The only good thing about the snows was that it brought the goblin raids to a halt, Jordan decided. It wasn’t until later that he learned that was only the case because of their Templar. He’d disappeared for three days after the first fall of fresh powder, and it was only after he’d been back for a few weeks that he told one of the other warriors the story after they’d been drinking; it was so unbelievable that the way it spread around the camp like wildfire had to be a form of mockery, but Jordan believed it.
Brother Faerbar had walked out alone into the snow after the raid and used the freshly fallen snow to track the vermin back to their lair before spending days slaughtering every last monster he could find. It was hard not to imagine the old man drenched in the green blood of his enemies, though it was more than a little disturbing.
When Jordan finally cornered the older man and asked him about it and why he didn’t ask for help, the Templar simply shrugged. “It was my penance,” he answered. “Nothing more than that.”
“I…I understand what you’re saying,” Jordan answered, trying not to blow up at the obstinate old man who was so different from the Paragon that he’d met on that dark road a few weeks ago. The light still burned in the man’s eyes, of course, but in his heart, it seemed to have gone out. “But we need you here, training the next generation of warriors and protecting us should the dead rise up once more. If you were to die in some hole—”
“I was stabbed a hundred times in the foul pit, and now only the faintest scars remain,” the Templar answered with nothing but scorn, “Unlike the men I led into battle. It seems that I shall not have the privilege of joining the honored dead anytime soon.”
“Maybe so,” Jordan said, trying to comfort him, “But then your God works in mysterious ways; perhaps there’s a reason that…”
Jordan’s words trailed off as Brother Farbaer turned on his heel and left him standing there. “My god is dead,” he spat. “There’s no plan for any of this anymore.”
Encounters like that made it hard to keep hope alive in Sedgim Manor, but Jordan did his best. He’d stopped wearing his mage robes and switched back to wearing the clothing of his brothers to seem more familiar, and he’d begun taking daily walks to try to put his remaining subjects at ease, but the results of those efforts could be called mixed, at best.
A malaise gripped the whole area as the weather deteriorated. Some feared starvation and other zombies or goblins, but everyone feared something. That was sensible to Jordan. The world had never been more fearful, and he could not sleep more than a night or two in a row without dreaming of that terrible zombie dragon and the way that it had gone insane and ripped itself to pieces.
Shortly before the midwinter feast that would be remarkably spartan this year, a group of starving bandits tried to seize the grounds by force. He sent most of the mob fleeing with a few thunderbolts while a few of their friends lay steaming in the snow. He might not be able to do much to fend off an army of Templars or zombies, but a superstitious mob was another story.
Bandits were the least of their problems, though. The thieves that truly needed to be worried about were the rats and the hungry mouths of the kitchen workers. Between them, they always seemed to go through the meager stores they’d harvested at twice the rate Jordan expected. At least they didn’t have to worry about sickness too, on top of everything else, he thought, trying to look on the bright side.
The Templar didn’t do much anymore besides sulk and sit on the stairs watching the snow fall, but he’d still stop whatever he was doing and apply his healing magics when one of the children fell ill, and that was more than anyone could ask for.
As the winter wore on and the days became more darkness than light, they slaughtered their way through the farm animals, preserving as many of their prime breeding stock as they could, even as they winnowed the herds, guaranteeing that next year would be at least as hard as this year had been.
Even his father’s prized horses and hounds were not spared this terrible fate. As much as the man might have loved them and as beautiful as a war horse could be on the battlefield, they ate grain that could better be given to staving mouths and hay that needed to be saved for the cattle and sheep that life would depend on next season.
It was around the time that he was serving everyone stew but no longer telling them what was in it that Brother Faerbar finally got out of his funk, at least to the smallest of degrees. When it was pointed out to Jordan that the miracle in question had happened around the same time that the manor had run out of alcohol, he assured the gossipy cook’s boy that it was an unrelated coincidence.
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The cause didn’t matter in his mind; all that mattered was the effect, and that effect was that lacking other outlets, Brother Faerbar resorted to sparring to get some of the volcanic anger that always building in the man’s soul out of his system.
These training sessions started as impromptu beatdowns to show some of the young men just how much less they knew than they thought they did. This quickly became the sole source of entertainment as well. The children had begun to share strange stories, which, as far as he could tell, were just myths and repurposed scripture from the Book of the Light, but none of these little games proved to be as interesting as watching grown men beat each other with sticks in front of growing crowds.
In time, most of the men of fighting age started to improve. Some of the fieldhands would even make decent swordsmen, as it turned out. None of them bested the Templar, though. With maces, swords, or even unarmed, he faced all comers and left them flat on their backs. Most days, after the younger men had finished their chores and practiced their forms, he would face them three-on-one or even five-on-one, occasionally. This just ended the matches faster because he felt no need to hold back when he was outnumbered.
It was those fights that made Jordan reflect on just how dire the straights had been in the undertemple and the catacombs beyond it. There, the jaded old warrior had barely been able to hold back the tide of death, but here he was utterly invincible. It was a stark reminder of just how hopeless the situation would be if the evil of Blackwater managed to spread this far east.
Honestly, he’d half expected it to by now. He’d even put off butchering the extra horses for as long as possible in case they’d needed to load the wagons or sleighs with children and supplies and flee, but so far, that hadn’t happened. But the only hazards without a pulse that other towns ever reported were cold and hunger. Only the usual dangers of goblins and bandits haunted the dark nights, and for the residents of Sedgim Manor, both of those groups were in short supply.
No, by all accounts, despite their misery, they lived in a winter wonderland compared to the rest of the region. So, Jordan would definitely try to hold the fort here as long as possible. As things stood, they were partway between the world going completely insane and the world ending, and though he prayed for the best for his family, just now, he wanted no part of the wider world. In the spring, maybe he would work with some of the other local lords to gather some kind of collective defense, but that was as far as he planned to venture until things started to make sense.
It started with one of Franko’s sons. Markez was certain of it. He’d seen the gleam in young Kell’s eyes early that morning when he’d gotten up to go ice fishing. It wasn’t very productive, and most days, he didn’t catch much, but the little shack he’d cobbled together at the very end of the longest pier was a good place to catch a nap and find some peace and quiet in the madhouse that was the mage’s manor.
Even with servants, only twenty or thirty people had probably lived here before this, and now it was bulging at the seams with almost seventy men, women, and children, with a serious emphasis on the latter. His mission of mercy upriver had saved almost two dozen of the little rug rats, and though he didn’t regret it one bit, that didn’t mean that he liked the energetic little bastards any more than he had when he was on the stony shore.
The gleam was something new, though. It wasn’t quite the glow that the crazed Templar had. That man’s eyes always radiated light. It was a subtle enough effect in the daytime, but at night, it was just plain creepy, and Markez avoided him whenever he could once it was dark out.
And now it was spreading. How was that possible? He had no idea, but instead of dashing out young Kell’s brains with a piece of firewood, he went and got the mage. He didn’t like talking to mages either, of course, but better him than the other guy. He might have sold his soul to the dark powers for his magic, but at least he didn’t look at you with a gaze of constant judgment.
The mage had no answers, though. It was all just praise for having noticed, and he promised to keep him informed after he’d discussed the matter with Brother Faerbar. None of that had stopped that light from spreading, though. First, it jumped to his brother Mason and then to little Gina.
It was contagious, is what it was. By the time the first snows began to melt, half of the children had been infected by it, and no one seemed to care! As far as he was concerned, it was a spiritual plague. To the Templar, it had been a welcome sign of redemption. A rebirth, he’d called it, but that just made Markez laugh.
“It’s disturbing, is what it is,” he said, talking to the river through the little hole in the ice as he counted down the days until it started to crack up. He didn’t care how many people called it a miracle. To Markez, those looks just made him regret not nipping it in the bud before it started to spread. “I didn’t work so hard and save all those little lives just so they could join the cult of some dead god.”
He spent as much time as possible out here now, worried that if he spent too much time around the infected ones, he’d wake up one morning to find his eyes glowing too.
“No sir,” he told himself. “Just as soon as the ice breaks up, me and anyone else that hadn’t drunk too deep of the Holy Man’s poisonous words - we’re taking my ship and getting out of here and going just as far away as we can.”