in ale, old man. We would die before our sheaths made sound.”

And Horral distanced from him and that chamber of merriment. He came upon a quiet place, heard the gusts, felt their chill. It seemed as if the Northman’s very gaze was upon him then, and through his throat the outlander spoke.

“And that is why you turned, where I marched on,” echoed Horral, void of eye. “And so on he marches…”

“Do not pay his words much heed,” Eidrik warned. “He is not of our world. With his badlands, his ire… he’s forgotten all frets of the common man. Winter, it broke his mind. He won’t outlast them. The spectacle of him, the vigour, it will end.”

“And we will drink on, eh? We will turn.”

“It is death to do otherwise, Horral. We would die.”

“But we could try, Eidrik!” he pleaded, in a rush of hot temper, for a shaking wish. “Should we not try? Even if all the three of us were tossed to Argolan this very night, stealing only one in their number, would that not be a worthy thing? A wondrous thing? Imagine, all of Eritle could look up from their boots to bear witness to a slain rank of the Crimson Clad… what a sight that would be!” Again, he was lost in visions. “Why, every blue-gold bladesman would be outed onto gibbets before a day was done.”

“And Eritle, she’d bloom like a summer flower,” said Eidrik through a brothy slurp, as he washed away Horral’s dreamspeak in the sharp ale’s anguish. “For a month. Then what? Then what, Horral? Galehaven comes for Eritle.”

“It is a good thing then that they’ve bladesmen of their own.”

“Ha!” Eidrik laughed, with only the mockery of disbelief. “And what might we do, Horral? Launch rocks at them from on high? Roll barrels at them, down the hill? It would be a half-hour’s conquest, then burials. Then consequence!”

“We’d have odds no better here than we do south,” the old man countered. “And Arakvan would see with what fervour this town fell.”

“And off they’d march to war.”

“Have you lost faith, Eidrik?”

Then Eidrik went for another drink, but the tankard was done. He caught the rank scent of backwater beer in his nostrils, irked at the sight of puddling foam. Faith? What was faith to do, when the iron hive crashed against them? What was faith, when Veidt rode his red cavalry out for revenge? There was only the day’s battle and that of tomorrow. Will alone would see it done and only the sharper blade could make that will true. But Horral was of a gentleness too feeble for hard truths, a wisdom too sacred for foul wit, and so Eidrik lessened his rancor, and lowered the mug to the counter in good calm.

“Faith is one thing,” he said. “But belief, Horral… this blood-red idealism, it has made you its victim.”

“We are all victims who wage this war. It is the first lesson! If we were not, still would our swords guard closets, or rot under beds. Without, still would we be chipping away at our own cowardice rather than the enemy. My swords have dulled facing the spite in me, Eidrik. But here we sit, to give it ground again.”

“There will be a time for champions, Horral. I know there will be. When the crowds are gathered, and the flags burnt. There will be a time to charge. It is not now, my friend. Now, it is time for rest, after a long voyage. And tomorrow, it will be time to journey out again. South, to our fellows. To family, Horral.”

For a time, Horral had no answer. Tomorrow, out they would journey again. Tomorrow, on the wheel would run. Their shins would splint and their soles would scab. Their cheeks would come brown with dirt, their hair matted in rainfall, and their blades would rise clean then fall bloodied. Tomorrow, the day after, leagues further, days longer. Until they stood in Galehaven again, and war was returned to them, and their chance at otherwise was spent. He could not fathom a worser fate, a rhythm more dreadful. How many days had it been since the warrior’s soul first took him? How many nights had he staked on the valour of playing shield? Years, or perhaps decades. The thought brought taste to his mouth and on his tongue then sat a sting. This war must have been his purgatory, thought Horral, trembling, teared in one eye, as he had not felt the liberty in life since bandits first found his home and his love unguarded. Low, his gaze fell, upon the hand that lay ruined over spilled ale, with bone showing through. Death had come so close, at times so many, but never had he feared it. Why had he not feared it? Why was the Northman’s deep, dark shadow a trail less horrid than the one that led home? Then the eye blinked, and the tear fell, though Eidrik could not see it.

“I have been here so very long…”

“Some months, only,” Eidrik reassured. “Time seems to wane different in Eritle. It plays with your mind. Soon, we will be-”

“No, Eidrik,” said a voice of stone. “It’s been lifetimes. I feel… I feel as if I’ve lived a life for every friend that could not see today. Karluf. Taegrin. Abolya. Little Renner. You remember that kitchen knife he swore was a sword? Ha… I feel their weight upon me now, Eidrik. Each time my eyes glance away. For years, I’ve served them. Knelt, to quiet graves. Without landing a home, honing any art, taking a love anew, I’ve served them. Visions and memories. Young fears and very old terrors. For years, I’ve served ghosts. And yet only now—when I turn from their fight—do I feel haunted.”

In Eidrik was a pity, and his greatest want then was to shepherd the old man to a land far south, where friends could console him, and the promise of a worthier future could be whole again. But he could not let death’s dream take him, so hard his voice fell.

“Ulf’s vengeance is not our mission, Horral.”

“I have to know this has not all been for naught.”

“Into the Cleft, I followed you,” Eidrik said. “After the Northman, up and down the Wilderwheats, it was I who was your shadow. Even into the den of Svarkahl, I was at your heel for every step, and there we went only so as not to lose the Northman’s tracks.”

“That is not why-”

“It is,” he bit. “Look at your hand, Horral. See the black of bone. Is that a price you feel paid? No, then, I followed you. But I cannot follow you now. All that awaits this Northman is death. He has long eluded it, certainly, but luck always runs out. We know better than most, that luck always runs out.”

“His name is Ulf,” said Horral.

“He will not outlast Veidt’s riders.”

“But he will try. And the Isyncra’s sworn enemies will look up that hill, up from their ale, and see the Northman’s blood trickle down the hill.” A despondency fell over him. He deflated of any bold flare, wrestled with coarse gospel. “Then what will we do? What are we then, Eidrik?”

“Cowards, perhaps,” Eidrik shrugged, stunted. “But it is not heroes in their armours of gold who wage this war. It is not heroes who will see it through, to the bloody end. Drink to this. Call this victory and, for Ulf, drink every last drop.”

Then Horral’s tankard was empty. The room raged loud, yet his mind had never been a quieter place. He could not come divided from his thoughts. He could not split from the Northman’s image, nor that raw heart in which Ulf gave away his future, just as Eidrik could not come apart from the sorrow of his brother.

Elsewhere, thunder boomed.

The pink light of evening dimmed. From the west, darkness rolled, and soon their sky was the subject of harsher night. There was a crack through the heavens, a pale blue lance that flashed white across every window and under every door. Shutters fell, bars locked, and then came the hail. It pelted against the lanterns of cabalder, and in moments a chrome fog took the streets.

Ulf looked up against the air, turbulent with bellowing thunderclouds and rifts of white flame. The rain struck him, pulled his scars wide, wetted his garb and slicked his cloak to his back. It was cold, he imagined. Cold enough for most to turn back indoors, but not so cold for him to raise his hood. They would come. They had to come. He would not miss his chance. For the sake of that little cliff-town, plagued by storms, he would not.

From where he stanced, those yellow mists did not reach him, as his was a realm devoid of even lantern-light. Thunder rolled, blasted, carried long like a groaning wind, then each little shack rattled as if they were soon to slip off their cliff. The world was grey, cold. Colour was a storied thing under the vicious night.

Darker and darker it came, while the seconds slowed. Ulf scowled at the heavens. The rain was then a broom, aimed to sweep away the rodents below, but Ulf was unmoved before its efforts. If it was up there, that terribly imbued source they named the “All-Father”, was it such a fool to believe hail and lightning could wade him out? Of what wisdom was the world’s lord, if it thought any blade in its arsenal might sway the wrath of man? If it existed, surely there it laired, far above in the clouds of dark like a monarch upon the ash of its throne, the field of its conquest, shouting and pissing and pretending at victory. Ulf was certain, if such a thing could be true, then there it must have sat, watching him and laughing and chucking its blights down against him. Here was its grand jest, its ultimate miracle: To lead a man away from all that was good, to riddle him in injury and scorn, then call his wish delusion, and grant him naught but rain. Did he laugh? Did he see? Ulf wished the clouds lower, if only so that he might swing against them, or at least to taste the full blunt of their frenzy, remain standing, and call the All-Father’s power fickle.

Again, thunder boomed and the heavens shook.

What fool was this All-Father, to think it and its lights and its roars could part Ulf from his lust of blood? What liar was it, to think the curses fired down against Ulf could ever be undone? No, there was no other path now. There was no salvation, no deliverance from that morbid affliction. Ulf would carve and war his way to the very heart of darkness, then split its shade asunder and take that which was long owed to him. He dared the All-Father then, in that horrible storm, to muster a bolt of lightning that was baleful so as to smite him down.

It would not come, for a blessing bestowed—a wish granted—was a perfect thing. And the All-Father’s world was anything but.

The fogs behind him parted then. There were footsteps. A form filed through the chrome mists, onto that terrace, out into the rain and the realm of the dark, then strode to its cliff, and there gazed out against the endless abyss beyond and below and all above.

Ulf turned, slowly, with disbelief and half an eye, to spot the form. It was hooded, in dark dressings, with the bulk of armour below its cloak. Out from its hood peeked a snout, and it was scaled. There, by his side, stood Veil Nadaar.

The hiss of hail subsided. A frigid wind swept through. Ulf stood upon snow again. Its white embrace was spanning and endless. He could hardly breathe, nor blink. All of his focus was trapped upon that deep green hide, the orbs of gold in its sockets, the crags of scale flush with rainwater. Ulf’s mouth ran dry, his eyes widened. A hand drifted near his hilt and the fingers twitched.

“You don’t mind the rain,” said Veil, his sights ahead. “Most here loathe it.”

It was hardly heard, much less understood. The kinnit spoke slowly, clearly, blessed by a tranquil tongue. Ulf found it unfathomable, to share his space with trite kindness. He could not believe what he heard, nor what he saw. Again, his fingers trembled.

“The rain…” he muttered.

“Though clearly enough,” said Veil, in lending the outlander a sidelong glance, “you are not from here.”

Then a depression grew in Ulf’s eye. Not from here? Certainly not. That pitiful sprawl of oak and rock could never hold him; nothing but a new arena. Nothing but the scene of the next sin. And Veil did not remember. He did not recall from where the phantom before him had come, nor what forces had driven him from his home.

“Where am I from, Veil Nadaar?”

To Veil too, the silence seemed immense and the clouds uncunning. In the drive of those brown eyes—the lightning that caught those many scars—rain and thunder was lost to him. The kinnit stood then upon a shattered deck before a greater storm. His own name rose as if to invoke a plague, deliberate and by hatred betoned. Wide, came Veil’s eyes. His lips stuttered, though an answer found its way forth.

“North,” he knew. “Far north.”

“But not so far as to escape your memory.”

“We have met?”

“So you have forgotten,” said Ulf. He nodded, realized some spurned truth in the back of his mind, though never did his eyes lose Veil, as against those gold irises he was trapped. “Let it be your ripest sin.”

Veil stretched his back. Subtly, slightly, he bent his knees. Under his cloak, a hand grasped a hilt, and he knew in shock and suspense that Ulf saw it well through the cloth. Rarely did Veil require precautions in combat, but before the spectre from the mountains he did indeed adopt a stance and tense his fists. This was no son of Eritle, Veil knew.

“Tell me then my first.”.

Then the brown of Ulf’s gaze came alive, searing. There was a shift in his watch, as if something had just then been born inside of his skull.

“Me, Veil Nadaar,” said Ulf. “I am your first.”

To Veil, that severity of will struck a very old, very familiar cord. Only once before could he recall encountering such fanaticism, with vehemence so profuse, though then they were splattered in blood and frostbitten. Veil felt a pull at his knees and assumed it to be snow. The storm was colder, coming from another sky.

“Ah…” he breathed. “Frausjael. I do now recall. I had thought… I had believed that none escaped.”

“None did,” Ulf bit. “The man you and your heathens left in the snow, whose name I have forgone,” said Ulf, in the black gap of lightning. “He is long dead.”

“Then you are…” stammered Veil.

“The Gargantan gave me a new name. They prayed to the very blizzards to keep them from the Banmard. ‘He from Ash’.” For a moment, Ulf’s vigilance did divert, but only to seek out the horizon, to remember the frost that rode it when first he had looked beyond his feet at the evil world that fled from him. And the world wore red. “They would say, I am what rose up from that dead man’s bones. That I am the malice, death could not snuff out. And first, I come for you, Veil Nadaar.”

At once, Veil stiffened and discarded his fear. He had long ailed of duty’s tribulations. Before him then, penance carried a steeper evil at last.

“Then in Eritle you die, Banmard.”

His cloak flapped out. A blade left it. The broadsword was of silvered steel, sharp and terribly elegant. Around its black hilt twirled tendrils of gold. From the pommel fell a razored edge, and set in it was a jewel of scarlet. Crimson armour in black wrappings showed through the rift of his garb.

“Ah, good,” said Ulf. His crooked blade swung to his side, stinging the air. “I was afraid you would run.”

At their feet, a puddle pattered between drifts of stone. Aside from the tiny and petulant wrinkles of rain, it was still. Its face reflected two blades. Either took aim, prowled without motion, as the hail tore their visage apart and patterned it together again. Lightning flashed. A pale blue shone in their steels. The puddle—their mirror—erupted.

Metal screeched through thunder. An awful clang harped. Their blades locked and flame leapt from the ill communion. The wraith of the Gargantan met at last to the Arakvinin drake.

Ulf moved with endless want. Against Veil, all reservations were forgot. He lunged, he whipped, he lashed and spun and tore and leapt, like a great sward-cat fighting against the pull of its own chain. Every step, every shift was one forward, bringing him nearer to Veil’s flesh. The onslaught was selfish and unyielding, but Veil’s defence was firm, strong against the beating wave, though it seemed as if in seconds Ulf would batter the broadsword until it broke.

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But the steel held true. Veil shoved the strike high, swept in for the belly, but at once the outland fang twirled to slash askew his kill. Ulf returned with a thrust: a stellar, vicious drive against Veil’s left eye. Veil upheaved it then struck across the gap. The black cloak swirled and the broadsword found only rain. In a blink, Ulf was past the blow and, in a breath, he had made his counter. He came crudely for ribs and all the flesh between, though Veil’s blade surged between himself and death. Sparks blasted off their quaking connection. There, their eyes met with hate again, in a murk of new understanding.

Veil was grateful in his bloodlust, to meet a match so lively in the cliff-town’s oppressive throes. From the far North, smuggled by fate, the fight had come to him. From the distant past, it remembered Veil’s reward. Indeed, it was a fine night for it all to end—a fine and screaming night.

The clash broke and both returned high. Overhead burst a bolt of man-made lightning. In the frenzy’s tightening, Ulf drove his skull forward, into Veil’s chin. Scale cut his flesh. Blood streaked from Ulf’s temple, down between his eyes, and a crater in Veil’s grey-green coat began to seep.

Ulf stabbed forth, cleaving with such quickness and such power it was as if he sought to slay a thing far behind Veil’s body, but never could it pass the kinnit’s prowess. Veil repelled and answered, running his sword ornately from scalp to hip, though swiftly, impossibly, Ulf rose sideways against it. The strike went still. He shoved Veil back and jumped to one foot, then unleashed a brutal arch of bone and steel.

Time seemed to lessen in Veil’s watch. He beheld a coming death but something beautiful beyond. He saw a measure of life, bloody and true, in the gaining assault. It could not slip away unsavoured. A claw came down. Ulf’s blade was quick, cut through the black of his garb then caught onto strong red steel. They staggered, tasted one another’s breath. The Northman tore back in a feral haze and brought the blade down again. Ruby ensnared.

“Damn the high snows and their secrets,” said Veil, his grin shivering. “This is what you fought on for!”

The tongue’s challenge was returned with steel. Ulf sought a knee, then a hip, but by a parry was pushed back. Veil came for the chest but was swept away. Ulf cracked his boot into the kinnit’s gut, shoving him off then lunging again, with a sword at the helm. The Northman slid in low, then twisted upward. As if chopping against a trunk, Veil laid the attack asunder. Metal screeched from the grate of bites.

“To fight, to die and know yourself spent!” called the wyrm-man. “It’s what brought you south! To the swine, to the infirmity! Isn’t it, Banmard? Isn’t it!”

Veil laughed his cruel glee, swarmed by the stomps of thunder, then ripped his broadsword towards Ulf’s cheek. The outlander sank, palm to earth, then blasted a boot into Veil’s knee. The kinnit grunted and saw a shadow spin and stand and strike. What was unleashed was deflected narrowly, flimsily. Ulf’s aggress loomed above the moment’s triumph. In the turbulent airs that chased the Northman’s cloak, lightning shone, giving his face to darkness and a glow of cold blue; graced by the storm to carry out its mercy. With descent, Ulf cut fiercely, and so was the kinnit forced to the lower foot, though was in the lock of arms no less ardent.

“Better to kill than return!” shrieked a fanatic Nadaar. “You’d topple a clan before you’d face them again! I can see it, Banmard! Plain as the sky! Plain as the thundering sky!”

Veil tossed Ulf backward and closed in with a thrust, but was swatted aside. A northern fang came for Veil’s shoulders, to slip between and wrench out the heart, yet with his broadsword buffered atop his own arm, Veil slit the wanton nerve.

“In your eye!” he screamed. “I can see it!”

The storm worked through the earth and brought it to tremor. Puddles bounced and spilled over their feet. In the splash of the heavens, in its lightless underworld, they clashed again. Blades met, a fist unfurled, blood jumped from Veil’s lip. A sword fell but the wrist was caught, and the pommel’s edge avenged the affront. Ulf’s chest was nicked and dripping. A broadsword took greedily only to be embraced by bone, then Ulf punched red through Veil’s words.

“They were not for you!” Nadaar cried with pain and favour.

A blow rang and Veil’s jaw was tossed up. There was a laughter of tooth and sword. The kinnit’s slash was sealed away with a firm retort, but a claw stole the second. A scar of four streams wetted Ulf’s left breast, as an effort towards the heart. Thrice more, they crossed swords, thrice they bounded back, and upon the fourth swing either blade quivered in its hilt. Through that steel grid, Veil’s grin was wide and wild.

“I am for you!” he said with the hail.

Ulf’s free hand snuck below the exchange and wrapped across Veil’s throat. He crumpled his hand into a fist that squeezed the words away. Ravenous, he threw back the kinnit’s head and slashed for the core, to silence the source messily and forever. Veil leapt apart, watched his own murder fall short, then lunged very near. Ulf backstepped but the blow was staggered. It was not until the Northman’s move was made that the arm of the wyrm extended.

The broadsword flashed. Ulf reeled back. He fell a short few steps away before he slowed. It was not until he again raised his blade that he realized a stinging. His cheek had been kissed in crimson. Below his left eye ran a gash that dribbled over his chin. Veil did not press the advantage. A stride apart, they both halted.

Ulf brought two fingers against the wound, to feel where his face opened. Red. So very, very red, as a young sunset in its blaze, as the ready leaves of a late fall, as the ichor of unbridled love. Of course, he recalled. So very much like the blood of his wife.

Yet it was not red. It was crimson. Crimson, bright and burning. Painfully crimson. There, trapped in his hilt-stamped palm, the dew of past and eternity. There pooled a trove of memory, too immense to wield in one hand, but there it remained.

“Is it her you grieve most?” asked Veil, twirling his blade idly. “Her memory… it drives you on, does it? With the grey fragments of meaningless little moments? With old laughs, and songs, and promises? Yes, I’ve seen ghosts. They have found me and defeat… Or do you miss only who you were, when she was yours? I have never had such a bond of my choosing, Banmard. I do long to learn that pain. Indeed, it might make man anew.”

“Her memory…” stammered Ulf, starstruck.

“And to lose them…” said Veil. “Like a stirring, I imagine. In dead tissue. Or I dream?”

“Yes, her memory,” Ulf confirmed. “Always, her memory. And the memory of the babe, that died inside her.”

With a fling of his hand, his blood joined to the pond. He rose in a memory but deprived of its warmth. Hate hung in his eyes. The blade pointed to Veil’s chest.

Again was the arena drawn, but to enter seemed less easy. Veil Nadaar found himself hindered, with new weight in his step, in his sword-hand. In his mind were a hundred drums of a hundred pities, and from their beat the realm around him fell into ruin, and for every shard of what was he felt a shame. A babe? It could not have been. It must have been a lie, but of course it was not. Banmard did not lie. He was only truth, just as bleak and no less bitter. A babe it was. A babe, among those Veil and his band stole away. A baby, unborn amidst the flame and the snow. A babe was nothing. He had seen infants die before. He had fed fires that ate them. But then, somehow, in the blur of storms, the thought was irksome, undressing. It riddled him in doubt and dishonour’s vagueness. Somehow, when faced with the eyes frenzied and cursing, that challenged and proved, that triumphed and suffered, Veil Nadaar felt a pull in his chest.

His eyes wobbled. His sword-hand trembled, fell away. He looked deeply to Ulf and the patient wrath within, though could not step forward and, soon, could not meet his gaze.

“Come,” said Banmard. “Death has bountied us both.”

The light of all the earth drooped about Veil, even in the shade of the unconscionable storm. He felt condemned. He felt seen.

Steps rushed in at his flank. His name was called, but not heard. Veil turned slowly, apart from Ulf, to see Arawn Dandril and Odr the Toothed, arriving cloaked and ready for his command. The mace and the falchion were drawn, and either looked expectantly to the outlander. Veil turned back to Ulf and at last managed to hold his eye.

“Farewell, Banmard,” said Veil simply. “May your ghosts find you again.” Then he turned, strode nearer to his companions, and whispered. “Kill him.”

Obedient, well-tested, the two stepped forth. Veil, in some haste, went to be rid of the battlefield, of the maddened soul with whom he shared it. Ulf was seized by disgust. He gawked, through blood, at the kinnit’s cowardice, but unwavering did his sword come up again, to slay the newest challengers. They were specs of the same damnable flock, owed the same retribution. They too stood as titans in the smoke and frost. This was not a betrayal of the warrior’s creed. This was not dishonourable flight, rather it was tremendous fortune. Ulf delighted at the opportunity to slay three in one night, yet the reinforcements never made it past Veil Nadaar.

All three froze when a call accosted them. Two new forms entered the fray. They anticipated distressed townsfolk, who came brazen in their appetites for restored sloth and tedium, though guessed they were bladesmen at the sight of weaponry. Then, in beholding the visage of beasts, of bodies scoured and outfitted, knew they stood before furrfiends. So was a revamped wariness adopted in the crimson company.

“Evening, red dogs,” said Horral. He strode in from the alley. With the tap of his cane, a blade shot out against the cobblestones. “A theatre unbefitting of Veidt’s champions, no? But the backend of a brothel is the more dignified grave, than what’s deserved.”

“These are the Crimson Clad?” asked Eidrik sourly, as he swung his axe off his back and into play. “Odd, at night they’re no fiercer than gutter-rats. None the more formidable than vermin.”

Arawn and Odr stepped to them, stalwart before Nadaar, which left the kinnit but one direction. He returned toward the cliff with a sigh, and of course Ulf awaited him.

“Curious,” began Nadaar. “Never did I suspect we were among those who could ever go hunted. Yet here you stand. The sward’s outcasts, so bold as to bear steel against us. So be it, then. Let Eritle drink away the victor’s proof.”

Nadaar leapt and Eldric rushed to meet him. To the alley, Odr the Toothed barreled into Eidrik Bourgall, and Arawn Dandril lashed at the caneblade of Horral Weirhym.

The space shattered. Blaring exchanges rang through the cabalder fogs. Without the storm and its ferocity, all of Eritle might have awoken to the quarrel and guessed calamity.

Eidrik moved against Odr with might, swaying a power that could cave breastplates, yet the Toothed was far from complacent. Beastial were his returns; a creature with an arm of spiked iron heaved in deadly precision. The furrfiend was then a gate to be rammed down and Odr forwent all restraint. He did little to block, to evade, indeed lending his opponent little regard, scarce respect. Never could the axe extend, to reach at its complete potential of devastation, so rather did Eidrik make himself centred, patient, with knees bent. He whacked about his chest with the staff instead of its ammolite crown, deterring Odr’s raring dooms. The furrfiend was pushed to the alley’s brim, then spilled out stumbling into the road, with Odr in his hot and giddy pursuit.

Where he was raw thirst and the warrior’s pride, Arawn was cautious, testing her falchion for an angle, then rapid upon discovery. She kept to the hindleg, thrusting forth and stepping back, allowing Horral good time to recover and counter. Her handiwork was paced but demanding, each bout a test and regularly failed. Arawn observed the squint of the old furrfiend, the twist of the wrist. She studied the rhythm of his breathing, before the lunge would arrive. The old killer was experienced with his swordplay, nearly more so than befits even an Archfiend, all deflection until came piercing accuracy. The furrfiend’s trade would not breed the grey-haired. For that, she knew he had long and hardily made foes of mankind. His ability was honed, earned. In seeing the contempt he returned to her, Arawn guessed those foes belonged to Galehaven. A champion of the Scourge, she figured, turned rebel. Her eyes narrowed, then she took to her front leg and dove inward.

Gleaming and clean, her falchion cursed to an axe-like tip that seemed sooner to slash bracken than sever flesh, but in her hand was it delicate. The hilt was dark red, vined by black wrappings, with the outer quillon curved long around her fist. She teased its touch, leapt apart before it could by the caneblade be tasted, then seized the affray, by a decisive slashing. Horral weaved aside, though felt the hairs of his chin tug away. The furrfiend stabbed at her belly and found a raised guard. He curled the wrist and tore high instead, forcing Arawn to suspend her swordplay and sidestep. Horral stepped back, permitting her a reprieve, wherein she realized her hood had been torn.

Arawn nodded, pensively, then cast off her admiration to recall the offense of it. “Quick, for an old man,” she said.

“No,” Horral answered. “Your war on farms has slowed you.”

She sneered and came again, bolstered by new speed. With aim and brutality, as if truly cutting across woodland thatch. Horral kept her at bay, but for uncut skin was wedged onto the defensive. A flurry sent him backwards into the road, then the falchion claimed his waist.

The gall was smacked aside and Horral stepped through, carving off his caution to bring a blade high and drop it heavily. The falchion found a brace in her spare arm, to stop the strike inches from her eye, and that eye did swell in wonder. She pushed apart from their clash, stepped far, and when Horral engaged a turned back, she spun metal against him. Hastily did the caneblade jump between. He did not know if he had survived until sparks flashed before him. Arawn withdrew her falchion and swung widely through his shins, but to her shock the old fellow jumped clean over the falchion. By the time his feet struck stone his blade fell at her chest, but a quick deflect saved her, then again she stepped off.

The furrfiend slowed, gave away pursuit, and allowed her a moment to again insert of her own volition. She aimed to find victory without the sacrifice of any blood. She aimed to bait and outpace him, then exhaust the old bones to cut through tender meat. She did not know whom she faced.

“Such tales, I’ve heard of your order,” said Horral. “Legends of prowess, and carnage of course. You leave no finer legacy. Stand your ground, red dog. Or would you die with your back turned?”

The old defiance was humbling and Arawn smoked at it, at its boldness. She strafed, spun her falchion to a reverse-grip, then drew low and with tight eyes beheld him anew.

“I know courtesy for my elders,” said Arawn. “I thought to give you your fair chance to cower again. To go mindless to the fields, as all you fiends are fated. But if on this bout you insist, old man, I will give you instead a last wisdom to take to your grave.” The falchion tensed. “Let its lesson ail and sting.”

Arawn served two hard blows. They cracked and left Horral’s wrists quivering. She was quicker then, forcing him lower to the earth, tearing at the aches in his knees. A wicked flourish harassed the cane and crumbled his powers of defence. His guard was too beaten to again repel, and then in steel’s whip Horral witnessed a horrid, abrupt finale.

There was a clang, then the caneblade fell sidelong at the edge of a wasted arm. Arawn Dandril stood over him, slowed again. There was some fret in her eye, like the conqueror’s doubt. She saw victory but in some part it soured her. No, the battlefield would not await cowardice. A scowl sealed all indecision away.

A last strike flew. Horral launched himself to the side of it, urgent and aimless. His eyes escaped, but his arm snapped back. Blood spurted out below his shoulder, his body jerked. He tumbled to the cobblestones with a scream, coiling, thrashing through puddles of rain. Horral grasped frantically at the wound and its burn and the blood that gushed from it, yet felt only a tether. In horror, he learned that his arm hung only by a few strings of muscle, by a halved digit of bone.

The caneblade left his grip and splashed. He could only stammer, locked in the vibrations of overwhelming shock. So much blood. He knew, without the rush of combat and its dumbed nerves, he would be dead already. His heart would stop or be skewered. But surely, that was next to come.

A falchion laid low, sharing the brim of his puddle. Cold and silent, Arawn observed him in his agony. The ragged breaths filled her ears and the bone sticking through absorbed her sights, like some unrighteous spectacle of resilience, like some statue to a morbid feat. She wished the blow had killed him. It would have been so much easier if it had only killed him.

“Surely,” she began, “you expected this. You must have expected this, old man. Do not tell me now you dared to believe in victory. You saw the stakes and gambled it away. I took nothing from you! You gave me your blood.”

Horral could not speak, only writhe.

“Come then,” said Arawn, gesturing to his lay with her reddened blade. “Let us be rid of this glum little night.”

Then she was silent, subdued quite suddenly by a viciouser thunder, of merry and madness that took away her breath. Odr the Toothed raged just up the road from them, brawling with all the faceless want of ferals.

Too slow was the furrfiend’s great axe of ammolite to surmount the strength of Odr’s assault. He was the relentless spirit of the arena, working his jagged mace like an iron clapped to a great bell, so before each strike Eidrik jolted, was with a boom sent back. The hand’s every shift was a fresh violation, draining power, draining nerve. The mace sped on, the staff dented at each blocked blow, and then was the ammolite crop like the many-jaded boughs of a sickly tree. In the air of evasion, Eidrik’s shins began to shake. He realized then that Odr was not fighting him as did the average blue-gold, as did the field’s bladesmen, as did the bandits and all the mongrels—Odr was consuming him, eating him alive. There was less in him with each strike, until at last he could not so much as lift his axe higher than his own chest. It was in exhaustion that Eidrik realized how awfully he had lost.

Then, he saw it, with the axe by his knees and the will to raise it weary. Eidrik beheld a glimmer of light in Odr’s mace, stretching out. Around its blue jewel, slivers of light formed and jittered. Electric cuts weaved about the macehead, gathering force, dancing as dastardly lightning.

The mace called down the storm, he saw, and his soul cackled. It summoned the violent flare of damnation, down from the affectless clouds. The eyes trembled in their sockets. Tight lips found a smile and breathed some private wonder, as the mace sped against him.

“A miracle…” said Eidrik Bourgall.

Black iron tore through his skull. The first spike clove his temple, split his eyes wide, gushed brains out over his open mouth. His head erupted, flattened, and seeped. The force of the blow tore him down to his knees and rain arrived speedily to pull his blood away. Odr ripped his mace out from Eidrik’s skull with a grunt, then the furrfiend fell and went still.

Ammolite clanged across the cobblestones.

The street seemed stalled and the rain a paralyzed drove. Horral did not move. Leaping eyes, bulbous with red borders, fought to make sense of it. The pain of his wound vanished. His knees struck the stones and bruised. He had but one hand to raise, then from his throat blasted a profane utterance. A howl, demonic and ancient, but a single word, to which all of Eritle shuddered.

“No!”

Rain pooled at his knees, a red reflection with popping veins. The shout fell away, into discordant weeps, abraded on their journey up to the airless jaw. The tendons of his neck nearly snapped. His stomach shrank and grew knots. Horral was sure he would never breathe again, but somehow, the cries rang through the sky. Somehow, the rain and wind persisted. Somehow, the world did not end.

But how he wished it did.

His eyes did not for a moment abandon the image of his brother. Not for a moment did they consider Odr’s lurk nor the falchion dipped near. He could not abandon that mangled ruin of man. He could not leave him, for to leave him then was to do so forever. When Horral blinked at the blur, at the burning, he could only sob louder, for in the shut eye laired a viler shame. He had let this come to pass. Arawn had divided Eidrik from him and Odr had slain him, but it was Horral himself who brought Eidrik to his death. He wished that the mace fell differently, that is tore the ear or stole the eye or rendered his fellow mute or maimed him. He wished that it took Eidrik and turned him cripple or blind or a wretched sludge of spent skin. The most horrendous things he wished upon his brother, if only that in their agonies there could be a beat in Eidrik’s heart again. Yet there was not. Eidrik’s corpse did not move from where the mace had left it.

And so was Eidrik nothing; only another body lost in the ravels of swards and their grim stories. A caution to a traveler, a smell for a mole, and it was Horral’s fault. The thought was an anguish that corrupted his misery, summoned forth a more abject, helpless thing. The weeps fell away and the fears fell cold. Horral took to a howling, loud, in lunacy. It was his fault. All-Father’s eyes, it was his fault. Thunder, lightning, the Crimson Clad. Of course it was his fault. This, he knew. But first it was theirs.

Gradually, the caneblade found his left hand, to which it was hardly accustomed. It laid in wrapped knuckles without flesh and the spare grip dripped and dangled like a limp chain, that obeyed the wind. Odr met his eye and frowned. The Toothed spun the mace in his grip and Eidrik’s blood spun off from it.

“Go to Veil,” said Arawn. “I will end this alone.”

Compliant and largely without interest, Odr hurried back down the alley towards the terrace. Arawn waited for him to leave their sight, then stepped aside. Horral was granted a channel to reach the body, and unthinking in a pure instinct of the heart, he seized it. Speeding to Eidrik, he could not look down upon what became of him. He could not see how the face had been split, the bone broken—it was too sickening. He could not see that cloven gaze and think it his, or always would Eidrik’s memory meet him as a pair of pale, skewered eyes.

He set down the caneblade and took up the axe, fetched its strap, then slung it over his back and fastened it. He held the dead hand tightly as he took from it, then armed with his caneblade again, he rose to face Arawn Dandril.

“Your battle…” she said. “The rebel’s war… it is as it’s always been: Ugly, and a furrfiend knows this well. You knew what this fight would cost. Now we end it. But face me as the soldier, with the soldier’s rage, and dry your eyes, old man. Do not hide behind grief and think yourself innocent. This is your doing as much as mine.”

“No,” Horral rasped. “It is my fault far more than yours, red dog. It will be my hands—my burden—to bury him. It will be my toll, to carry on the memory, by a cold axehead. But his vengeance…” His caneblade swung up to aim against her. “His vengeance will be yours.”

“Ah,” breathed Arawn, before donning a high guard. “Then show to me all the force you’ve left.”

Light festered in the fogs. A clamour headed up the road toward them, stunning their feud. The sound of boots, of metal arrived. Arawn understood quickly and hastened away, vanishing into the dark of an adjacent alley. Horral learned an instant later that at last Eritle’s bladesmen had learned of the skirmish, and came surely to collect their captives and string their rope. He ran disjointedly towards a home, throwing his tired body up against its side, nearly collapsing in the effort. He clutched his arm and scraped past, smearing the blood of the wound across the window. Once more, he glanced back. To the road, to the puddle of rain and guts. To where sprawled the greatest man he had ever known.

Then he turned and fled, though did it alone. Alone, into the next alley. Alone, gushing, under the storm.

Odr bounded out onto the terrace, with an eager romp and a trudging club. There was a melody of steel across the cliff. Bludgeoned and blood-slick, they battled and the battle was brilliant. Odr had never before witnessed such fluidity, such savage expertise. They were the whirl of rain, the shadow’s deadliness, the completeness of the night sky. The duel entranced better than lightning, was brighter than the gloss of the rifts and the crags of hiccuping clouds. Veil’s sword moved before his hand but the outlander never failed to spot and riposte it. Never before had Odr seen Nadaar go so tested, come so possibly before oblivion. That, he could not permit.

“Veil!” he cried. “Step away!”

Over his shoulder, the kinnit shot a warning glare, but saw already that the mace of Odr was arched, and in a panic leapt sideward. Ulf raised his guard, expecting the weapon to be flung, but saw instead the jewel take aim against the skies. It sang with blue light. It sizzled, sparked, then came a blinding flash. An explosion of energy met the macehead, a zap from on high. The jewel caged the lightning and glowed. Odr cried out, as if swinging an anchor one-handed, then dumped all his strength forward. The mace aimed to the cliff’s edge and the outlander.

A blue beam fired out. Ulf jumped back and it struck the stone at his feet. The earth imploded with the growl of the storm. Light caked and demolished the cliffside. Veil took cover from the awful flash and the impact pushed Odr onto his back. Ulf, closest to the pop, blew away on ravaged rock.

Veil rubbed his eyes then scrambled to his feet, hustling to the cliffside. It was destroyed, drifting away, split into a dozen drifting pillars of varying steeps. Odr invoked a rift and beyond did rock fall away into the gloom-embrace of Argolan. As if he aimed to catch the Northman from where he hung, Veil leapt to the edge and his mouth went agape. On dissipating earth, the Northman scurried. He raced the fragments of rock to the plummet.

In Veil was a relief he could not understand. He grinned, then bit his lip into a scowl. Ulf breathed hard, clutched an ache in his ribs, and worked down the rockface, across fallings charred and jagged. His black garb was tossed in reds and so too did his face bleed.

“When I awake tomorrow,” Veil called out, “and my blade dries of the last remnant of you… perhaps will Frausjael be forgotten in full. You are the last of your line, Banmard! The completion of the very old sin!”

The ground fell away beneath him, but the Northman leapt and rolled and snagged against shrinking ledges. In the hesitance of the avalanche, he chased his pit.

“Perhaps, at last,” said Veil, “I will care for all of it no longer! Perhaps the snows will fail to stir me! Or perhaps I will weep!”

The stone tore away from his grip. He slid and his gloves tore. The spine struck rock and all the air left Ulf’s lungs.

“Only your death might tell!” Veil yelled. “That is all we are, Banmard! That is all we have!”

Slabs of stone whirled down past him. He felt the wind and the doom of it. He could sense the swallow of Argolan gnaw at his feet. With a last vengeance, he glared up at Veil, who awaited him. The mist of broken earth blurred their union.

“We have only the blade’s chance…” said Veil Nadaar.

There was much left undone, Ulf knew. Many hunts unfulfilled, damned in the crumbling edge of the little cliff-town. He ripped his sights downward and jumped, striking a lower climb that turned brittle under his boots. He kicked off from the snare and caught the jut of a lagging mass, heavy and slow in collapse. Ulf scrambled to its crown and lunged apart. Pebbles battered him in the gap, then he landed with a roll onto a lower platform, already cracking apart. From his impact, it began to split away. Squatting, he gripped its edge and rode a lone member of the crushed stone lower, then disembarked before the drop could consume it. His arms felt sure to snap. His feet found earth crookedly, but Ulf allowed himself to slide, spared his knees, and battered his back, while the slant carried him. The mist of rock and lightning’s flame consumed his image and, in the death throes of the cliff, the Northman vanished.

Bewilderment washed over Veil. He could not fathom the dexterity, the acrobatics, the will, but all positive thought fell quickly into inconsolable wrath. He aimed his ill temper at the drop, as if preparing to take to the wind of the plummet and give his fate away to revenge. There was first an intrusion of cold like the scouts of frostbite upon him, working under the scale. A shadow emerged in his peripheral vision, far away in the dark, but with the ranger’s tenacity he snapped to it. Turning, Veil beheld a form towards the legs of the cliff-town, in the rocky mess beneath Eritle’s gate, upon a stab of Argolan’s rift, watching, with the same entrancement, the Northman who fell.

An ashen garb, with a face of white. A scythe with two blades was on its back. With a sudden twist of the head, it routed out Veil on his perch. Nadaar staggered back from the ledge, but in a blink the form disappeared, fed to the cover of the rocks.

“Veil!” shouted Odr again. “There are guards on the road! We have to get out of here, unless we’re to slay the whole of Eritle’s garrison!”

“We will not have to,” he said calmly again. “Fetch your armour. Gather Arawn. We have a new heading, Odr.”

“Anywhere but here, Veil! Quickly! We can’t be discovered here, Veil! Not here! Not with this many eyes!”

Veil Nadaar did not rush. He was firm in his vigil over the sinking stones and the graves of weary apparitions. Over his shoulder a cut snout crept, and the cracks of its scales split to speak.

“We go to Argolan.”

____