The water became downright freezing as they neared what must be the end of the tunnels and the source of the river. Duu’s waterbending was no longer a luxury, but a necessity, and Yaosen put all his effort into keeping them warm and dry with his self-fueled flame.
Still, Headbutt didn’t seem bothered by it, and Yaosen, not for the first time, questioned aloud the wisdom of following in the footsteps of a bearmoose.
Not for the first time, Torun said, “You have a better idea of which way to go?”
They reached a crossroads of sorts, and one path seemed to slope up more sharply, with a hot wind blowing across.
A distant cry echoed from the top of that tunnel.
“Actually,” said Yaosen, “this time I do! Duu, take us out that way.”
Duu bent for the edge of the flow, and they stepped up on to dry rock.
Torun and Grunt had no choice but to follow Duu or get blasted by the icy river.
Headbutt turned and grumbled at the rest of the group, as if insisting that they follow him.
“You go follow the salmonsturgeon if you want,” said Yaosen, “But the rest of us are looking for the people who live here.”
“We must be close to the surface,” said Duu, lifting her face into a subtle breeze.
Another cry rose up from somewhere up the dry tunnel, and Yaosen turned to follow it. After a moment, the bearmoose fell in behind.
The further they went, the more inconsistent the air got. Gusts of heat came from behind them intermittently, but when the wind changed, cold arctic air replaced it. It was as if they were in the throat of a giant breathing beast.
A crowd roared just beyond a wall of light, and Yaosen figured they must be nearing some sort of sporting match, or perhaps a muster of arms.
All voices fell away as they emerged into the light.
Row upon row of black stone benches formed up before them in a semicircle, not unlike the great lecture hall in the Royal Fire University. But while those stands would have been filled with bookish, mild-mannered students, Yaosen found these seats packed full of all manner of savages.
Worst of all, they had emerged from the tunnel right in front of all of them.
A massive fur-clad man shouted, “...and await your doom from the darkness!”
He seemed to be expecting another rousing cheer in response, but none came.
All eyes were on Yaosen, Torun, Duu, and the pair of beasts that shrank away from the mass of human attention.
The man giving the speech turned to see what everyone was staring at. He was wearing a smile that quickly faded.
“Who are you?” asked the man in a gruff baritone.
“Who are you?” asked Torun.
“Halvard… no, wait I asked you first,” said the man.
Headbutt roared at the man. He stumbled backward, eyes wide.
“Well I have a bearmoose,” said Torun, smiling. For once, Grunt seemed not to worry over the bearmoose’s presence, but lowered his tusks as if ready to charge.
“Torun don’t,” whispered Yaosen, looking amongst the crowd of people and seeing that each one of them looked lean and hard. They were dressed in furs against the chill; not the snowy white of the water tribes, but patchworks of tan and gray like natural camouflage. Every one of them bore a weapon, even if it was only a bow or knife.
Still none of them moved.
Yaosen stepped forward, “We heard of a village where people are welcomed and safe from harm. We’ve come a long way looking for that village and the journey was not without its struggles. Please, can anyone tell us if this is that village or where to find it.”
“Why didn’t you follow the signs?” said the man who had been giving the speech, drawing himself up to his full height again. “You were supposed to come in the other way. Can’t you see we’re in the middle of a trial.”
“Signs?” asked Torun.
“Trial?” asked Yoasen.
“We followed Headbutt!” Duu said.
Yaosen put his face in his hands.
“I took the signs down,” said a rich, even voice from behind them, and Yaosen turned to see a woman, strong-featured and clad in a cloak of black feathers, stride from in between Headbutt and Grunt without batting an eyelash. Both massive beasts were as confused as the monk at her apparent lack of fear. “The ridge is indefinitely closed to outsiders. Effective immediately.”
“But, Rook!” said the fur-clad man.
“It’s final, Halvard,” said the woman. The woman called Rook was no older than Yaosen, but somehow the edge in her voice brooked no argument from the larger, bearded man.
Torun nudged Yaosen and he realized he had been staring. Was her hair… yellow?
“Oh. You’re guilty by the way, Fenri,” said the woman.
“What? No! No that can’t be. I didn’t…” there had been another man before the crowd, stick thin and filthy, clad only in shredded pants. Yaosen hadn’t noticed him because he had been kneeling before the behemoth of an orator.
The kneeling man was blubbering as the woman unlimbered a large, broad sword of crude iron from her back. Long buried images of another trial flashed through Yaosen’s mind, as Rook’s blade rose above the kneeling man.
“No!” Yaosen shouted. Before he realized it, he had stepped forward and grabbed the woman’s sword arm.
She turned to him and gave him a shocked then dangerous look. It was so dark it put even Torun’s sternest look to shame. And there was something else there, something…
She shook Yaosen off and swung the sword at him.
He was so shocked at his own actions, as well as hers, that he had no chance to dodge the blade. Even if he could call up fire quickly enough, it would cut right through.
The blade clanged, and Torun was suddenly there, blocking the woman’s cut with another of the strange wide blades.
Things were happening so quickly, Yaosen didn’t even know where Torun had gotten the weapon.
Yaosen looked around and saw that the large man – Halvard was his name – was just as confused, an empty sheathe at his hip.
Torun and the woman locked eyes as their blades broke contact and they prepared to clash again.
“Wait!” Yaosen shouted and the blades stilled, ready to strike, “Halvard said that this man’s doom would come from the darkness. We came from that darkness, so we will pronounce that doom.”
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The crowd grumbled at that. Did Yaosen dare hope those grumbles echoed of begrudging… agreement?
Halvard looked confused, even a little hurt that his words were being used against him.
Everyone looked to the swordswoman with the yellow hair. No one spoke.
Yaosen suddenly felt that he was very out on a limb, “That is your law is it not.”
“Yeah, but so what?” said Rook.
“You would… disregard your own laws?”
“If it's a dumb one, sure. So you took a wrong turn. We can’t let lost travelers pronounce life and death decrees. We’d wind up with a bunch of decisions made by the most wayward people who know the least about the facts involved.”
The crowd seemed to agree with that. Torun even nodded at that, earning a flat look from Yaosen.
The woman rested her sword on her shoulder, and then Yaosen realized he recognized it. It had swung at him more than once, coming so close that it had cut through the flame in his hand. Suddenly it all came together.
“But we didn’t take a wrong turn and we weren’t lost,” said Yaosen, smiling, “We were conversing with the spirits.”
The woman’s eyes went wide.
Yaosen’s guess had been right. Rook was some sort of lord here. But just as some of the leaders of the Four Nations were also spiritual leaders, this woman claimed leadership by mandate from the spirits, specifically the shadow spirits.
The picture formed clearly in his head. Rook would listen to all of the facts, retreat into the darkness, then return with a decision. Her decision would be infallible because it wouldn’t be her decision, it would be a decision given to her by greater beings.
Only… Yaosen knew firsthand that those shadow spirits were real. He had actually talked to them as well. And now the woman knew that too. She was realizing that he had been right there beside her in darkness, and it had been him that she had taken a swipe at.
“Tell you what,” said the woman, pacing back and forth like a black-clad panther, Torun standing before her in case she should lunge, “If what the shadows told you is different from what the shadows told me, then we let iron decide who heard right. Fight me for the right to pronounce this man’s doom. And if we heard the same thing…” she smiled magnanimously, “well I’ll let you say it.”
The crowd laughed at that. She was basically saying, “choose my way or choose my way.” Perhaps only Yaosen realized that they weren’t the exact same outcome. In one course of action, Yaosen could save face with what might turn out to be a very powerful leader. He might even gain an ally to aid in his search for the avatar.
All it would cost is a stranger’s life. Yaosen looked over the gangly, half-naked man on his knees.
“On three, just say the sentence the shadows told you to pronounce,” said Rook, “Halvard, would you count us down?”
Yaosen nodded. He hadn’t heard any of the facts of the case, or even what the man was accused of, but he had backed himself into a corner. Rook had backed him into a corner. This was not how he wanted his first encounter with a Farwild civilization to go.
“One…”
The woman would undoubtedly say “death.” But what if the accused was a murderer? Yaosen couldn’t just say “freedom” or he might be condemning others to die.
“Two…”
He could say “exile,” but with the creepers and the Earthbreakers out there, that might be the same as death. Besides, images of his own moment of exile flashed in his mind, and he was not sure the condemned man would thank him.
“Three.”
“Death!”
“Freedom!” shouted Yaosen. He let the two words echo throughout the hall before finishing, “...to choose his own punishment.”
The man looked up at that. His pitiful eyes went from the woman to Yaosen.
The woman let out a long, tired breath, “I guess its trial by iron. Draw your sword, stranger.”
“I am his sword,” said Torun.
“But that’s my sword,” said Halvard.
“Shut up, Halvard,” said Rook, unlimbering her strangely wide blade.
Halvard retreated to the first row of benches, thumbing an axe instead.
“If your beasts attack me, they’ll be poked full of arrows,” she noted, gesturing with her blade to the two hundred or so onlookers in the rings of stone benches. For the first time, Yaosen noted that lecture halls were also very tactically disadvantageous for the one at the podium.
“Duu,” Yaosen turned and bent to the moss-clad girl, “take Headbutt and Grunt back up the way we came. Follow Headbutt’s path to the salmonsturgeon.”
“But-”
“No arguments, Torun can’t focus if he’s worried about you and Grunt.”
“Go on, Duu!” shouted Torun, without taking his eyes from the swordswoman.
Torun was right to keep his eyes on her. The way she moved was as dangerous as a firebender. Her steps were as light as an airbender’s, but somehow still as solid as an earthbender’s. When she attacked, she flowed like dark water.
Torun was a master swordsman, but he only just got the blade up in time. She didn’t wait to follow up her advantage and Torun was quickly on the defensive.
The beasts had already gone up the tunnel but Yaosen had to shove Duu as she lingered to watch.
Torun, to his great credit, kept his stance and even managed to counterattack.
The woman was all wild ferocity, but Torun was cold hard efficiency. Despite his more advanced age, he soon had the woman tiring beneath a stalwart defense and well-timed counterattacks.
The crowd was enrapt, and why wouldn't they be? This woman was the best swordsman Yaosen had ever seen. Seeing all of Torun’s expertise fully unveiled made the monk immediately question that assertion. Perhaps Torun was the best swordsman Yaosen had ever seen, he had just never seen him wield a sword to his fullest.
But no, for all of Torun’s well-trained and hard-earned perfection, it had to be the woman whose skill was more impressive. Because while Torun had studied for years under the best swordfighting masters, and benefitted from generations of improvement upon the practice, this woman seemed to make up her own moves as she went, flailing wildly and ferociously, moving from one-handed to two-handed attack, her offhand coming to the blade late to add force to a blow and flying off to add momentum to a spin, or even serve as distraction.
Only Yaosen among the crowd would have noticed the deliberate gesture that the woman used among all that flailing. He alone – perhaps in the whole world – could have noticed it, because it was a lightbending motion used in a way only Yaosen had ever used it; thrown in amidst combat so as to go unnoticed. Torun suddenly stumbled, as if blind. There was no other discernible effect other than a slight flutter of the air that could have been construed as the flickering of a torch, or a cloud passing in front of the sun.
Had Torun not been so entrenched in the pai sho match that was their sword fight, had he not correctly guessed where the next blow would come from, the Meteor Knight would have been dead then and there. Even blind, Torun managed to crudely deflect the next blow and stumble out of reach.
The woman paused for a moment, breathing heavily but smiling as she circled.
“Not bad,” she nodded her approval at Torun. Torun for his part held his stance, as solid as a metalbender as he watched her prowl. He shook his head as if trying to clear it.
Rook rushed in again.
Again, her moves grew wild, her off-hand flying from her blade, and Yaosen readied his own mental focus, watching for the same sign.
His willpower waited on the brink. His hands clenched to his chest as if cold or nervous, waiting for him to make the same gesture. If he missed it-
There!
The woman made a lightbending motion and Yaosen unleashed a beam of light of his own.
Torun’s blade never slowed.
The woman was so surprised to not see her opponent falter, that her own blade did.
It was all the advantage Torun needed to bat the blade from her hand and place the point of his sword to her throat.
The woman stood frozen, eyes wide waiting for the deathblow.
“So… trial by iron concluded?” asked Yaosen.
Not moving a muscle, the woman’s eyes flicked to Yaosen over her opponent’s shoulder.
Torun withdrew the blade without waiting for her to answer.
The woman stumbled back.
She took a deep breath through her nose to compose herself, and once she did, that grim smile returned to her lips, as feral as before.
“Pronounce your doom,” she said to Yaosen. “Oh no, wait. Your doom was… for Fenri to pronounce his own doom.”
Fenri looked from the woman to Yaosen.
Yaosen nodded him onward.
“So, Fenri. What’ll it be?” said the swordswoman, “A lukewarm bath? A walk through the daisies when the pollen’s bad? Consuming the flesh of another child?”
Yaosen’s eyes went wide and suddenly he realized what a mistake he had made. This man was no petty thief. He was no simple murderer. He was an animal.
He was a creeper.
He was human enough right now, but as the man spoke, Yaosen could see that the man’s canines were elongated. His fingers ended in the beginnings of talons. His gauntness was just a touch too extreme to be the natural effects of hunger, but the product of whatever process turned the people of the badlands into those bestial half-human things.
The accused – the condemned – looked from the woman to Yaosen once more, and he must have seen Yaosen’s horror there, because he bowed his head to the ground in abject surrender. “I am doomed to serve the people of Shadow Ridge, until I have proven that I am no murderer, no hungry beast in the night, but a faithful guardian.”
This more than anything caught Yaosen by surprise.
What had just happened? What had he allowed to happen?