“I think it’s safe to stop now,” Elseth said, and did nothing to hide her exhaustion.

“Let’s go a little further,” Jon insisted. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“We are on the safe side,” the woman complained. “Of the river.”

Still, she kept on going.

“Those armoured men,” Irina said as they shuffled along. “They looked like hall warriors from the middle of the land. And what I saw of some of those others... the axes made me think of the western coast.”

“So, warriors who lost their status when their lord did and turned to banditry,” Kent said. “Working with Dale scum and coastmen. That’s hardly usual.”

“I’m rather surprised to see that bandits are still an issue here at all,” Elseth said.

“They barely are,” Irina said. “They are even more broken and scattered than the demons. As that man said himself, they can’t really dare go any further south than this.”

“That begs the question of what they’re even doing on this side of the border.”

“And being led by that Camdyn,” Elseth said. “His accent wasn’t the strongest I’ve heard, but he is definitely from East-Melgen. And did you notice his boots?”

“What was wrong with them?” Irina asked.

“Absolutely nothing. They were masterfully crafted.”

Irina thought about it.

“Some merchant or lesser nobleman,” she suggested. “Cast out and now trying to gather the bandit fragments into some half-effective whole. It doesn’t matter. They will lose, as the Bright Lords spread order. Everyone loses against them.”

“I did hear about that coastal raid two years ago,” Kent commented.

“The attempted one, yes.”

“Everyone loses?” Jon said. “Is that what you intend to tell the prince?”

“I feel I had best tell him the truth, as I see it.”

“I think that is precisely what he is worried about.”

“Right, now we can stop!” Elseth said.

Irina looked up ahead and noticed the outlines of buildings. Or rather, their skeletons. They’d found another dead village.

Elseth managed a weak light and it painted a depressing picture. Very little remained that could be called shelter, and as fatigued as everyone was they settled for the first semi-intact cabin they found.

Elseth kept the light going long enough for them to clear away debris, and then let it go out. Before lying down Irina gave her a hug.

“You saved us. Yet again.”

“It was just an application of my will,” Elseth replied. “Bending the rules a bit.”

“A bit tends to go a long way with you.”

Their blankets had been left behind along with the bags, so they huddled together again.

“Are you still bored, Elseth?” Jon asked.

“Quiet, you.”

All Irina had to do was close her eyes and sleep took her.

# # #

They slept well past sunrise and Irina felt they had every right to. Perhaps her body had simply been in no rush to wake to all its aches. She didn’t consider herself one for complaining, but rising was still a slow process that elicited groans every step of the way.

“Oof, oof, oof.”

She leaned up against a wall as the others shook off sleep as well.

“Good morning, everyone.”

“Good morning,” Jon replied. “So, who is hungry?”

“We all are,” Kent said. “But I’m going to see if I can’t quench my thirst first.”

He left their shelter and Irina shook herself to get some warmth and flexibility back into her body.

“So what do you have?” she asked.

“The usual,” Jon said. He loosened his small waist bag and opened it.

Surviving the adventuring life for a little while taught one to have backup plans. Hence the waist bags each of them typically carried, with a bit of food in it. It was just bits of hard bread and with three or four days until the border they would have to ration it. There would be hunger, but they would have the strength to make it.

“I found the well!” Kent called, just as Irina’s throat desperately called out for water.

They found the man and the well. The skin the villagers had used in place of a bucket was somehow still intact and each drank their fill.

“This place has been dead longer than the other,” Irina observed as she took the ruins in properly. They really had found the only standing structure. Everything else was merging with the wild.

She walked over to a doorway that was the only still-erect part of its house.

“There was a fire.”

“A fire, and worse,” Kent said darkly.

They watched as he walked over to a particular spot in the tall grass. He reached down and picked up a wooden pole that was clearly every bit as old as the devastation around them. Impaled on the end of it was a heavily decayed human skull.

“There are more around,” the man said. “Many more, if you care to look.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“This wasn’t the demons,” Irina said.

“No,” Kent agreed and stared into the skull’s eye sockets. “This was the invasion from the East.”

“Prince Kalgan,” Irina said under her breath and turned in a slow circle, taking the village in with a different mindset.

“I was a girl when it happened,” Elseth said, and looked about much like Irina. “We only heard what the king wanted us to hear about the war. About getting ‘our’ lands back. It wasn’t until I started travelling that I... well...”

“That you learned that the king’s brother is a monster,” Kent finished for her.

He carefully put the pole back down.

“Discipline, Prince Kalgan called it. Discipline through fear. And fear requires displays. Places like this one paid the price for general resistance to the invaders.”

He stood in silence, lost in thought for some time.

“I once heard a theologian say that mortal men are the true evil in the world. Because true evil requires choice. Devils lack it and men have it.”

“By that reasoning men are also the true good of the world,” Irina said. “Just to... look at the other side of that statement.”

“I wish I’d thought to mention that to him,” Kent said. “It would have been interesting to hear what he said.”

He again looked over this ghost of a village.

“Some blame Kalgan for the Demon War, coming in his wake as it did. Some say he summoned them and simply could not control them. Others say his sorcery merely served to draw the demons to us. And yet others say his wickedness alone sufficed as a beacon.”

He turned to Irina.

“Tell me, did the Bright Lords ever offer you their own thoughts on it?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Kent shook his head.

“Well, enough of the past. Let’s tend to our future.”

“Yes, let’s,” Jon agreed.

Kent fetched his spear and that was it as packing went.

“If I remember correctly we ought to arrive at a ridge north-east of here,” he said. “It should make our journey easier.”

They found the overgrown outline of a cart trail leading north out of the village and followed it.

Irina put herself through mental preparations for what was to come. A hard march with little food tested the spirit as surely as the body. She knew perfectly well how it would tax her, and the resources she would have to draw on. And for three years she’d been able to draw on someone else’s strength.

Could she really just go back to being her old self? The question began to haunt her as they walked in silence. Her thoughts were no less chaotic than immediately after Jon cut away the collar, and this quiet made her acutely aware of it.

She touched her throat yet again. The bare skin still felt alien.

Had she simply forgotten normal human existence or was she out of practice in dealing with it all? Had Lady Lumiara simply tamed her?

“Irina.”

The voice woke her from her ruminations with a start.

Bors stood in their path, about twenty metres away.

Irina turned around, finding Ana standing behind them at the same distance.

Both had a tension in their body language, like cats ready to pounce.

“The plan,” Irina whispered. “Split up!”

Her companions burst into action, vanishing into the surrounding foliage.

Irina stayed perfectly still. Ana’s gaze followed the others for a moment, but then turned back to Irina. Both were focusing on her; their true quarry. As expected.

She thought of her clashes with normal human beings during these last three years; how slow and weak they’d always seemed. Now it was her.

“We’ve come to take you back,” Bors said. “But of course you know that.”

“I do,” Irina said, and heard a faint waver in her voice.

Ana put her hands on her hips, looking slightly angry.

“Why did you leave?” she demanded.

Irina let out a short sigh. She took a step towards Ana.

“I don’t... I don’t know, Ana.”

Her heart was hammering away and her throat felt tight. A flood of emotions was overwhelming her, too loud and powerful for her to make sense of them.

She continued walking slowly towards the dark-haired woman, using the club like a walking stick. She heard Bors’s footsteps approaching her from behind.

Ana loosened the ilthin from her belt. The blue rope moved with a smoothness that resembled life as the woman readied it meaningfully.

“My connection to her was just suddenly cut away,” Irina went on and pointed to her own neck. “I was confused. I had forgotten how chaotic it all is, without guidance and clarity.”

Bors was right behind her.

“Well, not to worry,” Ana said. “You will have guidance again.”

Irina’s eyes darted to the crimson collar around the woman’s throat.

“Come,” Ana said and reached for her wrist.

Irina moved as if to give herself over. Then she shifted direction, Ana grasped at nothing, and Irina grabbed her in turn. She flung the woman around, straight into Bors, and they both fell.

Once again she ran for the trees. There was a familiar swish in the air behind her and she timed her leap to the side perfectly. The blue cord missed, grabbing at air.

“Don’t be difficult, Irina,” Bors said with mild exasperation as she made it to the trees.

She wove between trees, making herself hard to target with the ilthin. Rapid footsteps followed her.

“You know how this ends,” Bors added.

Irina dove into a running crouch to get by a long, low-hanging branch. She glanced back to see Ana break it with a swing of her hand. She turned her eyes back front and heard Bors throw his ilthin. She held the club out behind her and the rope wrapped around it instead of her. She let go before the man could yank and disrupt her balance.

Irina leapt over a fallen log, darted left and then right, clinging to a faint hope that they might lose track of her.

“Split up!” Bors shouted at Ana.

Irina burst through a narrow gap between two thorny bushes, paying for it in scratches. She looked back again and saw Bors simply leap over them. She jumped down an incline, past a large boulder, and then lay down flat behind another fallen log. It was a desperate gamble, but given the state of her stamina it was all she could do.

Bors’s quick, powerful footsteps arrived on the scene.

“Irina!” he called out a few steps away from her. Then he darted off into the general direction she’d been heading in.

“Irina!” Ana called from nearby. “Stop this! Come back to our mistress!”

It sounded like she was getting closer and so Irina got to her feet. She ran back the way she’d come, but a miscalculated turn brought her straight into unfamiliar territory. She found herself all hemmed in by various large plants on two sides, and a house-sized rock on the third.

The rock. She could hide on top of it. Above sight.

She selected the tree nearest the rock, then selected a branch that could deliver her within reach of the top. Summoning what remained of her reserves she ran at it and managed to propel herself up against it, high enough to reach a low branch. The momentum sufficed to let her hoist herself up. She put a foot against the bark, grit her teeth, and reached for the broken remains of a branch. She made it, then set her foot again and reached for that higher one. The one that almost touched the rock top.

Her fingertips touched it and she dared simply let go and shoot her other hand out. Her fingers clamped around the branch and her feet dangled in the air for a moment.

The branch snapped.

Irina plunged downwards, straight into Ana’s arms. They closed around her and the chalu immediately drove both of them face-down into the ground, with Ana on top.

Irina knew it was over. Her body still went through an instinctive burst of resistance, but Bors grabbed her ankles and held them fast.

Ana folded Irina’s forearms together behind her back, then looped her ilthin around them. The rope cooperated subtly with its owner’s will, flowing in place and gripping as Ana looped it around again and again. Irina then felt the knot being cinched in place.

Bors released her ankles and Ana sat up, straddling her while still holding the ilthin in her hand.

“There,” she said, and patted Irina’s shoulder teasingly. “I got you.”