Phantom by the Fire

Chapter 2: Phantom by the Fire

The forest broke open. From its gap rose a smoking hill. A campfire, with three lodgers quivering before its flames, became a lighthouse; a beacon of salvation, to every wild soul that night who stared high enough to see its smoke.

The woods bent in the breeze before it, amassed at its base, and ruffled its leaves, indignant. The fire was an insult. The light was sheer mockery to the all encompassing darkness of the woodlands. And the servants of darkness, loyal and feral as they proved, watched it. Hated it. The impenetrable tangle of root and vine that died at the hill’s base encroached, stirred. Shadows loomed between trunks. Stomps echoed up from grottos under earth. An army in wait, the wilds twisted with each taste of arson. They growled their hunger, but by the fire and in its warmth those three fools convinced themselves they were safe.

Brown eyes, orbs of a burnt chestnut, found them from below. Their fire was measly, their defences unfunded. Evidently enough, they had either never before braved the lost woods or had seen her terrors so vividly, in a manner so scarring, that they lost the will to fend off death.

He, in his garb of studded leather and his rich cloak of black, sneered at the hilltop. He could hear their whispered stories, the following glee, the merry chants and the brazen ideas for the morrow’s ventures. Virgins to the carnal war, they were. Aliens to the field of lament veteraned tongues named battle. And battle was everywhere. It was behind him, even then, and if his will were unflinching and his conscience dormant he could drag it up all those steep steps to them. That heavy tide would snuff any fire, drown any who hid in the heat, he was sure.

Elsewhere, it is true that a campfire is a campfire alone and heeds no thought, much less no mercy. However, when one finds themselves in the belly of Meddleflore, that spanning green hell elders claim as gianthome, the last thing to do is start a fire, or make a sound, or do anything that might catch hungry eyes.

Fortunately for the three young, brash, highland fools who camped out on that stunted cliff, marooned amidst the crashing blacks of an emerald sea set aslumber, Ulf Eldric was not yet depraved beyond sympathy. His eyes did narrow with the thought of murder, and his grip did slip hiltbound with the envy of action, though by fire he knew hopes and dreams flickered, still bright, still unaccustomed to the darkness that chewed them. They laughed, and so he knew they had something worth laughing over, something to smile about and comfort them in the cold. Idiocy alone did not mandate that they be cut away from that warmth. They were, in his mind, for lack of a better word, undeserving; spared by ignorance from an arrogant end.

Ulf Eldric sighed, stole his hand away from his hilt, and with a brush of his cloak joined the shadows of the wilds. His steps were quick, but soft, silent, traitorous to the strength he bolstered. They carried him four strides beyond the break, then echoed. Ulf froze. Bending his knees and whipping his wrist, he unsheathed a gnarled blade of razored bone. Its coarse frame defiled the darkness, severing the frost from its wind. With that twisted device protruding from his left arm and the black flow of his garb shielding skin, he assumed the form of a phantom. His cloak flapped and his eyes searched, but his heart and mind went perfectly still.

The grass did not flatten beneath him. The wind did not bend around him. Insects could not find him, but dared not touch him still. In that patient readiness, in which lurked a most unholy want, Ulf Eldric challenged the whispers of the wood.

And they answered.

The sound he spied rustled louder, then multiplied. He heard the tear of shrubs from further in. With a sniff, he caught the scent of rotten meat, hot on snarled breaths. His sight was last to the hunt, as scraggly heaps of fur and scale creeped out from behind the trees. Their serpentine eyes reflected the moon, as their wolvish claws clenched dirt, sad to see it not bleed.

Thorned spines, horned heads equipped with snake stares, and the haired bodies of hounds that ended in sharp tails. The pack was many, but each was small. Their faces were scrunched and beastial, with spit slipping out from their gnashing jaws.

Lygons. The Meddleflorian rats. Prey to the arrbears though predator to anything smaller, with an appetite twice their size.

A sprawling wave of eager bloodlust descended against Ulf, who already began stepping back before they could utter their first shriek. It was an ungodly sound, like a wolf howling to the moon with shrapnel in its neck. It was their warcry, and at its sound they launched into four-legged sprints.

Ulf darted backwards, slipping between greatoaks with a trained ease. They were faster, yet the first of their many lunges found only bark under their claws and empty air between their teeth. Just as soon as he had vanished, Ulf reemerged from behind the foliage with a quick cut. He tore into the first and sent it off its feet. The beast flew backwards into a tree, then fell from its bludgeon, twitching, with a bloodied gash where its ribcage was.

Two more threw themselves at the assailant. Their frantic claws nearly caught cape, though even fabric could elude them with the speed of flight. The phantom circled, backed up against a greatoak and was absorbed by its shadow. He watched the hunters search failingly from that crevice. There were some dozen lygons in the pack, he learned. The scent of gushed insides took sway, deceiving their snouts, but it was only when their eyes failed to find, then accomplished doubt, that he emerged again.

The two nearest lygons jumped with fear and rose hustled claws, but Ulf’s awful blade was much faster. It whisked through them as if they were made of water. In one swing, he tore the arm off one and decapitated the second, before whirling back with a flick of his wrist to slash a red trench across the chest of the first. It fell on to its back, trembled its dead claws airborne, then dropped its head back with a dying screech, just as its comrade’s severed skull rolled idly against it.

The hunt had ended for the lygon pack at that very moment. Even their primitive minds knew, at the sight of their slaughtered brethren, that the chase had become a matter of survival. Ravenous furies guiding their lurch, they closed in around Ulf Eldric. Hate mangled between their teeth. Their serpent stares achieved a complete focus.

It would have to be broken, Ulf knew.

With a spin and a step back, his right hand produced a pouch from within his cloak. A thumb pressed in hard, and from the leather jaw breathed a hail of crystalline powder, the shade of sunlight. Ulf brought his sword crashing through the cloud. Sparks flew out, precursing the implosion that pursued them. The dust turned to pale smoke. In an instant, a cloud placed itself between the pack and their prey.

The gnarled horde reeled back, suspecting sharpness on the fog’s broil. With obeying steps they pivoted from the white mass of reaching mist. Their instinct frenzied, their violent urge quelled under fear’s weight. One lygon crept forth on her scabbed paws, lurched an inch nearer, and sniffed the air. She flinched, anticipating a toxin to stab up her nostrils. Alas, there was nothing but the rank stink of sulfur. In moments more, the shroud dissipated into nothing. Excitedly, like their leash fell unmanned, the pack surged, snarling, biting back lustful tongues. Only Ulf Eldric, the object of their depraved hunger, was gone. Already was he halfway up the hill, leaping from root to rock upright like a goat carved out from mountain shade, abandoning them to the measly woodland masking the outskirts.

Hysteria descended upon the lygons. It stole their hive mind and as one they plummeted into madness. Their instinct was deceived and their meal eluded, and the greatest insult to a monstrous stomach was an appetite unappeased. Rabied hate brought them through the trees like a flood. They ripped grass from the earth in their speed, tore bark from trunk with their mantling.

A tide of stained fur and scarred hides ascended the cliff. Their climb was barbaric, an urgent sacrilege against the rockside that left it defaced and marred. The sheer immensity of their desire made them a rapid force. It took the breath of seconds before Ulf turned to find webbed claws springing for his heels. The she-beast that had been so brazen to inspect the fog jumped high off the backs of her kin, and with a needing nail slit red out from Ulf’s ankle.

He stared down at the creature, ceasing his climb. A boiling mold of utter offense fell against the beast, one that only deepened, grew molten, under the sensation of bloodloss.

Ulf Eldric was prey to nothing.

Steel flashed. The wind whipped around a strong arm’s whirl. Lygon scurriers looked skyward to see a corpse falling against them, her face torn open at the cheek. The body plucked two from the hillside in its plunge, and in its shadow emerged Ulf’s spinning cloak like the very hand of death. His blade pierced through another’s chest and with a monstrous strength raised it off its perch. Staked high before them, a conqueror’s trophy, the body was hoisted, then backhanded, to bludgeon another from its height.

Claws reached for vengeance, so Ulf slashed fingers from their stubs. His blade melted flesh with each cut. Tufts of fur filled the air, blood splattered the rock. He leapt from ledge to slant to a rooted hang with an expert athleticism, emitting cleaves with each shift and raining corpses on the woods below. The force assailed the hillside like a cold wind, but he was the air’s own devil, and each time his sword flashed it whispered of hell.

Two lygons met his offensive, scratching then distancing and routing again, stealing his eye as their brethren sped up the left flank. In due course, the creature held height over him. It leapt down against a turned back. Yet Ulf’s ear was sharper.

He spun backward, caught the lygon by its little neck and snatched it out of its own assault. The beast slammed against the rockwall, struggling for freedom for mere seconds, before Ulf gutted it. Organs drooped out, divided at his blade, and struck the ground.

The stone wailed behind him, signal to a mounting rush. The first two had made their move. With a sidestep Ulf let the first attacker headbutt a fragment of boulder, then cut in behind it to center himself between the two. In one swift motion, he sliced forward with such momentum to propel his blade into a backward shift, then plunged behind with his full weight, to horrid effect. One lygon lay twitching by his feet, a dark sunder in its chest, while the other sat impaled between him and the hill.

He pulled his blade away, continued the climb hurriedly, only to realize near its peak that the pack had run screaming back into the woods. Their forces laid butchered across the stone steppes. Their hunger howled off into the moonlight, unappeased. With few to their number, the lygon surge at last sought a meal elsewhere.

Ulf flung his blade out to his side, slapping the blood off of it. He allowed himself a breath, and another, though his mouth remained shut. This work had not earned his pant.

Above him was the rigid lip of the hill’s crown. It jutted out, sprouted the wryly throes of an underbrush unchecked, though to him it was an ease of ascension. Rather, what stilled his step was not the height, but instead the shadows looming on its precipice. Three gaunt figures perched above him, falconish in their vigilance until the moonlight angled its way across their faces. Each was young, concerned, utterly fascinated with the sight before them. Their garb was cloth, lined with silk, and accented with the vibrant dross of wealth. Young nobles, most likely, so riddled with delusion to believe they truly sought adventure.

They attempted camaraderie, boasting smirks to curtail a warm welcome. Ulf knew their kinship was a farce. In friendship they prayed they would be spared that same slaughter that had befallen the lygons. No doubt the scent of gore castrated their campside air, choked their young lungs. They understood, even in innocence, the smell of sin.

“That’s bloody work, stranger,” one greeted, through a stutter he ached to hide, in a tone of pomp unrest. “Any foe of nightbeasts is a friend by our fire.” His hand waved to his rear where the flame sneered.

Silence loomed. The triplet could only wait, suffer the cold, and hope that the stranger’s disposition inclined towards kindness, or rather a mere lack of malice. Were he to tangent upon greed, they were helpless to prevent the coming wrath. The digit’s entirety understood their predicament, as clearly as Ulf recognized the power to kill influx under his fist. They shared the quiet, muttered their prayers, while Ulf bit his teeth, gazed at the cold woods behind him, and finally swallowed desire’s call.

Night, with a bloodlust satisfied, shed its phantom.

They were unimposing at a distance, though in approach he could closely assess where they belonged and where they certainly did not, and the darkness of Meddlelfore numbered starkly among the latter. The speaker wore a coat of dim red, with golden hair slicked back, albeit muddied with the slime of vines and shrubs and the most frantic of idle greens. His build was slim and that scrawniness was best reflected by the incline of his cheeks. With green eyes he smiled, twice as bright as even his white teeth could muster. At his neck hung an amulet of pearls, interlaid with fine emeralds from a foreign coast, and at his hip hung a short sword more akin to a dagger were it ever to face monstrous flesh. It paled against any real armament, though among this crew it nearly named him champion.

At his right, already seated by the fire, was a broad specimen with enough muscle even in dormancy to dismiss the suspicion of fat. He wore a grey cloak over white garb and on his feet weighed great black boots. A soldier’s, Ulf determined, likely thieved from a less eager father, but one more achieved than his son’s escapades could manage. He held an axe in his grip and slid a stone over its edge, flying sparks into the flame with each second stride. Ulf could hear the scrape, see the force of light, and knew the young lad made a strenuous effort to appear firm of composure, strong of mind, and no doubt put all his strength behind each glide of the whetstone. His hair was brown, shaggy, hid sharp eyes under its sway. They observed and pretended at perception, though a trained watch knew their deceit. On his wide fingers were rings of silver, and one rubied with a shimmering red.

Idiocy, thought Ulf, to carry wealth so openly.

The third was the least courageous. He alone knew the real threat this stranger presented. He alone hugged his short sword with the quiver that was warranted. Ulf could smell his fear. Sweat lined his hands, hugged under his arms. He wore a long black trench coat, laid atop a blacker fleece. He was tallest by a foot though deprived of the strength owed to one of his build. Jumpy eyes of brown greeted Ulf from under his mane of gilded orange, and they promised he was ready to act if any harm befell their camp.

Ulf offered a final gaze over the woods, which twisted with an uncanny quiet, before at last settling by the flame and its heat. Unfortunately, it too fell stunted in approach. He dug a hand in under his cloak, produced a small chunk of dim rock, then slid it down the length of his blade. It attracted sparks like a flaming shepherd until its glide found the blade’s edge. The rock crashed into the fire with a chrous of light behind it, earning a bellow, a roar, and the yawn of engulfing flame. The youths shuddered at the sudden blaze, and when arms lowered eyes raised to find their fire magnified. Now its breaths were fierce and its embers hot. Now the cold fled like ants before them.

The blonde shared looks of amazement with his peers, though they returned only concern.

“Helluva’ trick,” he marveled. “Where’s one learn a trick like that?”

Ulf sneered, reeled his sights elsewhere, then shot spit against the flashing light.

“North,” he said, with a voice like grating anvils, pronouncing dismay.

“North, eh? You’ve been up by Rotskal, then,” figured the wide one. “Seen the fires at Strideham? My da’ tells it to be the fiercest plight those lands ‘ave suffered in a century and more. He did a tour up there, twice in fact, to aid with the insurgencies.”

“Been to Rotskal,” Ulf confirmed. “Been to Strideham, too. It’s not in lands so soft with nights so hot that a man learns to make flames work for him. It’s in fiercer lands than your da’ could stomach. Far fiercer.”

They fed themselves on the silence that followed his words. It was a call to cease foolish inquiries and still the savvy of their tongues, less they desire them no longer.

“So when you say North…” the tall lad continued, in an aura of trepidation. “You mean…”

The blonde thieved the answer.

“The North,” he shuddered, as his friends gasped. “The realm of the Mad Vicar Allensworth, the home to the Frost-Thralls and hunting ground to Mounverns.” He looked about the ensemble in a terrified delight, high on adventure’s scent. “I’ve heard it said that only the most wretched of beasts and killers even worse stumble out from the high snows. Heard men aren’t men no more, after they’ve tasted a winter up there.”

Ulf looked against him, with all of misery’s flush searing in his gaze, and the youth fell silent.

“Winter doesn’t change a man,” he denied simply, dropping his focus back to his feet. “It’s what comes with winter… what crawls out from under the snow, what stalks into human towns with the taste of meat fresh on its tongue… it’s what you have to see happen… what you have to stop…”

He swallowed hard.

“That’s what changes a man. All winter can do is kill you.”

Again, Ulf’s words sufficed to shutter any conversation. The crickets reigned for a long minute of trepid thought, afright consideration. Their doomed minds ran so rank with torpor that the scratchy song of the insects was a deaf wave, a soundless vibration. Still, the noise was present, and in their idle soundbox they felt the woods creep up all around them with every slow, unheard shift. The blonde was lost in his fantasies of carnage, triumph, envisioning a worldscape so bleak he could somehow fit into it, fascinated that his daydreams fell to ground, so it fell upon the tall, wrily lad to vanquish the serenity, entrapping at it was.

“So are you headed south?” he asked the stranger, before realizing a question in and of itself may be too intrusive against ears so tested, so trained to detect. “W-we’re headed south…” he defused, dowsing water on only a vision of smoke. “Aye, we came down from Cambrill. Heard tales of lost treasures in Meddlelfore. Folk from back north say there’s a dragon’s sum sitting lost in these woods. Say it’s enough to buy a castle, but that beasts prowl every which way. That’s what you’re here for, right? For the treasure… a-a-and to kill beasts? Like the beasts you killed down the hill?”

Ulf wanted to growl the inquiries back into the void, but the innocent wonder in the young man’s tone slowed his antipathy. It melted dismission, so with a slight tolerance and low patience he gave an answer.

“Didn’t kill all of them. They ran off-” he paused, hesitant to reveal the truth of their defeat, but settling on keeping their spirits low. After all, high spirits led to quick deaths, and nothing inspired spirits like the conquest of evil in odds beyond surmount. “The fire ran them off,” he lied. “They’re scared of it. Deathly so.”

“The fire, eh? So, you’re saying…” began the tallest with a light, undecided smile. “In a manner of speaking… since we lit the flame, it was sort of us that beat them - in a manner of speaking…?”

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“Suppose so,” he shrugged.

“You hear that lads,” he asked, giddy and set jittering with the prospect of a fine jest. “We’re slaying beasts already!” The others chuckled gently, guided by his overcompensating grin, but their attention rested on Ulf and his unamused gawk longer.

“Hardly beasts,” he rejected. “It’s lygons lying dead on that hill. Wolfrats. And there’s far worse than them out in this darkness.” He remembered the thought of treasure and shook his head with a dry snicker. “And far less gold than’s worth dying for.”

“You think the riches are just fables?”

“I think you’ll scrape together a few silvers out from dead corpses, true. A copper here and there. Think that’ll nearly cover the cost to fix all the wounds you’ll give up to get it.”

“Not one for high adventure, I take it,” he said with a warm smile.

The look he received made the smile die and swamp with dread where it fell. Ulf’s stare alone denied such a simplification, though his words shamed the very idea of it.

“People die in these woods, boy,” he told. “They die looking for people they lost. Escaping things that want them dead, they die. They die because they’ve no choice.” He looked about the party, embarrassed. “And here you all are… For you, death will come on your own accord.”

He shook his head disdainfully.

“Adventure,” he spat. “There’s no adventure to be had when you know what’s out there.”

“And what’s out there?” asked the blonde, so enamoured with danger’s tale that his tone came against the outlander like an accusation.

Ulf dropped his focus to the fires, listening to the question as it pounded deeper and deeper into his mind. The way the flames twisted, raveled around each other, the way they sizzled and soared as a city in ruin. He could almost hear commotion in their revelry, a song in their fiery dance. A sound - one that grew and warped until it fashioned into screams. Screams that echoed off each burning tendril’s tip. Wails that begged and prayed and lamented; cries that sounded off into nothing. The fire held its own host of souls, and each time a cinder blew it blew with the weight of each body it burnt. Ulf could sit in sight of them all. To him, this light was not a warmth. To him, this light was a window to the heart of hellfire. It was a memory, burning forever.

What’s out there? the young, foolish boy wondered. What’s out there? the idiocy of innocence qualmed. How dare he think he had earned the answer. How dare he think he was ready for it. Again, Ulf scowled and shrugged, breaking away from the campfire’s lure and recalling that questions needed answers.

“Awful things,” he confessed. “Things that strip flesh- wear it like that fine silk you’ve draped under your coats. Things that bloodlet just to watch their victims wince, then beat them till they bleed their last drop. Things your da’ would never tell you about- things he’s never seen. Things that only ever see the darkness, and find offence at the light.”

The air itself hissed at his words, tightened around them. The cold felt the wound of his truth. The wind stirred, rustling leaves as it shivered.

“And you’ve seen them?” the blonde asked, now with a sternness his pale, fair face had never before formed and never before needed.

Ulf saw it, understood it, and rued its necessity, knowing even a young pup such as he could be bedeviled in the shadows of greatwoods. He could see the capability resting in his stare: The sour loom of a survivor’s earnesty boiling just under the surface. Horror could awaken such a thing, and so the horror in Ulf’s throat subsided for his sake.

“I’ve seen them,” he confirmed, then granted the tall lad a glance. “And I’m headed beyond them. South, to the ghost swards. South, to Arakvan.”

“‘Aven’t you ‘eard?” asked the axe-bearer, shocked. “Arakvan’s run ill with the Patch- red with the Scourge. It’s a dying nation. ‘Tis said the Crimson Clad alone keep its peace. ‘Tis said the Vicar is fat with the sugar of his own sacrilege. Not a place where outlanders can tread lightly, to say the least.”

The stranger nodded, having at last heard the triplet speak a truth, as infernal as it was.

“Often it is in dying places where men find what keeps them alive. In Arakvan, I’ve a debt to pay,” Ulf admitted. “The distractions will prove sportful.”

Bellowing with laughter, the wide fellow bloomed out from his sulk. “They will that, at least,” he said between hacking chortles, infecting his peers with a mild glee. “I’m Torreck, son of Tybalt, by the way.”

At first Ulf was insulted by his disposition, his faltering in the face of severity, though upon closer inspection of the dimples gouging his cheeks and the red blushing under his eyes, Ulf knew this was a child’s joy. He could not muster a smile, but he did offer the youth a nod, which to him was a trophy, setting his visage alight with a warmth of contentedness. He was honoured, to say the least, having befriended a phantom so early in his flight from home.

This will be a worthy adventure, after all, thought Torreck, muzzled by his own awkward merriment. His sharpening hand softened and the sparks flew dimly from his axe. His fear, at last, was lifted.

Yet Ulf’s had just found shape.

Distant vibrations struck his eardrum like an acid splash. Crushing grass, snapping wood. The sting of disturbance rippled through the woods, wove itself deep into the earth. Trespassers, he realized. Before his mind formed its conclusions, his hand found its hilt. He heard stone screech, dirt mould to split. Something wide, perpetual. A beast’s talon or- no… a wagon’s wheel. Its peripheral - littered with uneven beats. It was a band of a dozen, though it was only four who began to mount the hill.

“You all need to leave,” Ulf advised like a harsh bite.

Smiles dried up amidst the triplet. Confusion masked them, though unrest fettered through its shroud. They felt an immediate offence, then a worry in quick pursuit, as if they were sure they had said the wrong thing; an evil thing to stroke the vilest of their stranger’s tempers. They recoiled, sure their brotherhood had just broken away before them, then shrunk, sad to see such a new kindle fade out so fast.

But the phantom’s eyes said otherwise. They were wide, bulged, urgent with the wait of death.

“Have we said the wrong th-?”

Ulf interrupted Torreck’s idiocy.

“Men come up the hillside,” he continued. “Stay, and you’ll die as robbed corpses.”

Bewildered, they looked amongst each other for even a clue of anything definite. They shared their worry, their uncertainty, then rallied behind the blonde as his eyes went lucid with an idea.

“Plenty of room by our fire,” he rationalized. “Especially now that you’ve gone and grown it-”

“Time’s short,” Ulf intercepted. “Leave now or you’ll be carrion for the lygons.”

But they didn’t believe him. They didn’t know. They didn’t have the fastness of foot or the commitment of mind, so they stayed for seconds more, shared their stares, their silence, twiddled their thumbs and composed their smiles. Ulf dropped his head, a helm of certainty heavy upon him. Soon, they would understand. Soon they would learn the cold truth of Meddlelfore and places every bit as horrid: There were no friends beyond survival.

Moths to the light, the strangers ascended. Scavengers to warm meat. First over the edge was a grizzled, white-haired behemoth of a man, and his stomps made the blonde youth sink back from his welcome. In his right hand was a greataxe and in his left hand a greatshield, both made from iron, both pleasured on sapped life. Behind him were two ignoble grunts, with knotted hair unkempt, chipped swords unsharpened, fractured armours only intact at the shoulders and chest, and wild stares that sought like they had never before tasted sweetness. Leather wreaths ran where their steel subsided, adorned in chips and tacks and dull white cuts. One was black-haired, rat-tailed, with a starved hunch and a broken-hilted blade. The other was haired with dry, brown strains that covered the scars of his face and fought to hide the half-blindness of his eyes. Still, the mist crept through.

Ensuring their rear was the most formidable of the bunch. It was tall, structured, standing immovably though adjusting with each step to target its waiting lunge. On its face was a nearly featureless mask of white wood. Narrow slits kept its eyes focused yet concealed, and the rest was void. Submerged in a grey cloak, the form was an ashen spectre, yet the double-bladed scythe on its back made it more akin to reapers. The weapon was obsidian with moonshone steel, a brass cultivated in ocean-floor earth. At its either pommel protruded death; razored, long, and wickedly curved. Its cloak did not rise with breaths and did not fall with its steps. It merely floated, like a lofty curtain of dust lined in darkness.

At the sight of that creature that did indeed stand on two legs though betrayed every other notion of humanity, the trio flattened in horror, questioning how that form could even breathe - if it was even real. Ulf knew better. Ulf knew it had mastered its breaths and, beyond that, that even then, its eyes were fixated upon him as if they had hunted him their entire life.

He demonstrated no concern. In his mind, the stage was decided and the outcome laid bare.

A pity, he thought to himself.

“Evening, t-travelers,” the blonde boy greeted. “Care to join by our fire? The night is long yet, and she’ll only grow colder.”

They did not obey custom, nor did they do so much as provide a gesture to show that they had heard. They simply watched. And grinned. The white-haired mass strolled into the center of their camp casually, lackadaisical, while the spectre remained unmoving at their entrance and the two bearish vandals crept their way behind the cluster, cackling and stumbling like drunken hyenas. Nervously, from the side of their eyes, the young nobles observed the iron mire that soon entrenched itself around them. In moments of silence, a circle had been formed and their means of escape had been stolen. They were barred within a quagmire of snarls and ill ambition, with naught but chipped daggers to fend off the teeth.

“A tad too dark for evening, in’t she,” the white wolf joked. “Nay, if my years in th’ wood left me at all wise, I’d name her twilight. Wouldn’t I?”

“Indeed,” jibed the rat-tail.

“But you’re right to call her cold,” said the white marauder with his snout to the wind. “In a fortnight, I’d wager we’ll see snows. She comes, our lady. Our great, impermeable winter. She comes with her flail of ice and her frost tits. She comes to claim us in our sleep, when the door lies ajar and the gusts unguarded.” He sniffed the breeze, inhaling the cold straight off its back. “Aye, she comes.”

“I’ve seen winters before,” quipped the blonde, intent on remaining no one’s fool to be scared and toyed with. “And they’ve found me all too guarded.” He was unaltered before their threats, and in that there was virtue, but of what worth is courage in the murk of a gouged heart?

Pulling but leashed, the white wolf snapped to him, the might of a hundred blizzards and a thousand cold sins set storming within his aged eyes. His shoulders tensed, his arms tightened, and his axe tilted in his fierce grip.

“Have you, then?” he asked with a quivering grin, as if with each tooth it contemplated indulging insanity and enacting insanity’s endless bites. “So you know damn well how to survive the winter, don’t you? You know what a man must do when the snow falls.” He leaned back. “What must a man do when the snow falls?” he asked the entirety of the hilltop.

“Eat!” snarled the rat-tail.

“Get fat…” snickered the half-blinded.

A nod proved them true: Slow and hefty, dunking in the validity of their words. “Get fat before the snows fall, aye. Like bears…” He raised a hand above the fire, feeling its heat surge and burn the wrinkles of his palm. “Savour the warmth while it’s here… that’s what a man must do. Before the warmth is all gone.”

He turned his palm upward, groveling at the black stain upon his skin. To him, he beheld a valley of ash and ruin, but to others there was only the madness of masochism to observe. He knew that was the truth of it, and it made him simmer with delight.

“Course that ain’t exactly right, is it?” he asked the young men, his eyes a candy temptation to their wrath. “Cause bears eat men, don’t they!”

The rat-tailed and the half-blind cried their splendor, letting thirsty tongues slip between breaths and gargle the rush of gaiety. The white wolf chuckled heartily. Their guarding spectre, however, did not stir.

“Meat means less for us, fortunately for you lot,” the aged beast claimed. “It’s gold we want. And what we’ll do to get it, well… that is no different from a bear and its flesh.”

The blonde stood tall, defiant to the last.

“We’ll not swallow threats like some-!”

“Enough talking,” ordered the white wolf, his humour a vanished thing. “You’ve a fine little treasure around your neck, boy. Piggy’s got silver on his fat little fingers. I’d say our hunt’s found its end.”

With the weight of a monument erected by rope, his greataxe dragged into the space between them. It cleaved the dirt it touched. The three found their feet at its sight and fumbled for their weapons.

Such movement alone, to depraved minds, was a declaration of war.

Torreck, son of Tybalt, rose with his axe and a defensive cry, though the rat-tail snuck in close, quickly, and rammed his blade through the young man’s back. The axe struck dirt, blood dribbled over it, then his full weight crashed into the fire. The flames raised high and squealed, before latching onto Torreck’s broad corpse. The white wolf grinned at the wounded flames.

The blonde unsheathed his short sword with a fury and threw himself at the killer. His throat rasped under the force of his howl, cracked, then choked as a sword slid across his neck. He fell to his back, grasping at his opened jugular, gargling his last breaths, while two misted eyes fell over him to bask in the bliss of his misery. The sword fell again, and this time it tore his stomach apart. The noble spasmed, trembled weakly at wet pieces of himself. After seconds he went perfectly still. A face of frozen terror aimed at heaven; nebulous if not so certain in its agony.

Just a few meters beyond that stare was Ulf. Watching, diverting his gaze, wondering how much life night had left. His blade remained sheathed.

Tears soaked the third’s focus. He tried to behold his fallen brothers but failed to stomach the sight. With sorrow, outrage, and misunderstanding he charged the white wolf with a weapon raised high. He would take that old bastard’s head if it was the last thing he did. But in age was experience, and the readiness of that cur trumped his young fury. The white wolf caught him by the wrist and launched him on his side. With a heavy steel boot he stomped on the attacking hand, crushing bone and forcing the sword to fall from his grip. The other two fell over him with kicks and fists, tossing him from knuckle to knuckle until he stopped moving, but whimpered still. In a ball of blood the last of the triplet wept, hardly shielding himself from the strikes and laughs.

The rat-tail turned aside, recalling that a fourth remained unrisen and unslain. Three excited steps brought him before the outlander, who still stared unmoving upon the blonde boy’s corpse. One shriek brought his sword down towards the outlander’s head. One blink readied itself to meet the blood that would gush.

Except the air changed before his steel could fall. A blur of black whisked past. The sword struck dirt, the attacker’s eyes widened, then he collapsed to his knees. Ulf was seated again before the man’s head could roll off his shoulders.

Instantly, the beating ended. The youth’s whimpers and Torreck’s immolation were the only sounds to be heard, until the rat-tailed skull went still and the wind died out. The misty-eyed bandit approached with insult and an unquenchable urge for violence, but the white wolf’s grunt alone stopped him in his tracks.

Ulf did not look at the pair, despite their insistence upon observing him, nor the newly made corpses either. The focus of the outlander belonged to the rising flames, as well as the spectre that had approached beyond them. Watching through its peevish eyes, motionless in its float, the white-faced fiend stared into Ulf, and found him staring back. A war of wraiths, it was, but the old wolf wished it otherwise.

“Now this is something to behold…” he said, impressed by the seated slayer. “I’d never have thought young fools such as these would host a Northman. With a blade forged from a yeckle’s spine, no less! Truly, a sight for sore eyes…”

“Let him feed our fires, Garott,” wished the mist-eyed. “Give me the word and I’ll gut this whoreson before he takes his next step!”

“You’ll try,” Garott laughed. “And he’ll do to you as he did to Myr. This is no back-alley miscreant, my friend… This is a killer from the North. Garbed in skinned hides. Dressed in scars of battles won.”

Ulf ignored his flatteries.

“We could do well with a warrior like you in our ranks,” offered Garott. “Weaklings like these make your bones ache- you need killers to keep you safe. And we of course could find use for one who takes heads like Myr takes shits-! Or… took shits, I suppose.”

Garott took a seat atop the only noble still breathing. A bone snapped under his squat and a whimper answered. The white wolf laughed and leaned in. At some point, inaudibly, his masked spectre had drawn closer, watching the outlander with great interest and, beneath that, something darker. Something bred from malice, that lusted for worse.

“It’s a waste of your time, skulking about the woods like this…” Garott continued. “If you want some real wealth, it’s us you’ve ought to ride with. We’ve food, too. And women. Young ones, even, if that’s to your fancy.”

With the fire flickering against him, Garott could truly observe the face of the phantom. He was completely bald, fully-shaven save for a tracking stubble around his chin. His skin was tanned, then shadowed beyond that. His eyes were burnt chestnut, stern and focused. His skin was lightless, save for the gloss of blood that shone in old wounds that laced across his firm jaw and strong cheeks like roadways of red. A chunk was torn out from his left ear.

Garott felt compelled to pull back, as if he had just shared a glimpse with pain’s own emblem in the mortal world. For a moment, when he gazed across Ulf’s dark features, he witnessed an evil far, far beyond him. An evil of disposition- of will. An evil that would stop at nothing to ensure it succeeded.

“Get off the boy,” ordered Ulf, his beckon a gravel whip.

First the white wolf contemplated the command, the threat loaded behind it, then smiled. He stood up, and again the boy could breathe.

Taken back, the misty-eyed vagrant stepped nearer. “You obey this coward, Garott? We killed his friends right in front of him, beat his queer love blue, and he didn’t so much as raise a finger! Whatever beast this cunt once was, he’s lost his claws now… He’s weak.”

“Weak?” Garott laughed. “You’ve never seen strength, friend. Rhaebjorn alone could fell this… creature. And I won’t risk Rhaebjorn over some vain skirmish in the woods.”

Garott gazed low, offering the outlander a last look of opportunity, which of course went unattended. He then turned around, plucked the amulet from the blonde’s chest, snapping off half its pearls in the process, and headed back to the hillside.

“Mayhaps he’s lost his claws,” the white wolf said. “Mayhaps he’s a coward who lets friends die ‘stead of getting his hands dirty… but he’s wild, still. And this is no place for it all to end.”

Reluctantly, the misty-eyed bandit trailed after him. Together, they stomped down to the cliff’s base, back to their wagon, their reinforcements and the path ahead. The theft was in part forfeit, though the deaths many.

Ulf remained where he sat, staring at the flames. The blonde laid gored by his feet, wetting Ulf’s toes with regal lifeblood. Torreck charred in his own fire, tainting the air with rot. The third, whose name he did not know and whose future he had inadvertently saved only for him to later awake and witness horrors, whimpered and shivered and pretended that all was only a nightmare.

He’ll never wake, Ulf knew with all his heart.

In the shadow of death, his only company proved to be the spectre. From the opposite end of those tall flames, Rhaebjorn still stood, watching. The two assessed one another, summed up their capabilities, their dangers. They contemplated victory and death and the thrill of the battle they could wage. Rhaebjorn tilted his ghostly head, as if it jolted at the end of puppet strings, then spoke, in an air of sharp, hushed restraint.

“You let them die.”

Ulf frowned. “I’m not here to save fools.”

“And yet one lives.”

He gave Rhaebjorn a long, fierce gaze, then dropped his stare back to the flames.

“Your master gets far, Eastman,” he said, earning the spectre’s tilt. “Better catch up quickly. Wouldn’t want your tracks to still be here come morning.”

“Ah. Vengeance, then.”

“You aren’t worth my vengeance. Not you or your blind comrade or your white-haired lord or any of the cowards at the bottom of that hill. But sport? There’s always sport to be had in chasing what’s weak.”

“Is there?” Rhaebjorn asked slyly.

“So long as it’s got a fair headstart.”

Again, their eyes met. Again, the silence reigned.

“I will hope you catch us, outlander,” Rhaebjorn muttered. “I will hope you chase. I, too, would taste vengeance in the drip of your insides.”

Ulf gave a nod to the decapitated raider. “Friend of yours, then?”

Rhaebjorn shook his head gradually, as if each shift of his neck could sever his throat were it not delicate. “Not vengeance for him… Vengeance for me. Vengeance against all those who think themselves above me, and who must learn through blood they are wrong. Vengeance for my blades, and for nothing else.”

“Then be ready.”

Rhaebjorn walked to the cliffside.

“Always,” he said in descent.