The crackling hearth had burnt down to a handful of embers when he finished his story, and Yesugei leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He had shared all he dared of the journey since he had left the Qarakesek ulus - only leaving out the mention of the crystal that Vasilisa had laid into his heart, for that was an abomination he would not lay at her feet.
All those who sat at the table were deathly silent through his story, and of them Tuyaara listened most intently, barely shifting in the carved wooden chair. Lavr’s face was an inscrutable mask, but the boyar raised no objection to any of what he had said, not scoffing even when Yesugei told him of the Apostle that had crawled out from the spire in the Devil Woods. For a brief moment as his tale went to the Devil Woods, Yesugei thought he caught a strange glimmer in the boyar’s eyes - as if something known only to him had become suddenly apparent - but there was nothing more to be gleaned from him. Kargasha and Bykov might have laughed once, but the sight of the Flame-Kissed had withered away any doubt in their minds.
Magic is real, was the thought in Yesugei’s mind as he told his story. The legends are real. They are coming to life, and they will swallow us whole.
“Your path is one that is strange and dark,” the boyar eventually spoke, the wheels of his mind turning relentlessly as Yesugei’s words settled. “But…your tale brings some sense to the things that have been happening of late.”
Yesugei raised an eyebrow as the boyar continued, “Scouts from Chernogorsk have told me that the foothill tribes to the east have become more…bold as of late. I heard some rumors about them finding faith in a new god, but I did not believe the stories until now - for my scouts told me that their new god is one of flame, which the tribes fear for they are like wild beasts.”
“And it isn’t just the men of the foothills,” chimed in Kargasha with a meaningful look to his brother. “In Chernogorsk as well - it makes sense now, what we saw there.”
The warrior looked to Yesugei and Tuyaara. “The man Bykov and I were hunting - he butchered seven men in seven days, always at night. Stuffed their mouths with rocks once they were dead, and on each of their bodies, he had carved a symbol. We thought it was the work of a demented mind - perhaps it still might be so - but….”
At Lavr’s call, an elderly servant came into the hall bearing a stack of parchments, ink, and a quill. The boyar made a few scratches onto the paper, then pushed it towards Yesugei.
Yesugei took the parchment in hand, his fingers trembling as he felt a terrible, chilling grasp come over his heart. His burnt hand pulsed with renewed light, as though it were roused by the ink scrawl - for cast by the boyar’s quick hand was the symbol of a cross with a triangle at its apex - the same symbol carved into Kaveh’s chest by the monster of the Devil Woods. The mark of flame - the mark of Gandroth, without mistake.
Yesugei beheld the symbol for as long as he dared, then cast it aside into the burning hearth.
“So it is not just the Modkhai…” he mused aloud. “Even your countrymen are taken by these heresies. Was it just the one man?”
“Not likely,” replied Kargasha with a frown. “It could not have been just one man doing all the work we saw - we had hoped to catch the lone one and winkle the names of his friends from him, but alas…”
The memory of the fortress in the Devil Woods crept back to his mind. How many dead had been piled up at the base of the obelisk then? “Seven men is not enough,” he told the Klyazmites. “In the Devil Woods and in the steppe, they butchered dozens of folk to call upon the demons.”
Kargasha’s face paled. “Dozens? Even a few lone killers could not butcher that many in good time, not unless you have…”
The warrior’s words trailed off as Lavr rapped his knuckles on the table in sudden understanding. “The foothill tribes. Their warriors number in the dozens, and they are no strangers to raiding villages in the mountains for food and slaves. It is them the heretics hope to use as their butcher’s knife for these spirits.
“We must carry a warning to Chernogorsk - a dozen of my servants can hold the Blackhand Gate against ten times their number, but the town's defenses are nowhere near so strong.”
Lavr’s son pushed back his chair. “Let me go, father. I know the road as well as-”
“No,” insisted the boyar with a steel edge to his voice. “You will stay here, and mind the walls. You are still a boy and for all your bravery, it will be for nought if the hill tribes take you as their prisoner. You will stay here, and you will command, as the lord you shall become.”
Zhenka opened his mouth to give a reply, but closed it when he saw Kargasha nod in assent to his father’s word. The boyar looked to Yesugei and Tuyaara, his gaze searching. “You two. It has been a harsh road thus far, but I would ask you to ride with us. You know of these matters more than I, and we need wisdom more than ever on matters of spirits and these heresies.”
Tuyaara nodded solemnly, and Yesugei flexed his burnt hand. The light that spilled from the cracks was beginning to dwindle, but within it the strength of the stolen kiss remained. No more butchery - not this time.
When he gave his agreement, Lavr and his son went out into the yard and roused the stablehands while Kargasha and Bykov set about arming themselves. From Lavr's armory the two warriors retrieved two well-forged swords, but took no armor besides iron helmets for the swift ride. Yesugei emerged from the armory with a quiver heavy once more with arrows and a roundshield slung across his back. Last to leave was Tuyaara, with a longknife in her belt and an iron skullcap fitted under her veiled headdress. The night outside was deep and black when the company stepped out into the courtyard, and strong, blasting winds from the peaks sent a shiver through them all. The mounts that awaited them were strong, stout ponies, fit for riding through the paths that lay ahead of them on the God-Spine. Yesugei threw his saddlebags on, and let the boyar lead them out from the northern gate back onto the road.
A small light shone from the guardhouse at their backs - Lavr’s wife, bearing a candle, called out to her husband, “Come straight back, and don’t spare the lamp oil!”
“I won’t!” reassured the boyar, and at his wife’s word he begrudgingly drew out an oil lamp, lighting the twisting path ahead in a dim orange glow.
She still thinks he means to escort us, thought Yesugei glumly as they set out.
They rode along the high road in single file, pressing close to the rock face at their side. The highlanders rode with the ease of experienced mountaineers, but Yesugei soon found himself strangely sore and uneasy. At times, it seemed the road was just barely wide enough to accommodate even a single pony, nevermind an armed caravan as his father and the noyans had trailed. And in the darkness, every tiny crack sounded as though it heralded a landslide, and every sudden misstep seemed to threaten a long, cruel fall into the void below. He peered down over the edge, squinting, and wondered how many Khormchak skulls lay down at the bottom to return his stare with empty eyes.
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The road eventually began to widen as it curved away from the mountainside, sloping down into a saddle between two high peaks. The moon shone brightly overhead once they were out of the mountain’s shadow, and it cast them all in soft light as Lavr guided them along a thin silver stream. As they continued along the stream’s trail, Yesugei noticed Kargasha quietly slow his horse until they were riding side by side at a distance from Lavr. The warrior’s face was shadowed, but even so the lines of a frown on his face were apparent.
“Your story…” the warrior spoke quietly. “Your brother…I am sorry.”
The warrior’s words took the nomad princeling back. Yesugei dipped his head low, letting the darkness shroud his own face. “It has already passed…he has passed - gone on to the Eternal Sky- and I remain.”
“You seek vengeance, then?”
Yesugei narrowed his eyes at Kargasha. Where was this going? “Why do you ask now? Of course I seek vengeance - for my brother, for all of them. At the least, so they might not have died in vain.”
Kargasha looked away, and Yesugei saw he was staring ahead at his brother’s cloaked back. The warrior’s face twisted into a thoughtful look - recalling some distant memory of theirs. Then he spoke to Yesugei, “You are not the only one who has seen queer things in the days before this madness. When we set out to search for the one who butchered the townsfolk of Chernogorsk - when I had last stayed at the Blackhand Gate - I had a strange dream, the kind that lingers long after sleep has passed.
“I saw the stars, like I had never seen them before.” Kargasha lifted one hand to the glittering skies above, and traced a finger across the heavens. “Two stars - they were burning across the night sky. But when they drew closer, or perhaps when I rose higher, I saw that they were falcons - proud and mighty. I heard the tolling of a bell, but somehow it sounded…lonely, as the call of a dog without a master. And with the last toll…I saw the God-Spine shattered, broken in two like a rock beneath a miner’s axe.”
Kargasha looked meaningfully to Yesugei. “Two falcons, proud and mighty. But what does that speak to the rest?”
Yesugei shrugged. “Were it that our dreams did not speak to us in riddles.”
“I do not think it a riddle, nomad,” Kargasha spoke in a hushed voice. “Fate has brought two falcons to me - what of the rest? Your own shamans speak of the death knell of the world, ringing from Belnopyl, if it is to be believed. But what of my home?”
“Not all fates in dreams must come to pass,” Yesugei replied. Then, another dreamer came to mind. “The eldest of my brothers - Nariman. He too had dreams, and more often than not they came to pass - but far were they from certainty. Even the Modkhai might be mistaken - more often than not, they were.”
That brought some small comfort to Kargasha, but the words sounded hollow to Yesugei’s own ears even as they slipped off his tongue. Dreams and prophecy…such fickle things they once were - yet now it seemed all beneath the stars were being taken by them. Where was the line - between dreams and madness? Was it that one was of the slumbering world, and the other of the waking world? Yet it was now upon a dream which he rode ever further west - driving him ever on towards the White City whilst the east burned.
As they passed further along between the two peaks, the moonlight eventually failed as the mountains loomed over them once more. At length they continued along in the darkness, riding in complete silence as mountain shadows themselves…until there came a distant, high-pitched cry. The call came from high up in the peaks, and was answered by another which echoed out from over the eastern ridges. Yesugei’s blood ran cold, and he saw Lavr suddenly snuff out the dancing flame from his lamp - plunging them all into total darkness.
Yesugei drew his horse to a stop, and saw the faint silhouettes of Tuyaara and the Klyazmites wheeling about in confusion. He carefully rode up to them, and heard Lavr hurriedly whispering, “Watchers…they must already have been on the march, making time through the night.”
“The foothill tribes?”
“They know we’re here,” replied Lavr. In the darkness, Yesugei saw him fingering the hilt of his longsword. “They will be on us - so now we run.”
No one thought to argue. Bykov turned his horse north-west, and pointed out to a rising cliff that ran above the high road. “A large band will march along the eastern road - we can lead them on a merry chase where they cannot bring too many of their own if we take the Stonesnake Trail.”
“It is a hard trail,” spoke Lavr. Even in the darkness, Yesugei could tell the boyar was looking pointedly at him and Tuyaara. “No light. You will need to ride as you never have before, Khormchaks.”
They struck hard for the Stonesnake Trail as another high-pitched call echoed over the mountains, though the watcher could not be seen. The wind grew stronger as they rose higher up along the bare peaks, feeling carefully along the stony footholds. Once they reached the summit, Lavr led them down into a steep plunge where they found themselves riding along and above the moonlit stream.
At a turn along the trail, Yesugei saw torches down below. Dozens of small lights bobbed up and down, moving like a red-orange tide over the sloping hills. The red light glinted off of unpolished iron - helmets, speartips, and the iron bosses of rounded shields - the arms and armor of the foothill tribes. Though in the dim light they seemed no different than any other men marching to war, Yesugei saw the banner at the head of the column was a clawed hand smeared onto a stretched leather canvas whose shaft was decorated with three dogs’ heads.
“Tugars,” whispered Lavr. “I see Tugars…Gromirs…Vetrovniaks…and many others besides. I have never seen them marching alongside one another like this. Keep moving - quickly!”
They went on cautiously, peeling away from the edge of the cliff and moving as quietly as men and horse could allow. Yet still, every pebble knocked loose sounded a rockslide in the bleak darkness, and every clack of hooves against stone sounded as though the God-Spine itself were fracturing. Yesugei saw shadows moving against the darkness - they were being tracked, he knew, and with them so close to the greater army the scouts had little need to hide themselves now. He counted a dozen, perhaps more, scurrying behind them like black bugs.
We could slay a dozen, he thought to himself. But what of the other hundred that march?
Lavr was quiet through their ride, but Yesugei smelled the fear that rose off the boyar as he guided them. The scouts had cut them off from the path home, and the army that they hoped to outpace along the eastern road did not have to climb high and low over vast ridges in pitch darkness. They were moving slowly along the Stonesnake Trail - too slowly, Yesugei judged, but to move in haste would only invite a fall and a broken neck.
They cut farther to the north-west, and soon the Stonesnake Trail took them along another narrow path that hugged a cliff face on one side, and looked over a perilous void on the other. Below them in the darkness, Yesugei heard the sound of rushing water - though whether it was ten feet or a hundred feet below he could not have said. There was barely enough room for them to ride single-file, and so when Lavr came to a sudden halt he nearly drove them all to collide with one another to disaster.
The boyar’s voice dripped with terrible dread. “They have blocked us. Look, up ahead.”
A great jumble of fallen boulders lay further along the cliff path, with a handful of great boughs and tree stumps poking out from the mass of collapsed earth. From atop the cliff, Yesugei saw there stood several small figures, and a moment later they scurried away with high-pitched calls like those of birds. The reply came from behind them, closer than he imagined. Then from the darkness, the sound of a horn blast shook them all.
“They were shepherding us.” groaned Lavr as he turned his horse back. The steel of his longsword sighed as he pulled it free from his sheath, followed quickly by two other hisses as Kargasha and Bykov drew their own blades.
Yesugei pulled an arrow from his quiver, and nocked it as the shadows began to give way to the silhouettes of men. The light within his hand was shining brighter, pulsing in rhythm like the beating of a terrified heart.
“Now they come.”