The forest was dark and full of unseen dangers. Every movement of branch and leaf, every whisper of wind, could be the first and only warning of an enemy which the boy could scarcely understand. He had heard many stories of wolves and outlaws, monsters and wicked spirits and all such man-eating devils which stalked the world beyond man’s walls. But the boy’s father had taken the family away from the walls and comforts of home, with fear in his eyes all the while.

It was unnerving. His father had always been a pillar of strength in the boys eyes, a great bear of a man who stood above all others, a god of war in his resplendent armour and furs. But some unspoken thing had scared his father, and now the man was lying stricken in some small cave and nursing a broken leg after foolishly loosing his footing on some rocks. His father had gone delirious with pain, and the boy’s mother had sent him away to fetch some water from a stream. But he knew that his mother simply didn’t want him to see his father in such a state.

The boy couldn’t help but agree with her.

Wandering farther away than intended, the boy was lost in thought, fearful of his wild surroundings, but at a loss on what to do about it. His days since that night his family fled home had been nothing but a cold and weary journey through darkness. The boy was angry at his father. The father he once knew would have picked up his sword and stared down any danger. Wouldn’t he have?

It was not long before the boy had heard the sound of hooves come from the distance. There was a road nearby, and the boy had crouched behind some scrub to see the newcomer. The horse was a large, glorious looking battle-stallion, the kind his father adored. And the horseman himself was a warrior, clad in mail and ornate steel plate. The man wore a silvered steel helm, plumed and horned, with a magnificent sword at his side. The man was tall and straight-backed, a figure of martial power and competence. The boy was overjoyed. Here was a warrior, the kind his father called his companions. His father might be unmanned, but this warrior was surely someone who could help.

The boy emerged from his hiding place and approached the horseman. Neither horse nor rider seemed at all startled by his sudden appearance. The rider leaned over his horses neck and heard the boy’s plea, a look of concern over his face.

Swearing to help the situation, the rider asked to be shown the way to the boy’s injured father. Dismounting and securing his horse to a tree, the warrior followed the boy into the forest. The boy was exultant, help at last. Surely the sun was rising, and the days of fear at an end.

Soon they were standing before the cave entrance, the all too recognisable scents of the boy’s parents strong in the air. The boy announced his arrival, loud and joyously. Look, he had said, I brought a friend. He is here to help.

He watched as his father’s dazed eyes looked upon the stranger. Suddenly, the delirium was gone from his eyes, replaced by a frenzied expression.

His father had screamed, howling for the boy to get away from ‘him’. The boy was taken aback. He looked up to the armoured stranger, and all he could remember was the Eye, cold and wrathful. The boy was frozen in place, hardly reacting when the stranger had passed him by, sword drawn. Then all was blood and death. The time of reckoning had come, the fear had finally caught up to his father. And the boy did nothing.

The stranger stood over his prey, the boy’s father lying over his wife as he had desperately tried to shield her body with his own. Both were still. The stranger looked up at the boy, smiled, and laughed.

The next thing he knew, the boy was running, vaguely aware of trees all around him. He wanted to cry, to scream, anything to drown out the laughter, to drown out the pitiful cries of his parents as they had died. Even when he closed his eyes he still saw his father’s expression, when he had looked into Pike’s eyes, all strength and fire gone from his face in his final moments.

“Run…” he had muttered. “Run Pike. Run away…”

And so he ran, into darkness and despair, alone.

Pike awoke suddenly from his sleep with a startled gasp, his sweat cold against his skin. The memories of his troubled dreams quickly faded when sharp pain flared up in his side. Clenching his teeth against the pain, Pike’s hand went to his side and found the wound was covered in woollen cloth, warm and damp with his own blood. Pike realised then that he had been stripped from the waist up, strips of wool wound tightly about his lower abdomen to halt the bleeding of his wound.

Suddenly, Pike was aware of his surroundings, a sunlit clearing with damp grass beneath him. The faintest whisper of movement caught his attention. To Pike’s right was a stone boulder, half sunken into the earth, and atop it crouched a hooded man, wearing a cloak of green, gold and brown weave. The man was staring down at Pike with intense, green eyes in a tattooed face, his spear resting against his shoulder.

Pike tried to distance himself from the stranger, half dragging himself across the ground despite the pain. The man’s strange appearance marked him as a foreigner to those lands, for he clearly was no imperial provincial, nor one of the Thane clansmen who patrolled the Mark. Pike’s hand sought blindly for a weapon, but there were none within reach. He tried to rise to his feet, but fresh blood surged from his wound, and Pike’s strength failed him as he fell heavily back to earth.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

The foreigner laughed, his joviality enraging Pike. He spoke something in a strange language, and was answered by another voice, followed by more laughter from both speakers. Pike cursed to himself. He was trapped, he guessed, no doubt by a band of savages from beyond the mountains, keeping him alive for torture. Pike lay still with eyes closed. He slowed his breath. Entering into the Battle-trance with such a wound would almost assuredly lead to his own death. But if death were a certainty, then Pike would rather die fighting, dragging his enemies into hell with him…

“What on earth is that man doing?” a woman’s voice broke Pike’s concentration. “Conn, you could have called out that he was awake.”

The cloaked man on the rock straightened to attention. “Uhh, pardon, my lady,” he said in a curious, lilting accent. “The patient only just woke up and took fright. Seems a bit of a jumpy fellow…”

Pike turned and saw a woman approaching him, wearing a grey travel cloak over simple tunic and riding trousers, in the style of northern noblewomen. Followed close behind her at a respectful distance was younger girl in similar garb, and a tall grey-bearded warrior with an aged, tattooed face.

The grey-beard spoke up, his hand on the hilt of his gaudily decorated sword that hung from his belt. “Best keep your distance from this stranger, Lady Erda. This one’s a killer.”

“I’m aware of that,” the one called Erda replied. Then she rounded on Pike and glared down at him disapprovingly. “But surely a fighting man should know not to thrash around with such a great big hole in his belly. Good heavens man, you’ve nearly undone all my hard work and now those bandages will need replacing.”

Erda approached Pike where he lay and knelt beside him. Pike did nothing but stare at her. She was tall and straight backed. Gold hair spilled from her hood in curls, held back by a thin leather head band. She was beautiful, with only the creases at the corners of her eyes showing years of wear. She was poised, yet humble, warm even. Pike thought of the images of certain goddesses who were said to watch over the weak and dispossessed.

She placed a delicate hand on Pike’s bare chest and urged to him to lie back. Pike felt the tension of the onlookers, any sudden movement on his part would surely bring all their weapons down upon him in an instant.

“Please, be at peace,” she said softly. “You are safe with us.”

But Pike would not allow himself to let his guard down just yet. “Where am I?” he said between pained gasps.

“So you do speak Imperial, thank goodness. I am Erda,” the lady said. “And all you need to know right now is that we have dressed your wound. It was a close thing, but Mother Mercy smiled upon you and you pulled through. But you must stay calm and rest before your recovery can begin. Now let’s see about those bandages. Nim! Tear off some more strips from that spare cloak. Not ideal material for the job but we’ll have to make do…”

“Wait!” Pike grabbed Erda’s wrist as she reached for his bandages. He saw the glint of sunlight on bare steel in the corner of his eyes as the grey-beard half drew his sword from the sheathe, but Pike had more pressing concerns. “Did you see him? The One-Eyed Man? He was there, in the ruins. Where did he go?!”

“One-Eyed Man? Ruins? We wouldn’t know anything about that, we found you on the side of the road this morning, leaving a trail of blood all the way into the wilderness. How you survived a journey so long in your condition is something I could hardly understand.”

Pike was lost in thought, his mind racing. He remembered the frightful encounter beneath the ruined temple, but the memories were illusive, vague and dream-like. The best he could remember was the fear, pain, and the Eye.

“I am not safe here,” Pike muttered to himself. “I am weak. He will find me here, and kill me. And there’s not a damned thing I can do about it…”

Pike’s anger was rising again, but Erda’s hand touched his jaw and turned his head to her. Her eyes held him in silence. “Sir, enough. Now is not the time for questions and answers. I don’t know what kind of danger you are in, but you can trust us to keep you in our care until your strength returns. Here…”

Erda withdraw a flask from her belt and uncorked it. The contents of the flask had a rich, earthy smell. Erda held the flask up to Pike’s lips and poured it into his mouth. Suddenly, Pike felt a sensation of warmth grow in his gut and spread out. The tension in his muscles relaxed, something Pike hadn’t felt in a long time. He was being overcome by a sense of ease, and his eyes drooped drowsily. He was fast forgetting the pain of his wound. Pike tried to resist and stay awake.

“No. I can’t sleep. He’ll be there… the dreams…”

But there were no dreams, when he finally succumbed to Erda’s drought, her hand resting lightly on his forehead. She smiled. Erda had no doubt that this man was a killer, perhaps even an outlaw. But for now she could not think of him as anything other than a poor, wounded man in need of help. Years of anger, fear and doubt washed away from his face as he fell into the potion’s sleep, replaced by an expression of blissful rest.

As she busied herself with replacing the stranger’s bandages, she looked towards the young spearman who was watching from his perch impassively.

“Look at all this blood, its a miracle he was even able to wake up when he did. Conn, you better not have tickled my patient awake with that stick of yours, did you?”

“Trust me, I did no such thing,” the young man said. “He looked like he was having a bad dream when he suddenly woke up in a panic. I didn’t so much as look at him. Honest.”

“I saw it too,” said Bran, another young warrior only a little older than Conn. Both were garbed and armed identically, with spears, short swords and bows unstrung and resting beside their quivers.

“You should have seen it, Lady Erda,” Bran continued. “The man looked like a cornered wolf. He would have nipped someone’s fingers off if he was close enough. Gods, I can’t even believe he’s still breathing…”

“That one’s bewitched, no mistaking it,” said Nim, Erda’s handmaiden.

“True enough,” Ruadh chimed in a hes sat sharpening his sword. The ageing swordsman was the oldest of Erda’s three bodyguards and a veteran warrior. “If our guest doesn’t have more than his fair share of demons then I’m a fool. Aye, it would displease the gods to just leave the stranger for the crows. But I’ll still be mighty surprised if this doesn’t bring trouble…”

“I know, I’m a little worried too,” Erda said, cleaning her bloodied hands on the grass. “But still, who can say this isn’t a blessing in disguise? We are, after all, here to find warriors at the Moot, and here is one delivered into our hands before we’ve even arrived.”

Ruadh seemed less convinced. He was watching the sleeping vagabond with a critical eye when his whetstone slipped from his hand, blood welling on his thumb where the blade had cut into it. At least he knew his sword was sharp.

“We’ll know this stranger’s quality soon enough. If he lives…”

Erda looked down at her sleeping patient, snoring softly when by all common sense he should be long since dead.

“Aye, he’ll live. You can be sure of that.”