They walked for hours in the smell of the smoke, with the haze of it drifting lazily across the eastern sky. The sun tried but could not burn through it all. Soon the three crested a hill and looked down into a valley on the edge of the wildlands. A village that should have been tucked against the trees was a pile of home shaped ashes burned down to stone foundations against the charred stumps of what was once woods. Smoke drifted nonchalantly through the frigid air. It was warming to the south, but the cold still dominated. The road into the wildlands twisted through the burned-out wreckage of the village.

“Lightning strike might have done it, but without rain and storms make no sense for there to be any lightning.” Mareth said.

“And no heat lightning when it’s this cold.” Aerendir said.

Siegyrd hunched and picked up a handful of ash which he felt between his fingers and then sniffed. His face looked confused.

Mareth questioned, “What is it?”

“I’m not sure. We should look around a bit.”

They all nodded and fanned out. Siegyrd made his way through a partially burned hovel. One wall was still partially standing, its wooden slats charred black. An old iron pot was intact inside, and the bones of what looked to be a small woman based on the pelvic bone. He closed his eyes briefly and whispered something, then the bones hovered and moved out into the center square.

Aerendir found some more bones and brought them to the center of the town. Mareth did not think to gather bones, but found a few scraps of rope, some provisions that were buried in an underground storeroom that had survived the fires. He gathered those and came to the center.

He was amazed how many bones they had found. The brothers had collected the skeletons and organized them in a complex circular pattern in what was likely the central square. Between twenty and thirty people had been found.

“A burial?” Mareth questioned.

“Of a kind. Please stand back.” Siegyrd said. He nodded to Aerendir who drew his sword and drove it into the ground. The brothers began their song and sang the rites of ash.

Mareth stepped back and watched as Siegyrd drew his songblades and danced and played and sang while Aerendir hallowed the lower notes and drove them into the ground. Roots and flowers began to sprout from around the bones of the fallen and to embrace them, at the same time they seemed to shift and fade and burn away into an ash without flame which was subsumed by the surrounding new grown foliage.

And in the center of the ring where the bodies once lay a small sapling, barely thicker than Mareth’s thumb, grew and stood, blooming white in the chill afternoon air. The vibrance of the green and white was a stark contrast to the ashen grays and deep char black that surrounded them.

#

The three made their way through the soot at the edge of the wildlands, walking between flame-licked stumps and in the bones of the animals who could not escape. None of them spoke until they reached the limit of the fire’s damage. The forest rose. High, tall, strong trees, stood denuded in the winter chill, branches grasping for the distant sky as if in lament of the loss of their companions. They huddled together, co-mourners of all they saw.

“There was once a deep song here.” Siegyrd said wonderingly.

Mareth started at the silence broken, then rubbed his hands and blew into them.

Aerendir spoke, “I had worried the song might’ve turned like the dragons, wilding the trees and the earth.”

Siegyrd replied, “I had wondered the same, but instead it is something almost worse.”

“Worse than a turn to madness?” Mareth said.

Aerendir spoke, “It’s as if the song, has simply drifted away.”

“Forgotten, more like” Siegyrd said.

It was barely past midday when they entered the edge of the wildlands. The sun conveyed its light but not its heat through the waves of winter chill.

#

The sun had dipped past the horizon and a fuller moon set its bluewhite rays between the branches of the densely packed trees. They walked for a time in semi-darkness, along a path that was no path at all, with Aerendir in the lead. He seemed to know precisely where he was going, as if he were pulled along by a chain tied to his destination that would not let him waver. He did not know what lay at the end of that chain, but it drew him forward inexorably.

Mareth kept the pace deep into the night before he relented, “Friends, can we rest?”

Siegyrd and Aerendir gave each other a look of admonishment, then both agreed, “Of course.”

Aerendir’s gaze looked distant, back in the direction of the unseen chain he felt tugging at his chest. Before they entered the forest he had no clue where to go, but now it was crystal clear.

The three found a small clearing, just wide enough for each to sleep almost on top of each other.

“No fire.” Siegyrd said.

Mareth nodded, looking around him at the dried cold trees and at the dry foliage on the floor. So instead he wove a song of warmth atop the melodies of warding and warning he had practiced each night before they rested.

Aerendir spoke, “I will watch a while. Rest.”

“We have a shadow, it seems.” Siegyrd said, just as Mareth was settling in.

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Mareth sat up and looked into the forests gloom as Aerendir replied, “He has been following us for days.”

“What is it?” Mareth asked.

Aerendir flashed a smile, “You could guess I’m sure.”

“The lion?” Mareth sighed.

“The same.” Said Siegyrd.

Mareth turned back over in his bedroll as he replied, “He’ll get no more from me, wasting his strength looking for the easy meat.”

“That seems harsh for you, Marwolaeth. Are you feeling well?” Siegyrd said.

Mareth did not reply, instead focusing his attention on his breathing as he sought sleep.

“Your influence no doubt,” Siegyrd joked to Aerendir who narrowed his eyes and then let his face melt into a small smile.

#

Mareth and Siegyrd slept soundly. The evening’s chill was warded by the wizard’s warmth, so Aerendir stepped out into the cold beyond the barrier. He loosened his tunic and let the cold air grip him, enliven him. The dreadful warmth of the summer was always the hardest time of year for him, for Siegyrd too he knew.

He made a wide circle around the camp, stepping softly and monitoring as he went, stalking the night like a wraith with silver-gray hair. His sword hung from his back, but he wore no armour. He snuck near where the lion rested and inspected the beast. It was worse than they had seen it before, wiry thin and gaunt like death. It would not last much longer.

“A proud predator starved to death in the remnants of this world misshapen,” Aerendir whispered.

He could feel the animal’s heat, sense its heartbeat. The scent of looming death lingered all around it, a hint of fear. “Even you may feel fear, my friend.” He knelt next to the lion who did not move. He reached out his hand which glowed with a flickering, static blue-black energy.

A branch snapped behind him, and he turned quickly staring hard out into the nighttime gloom. The tension leaked out of him as he turned back to meet the lion eye to eye, the heat from the lion’s breath on Aerendir’s face. They stared into each other’s eyes, and the lion curled its lips in a kind of snarl, but Aerendir did not look away. He moved closer. Their noses almost touched, and the lion flinched with unease. It growled, but took a half step backward. Aerendir lowered himself to all fours and prowled forward, closer again. The lion made a high pitched screeching sound and lunged its face forward, but its legs stayed in place. Aerendir did not flinch the smallest fraction. As he stepped forward again, the lion retreated with a snarl and turned in a full run into the night, bounding silently between the trees. Aerendir stayed low, pulling his legs under him into a squat and surveyed the area.

He closed his eyes to listen and heard a faint crunching of leaves and dust beneath soft steps. He turned his head slightly toward the noise and it stopped. He sat statue still, eyes closed, focused into the surrounding area. He felt alive in the cold, refreshed. It was not the sound that gave away the hiding creature, but his heat, an ever so slight ripple of warmth off to Aerendir’s left, very near.

Aerendir stayed still, knowing the direction, he gave no sign of noticing. No sign of movement. He could have been squatted sleeping for all anyone knew. The presence reached a space right next to Aerendir, its warmth giving it away. Aerendir felt a sense of hesitation, a kind of shivering in the night.

“Hello,” Aerendir’s voice was impossibly deep. There was a slight yipping noise, and then a rapid scramble. Aerendir shot out his hand and grabbed as he opened his eyes. What he grasped was the ankle of a small boy, perhaps not more than nine or ten who writhed in his grasp and began to whine.

“Lemme go. I didn’t do nuthin wrong. Lemme go. HELP!”

Aerendir stifled the boy’s cry with a firm but gentle hand over his mouth and pulled the boy eye to eye. The little one was disheveled and covered in ash and soot. His hair might have been any color beneath the gray. It was impossible to tell. Only his eyes, a crystalline moonlight blue, shone in the sockets of his otherwise filth-ridden face.

The boy stared knives into Aerendir and tried to bite his hand, but found it to be a futile effort. He tried to kick, but felt pain as his bare toes struck the cold iron of Aerendir’s skin ghosted with scales.

“If you don’t scream out, I will release your mouth.” Aerendir said.

The boy narrowed his eyes, made one last futile attempt to squirm away from the clearly much stronger man and then slumped as if resigned and nodded. Aerendir removed his hand and the boy sighed and rolled his eyes away from the man.

“Where did you come from?” Aerendir said, his voice a close, deep whisper.

The boy shook his head defiantly. Aerendir heard from a near distance the movement of footsteps, some armoured, some lighter. They had the quality of trying to be hidden though failing. Aerendir smiled. The boy went to yell again, but Aerendir gave him a sharp look and the boy’s voice cracked without saying anything.

“Good lad. How many are your friends?” Aerendir said.

The boy set his jaw and narrowed his eyes, scrunched his brow and glared.

“Do you care for them? Rather, do they care for you?”

No reply. The sounds grew louder, though they had clearly still been attempting a kind of silence. Aerendir could see shapes among the trees, cloaked and darting from shadows to shadows. He counted at least five.

“Answer quickly, boy. Before they die.” No reply.

Aerendir released the boy and drew his greatsword. Its white blade gleamed ghastly in the moonlight. The boy sprinted away from Aerendir in the direction of the shadows.

An arrow split the air next to Aerendir’s cheek, but went wide. He did not even have to shift. The next arrow he parried with a flick of his wrist, shifting the giant sword as if it were a rapier. He stood to his full height and strode forward in the night, a spectre of silver and gray and white.

“You’ve set your eyes on no prey, men. Move on.”

A third arrow struck at his foot, and he stepped past it without a thought.

“Final chance. Your lives are worth more than I carry.”

Three arrows came at once, and a medium-height man in a tight fitting cloak leaped from the shadow to Aerendir’s left driving forward with a longsword in precision strike toward Aerendir's off-hand. A single powerful swing of the greatsword shifted the three arrows flight path away from him and Aerendir spun letting the sworddsman’s thrust hit empty air behind him, and then turned the flat of the blade to smash the man’s sword shoulder. A sickening crunch split the air, and the man crumpled in a scream of agony as two more arrows whistled toward Aerendir. He crouched and both went over the top of him, and he shouted, no longer calm, “DO YOU SO BADLY WISH TO DIE!”

There was a blind kind of fury in his voice. No more arrows came. The man at his feet, shoulder shattered into pieces, lay babbling the strange language of agony that knows no words. Another shadow bloomed from behind a nearby tree, then another, and another, and another. Eight men and a small boy moved around, five with bows, three with cudgels.

A gravely voice that seemed almost comic as an attempt to mimic Aerendir’s depth spoke, “Lay down your arms, and give us yer goods.”

Aerendir sighed and pointed to the man at his feet, still groaning, “You might want to have a healer for him instead. And, boy, do they treat you well?”

“We’ve got the upper hand here, don’t be a fool.” The gravely voice spoke.

Aerendir looked at the boy, the moon blue eyes. “Do they care for you?”

“He’s a right good scout, and we feed him alright. What’s it to you?”

The bowmen continued to step around, flanking Aerendir on three sides. He stepped back one pace to keep them in his eyeline, but he kept looking at the boy. “I’d like to hear what the boy says. He holds your life in his hands.”

There was a nervous chuckle of laughter from all the cloaked men, but Aerendir’s gaze was steady, his demeanor deadly serious. “Well, boy. Are they a family, a tribe, or a torment?”

The boy scrunched his face, but the gravelly voiced man stepped in front, in between Aerendir and the boy. “He’s ours.”

Aerendir was standing still, and then he wasn’t. In the span of a blink, three arrows fired and hit only air, the other two didn’t even have the time to react to fire. Aerendir was directly in front of the speaking man, his titanic blade hung high prepped to strike. The cudgel men froze in the flash of the white blade high in darkness. He used the flat of the blade, crunching downward on the man’s shoulder. A cry of anguish shot through the sky and then was muffled as the man collapsed into unconsciousness in the dirt.

Aerendir stood and swept his blade out in a wide arc as he spoke, “Can’t any man be civil? I asked the boy a simple question.”

One man in the back yelped, “Let’s run.”

Another man, with a bow, behind Aerendir said, “Shut it!”

Aerendir sighed, and looked at the boy again, “Are you treated well? This is not the life for any man, but do you have love for them, and they for you?”

“Stop talking to the boy!” There was an odd quivering in this voice, an edge of confusion.

“The boy holds your lives in his reply” Aerendir said as he surveyed the men again, “if he wills it, you will all die.”

There was a long pause as the varied men stood confused in the moonlit night, and a tall, ashen-gray skinned monster of a man stared at the little boy. “What do you want?”

The air was taut like a coiled rope ready to snap, and then the boy burst out crying, “I wanna go home.”

“We told you, there’s no home left. It’s all burned out.” Another voice said.

The child just cried all the louder, and one man with a bow moved to him, eyeing Aerendir warily, but went to comfort him.

“Silas,” he said softly, “your home is gone. I’m sorry.”

The boy continued to cry, and the man hugged him to his chest looking up at Aerendir, “What do you want from us?”

A few of the other men began to saunter off, and Aerendir shouted, “You will not leave!”

One man scoffed, and turned. When he took another step he fell. His head rolled out from him into the dead leaves and rested staring up at the winter night. Aerendir’s blade was bright with red and he looked around the half circle at the men and said, “Don’t move.”

One of his companions blanched, and knelt, “Please don’t kill us. Please. Oh stars above don’t.”

Most of the men stared in shock. The boy, Silas, and the man next to him looked at each other and then back at Aerendir wide-eyed.

Aerendir closed his eyes and put his face to the sky, letting his sword hang at his side and breathed deeply, whispering a small prayer. Then he spoke again, “Gather right here.” He pointed with his sword, “and kneel.”

“Who the hell do you,” the man didn’t finish his sentence before his own companion nudged him in the side and pointed again at the head, lolling underneath the tree.

The men gathered, eight left of a starting nine. The swordsman's arm was shattered in multiple placed, and the gravel-voiced man had not yet awoken. One bowman was dead, and another held the boy. They sat in front of Aerendir, and looked up with mostly fear.

He drove his blade into the ground and began to weave a song in low tones. A golden glow built in a ring around the whole group. They looked oddly at the light, but felt no sense of fear, rather their heads were clear, and clean. Once the spell had fully taken hold, Aerendir spoke again, more softly this time.

“In the absence of law, men tend to become a law to themselves or to abandon law altogether. Now, let me tell you what happens next.”