26. Lost Men

“I still remember my days in the Midderlands, living among the goblin tribes, and I cannot help but wonder if I am fighting on the wrong side. Brolli’s melancholy worsens by the day. Grettir seems ever more a haunted man. I even struggle to recognise my own haggard reflection. Amid our camp of murderous heroes, only Gudmund seems immutable. He met with his young wife Hilda just the other day as if he was not a man wading through limbs and blood.

I had never envied a man more as she embraced him. I felt a sudden longing for my own wife, and hoped that her and the boy were still safe.

I wonder now whether the goblins lament for all the children we have killed.”

Sam glimpsed black outlines on the night’s horizon. “There it is.”

An ox spluttered in response, trudging forward with the ox yoked beside it.

The shaggy beasts hauled a noisy cart and spluttered to punctuate each dozen of their exhausted breaths. Their hooves rasped against rocks as they rose, then clopped heavily back into the stone-pocked path.

Sam walked alongside them, watching the animals struggle with no small amount of guilt. The Salt Sage had told him to carry on through night and day, and not to stop until he reached Fenkirk. He hoped the few crates of mining equipment he had abandoned, miles back, wouldn’t be of any great importance.

“You can stop soon,” Sam promised the oxen. “We’re almost there.”

He felt both vulnerable and free on the open road, taking a deal of comfort from the company of the animals. He also felt guilty for all the winters he had wasted waiting for his wife, but quickly reminded himself that if he hadn’t been there then Hjorvarth and Isleif would have been homeless; that he had at least done some good, and he would, hopefully, do a little more good before Muradoon took him.

Sam grew closer to the distant settlement and had a hard reconciling Fenkirk with the lumbering town he remembered.

There were no buildings sprawling along the open plain, not even any tents, shacks or huts. The wide boundary fence had been replaced by a sturdy wall so tall that only a few rooftops rose above it, encircled in turn by dozens of large stakes.

Sam shivered with the chill morning air. He glanced to his accompanying oxen, wondering if he shouldn’t just circumvent the town altogether.

Smoke billowed up from behind the tall wall, paling a dark sky that made ready for dawn. Silence seemed to have a hold for miles, so much so that Sam pinched at his cold ears and snapped his fingers to see if he had lost his hearing, too tired and hungry to pay mind to the fact that he could still hear the cart grating beside him.

“Odd,” Sam murmured.

Sam drew close to the tall wall, putting little thought to where he was walking. He noticed the cart had halted, so slowed to a stop one step short of a staked ditch, his toes overhanging the drop. Sam glanced down and his blood froze. He staggered back, grabbing a hold of a shaggy shoulder in case the oxen had less sense than he did.

A distant twang preceded an arrow snapping against stony ground. Another hummed past Sam’s ear, so close that the fletching scratched his flesh.

“I said,” a voice screamed, “stand still!”

“What?” Sam squinted up at the shadowed leather-capped archer. “Don’t loose!”

“We’ve got something over here!” the archer called, lowering his bow a little. “Got a cart!” He scowled down at Sam. “Don’t move! You move and you’re dead.”

“I’m not going to move,” Sam assured, loudly enough to be heard across the ditch and up the wall. “But I’m curious to know what it is you think I’ve done—that you would loose on me without a word!”

“Without a word? I warned you three times on approach! What do you expect me to do when some man comes out of the darkness on his own!? Doesn’t answer greetings and doesn’t stop when I tell him to stop!”

“I didn’t hear you! I was distracted!”

“Distracted?” a deep voice asked now a taller man, Thorold, came to stand beside the archer on the wall walk. “I’d say you’re nothing short of mad, or something much, much worse than that, to be walking around out here on your own.”

“Mad?” Sam asked. “From where I’m standing, it’s the pair of you that look cracked.”

Thorold rubbed at his lean jaw with the head of his axe. “You should leave, heathen. Turn around before we fill you with arrows.”

“I’m a barkeeper,” Sam said, “not a spirit. But I’ll be on my way.”

“Wait! What’s in your cart?” The archer raised his bow. “We shouldn’t let him leave.”

Thorold nodded. “Throw off the tarp and leave your cart! We’ll let you go in peace, but we need your supplies.”

“This is my cart.” Sam urged his oxen to turn. “Feel free to loose.”

A bowstring twanged and an arrow thudded into the ground by his foot.

The leather-capped man nocked another arrow. “Last chance, barkeeper!”

“Galdi! Put your bow down!” a third voice commanded, strangled with rage. “I said put your bow down!”

“He’s a heathen!” Galdi shouted back. “We let—” The short man seemed to grow taller. “Let go!”

“Hakon,” Thorold said. “You don’t—”

“Shut your mouth,” Hakon growled. He hoisted Galdi over the parapet, dangling him above the staked ditch. “When I say something—” He shook the man, causing him to whimper. “—you do it. And if you’re not sure what I’ve said, then stop whatever it is you’re doing and ask me to repeat the words. But don’t ever ignore me. Don’t ever suppose that I’ve misspoken. And all Eleven Elders help you if you’ve come to think that I’m wrong.”

Galdi nodded as his belt knife dropped to the staked ditch. “I wasn’t thinking, it won’t happen again.”

“I don’t want you to think,” Hakon said. “I just want you to do as you’re told.”

He hauled him back over the wall, then threw him off the other side, where he landed on a pile of straw and manure.

“Any point to that?” Thorold matched stares with Hakon, who stood a little shorter and much broader.

“Letting him live?” Hakon shook his head. “Probably not, given that he meant to loose an arrow with those oxen both facing the ditch.” He leaned on the parapet, squinting down at the lean barkeeper. “So who the fuck are you?”

“Sam.”

“Well, Sam. We’re going to take everything you own… and in exchange I’m going to invite you into our lovely town.” Hakon smiled, his scarred face shrouded by shadows. “How do you like the sound of that?”

“Honestly?” Sam asked and Hakon nodded. “Not at all.”

Hakon laughed. “Open the gate,” he said to Thorold, who bellowed: “Get the gate open!”

“You can’t just steal from me!” Sam shouted, nudging his oxen towards the road. “Where’s The Mayor? I want to speak to the Mayor of Fenkirk.”

Thunks and groans came muffled through the large wooden gate now Fenkirk’s Militia dug out and lifted braces that held the doors in place.

“Do you?” Hakon asked. “I doubt The Mayor’s in a mood to listen, given that he died a week ago. Should have died sooner, mind, should have cut his throat and been done with it—done the man a favour, you know? Instead we let him rot with an arrow in his gut, guzzling wine like a drunk fish, crying, praying, stewing in his own shit, sweat and tears.” He regretfully shook his head. “Apparently that was mercy. Apparently it was cruel to suggest we kill him, as if they might knit together his innards.”

Sam stepped back, ill at ease with the man’s cold delivery. “Who—” Both doors of the large gate groaned inward, accompanied by the swears and grunts of men heaving it through piled mud with a scraping of dirt and a rasping of stones.

Sam, his oxen no longer amiable, came to an awkward stop beside his cart.

He turned to Fenkirk, saw the town through the open gates, wires and barbs of the walls and stakes glinting in the growing dawn light. Tired and hungry as he was, the place seemed surreal to Sam, as if he wasn’t looking on a town that was, rather a town that had been: burnt out houses flanked the haggard men of Fenkirk’s Militia, who stood along the churned up street in their dirty leather armour. Smoke twisted up from several piles in the distance, close enough for Sam to see that the fuel was flesh.

He reached for the emerald-hilted dagger at his belt. Fenkirk’s men came forward: a pair with bows and a dozen more with clubs, axes or spears. They surrounded him, swearing and spitting and screaming for him to drop his blade. The clamour startled the oxen, who tried to flee, but got their throats slit for their efforts.

Hakon called his men to order, and strode over. “Sam?” He snapped his fingers in front of the man’s long and pale face.

Sam blinked. “What have you done to Fenkirk?”

“That sounded almost like an accusation, Sam. Why don’t you drop your dagger and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“You killed all those people!” Sam brandished his dagger at the man, and only then seemed to notice the rest of the armed, angry men surrounding him. “You killed—”

Hakon caught him under the wrist with one hand, by the throat with the other. “My father taught me not to draw your weapon till you mean to use it.” He twisted his arm, pulling both of their faces together. “Open your eyes, Sam.”

Sam tried to struggle, and got his arm almost wrenched from the socket. He roared his pain, and opened his eyes to a soulless black gaze.

“Look at my face,” Hakon said. “All the prettiness ruined.”

Three crinkled lines of flesh were the mainstays of Hakon’s face, making his eyebrows no more than rogue hairs in sickly flesh, leaving his cheeks depressed and his nose ruined, burrowing through his bottom lip so that the lowest scar seemed a gruesome mock smile.

Sam glared, furious despite his pallor.

“My old face was an illusion.” Hakon’s black eyes appeared both wild and restrained, as if the scars imprisoned some darker part of his soul. “How I look now truly captures the man that I am, you understand? A man that will do far worse than kill someone who lies to him.”

“Let me go.” Sam came unanchored. Vision shifting, he thumped into the ground.

“If you insist,” Hakon said. Laughter sounded around him. “Take the cart in! Have those oxen butchered, but keep them hidden. I’ll see to our new friend.”

Sam lifted his head to see the leather sole of a boot.

***

Gudmund grumbled in his sleep, sniffed at air thick with pungent incense. He woke in earnest to dark and unfamiliar rafters. Smoke stung his tired eyes and set his head to throbbing. He stressed ropes when he tried to rise.

He struggled further, causing a table to scrape beneath him.

“Calm yourself,” said a strained voice from above. The rafters were eclipsed by a purple-hooded head. “You’re tied up.”

“Oh?” Gudmund frowned, his pale face slick with sweat. “Any other insights for me?”

“Do you remember—”

“Untie me!” Gudmund thrashed, causing the table to jump.

Lovrin held a sacrificial dagger in his hand, hidden by his side, glinting with malicious firelight that billowed from a hearth of old stones. “I will untie you.” He brandished the blade. “If you swear to do me no harm.”

“Cut my ropes or cut my throat,” Gudmund snapped. “I’ll swear you no oaths.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Fine.” Lovrin cut one of his hands free. “But do you even know why I’ve tied you up?”

“Mad men do mad things.” Gudmund rolled over to untie his other bonds. “You must have taken me from my bed.”

Lovrin laughed, wryly as an old man would. “Dragged you through the streets with my hunch back, did I?”

“Had some fool do it for you.” Gudmund glanced back at him. “What’s it matter? Think I’ll let this pass? Think I’ll take some mercy on you ‘cause you had no courage to slit my throat? Had no stomach to sacrifice me to a false deity?”

Lovrin’s keen eyes glistened under his purple hood. “Courage?” he asked, laughter still in his tone. “It’s pity a man would need to put you out of your misery, Gudmund. Separate your fool’s head from your coward’s heart.”

Gudmund, legs still bound, lurched for him, but Lovrin stepped deftly back. “Quick for an old man, and your voice changed, as well. Is that you, Sage?”

“I am the same man I have always been,” Lovrin replied. “A servant of Muradoon. Poor one, perhaps. Though I doubt it bothers him that I play at frailty. Good that I did, I think. Made it easy to knock you on the head when you came in here, frothing at the mouth for more tincture, screaming for it even when I told you I’d had the measurements wrong and it was near to poison.”

“Tall tales are for small men,” Gudmund answered, even though doubt crept into his blue, red-rimmed eyes.

“How else did you get here? If not by your own feet.”

Gudmund searched the room, looking for the man that carried him, finding only ornate or antiqued altars, covered in dusty wax and stacked with candles, dotted with glass pots of burning incense. He blinked, breathing deep the stifling air, as some segments of memory found place in his mind. He saw glass scattered and broken on the floor, a breadth of candles and pots missing on one altar, then felt anew the dull-and-sharp pains of his burnt-and-cut arm.

“I can wrap that,” Lovrin offered, nodding to the wounded limb. “Unless you’d prefer it go bad?”

Gudmund laughed, teasing a shard of glass from his wrist. “That’s your story is it?”

Lovrin’s scowl creased his hooked nose. “Story?”

“That I came in here, tried to smash the altars, as if I’m some lapped dog to your tincture. That I came here in the night, but have no memory of it.” Gudmund scowled up at him. “That I’m weak?”

Lovrin shook his hooded head. “Those words are all your own. But you also came here in search of the Sage.” He studied Gudmund, who looked lost in a world of his own, then snapped his fingers. “Gudmund? You look close to death.”

“From a cut on my arm?” Gudmund asked. “I’ve walked a mile with two axes in my back. Now, I’ve things—” He tried to rise, remembered his tied legs. “Untie my legs and I’ll let you live.”

“I’ll do that.” Lovrin walked over with his knife to hand. “Though I’d rather you stay here and have something to eat. If the Sage’s prediction holds true, then this town will need you to lead a defence.”

“If, if and if. And if it does, Grettir will do what he can. I’ll stick my neck out if there’s fighting in the walls. Beyond that, I’ve no interest. Men are my enemies. I need to get to Timilir and settle a score.”

“You’re in no condition to travel.”

“You’re in no position to speak.”

“With a knife in my hand, and you half-bound?”

“As a coward to a man.”

“I’m no coward… merely practical.”

“Brolli was a believer in practical cowardice. I hope it ends the same for you.”

“An odd comment,” Lovrin remarked, cutting him fully loose. “Given that Brolli was well known for his savagery, as a man that never bowed to anyone.”

“He believed in it for weak men.” Gudmund pushed up from the gouged table. “Men like you.”

Lovrin sniffed. “It truly does surprise me that you have any friends at all.”

Gudmund met the sentiment with a cruel smile, yellowed teeth traced with pink. “I don’t need—”

“Have you coughed blood?” Lovrin asked with genuine concern. “How many times? For how long?”

“I’ll be fine.” Gudmund dropped to his feet, and walked to the low archway that led to the main altars.

“Or you’ll be dead,” Lovrin warned. “Your daughter left fatherless and brotherless. Alone.”

“It’s a damn foolish man that speaks of my daughter.”

“No more foolish than one who puts no stock in his own mortality.”

Gudmund paused in the archway to the altar hall, where hundreds of candles burned in rows atop stone altars. He watched the dancing flames. “I forgave you for binding me, because perhaps I did come here with some ill intent to mind. But I’d warn you now to stay where you are, with your lips tight-pressed, and leave me to business that is mine and mine alone.”

“That’s your story is it?” Lovrin offered a quiet laugh.

The Chief of Horvorr turned, with a slackness to his bearded face and eyes that made him look murderous. “One more word, and—”

“You’ll kill me? I’ll die either way if this town is overrun, and a bad death for the bargain. If you’re coughing blood then you need a tincture.”

“Poison like the last one?”

Lovrin shook his hooded head.

“I need to find Grettir and my daughter. I’ve no time for this.”

“Not even a minute?” Lovrin turned, hobbling at first out of habit, then he opened his stride until he came to a large cupboard along the right wall: open tabletop at the middle, where a pestle stood amid strewn herbs and scattered mushrooms.

He reached up and opened one of the panelled doors. With a tinkering of glass, he pulled out a fat-bottomed vessel of murky liquid, shades of brown and green, sealed at the top with wax and a stopper.

“Oh I like the look of that,” Gudmund said, “though I’d sooner swallow fire.”

“So sell it on to an apothecary in Timilir.” Lovrin handed it over. “I only care that you take it, that I gave you a chance.”

“Why?” Gudmund grasped his outstretched hand, smothering glass and fingers. He stared into the man’s shadowed gaze. Glass fissured with a crystalline note that pierced the crackle of tinder. “Why would you care?”

“I don’t know.” Lovrin flexed his fingers outward to spare the glass. “It is something of a mystery to me, and yet I care all the same. These are the hands that brought a daughter of yours into the world. These are eyes that have seen you as a better man. Perhaps I hope to see it again. Perhaps I’ve misplaced sympathy. Muradoon knows I wanted to cut your throat when you came in here… when I had you on the table. Or fill your mouth with poison and make you bite down. Would’ve been simpler, I think. Simpler for everyone. So I don’t know, Gudmund,” he conceded. “I truly don’t. Perhaps it is, as you say, that I’m a coward.”

Gudmund smiled. “An honest coward.” He let Lovrin’s long fingers free and stole the tincture from grip. “Lucky for you that’s the only kind I can stomach.”

Old wood creaked in the altar hall then wind whistled in, setting smoke stirring, causing candles to dance. Both men frowned towards the archway. The main door swung to a close that echoed up to the lofty ceilings of the Ritual House.

“Hello?” asked a wary voice. “Lovrin?”

“In here,” Lovrin answered.

“Oh.” Ralf stepped past cloth-draped altars and shelved candles. He bowed his leather-capped head. “Gudmund.”

Gudmund glanced back at Lovrin, pocketed the tincture, then walked towards the door. “I’ll leave you two to your business.”

Ralf stepped out of his way and onto a long cloth, making a dozen candles teeter. “Actually,” he began, noticing his misstep and stepping forward. “I came here looking for you, Chief Gudmund.”

“Talk as we walk then.” Gudmund stopped by the main door. He shivered, more for the cold in his bones.

“I need to go to Grettir’s house. And apologize.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Ralf said, his words a little stumbled. “Grettir, well… Grettir left Horvorr.”

Gudmund’s hand froze on the door’s handle. “Left…?”

“On a horse, that he stole. Well, I don’t know if he stole it. But I have to guess that he did. Or else why would he had have tied up the stable boy?” Ralf kept his gaze towards the candle-laden floorboards. “Not for me to decide.”

“Gone on a horse? Left one, then?”

“Took them both.” Ralf glanced over at Lovrin, who was already busy sweeping with a long-handled broom. “The stable boy said a woman was with him. Grettir, I mean, not the boy. A young woman, and I’m—”

“My daughter wasn’t home?” Gudmund let out a slow breath. He studied the carved visage of Muradoon the Spirit Talker on the main door: one eye wrapped in a rag, the other resolute; a proud set to thick, bearded lips. He thought it to be a small and resolute smile, made by a god judging his lesser.

Ralf shook his head. “No. I looked, but no. Could be that—”

“He took them both,” Gudmund muttered, meaning Muradoon, meaning his sons.

“The horses?”

“Your stable boy.” Gudmund worked his tongue against bloody teeth, pressed it against aching gums. “He make any mention as to the girl’s mood?”

“I didn’t think to ask, but I can take you—”

“No need.” Gudmund pushed the door open, momentarily blinded by the light of a clear noon sky. He squinted as he walked forth.

“Are we going to chase them?”

“Do what you want.” Gudmund paused in the stony yard of the Ritual House. “I’m going to bed.”

***

Sam opened his eyes to Hakon’s ruined face, scarred flesh aglow with lantern light.

“You fell asleep.”

Sam tried to move, but rope held his legs in place, scratched his flesh. “I—” A brutal ache across his face brought Sam to silence. “What have—” He tried to reach for his cheek, but his bone grated against wood instead.

“Calm down, Sam,” Hakon said. “You’re among friends here.” He swept his hands out to encompass the small shed, unfurnished save for the chair and the lantern squeaking overhead. “Friend, rather. Just me and you now, Sam. That is your name, isn’t it? You told it true, did you not? I’d hate to be calling you it over and over and over, thinking us trusting, thinking us friends—”

“You’re mad, aren’t you?”

Hakon frowned, creasing his ravaged nose, puckering his ruined lips. He leaned close to Sam, drummed fingers on his head, then let out a long rancid breath. “I’m just tired, Sam. Beyond tired, really. It gets to you, you know.” He slapped his palm into Sam’s lips. “Shut your mouth. Please.”

Sam laughed into Hakon’s hand, eyes watering. He lamented ever trusting the Sage.

“Your cheek is a little bruised,” Hakon said, softening his ugly face. “I kicked you harder than I’d like and so it drove you into the ground harder than I’d like. I’ve tied you up, because I’m not sure who you are, what you are, or what you’re doing here. I’ve tied you up because you are the first traveler to arrive at Fenkirk in weeks, unless you count the thousands of goblins that are hiding in the forest, eating the corpses of Fenkirk’s fallen… and I don’t count them.”

He stepped back, pulling his palm away and letting Sam breath.

“I don’t—”

“Maybe you don’t.” Hakon nodded, and drummed his fingers on his own shaved head. “Three questions, Sam. Answer them and you’re free. Refuse and I will burn you alive. Hesitate and I throw you over the wall. Lie… well, if you lie, Sam, then I carve out your cock and let you bleed grey, and then I’ll de-limb you, cast each part over the wall for the goblins to eat, in the honest hope that you suffer badly under the Lady’s Shadow.”

Sam swallowed, and slowly nodded.

“What is your name?”

“Sam.”

“What is your father’s name.”

“I don’t know.” Sam said and Hakon’s eyes stirred. “I never met my father. My—”

“What is your name?”

Sam frowned. “I—”

“What is your name!?” Hakon screamed in his face.

“Sam.”

“What is your mother’s name?”

“Lora.”

“How long have you lived in Wymount?”

“I’m from Horvorr.”

Hakon tutted. “Same question, different place.”

Sam paused, holding onto figures in his head, trying to bring them together.

“Too late.” Hakon lifted him and the chair from the ground.

“I haven’t kept count!” Sam’s lean frame stayed fast to the chair. “I haven’t kept count. Have you?” He asked. “Long enough. I’ve lived there long enough for me to think it too long. Long enough to have a wife and a child. To have my child leave me and have my wife leave me. Long enough to have a life and think it misspent. Long enough to be a man of middling age and already think my life far too long lived.”

Hakon let go and the chair thumped into floorboards, causing Sam’s teeth to snap together, his vision to blur, ears to ring and his head to ache.

“What is your profession? How do you make a living?”

“I own a tavern.”

“Then why—” Hakon grabbed onto both of his wrists, squeezing them, staring into his eyes. “Why is your cart full of mining equipment? Why have you come to Fenkirk during a siege, with that gear in tow. Did you aim to dig a tunnel? Did you mean to let the wretched bastards in? Would you betray your own people, for the sake of those green-skinned scum?”

“No,” Sam answered. “No.”

“No?”

Sam shook his head. “No.”

“I’ll need more than that.” Hakon lifted a dagger, slender blade stained with muck and blood. “Quickly, now.”

“I came here to save my son. I need to get to Timilir.”

“Save him how?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are pickaxes for? What did you mean to dig?”

“Nothing,” Sam pleaded. “I don’t know.”

“Who packed your cart?” Hakon asked.

“I don’t know,” Sam answered and Hakon gripped the dagger. “I don’t know! Edgar packed it! But it was the Sage who arranged for the cart.”

Hakon stared down at him, black eyes dead and vacant behind those scars. “You’re blaming a holy man?”

“I would only blame him if I thought he had some ill intent in mind. Have you not considered that he might have meant the gear for you. That it might not be for some black purpose. And have you put any thought to how would I dig a tunnel on my own with no man noticing? Why I would come here, on my own, with a cart full of pickaxes, when I would only need the one?”

Hakon drummed his fingers on his own shaved head, but his face remained unchanged.

“You say that thousands of goblins are outside your walls,” Sam said. “If that’s true, why would I not just ride my cart into the forest?”

Hakon stepped forward and lowered his hand onto Sam’s shoulder. “Exactly, Sam.” He squeezed and smiled. “That’s exactly what I told them when they warned me you were conspiring with the goblins. It doesn’t make any sense, does it?” He shrugged. “I had to check though, you understand? To be safe and all that.” He lifted the dagger to Sam’s throat, but then placed it in his lap. “Your dagger.”

Sam blinked tears from his eyes. “You’re letting me go?”

“No,” Hakon happily answered, as if the notion amused him. He tugged on rope bonds and they came smoothly loose. “I’m taking you to a bigger prison.”