Chapter 12 : Bellflower Grove

Long did the Lunga’ar guide him, but at once he severed its leash. Abandoning the asylum of the winding fjord, Ulf deserted into the inner plains, and so it was that the farther he tread from the riverbed, the more pitted the swards came, with equal ascents at their brake. The land altered under his steps and all newborn haste, and at midday he was among prodigious hills, cleaving through bracken. North pulled him. Eritle was his anchor, dragging him deeper and deeper into that sea of hurt soil and bawling chasms. Indeed, the cypresses stacked high and the stones piled strong until he was at the bottom of an otherworldly ravel. There, like a metal man upon the seabed, he nudged on through all the muddle and thatch with an enlivened pace. With the colour of crimson in his mind, he could not be deterred.

Then the land opened and the trees shrunk away. Ulf stood in a spotless field, bordered by the overgrowth of bluffs, at the crown of a grand mound. At such height, the Cleft of Teroe watched him; a gigantic sail over the sun. It was a lonely mountain rent atwain, or so it seemed, with two gargantuan spikes of curved rock facing one another and forming a toran of iced winds. A portal to winter, the Cleft was his way ahead, and through it he would find the fastest course to Eritle.

First, he stopped. Beneath him was an expanse of growth, teeming with bellflowers in miraculous dyes of plum and teal. They caught the sunlight in their petals and burred with its ardour. The grass whitened here and the gales did not blow; smitten by the tousled oaks manning the brim of the swath. Here was a grove of splendor, though it would be blemished as easily as any other field.

Ulf found a lone stone in the grass and seated himself atop it, an uncanny blotch of rock like his throne. His thrawn blade was brought out and laid across his knees, and a stare of sheer devilment took arms against the climb to the south. For in truth, Ulf had known the furrfiends followed him for some odd days, but at last he tired of their meddling, and while before a distance was allowed, now he had tracks to keep to, and their trespass could be endured no more. It was first the glimmer in their spyglass that caught his eye, then a stretch of stamped grass pursuing him; beheld from atop a cliff. He was worn thin from their pursuit, and atop that mound he awaited them, so as to bring them the fate they so persistently chased.

A time did pass, and doubtless, the furrfiends had drawn close, but watched with great heed through the wild flock of that cliffside. Ulf was alone, unguarded, with an arena untrapped. There was only him, but their nerve did fester and bruise, as the outlander, upon his measly stone, sat with full faith he could achieve his victory alone, and such was a frightening thought, reimbursed with each wind spent. Through a slit in the fronds, Horral believed him, but Eidrik only scowled measurably, and clutched the haft of his axe in wait. Ulf had already seen its ammolite, however. Impatient, he produced a whetstone from his cloak and slid sparks from his sword into the dirt. Horral understood that the stage was set, and so with a deep breath and a restful tread, he meandered beyond, into the bellflower grove.

Sunlight smote them. Horral came straight, lax, slackened over his cane, but Eidrik’s lurch was apace, laden with wary leers forth and back. His axehead caught the light and glowed; an opal lamp among the imbued petals underfoot. His brows weighed heavy and his teeth clamped shut, while he strafed the grove’s ledge, though his vigilance never abandoned the Northman at its center. Horral was rapt, and his gaze indulged both the warmth of day and the cast of earth.

“So this is to be it,” said he, a guest to that open air.

The clouds were scarce that day, and those few wisps floated adrift, untethered, over a naval duvet. In their frame was the sun’s clinging gleam. All was right, yet Ulf savoured none of it. His stare was cast to the steel laid over his knees.

“This is not such a horrid place to die…” remarked Horral. “Flowers to rest my head on… a last clear sky to take with me into the afterlife…”

“That’s just darkness,” Ulf corrected, under the screech of shot sparks. “And this is just dirt.”

Horral, no longer the sky’s thrall, jabbed his cane into the soil. He watched Ulf, heard him sharpen away, and pondered at all the misery encased within that withered skull, lining each ancient wound. What awful goal forgot him to his spirit? What ambition so morbid could make him heedless to the bellflowers strangled under his boot? In this outlander, there lived a thousand anomalies, and Horral was then a scholar to their ciphered tomes.

“Heh,” he chuckled. “I nearly forgot: you have no heart, outlander. Tell me, which loss was it that undid you at last, and cast you out into these wilds? Was it a wife? A son? Perhaps a daughter?” Horral shook his chin at the riddles of the universe, dumbfounded by their foulness. “I’ve seen your ilk before, Northman: pained, yes, but cruel. Quick killers always die slow, man of the Gargantan, and it’s never the blade what ends them.”

“Have you a song for me too?” asked Ulf, in a flotsam charge at Horral’s old word.

Whatever compromise the elder furrfiend envisioned or goodness he grasped, Eidrik could not see it, and no longer wished to stake his life on trying. He came along Ulf’s side, at a distance, and tapped an anxious finger to the axe. He heard the outlander’s hate, and in its sound tumbled to a dozen other evils, where before circumstance had arose questions of integrity against him, and always had his mercy yielded iniquitous costs. This was no misconceived victim at his pupil’s bond, nor any noble sufferer keen on second chances. In that wretched cloak of night and those eyes of unhearing intent, Eidrik saw banditry, saw betrayal, and, in the cold clench of his own weapon, saw a means to smother that zealous flame.

Yet Horral’s words came first, and always did they prove apt in stifling Eidrik’s wants, no matter how vulgar or how needed. At the tug of a leash, his throat strained, swollen with a sordid thirst, and in a growl he forwent his urge.

“How long have you been bleeding, friend?” asked Horral, his voice low with eager sympathies and his heart sterling in its crave.

He, in all his goodwill and unalloyed intent, was as imperceivable as he was vapid, to Ulf. Either the moral slush he spouted was deception aimed to entrap Ulf’s weaker senses, or he himself was so naive to think that there was some gain in healing the hurt striders of the wayward road. Whether a delusion or a lie, the path would not reward his wants. Horral had survived long enough to see grey grace his hair, but his journey spanned no longer. If not him, Ulf told himself, it would only be another murderer in the swards to undo his goodness.

“So many wisdoms…” Ulf said; a cynic’s applaud. “So many words… To what avail is a learned mind, if in the end, it cannot learn to do what is called for? What worth is all your knowledge and heart, if it only slows your hand?”

Horral scuffled his whiskers, poised a finger upon his chin and, subject to the skies again, he thought at that question. His eyes pleaded upon the stars unseen, but their lone renewing blaze brought his answer hot upon his cheek.

“There are greater things,” he vowed, “than seeing tomorrow. Greater things… can be done today.”

“Of course,” Ulf lied. “And mercy is no doubt among them. And companionship. Kindness.” It bore the sound of a curse.

“I have no quarrel with you, outlander. Not truly. That, we both know.”

“I know you’re older now than you were in Arrenfaeld, where last I spared you. I know your old ears did not fail you to my warning, and I know that whatever you want, I am quick enough to see it undone. You—and your friend,” he shot a stare at Eidrik’s creep, “followed, against my will. Now, you see how deep it cuts.”

“What if what I want is wonderful?”

A gale, more formidable than its flock, whooshed into their grove, then. It rattled the growth at its brim, ruffled the bellflowers in their bloom, brought a chill across the mound. Coldness was theirs again, Arakvan was recalled to them. That raw, polar flail swept away Ulf’s thought, hardened him in a killer’s clad once more, and when the brown of his gaze lifted from his steel, there was an ice of life within it, that turned their grove dark. Suddenly, his cloak—lashing in the breeze—seemed as if it chewed upon the grass and slew its flowers. His shadow came ravenous and under it, growth twisted and died.

“Then let your wonder feed these flowers,” he said gravely, “and your words die.”

Horral’s kindness fell flat. Fearless, he tapped his cane through the grass and strode up to the outlander’s rock. A jump from him, he came, then stalled and basked the Northman in that grey isolation of his disappointment, which was a heavy thing, bolstered by all the creases and strains of skin flexed only to form it. His approach made Eidrik uneasy, and with a few steps the furrfiend came a lunge closer, so that he might part Horral from his untimely demise. He sensed Ulf could indeed render it swift.

“I do feel sorry for you, Northman,” said Horral, stern. “Truly, you must have seen some wicked things, to think in full heart, that this is the only way.”

“The only way doesn’t matter,” Ulf rebuked. “This is just what’s quickest.”

“So I die for convenience? For the crime of following you when you would rather go unseen?” He shook his head. “You must not see how fascinating you are…”

A cloud came forward from infinity and clawed into the sun. An immediate dimness took the field, while more skyward clumps shuffled out, shepherded over the light. The heavens were maimed silver, sooted, with godly neglect. The life of the grove mourned, its teal and plum dyes donning wintry dryness, while under the clouds a pale stain crisped the grass. Colour was shed like a season’s change. In the shade, their words grimmed, and forced were all to consider the danger of their company anew. The lie of warmth was gone. The sun was negligent once more. And they were left barren on that hill’s crown.

To Ulf, it was a falsehood. There was nothing remarkable within him—nothing worthy of greater regard. He was a different brand of a too saturated breed; a killer more competent, but a killer still. Horral could not be good, for his words were false, and in deceit he revealed the depth of his animus. Ulf was not of a pride so needing he could fall to an ego’s snare, so it was defiant that he arose, and with a raise of a spurning chin, his blade was at once whelmed against Horral’s throat. Loose skin rippled under the maw of that steel, his veins bleached, but he made no move with his cane, nor empowered his grip upon it. Eidrik’s axe was drawn in full then, and close he stomped until Ulf’s undoing was a chop away.

“Will this restore you?” asked Horral.

“It will liberate me,” Ulf answered.

“Of our violent chase?”

“Of your incessant appeal. Of your urge for an alliance that will utterly undo you. Of your boy’s doubt of evil, that you peddle to each fork in the road.”

“Is it truly so insufferable?”

“It is a lie.”

“Oh,” Horral jolted. “And what then is your truth? What is right about your wild scurry up and down the Lunga’ar? Of your sudden lunge north? You head for the Cleft, outlander, and if it is only truth that we speak now, then you will die there.”

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“Your fears are little things to me,” he said, while his blade aggressed.

“I do not know your reasons, but I know your path. You’re willing to waste life and not time, and the Cleft will treat quick feet with deep drops.”

“And you are the only chance at seeing its end,” Ulf guessed. “Men trade service when skill fails them.”

“What know you of the Baelgarth, who haunt the Cleft? Or the striders of Teroe, who drag mares into the night? Or S’va Kotai, that fiend of old myth? You do so pretend at reason, then treat yourself honestly, and accept that wantonness you brand your skill may not suffice.” Horral grinned down at the steel wedged against his neck. “I am old, true, but wisdom finds a path better than the foot. And in the Cleft, a poor path will be your end.”

The gloom of Ulf’s study was irksome, but Horral kept composure below it. Eidrik, however, had no patience for diplomacy when steel was drawn. He heard only insult in their barter, and unwilling to witness Horral as some booted mut, he lowered his axe and took to the space between him and the outlander. His gawk was a menacing deterrent, ogling the flesh it would tear and stooped down against Ulf. He stepped slowly, carefully, and placed his own throat against the Northman’s extended sabre. With his jugular like a gentle ram, the furrfiend walked the steel apart from Horral and replaced his drooping neck with Eidrik’s own, like a sacrifice renewed, then gazed all the more vitally into Ulf. The outlander felt the urge to seize advantage, and rip through his throat before Horral could respond, but some warning intensity in Eidrik slowed him, and he felt compelled to not abandon his watch, even while the furrfiend’s neck reddened alow Ulf’s blade.

“Luck runs out,” Eidrik whispered. “The Cleft… that’s a fine place for it.”

And Ulf heard him, and treated with that unruly gaze. The will to place one’s own flesh low to the block was startling, and indeed it made Ulf consider the pair anew. Horral’s kindness softened them, but there was both experience and deed beneath it, and only when one was threatened did the other presume his proper countenance. Horral flipped his cane forward and a thin blade shot out. The command was simple: release Eidrik or fight.

Ulf made his choice.

He narrowed against Eidrik, and that aggress allowed the furrfiend a moment to reel away from the sword and raise his axe again. He chopped Ulf’s armament askew, then, under the cover of its clang, with a low cleave, Eidrik hunted his knees. But in a moment, the Northman was beyond him, and a cloud of petal-dust and hewn turf brushed high from his axe’s splint. Through the guise returned Ulf like a wasp, stinging and circling and rebounding, yet with brutal force. First, he struck the pommel and wobbled Eidrik’s stance, backhanded steel into the axehead, lodging its weight away and forcing its wielder to stumble, then he thrusted against the flat edge of ammolite and threw the furrfiend onto his back.

The Northman spun his sabre with an ornate pronouncement of doom, and unleashed it against his prone foe. Yet his strike spouted sparks, and repelling it was the caneblade of Horral. Under their crossed bites, Eidrik breathed relief and fury. Irritated, Ulf turned his attention to the dour sneer of Horral, and the aged man gave a knowing, struggled grunt.

Now Horral was fast for his age, and their spar was a dexterous exchange. They moved in flurries; gales through grass. Ulf was a panther, seeking and imbued with each cut, whereas Horral was a fence, molding and bending to keep the creature at bay. But where age took Horral’s limbs to a quiver, Ulf’s moved with power, and soon the furrfiend’s swiftness was a depleted defence. Eidrik swooped in with a shoulder to lift the siege, but Ulf stepped aside and all its strength was wasted. In his slip, the Northman kicked up a foot, and caught Eidrik in his shin. The axeman tumbled through the bellflowers, while Ulf returned to Horral, though fell shocked to see he had not rushed in to claim his free cut.

Horral spun the caneblade, slapped it on his shoulder with its edge aimed high. Then he took to tour around Ulf, eyeing him curiously, and the Northman readied his attack again. Eidrik rose but waited, pacing to find a flank he could rend.

“Such power,” panted Horral. “It would be some shame to see it snuffed out in the pits of the Cleft.”

“As you’ve other means for it,” said Ulf. “But your desires are not mine.”

“Are there desires in you, outlander? Or is it only wrath?”

“See for yourself,” Ulf ordered, as his gnarled blade jumped.

The crooked crashed against the slender, and their swords fiddled out a squeal. Ulf’s bursts could not be tamed. His speed prevailed, and while Horral grew lazed with each defence, Ulf hastened upon him and backed the furrfiend against the earth, thieving the strength out from his knees. He slashed for Ulf’s vitals in an urged gambit, but where weaves fell short steel found the path, and Ulf was untouched. Indignant, Horral rose with what was left of his strength, and Ulf cleaved down to meet his force. Their blades locked and fire leapt. Between the twist of steel, their eyes found each other: vengeance upon shock.

“And if you fail?” Horral heaved between breaths. “If the Cleft is your grave—what of all your desires then? What of your power! Spent away in a mountain tomb!”

Eidrik came up behind, to a pivot of black. The clash broke, a kick battered Horral’s chest, and turning, Ulf slipped his blade below the curve of the planting axe, then backed an elbow against the tip of his sword to enforce the trap. The cleave was caught. Ulf launched it aside, jabbed a knuckle into Eidrik’s throat. The furrfiend choked and fumbled, and when error was done his eyes steadied upon falling steel. The sword pushed against his temple and there it stayed; a reminding victory. Ulf turned towards Horral as he scampered to his feet.

“If death finds me in that mountain, then I never might have prevailed to begin with,” said the Northman, drawing blood above Eidrik’s brow. “And then, to die here would be a great kindness. Done even by rogue, petty hunters.”

Horral spat through an exhausted smirk, and chucked his cane to the earth, where it toppled and tore through the flowers. “But I am not kindhearted this day,” he proclaimed.

“Dying unarmed isn’t honourable,” Ulf warned. “It’s just easier.”

Horral came to a weary rise. A hand smoothed the ache of his booted chest. He breathed heavily, shuffled from foot to foot. Horral’s smile now bore red, and his age seemed eclipsing of life at last.

“Nothing’s easy,” he denied. “Not here, it isn’t. Cleft’s not easy. The Lunga’ar… isn’t easy. And we… we wayward travelers of this bloody path, outlander… we need each other. Or off we’ll be picked, one by one, by beasts and bandits and the evils of men…”

“And you are not among them?” Ulf asked, disbelieving.

Shrill and worn, Horral’s voice wavered. It fell to thought, came to a laugh.

“Of course I am!” he cried, breaking up between crazed glees. “I feel greed, seeing my betters ride on—on horseback to walled homes. I feel… malice! Malice, seeing pain done unto poor folk, when its doers go unaccosted! I am evil, of course! when claws come for village doors, and I then must be.” He shrugged a blithe surrender. “I am Arakvan, true,” declared Horral, “as are we all, never to deny it. But I want to see it better, you see? I want tomorrow, vain as it is, condemnable as you might find it, to be a lighter thing. For the fool's thought of perfect to perhaps some day be real.” He fell over his knees, panting, quivering in his merry with unkind thoughts. “I don’t need to feel it—don’t need to see it…” He shook his head. “But I need to know.” Then his gaze came high again, and an accusing mercy fell to Ulf. “That has to be enough.”

Choice weighed on the Northman, under the bare truth of Horral’s words. He could still feel Eidrik’s heavy breaths wobble his blade. He could see the vein that would pop if he pressed his profane steel an inch closer. He saw the axe in the earth that might cut and bury him, if it was let up for but a moment. Horral’s empty hands and his full eyes, he saw. That grove, its cold and heat in equal measure, he saw, and all the bellflowers—stamped and tall. Like a town of man, it was. There were those that fell flat and those bloomed high, under a sky that could not care and underfoot of vile, warring gods. There was mercy and madness, evil and good in each tangle and tromp, encased within that little arena of teal and plum and brighter whites. The gales brought it change, the sun yielded splendour, and the cold recalled it to cost. It was much like any town of man Ulf had witnessed before, and he and his brawlers were nothing more than titans scuffling in the dirt. It was just as weak, trivial, vain and doomed as all he had suffered prior. It was just as wrong and finite and no less fated to nothing. Ulf tired of it all.

The grip on his hilt tightened, Eidrik winced. A deeper gleam of red came streaking down his brow. Horral beheld the eyes of the outlander fall to a squint, and knew, with that twist of the wrist, that his journey was done and his hopes were delusion. He dropped his eyes a moment, breathed deep, and readied to pick his cane up once more, for the sake of noble duty and furious revenge. He was unsure which would first seize him. Eidrik sealed sight away, then whispered some prayer under his breath. The grove was set to sip of the life Ulf promised it. The clouds were drawn to hide the deed. His gnarled fang retracted, then, with a crude whip, unleashed.

And the snow fell.

The first snow of a winter still dormant. The first warning of nature’s wrath. A glitter of radiant white drifted down. It was soft, more water than ice, and with a gentle cold that calmed the skin. It dotted the bellflowers and sparkled in the grass. On Ulf’s sword-hand it fell, and awestruck, he watched that white spec become nothing in the lines of his seared leather. Like soldiers awakened from a dream-war, the three slowed and stuttered skyward, pegged idle by Arakvan’s first frost. The clouds were mending scads of ivory, and their milk-white drizzle was a sample of sanctuary.

To Ulf, it was the hail of recall. The cold touch carried him away and launched him headfirst into the frigid sea of the White Gargantan; a young man again. He arose amidst black smokes and cries of war. He spun with illness overbearing in his mind, and dropped to find scarlet seeping out from his side. Over the nearest mound of snow, screams called to him—desperate and scorned. Through the fog of memory and the illusion of pain, he mounted that white hill, then slid scurrying down its other side, where a rise of ice forbade the beyond. Over the ridge, a village sprawled, entrenched within those horrid snows. The houses were charred and the streets cluttered with dead. Wails shook the air worse than the winds. Between the ash of those homes streaked horses, and dangling from their ribs were bright red boots.

“How can you stay so dreary in such a perfect place?” a guiding voice beseeched him, lost somewhere in the stars but never nearer, and never warmer.

“Perfect doesn’t kill when the clouds go dark,” answered an echo.

“Not here, fool. This world. It’s… well, it’s just perfect.”

And the cold enveloped him and the snow flashed through his mind. At once, the grove surrounded him again, and all its blood and bellflowers, now steeped in frost. The voice, the fumes, the wails, and the red was gone, yet still the snow fell, and in his mind that condemnation was clear. He toiled over it, unable to discern truth.

Are you wrong again? Ulf wondered in the blank sprawl of his mind.

His blade fell low. Eidrik finally let himself breathe, while the threat withdrew from tearing his head in two. He did not shift, instead watching his saviour unsteadily like he were a werecat with foam in its jaws. Horral however, was ecstatic, and collecting his cane he strode over to help Eidrik to his feet and dust the dirt off of him. Grandfatherly, he probed each cut and bludgeon and ensured none delved too deep, then with a reconciling joy slapped the suspense off of his companion’s back. The pair gazed then to the Northman, who for the first time in days of observing him, elected clemency. Whether it was from pity or kinship, they were uncertain, and Horral did not care. That outlander who knew only wild murder and nights in mud had strayed from his own certainties for the preservation of another, and in that there was victory. In that, there was some modicum of hope.

“Through the Cleft,” Ulf commanded, sheathing his blade. “Then I will hear of your desires. Hinder me before then, you die on the mountain.”

His cloak flapped away; white specs softening its shade. With one eager and one too jolted to argue, the two fell into pursuit. They seldom spoke, though were a swift band. As day waned on, Eidrik took to hunting amidst their roves to blur the memory of his complete defeat. In eating, he groaned of bruises yet healed and moves of the outlander he deemed improper, between mighty chews. Often, Horral would laugh at him, but Ulf only watched when there was no wilderness to watch instead. The older man enjoyed the silent inspections, keen on forming findings of his own in that etched, northern face. Eidrik did not. With each stare he pondered anew if it would have been better to die or kill him and leave fate to the bellflowers. He knew that it was a fluke of fortune alone that appealed to the Northman’s senses, and knew that their guest would have slaughtered them both had the skies stayed silent. But his malice thawed in sight of a giddy Horral, and Eidrik was sure that the old man thought he saw a miracle. So quiet, he remained, while Horral told tales and jests and laughed alone.

Ulf, no doubt, thought of the easiest means of dispatching the pair. Eidrik, too, could only consider death, but as to whose and when he was left uncertain, as behind the sway of that black cloak, destiny was a fickle thing. Even as hours were spent, Eidrik still turned his eye south again and looked for their own path they were better off treading. Some misery it would be, he thought, to die in a stranger’s dream, when friends awaited them still. Gradually, the thought of their abandonment done on behalf of such a fantasy scathed Eidrik, and soon he came to glare at Horral with an almost mild loathing for setting them upon that aimless path.

But walk it, he did. And unwaveringly so, until the grove was miles behind them, and its frosts came wet, and under the perishing of snow crept bellflowers; some bent by boots, some cleaved by steel, some still as tall as ever. In their wake, that place of hidden grace was a disorderly thing, and never, in its many wounds, would it grant solace again. Such was the cost, it seemed, of their alliance. He only wished it was worth it, and that such was the extent of destruction suffered for their sake.

Folly, of course.

Through the winding hills of the Whilderwheats they bound, up to where the land arched and the stone shone through, then farther still, to the mighty rise of mountain where the Cleft of Teroe perched, like a door to damnation, to the scale of giants.

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