If nothing else, the horrid weather ensured Oak got his shopping done quickly.

After an hour of visiting stores, and trudging through mud with Geezer in toe, he finally stepped through the doors of Respite. It was his favorite tavern in town. The downstairs was a large drinking hall, lit by oil lamps and the roaring fireplace at the back of the room. Rugs and antlers adorned the walls. The largest antlers, taken from a bull moose, hung from the wall above the counter where the owner, Aífe, held her court.

The place was not too far from the north gate, so he would not have to walk through the whole town when he left to make the journey home, and the ale was to his liking. So were the barmaids, if he was honest, but they were the owners' daughters, and he did not fancy making Aífe mad enough to hit him with a mallet, so flirting was off the table.

It seemed to be a busy afternoon for Aífe and her girls. People and sounds of merriment filled the tavern to the point of bursting. Aífe’s daughters were running around with trays full of ale, dodging customers as they went. Pipe smoke drifted upwards from every table, and folk were playing cards and dice to pass the time.

Oak headed to the counter and flagged Aífe down. Coin changed hands and Oak took his purchases, and Geezer upstairs to one of the small rooms Aífe rented for travelers. It was nothing special, but there was a bed and a window, so he couldn’t complain.

“Guard these for me, won’t you?” Oak told Geezer and pointed to his sack of purchased goods. It had been a long day, and Geezer had missed his afternoon nap, so he left the dog behind to sleep. Armed with a parched throat and a pouch filled with coin, Oak headed back downstairs to find something to drink.

A group of laborers from the tanneries had a game of poker going, and Oak settled on a nearby table to watch while he drank his ale and ate a bowl of stew. He rarely had luck with cards, but he enjoyed watching others play.

Cards were dealt, ale was drunk, and men celebrated their winnings and damned their losses in equal measure.

One of the laborers noticed Oak’s interest. He introduced himself as Brian and asked him to join the table. Why not just this once? Maybe my luck has changed? Oak thought, and eagerly sat down to join the game.

By nighttime, Oak’s fellow players had almost robbed him blind. His luck had not, in fact, changed.

“I have to retire, dear friends!” he shouted over their demands for him to keep playing. “If I continue, you will take my clothes as well, and I will have to make the journey home stark naked!” Oak thanked the laborers and especially Brian for inviting him to their game and made his way upstairs to his room.

That evening, Oak’s lousy luck could not be satisfied with mere coin. He opened the door to his room, and instead of stepping inside like a normal person, he hit his head on the door frame. Hard. Oak tried again, while bowing his head low and cursing his height.

Why is everyone else a bloody midget? he thought bitterly.

Geezer welcomed Oak back by opening a single eye and letting out a lazy huff. The dog did not even have the decency to look surprised by the fact that there was now a bump growing on his forehead. After a time of quiet self-reflection in the darkness, Oak’s head stopped aching, and he climbed into bed.

To add insult to injury, he had to tuck his legs to fit his large body into the bed, and even so the ends of his feet dangled in the air. Geezer yawned and joined him under the covers. The addition of a large dog didn't help matters.

***

When Oak woke up in the middle of the night, Geezer was growling, and there was a glow coming from his window. He staggered upright and looked outside, trying to shake the sleep from his eyes. A building down the road leading to the northern gate was on fire, and the rain had slowed to a trickle that would not quench the flames. As fast as he could, Oak stepped up to the window and swung it open.

In the firelight, Oak saw a large group of maybe thirty armed men approaching down the street, squads detaching from the main group and vanishing down the alleys surrounding the main road. Helms and mail glinted in the fire's light as the men moved forward, confident in their purpose.

The men’s shields were not painted in the King’s yellow. They wore Jarl Shaws’ blue. The realization sent a shiver down Oak’s spine. He could hear the unmistakable sounds of fighting in the night air, and somewhere near the north gate, another house went up in flames. He stood frozen, looking out the window, as Soot walked out of the darkness to face the attackers. Immediately, he knew things were not going well.

Soot wore her usual black trousers, white dress shirt, and a black vest. She had a sword in hand but no helm, and she was not in armor. She was also missing her left arm from the elbow down. Blood was dripping slowly from the stump in a small trickle. If Soot had been an ordinary person, she would have been in the process of bleeding out, but she was anything but ordinary.

Without a care in the world, Soot looked around and cracked her neck. The flames made her yellow eyes glow, and they seemed to take something of the fire to themselves, becoming like two hot coals piercing the night. Jarl Shaw’s carls recoiled from her in fear.

Fucking Hell.

“That you and your boys over there, Horseshoe?” Soot hollered. “Nice night to be out and about.”

A man with a hook nose, an impressively braided mustache, and a face covered in blue war paint brandished his war axe and replied, “Ay, your eyes are still as accurate as ever, Soot, though it seems you have had a worse start to the evening than us.”

Oak had heard of Horseshoe. The man was an old hand at war who had earned himself a name when Oak was still a child. He was not a grafted like Soot, though.

Soot spat blood on the ground and grinned. “I’m still mostly in one piece, so I’m not sure I agree. Ran into Carnage, and we exchanged pleasantries, settled some old scores,” she said, eyes constantly moving from man to man.

Horseshoe looked a bit worried. “You kill him?” He asked and licked his lips nervously. The men around him spread out a little, so they would not get in each other's way.

Soot’s grin grew even wider. “Oh, I sure did. It was quite a sight to see him crawling around trying to keep his entrails on the inside where they belong, before I beheaded him,” she said.

The last of winter's chill lingered in the night air, and yet Horseshoe had sweat dripping down his forehead. “I am sure you understand me and my boys are not as thrilled about that as you seem to be, ay?”

Soot’s grin vanished, and she stared directly at Horseshoe. “Don’t you worry, I don’t mind. This was one of those things where you had to be there,” she said.

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It happened so quickly that Oak almost missed the start of it.

Soot moved and men died like flies. In a blink of an eye she was among the carls, her sword reflecting the glow of the flames, lines of light cutting through men and the blackness of night, followed by screams and splatters of blood.

It took five heartbeats for the survivors to break and start running. They left at least ten dead comrades behind as they raced away from the yellow eyed grafted and vanished beyond the firelight. Oak could hear Horseshoe bellowing orders and trying to keep his men together.

An arrow whistled from out of sight, striking Soot in the side. She grunted and dashed towards the direction it came from. Oak could see flashes of movement in the darkness, and he heard curses and calls for reinforcements.

The spell of the moment broke, and Oak started moving like his life depended on it, which it most likely did. He got dressed in record time, grabbed his sack of goods, then thought better of it and left it behind. Salt would not help him now. It seemed Shaw had decided that this spring was the time to correct old mistakes and try his luck at becoming king once more. He had caught them all off guard.

King Jair and his vassals had more men, more grafted, and more mages and spooks than Jarl Shaw. Unfortunately, King Jair and his vassals were not here, and Shaw was no fool. He would be here in force to take the town, kill or conscript the fighting-age men, and burn his way through the farmlands to strike at King Jair’s loyal Jarls before they could mobilize.

The town of Spoke belonged nominally to Jarl Cadoc, whose clan hall was a day's ride west from here, in the Hills of Craig. He would be the first to fall.

Things were not looking good. The enemy was inside the walls already, and Soot was badly wounded. In all likelihood, the battle was already lost. Soot was a tough bastard, and she had killed one of Shaw’s grafted, but she could not turn the tide alone.

Like Soot, Oak had made a name for himself with his deeds. The men under Shaw’s command would know them both, and if they were still in the town when the battle was over, it would not end well for either of them. Unlike Soot, Oak had no real loyalty towards King Jair or Jarl Cadoc, and as a follower of Ashmedai, he felt kings were unnecessary, anyway. There was nothing keeping him from escaping.

As Oak ran around, opening doors and shouting that they were under attack, he realized that he now had an answer to the mystery of the poltergeist. Outlaws had not killed the farmers whose memories Oak had taken to Soot. They had likely been cut down by the army now storming into Spoke, and the poltergeist had been alone because it had been the only one gone unnoticed by Shaw’s spooks.

“What in the Hells is happening?”

“What? Under attack? By the Seraphim!”

“Wife, where are my trousers? Quickly now!”

As sleepy patrons came out of their rooms, Oak ordered Geezer to follow, and stomped down the stairs. After almost losing his footing and running headfirst into a supporting column in the dark, he made it to the door and glanced outside. As far as he could tell, the way was clear for the moment, so he made his way out of the Respite and into the street. He quickly ducked into an alley and started jogging towards the eastern gate.

There was still a slight chance he might make it out of the town before it was too late.

Shaw is attacking, the walls are breached and my only weapon is a bloody hunting knife. Ashmedai preserve me, Oak thought, and picked up the pace.

***

Only Geezer's warning saved Oak from running straight into three men in Shaw’s colors. He quickly dove between two houses and sneaked a glance around the corner. The alley twisted and turned like a snake, but he could barely see three armed men approaching his position.

The narrow backstreet was a muddy, garbage-filled mess, and it smelled vaguely like a chamber pot. Oak’s foot touched something hard. A roof tile had fallen to the muck from the house he was leaning against. Oak took out his knife and grabbed the tile with his left hand. It was better than nothing at all.

Smoke from burning buildings filled the sky above. The night carried harsh sounds to Oak’s ears from the direction of the Respite. It sounded like someone was beating down a door so they could ransack the place and steal everything that was not nailed down. A woman's scream echoed in the air, followed by shouting and ugly, excited laughter. Pandemonium was spreading its wings. Oak signaled for Geezer to be quiet and dove into the Waking Dream.

The cold of the dive hit him, and he found himself standing in an alley much like the one in the real world. There were, of course, some differences. The surrounding houses leaned towards each other, roofs so close to touching that only a small sliver of the sky was visible in the Dream.

The houses and their wooden frames were groaning as they expanded and deflated, almost like the buildings were breathing. Hate, anger and an overwhelming sense of fear were pulsing against him from all directions. The Dream itself felt almost hostile, like it too wanted to taste blood. Oak settled in to wait and observed the minds of the three men walking towards the corner his body of flesh and blood was hiding behind.

Normally it would be quite hard to sense a mind in the Dream, especially if they did not want to be found, but Oak knew exactly where his targets were in the real world. This made shifting through the currents of the Dream to find their minds a much easier task.

The wards of the carls were basic soldier fare, nothing he had not broken through before. A fairly thin layer of trauma sheltering the mind within. It was enough to guard you against many basic memory parasites, traps and even poltergeists, but against a dedicated spook, it would not be enough.

Oak readied Kaarina’s Horror, and as the men were about to turn the corner, he struck the one in the lead. The stinger shaped construct lunged forth, guided by his will and pierced through the man's wards after a brief moment of unpleasant resistance. An echo of a memory traveled through the stinger and struck Oak’s wards, which handled the strain easily. The pain of burning flesh dissipated against his protections, unable to break into his mind.

The man’s wards buckled, and Kaarina’s Horror ruined the consciousness beneath. The border between the man’s mind and the Dream dissolved as his cognition shattered, memories leaking in all directions. Oak would have loved to claim the man’s ghost, but he did not have time for it. He immediately dove out of the Dream and jolted back into his own body.

He opened his eyes and sprang around the corner. The man leading the other two forward was falling down, still technically alive, even if there was nothing behind his empty gaze. The others were just beginning to shout in fear over their comrades' fate, when Oak threw the tile at the rightmost one's face and tackled the one on the left.

Oak was a very large man. So when he struck the carl with his shoulder, and tackled him against the opposing house's wall, something in the man cracked. The poor fellow let out a scream of pain, which quickly cut out when Oak stabbed him three times in the throat. He dropped the dying warrior in the mud and turned towards the last man, who was currently picking himself up from the ground. Apparently the tile had done its job.

Oak reached the remaining carl with a single step, caught his sword-arm in a death-grip, and dropped his knife so he could get a hold of the man's helmeted head. His giant fist closed around the helmet, and he started beating the man’s head against the nearest wall like a particularly vicious drummer. After the fifth meeting with the wall, the man was no longer making noise. Oak wrenched the man’s jaw back, picked up his hunting knife, and slit the man’s throat from ear to ear.

He stood over the corpses, breathing hard. Oak realized there was a small, content smile on his face, and he shuddered. Why does this have to be so damn easy? Like getting to a pleasant task you’ve been looking forward to. He wiped the smile from his face. Geezer ran to him, ears flat in worry, and licked his hands to make sure he was okay.

“Fuck me. I’m- I’m alright buddy,” Oak said and scratched Geezer behind the ear. He felt almost a little drunk as he snatched a sword, a sheath and a shield from the corpses and started moving again, staggering down the alley while he fiddled with the sheath and his own belt. Every moment counted if Oak wanted to get Geezer and himself outside the walls.

The screaming behind Oak intensified. The weight of the sword in his palm felt like the handshake of an old friend, and a part of him yearned to turn around. There is work to be done, that part of him whispered, but Oak ignored it. Survival required more of him than surrendering to base impulse.

Everyone had a death waiting for them at the end of the line. Oak just did not want his exit from Creation to be a stupid one. There was still breath in his lungs, and he would fight to keep it that way.