Chapter XIV : Into the Cleft
The mountain was a glaive, voracious, split-edged and laying skies asunder. About its endless appetite did clouds ache, adrift. Hooked along its brilliant slopes writhed the glow of a horizon, since forsaken. If the Scourge bore architects and worship could be by the underearth fostered, then certainly the Cleft of Teroe would be a monument to beasts. It curved, hateful, towered to a wintry recluse. In it was the utter power of earth, emitted from its every snag and serration, and down its center was a darkness and light both, mingling as if twin energies bade its vein blood-clot.
In they went, down a narrow crevasse of all cold and crumbling. Onwards meant miles of tight harm. From on high came sprinklings of stone, to preserve that pressing threat of the landslide. Their way was a ravine of leaps, threatened, jostling from steep rim to gutter tomb. With a scamper they seemed cloudward, then was immediate descent and deep earth ensnared them, where under the glimmer of vanquished sunlight they glimpsed their own shadows fall out to infinity. Teroe’s depths were unconscious in grandeur, and in woe of collapse petty boulders came crying past. Others stepped, Horral warned, higher and heavier than they.
They beheld deep respites in the low weave of the land, where wells of night swallowed all that the summit discarded. Not even the sound could survive those bottoms, that writhed like roots down into the underearth. But above lurked no lesser fear, as those jagged peaks were eyes over all and the every tiny intrusion. Fangs down from space they seemed, hummed in malice for the unearthly.
In the grand rupture they felt abandoned, then above and distant rolled skitterings, as a damning recall to how unalone was their trek. In the breadth between half hours, they found too a tail vanish to its ridge, or a hoof scamper to an unwitnessed hollow. Life was scarce in Teroe, deviant, green was a forbidden light. Plants that grew in Thedrun’s crown grew to their sides, webbed unabiding through the ground like cancers, and bore petals that could sooner trap a hawk than a bug in their spikes. What a mind could call spiders came thrice as broad, cast in unwrought hairs, carrying to them bellies of sucked blood. The flies were cantankerous buzzards that fished each crevice for flesh, with eight eyes for their every hooked tether. Yet the outlander was learned to such vermin, and the hook he yanked to slay its wearer and the spider he spotted to pierce its hide. Eidrik and Horral did not trouble the pests, knowing rather how to bore and appease the passersby.
Over what rockface they passed tracked an eerie smut: a sand of bright blues, slacked over the breaks of wall. The path at their feet and towards the Cleft’s innards sprouted fungi, broad-stemmed in low caps, all in dyes of silver. Up from the wiry growths came flakes, an afloat shred and luminescent, casting but whiter greys through the air tread through. In the light of the fungi, the band discerned striations over rock, great scratches in stone, that scrawled near them and soared higher, where some creature of prowess seemingly sprung to lurk. When they dared to wonder at that ridge in the drawn eye, all heard and rattled whilst a shriek echoed down in answer. Without doubt they knew it to be the crying of a chronic hunger, ever unquenched, heinous in search.
The three came squat, lower without word to creep their trepid hour in the brook, eyeing the spans above readily, jittering fingers over their hilts should that loud doom knock. Yet pass they did, and unassailed, and the land heaved them up to a valley of battered columns and the passes between. The sight of sunlight was their reward, though the mists swarmed in cool day, to flog and by gloom turn it pale. Unto the breach did gales rock, to resist the triad’s stalk with each ledge stepped. Wind grated against the Cleft and out it weeped shrill and wanting.
The furrfiends drew hesitant, aware of what spiraling damnation awaited the poor foot, though Ulf remained steadfast, unyielding to the tantrums of the wild. He strode up a gyration of stone, leapt to its near pinnacle, etched shallow and woefully unto the side of that greater height, and followed until it ducked to an alley again. The furrfiends were of a gentler pace, though swift to again claim their lead, and sage in the routing thereafter.
They stepped across chasms from which amethyst stores bloomed, aside gutters still with the rotten sacs and caps of ancient merchants, under barbed ramparts long neglected and bodies impaled then only bone. A stair brought them up and between tight cavities, where in the wall were galleries to fast visiting then vanished ghouls, who joyed amidst the clutter of stalagmites without face or a sound to their steps. Steel and size warded them away, but their furred grope knew its longing. Moss clumped at their backs and made tendrils of their arms, each withered but with a belly full. A grunt from Eidrik cast their spell aside, and upon exiting the stair Ulf emerged late, with a blade bearing the blood of a wrist.
In finding worthier heights, they found too the braiding of roots, strange sorts from which no trees grew. They ran in dense tangles, constricted the rock below them, shone with cold white. To a perilous eave did the band draw, one glimpsing its fatal descent by a smug inch, and the root—named jotahr by Horral—crossed down into the lone wall. He slapped it with his cane, slid the blade through a buckle in his belt, then gestured them towards it. The three dismantled, around it they wrapped themselves, steadily, without question, yet a tinge unnerved in leave of their floor.
The wind was fierce on their backs and hungrily did the fall grumble, a watering maw under their dangling, though even under arms and armour the root kept, solid. Ulf breathed in the frost of that exposed cusp. It held a scent of home and it soured him. Swifter he pawed to its end. Eidrik could not help but hold himself tight against the roots, pinning his belongings and soul to the jotahr, shaking from his mind visions of his sac unsealing and spilling to the long drop all that he owned. That loss was more irksome than his own life. Braced firmly to its shacklings, they could in fair time sidestep till its end, where a curl of earth led them high again. Hastily each ripped upwards, off the rim of demise to the crutch of a trench. Above glistened an open sky. There was star-visited sunlight and the Cleft’s bucklers before it.
All over its limbs, jotahr writhed, and by their touch was the ground chilled, made blueish grey. On its turf nestled a flock of crows, with burgundy plumes and long, flexed throats, though when Ulf’s shade and its gnarled disciples stepped into sight, the murder vanished in a feathered cloud. Alow the crush of wind, a cawing sang.
The trench’s end was a sharp change that roots seeped over like a waterfall. Down its ravel the three climbed, with their fists full of jotahr and their eyes of the beating, tightening plummet. Their soles hung again atop a terrible pitfall, and from there that mountain’s immensity could be beheld, unaltered. Chasms, competitively equating themselves aside intermissions of sky. Down it they worked in good diligence, until breaths were spent and hands clammed, and with a leap they could disembark to a near jut. It caught their steps—even Eidrik’s with all its heft and Horral’s with its stumble—and carried them to where the path burrowed unto a worser slab.
They did learn, from their drudging through the voids of world, that the Cleft was only a plane of hard chaos, so massive it startled and so aimless it killed, construed from the machinations of a mad conjurer, who saw folly in straights and future only in dire stone. Few wayfarers lived to see what concluded the climbing plight of Teroe, so it was a pound of proud disbelief when Ulf and his furrfiends stayed standing, remarkably undamaged, and night in commemoration drew near. Though the way was long yet to the nomad’s gold, indeed the pair proved as experienced as their guest was capable. Horral’s age was not fortune and Eidrik’s strength not ill-made.
“Night will know no kindness,” said Horral. “Not for us. I know you care little for a full rest, Eldric, but know that things will come in twilight that even the Baelgarth would not risk. And this land is theirs.”
The caution was heard, and by a grunt did Ulf consent, yet an hour remained to them, and busily it was spent squeezing and in mantling. The last bit of light was draining out from the sky when they reached their site: A dull cavern, with a rift between it and the climb higher, and a winding steppe tracing its flank. Above it was only mountain, straight and sheer, and in staring against that looming giant, Eidrik saw their camp as its grizzled mouth. He wondered if rock would fall to clamp shut upon them in their sleep.
From their shallow gape, the world was low and open to them. In a growing darkness they witnessed Arakvan. Jagged cliffs, crying fields, rifts eclipsed in dusk—it was all known to them before, but from on high all its rugged wounds seemed part of a greater thing, bricks in a wall, ink in a tale. Forests in firefly festival; packs, chattering at drudgery; grasses alight, to twirl in lower greens. Gusts of quick calamity passed and hollows did snooze to recover and again defy. They seemed, from that mighty distance, to belong more than burden and, for a moment of waning daylight, there could be a hope for Arakvan, for its blight and croon. But the lowest of clouds laid between them and the lands below, and perhaps it was a lie of the fog that brought a betterness from obscurity into mind.
When Ulf glanced against it, the beauty of vastness or the quietness of an afar thing failed in its enchant, and sneering he crept to the cave’s depths. Eidrik remained there a while, poised over his axehead as if it were the top of a signpost gesturing fates, and he strived to see—in that endless stretch—the first home of Galehaven. But it laid, as even he knew, so much farther than an eye could grasp, and he wondered there, with the cold of the mountain smoking his breaths and wind pushing him nearer to the ledge, if he would ever see that wretched sprawl of wonders again.
Horral sensed the same aching and so drew beside with a tap of the cane, reposed in its industrious melody. Deeply, he breathed in the view, letting the wealth of lungs applaud the spectacle. In all his years, never had he drawn so high, to stand so immense above it all. To see the landscape of his common stalk, his own earnest continuity, as by night and a march nothing more than another tile in its motherland, he thought to bawl, but for a smile was swayed. Horral pat his fellow on the shoulder, his mannerly press the print of conviction, of recall that this was joy’s accolade; this was triumph for that time between providence.
Eidrik grinned, proven in modest throes before paradise. While by Teroe’s cold chapped and made rumbling, a true pleasure it was. Weirhymn and Corralain together bore witness to their home anew. They saw a largeness they could never before reckon, an astral course of chameleon glories. Cliffisde, clawing their monument, the world knew might and Arakvan its future. It was clear, potent. There could perhaps be a gentle world again. Such a thought seemed worth the crack of their lips, the shame of a smile beside the grim third, as if nature’s bounty sufficed to renew them. By one crisp inhale, the plight of old felt contestable. They could believe, in that moment, that in the blink of some still flashed a riven dream of new day.
“The Baelgarth can have me, for their banquets or stakings,” said Horral, hardly welling tears from their plotted spill across his cheeks. “Name it the toll, for a thing as priceless as this.”
At the fringe of majesty until the thick of night, gratitude was their lantern, translating the world’s intricacy, though the dark did gain its hour and sleep washed soon over them. Horral’s snores filled the cave. Ulf was silent. After a time of long, patient night, he saddled to his feet and strode from their shallow grot. Each hour slumbered through was thieved of everything greater. So awake, neurotic in his distress, Ulf came apart and climbed high. He passed the gap, mounted its other end, and from the cliff admired the cave. If he listened carefully, he could still hear Horral snoring. It seemed quaint for an instant, like some timid bear of the country complacent in its den, but quickly he discerned that if he could hear the old man, so too could worse predators. They risked him in ways they did not know, by deficiencies they could not treat. A cruel gaze then fell upon them and their cave, and the Northman’s gawk twisted with grudge, as he imagined their ineptitude taking him too.
Ulf could not be allowed to perish upon the slopes, he told himself. The notion of those bumbling fools dragging him down with them struck him like a malady takes a newborn, and it became all his spirit could achieve. There he loomed, a shadow on the mountain, staring with eyes whole and malign. A blade he did not recall unsheathing sat tight in his fist. It would be a plain thing to kill them. It would perhaps be a noble thing. What good had they truly done in their labouring lives? What merit made them worthy of a life longer than the Gleemen, the adventurers of early Meddlelfore, or that piled cast of depleted Arrenfaeld? It was not virtue to empty vice on beasts, then take from the peasant his coin as comeuppance. Ulf asked himself, from atop that great perch, what made those furrfiends any better than him?
He found no answer. Perhaps the truth was that the hunters in their cave did deserve steel, but they were yet to show that glint of teeth untrammeled. Certainly, Ulf knew, in their guts they possessed the survivor’s evil, that made reasonable all walks that were onwards, but it was just that they lived at least until they showed it, and he and them were without doubt akin. Then, they could die, to suffer and be saved from it all.
“Yes…” Ulf whispered, derelict in his lurch. “I can give them that kindness.” His sword swung back into its sheath and he turned his eyes to other hunts. “When you’ve earned it at last.”
Morning drew, sheepish and uneager. At some point in the night, Ulf had returned with a wolverine of the mountain cast over his shoulder, then slumped it across Horral’s fire. The old man stabbed his cane through and hoisted it up in smoke. There it roasted and all watched it burn, the skin char, the meat tenderize. The smell filled their snouts, wetted their tongues. It was done before the sun had risen in full and under a soft, warm amber, they divvied it up amongst themselves.
“Never ate barverin before,” said Horral. “Suppose I haven’t yet spent my share amidst mountains. Granted, thought it’d be thicker, like turf.”
“You’ve tasted turf, have you?” Eidrik jeered. “Beside the Grey, I wager. No doubt from Angmerl’s cooking.”
“You call that cooking? She just finds something that looks dead and burns it to bone. And what did Caelum say? ‘She can’t tell she’s chewing unless that fat neck of hers hurts?’”
They laughed and on they went, jesting, storytelling until the barverin’s bones were dry. Ulf said nothing. The furrfiends stomped out the fire and scattered the ashes, then chucked the bones of the barverin off the cliff, so that no hunters could find and trace the scent to its source. They knew however, that the greatest of predators were not below the mountain, but near its summit. Only upon peaks did conquerors lair, as the children’s tales rightly gambled. The extremities of the land housed its drastic sum. Upon the precipice of crowns or chasms, it was tradition for the furrfiends to kiss the hilt, beg the warrior’s esteem for the challenge of befouled lands.
Across the gap, atop the ridge, the path narrowed again, cragged and truculent in guard of its meddling, with a slope taut and lolling high. They winced under stone rain, hastened sideways to the slit’s end. Ulf and Horral bursted out with quick breaths, their chests squeezed, but Eidrik came clasped between acquisitive rock before the alley could be rid of him. His puffed chest, with an axehead to his back, proved too broad, so sweating, strained, he fought to wedge himself across then back, but to little avail. The capture infuriated Eidrik.
Horral snatched him by the stretched wrist and went to work pulling him through, filing his discontent, yet even the outlander’s eyes came wide, and like all his hairs stood high when he saw, above the pass, lurking like a fanatic in the nosebleeds, stood a visitor. Its snout was long and deformed into a flailing trunk, toothed at its end. Its body bore two legs too many to live among other muts, and far too broad was its chest to battle wolves and be called fair quarrel. Its fur was matted, filthy with grime and thieved blood. Its tail was twinned, barbed at its end. Yellow eyes fell from it, with a human greed, and in its paws was a power that crushed the rock beneath it. Avid, it snarled, and from a jaw below its trunk sizzled foam that struck and burnt Eidrik’s shoulder.
The furrfiend howled, agonized under pickle fumes. He tried with vicious heaving to hurry himself through. Even with Horral’s pulls and their then frantic gusto, he could not breach the trap of the passage.
“Its trunk!” screamed Horral in warning. “Watch its bloody trunk!”
And the trunk coiled and whipped. From its spiked gap bubbled a caustic green. A sole drop loosed down upon the furrfiends, catching Horral on his left knuckle. The skin crunched, blackened, and the old man jumped back to see a dark fist conjoined to his arm. His shriek was of a fervor unbefitting his own tongue.
Furious, Horral growled at the wicked thing, whilst an acid loaded again in its trunk. With a flap of his cloak, a dagger launched up against it. The steel beamed through the thing’s front calf and there it stuck. The natnite staggered, whimpered, fell away a moment, but returned with madness in its gaze.
Snubbing the trapped Eidrik, it whipped its trunk forward and out gushed a toxic blaze. Hurriedly, Horral and Ulf leapt aside. A pool of green splashed and seared the stone between them. The earth bubbled and in its heat popped apart the colour of health. In the same damage, in visceral aching, was Horral’s flesh gloved and through spoiled fingers he beheld his friend, wedged firmly between cliff-scars. Trapped, under the natnite’s gushing perversions. Horral was frenzied. He called up to the beast in villainous spite and took a fearless step under its perch.
“Bastard!” he screamed, ruptured through power’s griefs. “Strike me again, dog, I’ll thieve your fucking hide!”
The hand grilled and with each second of shouts it melted more. Ulf was caught unsuspecting, in sight of that passion that begrudged even terrible pain. The studs of his own garb became trivial supports.
Snarling, the natnite furled then lashed its spew. Horral dove low. From the splash an ever slight sum of droplets struck his boot. The leather fumed, but he was not perturbed. He raised his hurt hand to the creature, standing afore its miss and shaking fury back against it. The bone of his knuckles tensed out in challenge. The skin was burnt through. The old fiend’s lips twisted and emitted was a wild laugh. Ulf’s brows shot high.
The beast readied its next volley, crazed in turn, but in wrath had forgone instinct. At the sound of a scuffling, again it peered down to the foe siphoned and ignored, only to see Eidrik had relinquished his freedom to instead climb higher. With his feet spread and stationed against either side of the crevasse and his strong, veined hands heaving him up, he came near the ankles of the beast.
Startled from the ravening of its prey, it turned its trunk against him, though with a lunge and a tight grasp, Eidrik caught that fanged trunk in both fists. With violent strength, bolstered by fraught and the madness of agony, Eidrik ripped the natnite down from its landing. Its legs kicked about, its claws scraped the walls, and aimlessly, ceaselessly, its trunk spouted acid all about its fall. With a thud, a shudder, then a creaking groan, its back broke at the bottom of the crag.
Up it looked sore and vengeful, only to see Horral step near. He thrusted his caneblade through its neck. Horral pierced its jugular then tore sideways, opening the throat. Green goo splattered out from the wound as it wailed, twitched. Eidrik shimmied from his snare and vaulted that demise dividing them.
“Fine work,” Horral congratulated, scratching his chin. “And in good time, too. If it burned you, never would we squeeze your fat damned bones out from here.”
Eidrik thought to laugh through his panting, but when witnessed to the bone of Horral’s hand he fell swiftly to panic. With all fingers he gripped Horral’s arm and gawked over the burn. It was grizzly, smelled of oil and vinegar, yet the old furrfiend grinned no matter.
From his pouch, Eidrik produced a vial of a clear elixir and doused it generously over the wound. Horral flinched and impulse pulled him away, but Eidrik kept him near and beyond accommodation, until the wound was doubly disinfected, swabbed of its foul bloods and acids, and bandaged tight. Ulf granted them an undisturbed solitude.
“Not poor work, old man,” he said quietly.
“Not poor? Ha! A cheap reward that is, Eldric,” Horral griped. “But from you, let it be an honour. They say a journey is unwhole without a wound to recall it.” He raised his black, bandaged fist to Ulf. “This may yet prove a tale better than the leaf’s, after all. If, that is, we do leave this accursed place to tell it.”
Eidrik slapped his back, assuring he stood steady, then trekked on. “Teroe must find better than a natnite for us,” he said. “Though never have I heard 'em to prove so seeking. He was enraged, this cur. This is an ill omen for what sits above, I fear, if even the solitary flock of the mountain have come to hunt with such abandon.”
“Winter draws,” said Horral. “We’ve no more than weeks now, then the snow comes to eat without end. Things get hungry in the prewinter, my friends. Then they get mean, and so are swords dulled.”
Ulf shook his head. “This is not the doing of winter. Year long does the mountain know cold, and freezing does its flock persist. The natnite was desperate, to test itself against three so large. Something has taken its common prey. Something on this mountain—something greater—made it starve.”
Wearily, Eidrik glanced at Horral. “You don’t think…?” he began.
But Horral shook his head. “Only myth,” the old man dismissed, before carrying into the windings beyond.
On creaked a ledge, a ragged advance until white blue broke it. Over its ford they bounded, splashing through cool mountain blood. In its flow they washed themselves and sipped. Its crispness came like rapture upon them after a time so testing, spent malnourished with only crusts on their tongues. Across the stream, the crystalline underbites of Teroe speedily stole their abode again, where fresh sky staled. They grew accustomed to the tight crawl of its gullet, undaunted to again trek lower, and even Eidrik, in all his hesitance, was perturbed no longer when the ridge above them dribbled or the walls echoed each gale’s haunt.
When sunlight next struck, it met them to an alcove that hung drearily, possessively over a rutted terrace, in detached governance of a slum of old white stone. By a glance low they found unnatural architectures, where columns half-succumbed and ruined men-at-arms sapped, chiseled, decrepit. Marble floor, jutted through by a growth of shimmering ores, sheeted the terrace, scaling from the walkway beneath their balcony to an archway opposite them, hoisted by pillars and yawning a powerful black. Along the stretch to its step, statues of shieldmaidens lined, some fallen, some broken apart. They were a corridor to the thing beyond—with snouts, spears and ghastly squints—and that thing was implanted halfway into the cliff face that shadowed it, with much earth crowding its stature. Debris stacked over the land like leaves in fall.
They went squat and still, sheltered behind the cut of the ledge. Neither needed the others to whisper warning when the patter of metal sounded below them. A cluster of five roamed lackadaisically onto the terrace, between marble climbs.
Broad spangenhelms chewed steel masks, in concealment of their cheap effect. Only wild eyes showed through, darting, and from behind narrow slits. From the back of each helm ran false grey hair that was wrinkled and scraggly. Tufts of fur, scale, and bone crept out under the masks: a decay of mortality, oozing off. They bore chainmail made deft, tossed over by broadcloth tunics. Trimming the sides were hues of dark, faded violet, at the cores were blotches of a greenish grey, and on their chests sat sigils. They showed a reaching hand, half-clawed and half-fingered, the thumb under bandage.
Two of the scatter wore capes, long navy, while the others’ backs laid bare, hunched and broad. Their strength was resonant, beastial by the lurch and stroll, to name them sternly to the ranks of the Baelgarth. Two were shaggy and half-faced, pale or burgundy, hunting by sniffs. Axes were blunt in their fists and trailing was a sabre, gripped to a wizened fellow, curled serpentine. Inclement eyes shone in green scale. Its stalk was focused and interrogated what rubble it passed. The final two were well concealed in their irons, though one’s chin was skinless and its eyes an unwell red. The mouth of the last dripped black gunk, and they bore hammer and spear.
In they marched to the terrace’s center, where in ruggish slur they recited upsets, tapping iron upon the statues, inspecting but bored by their memorial judgement. Ulf caught them with a particular intrigue, as never had his travels north met him to beast-men, and indeed kinnits were a striking sight. Their forms were jagged, irregular, as if scrawled with paint and coloured by water, though seldom could a brush achieve a hue so gruesome. Albeit fatigued and tantalizing the ruins with their hard touch, speaking of ill tales and doomed foretellings, there was a melancholy that followed them and sounded off their steps, stripping some of the strength their forms boasted. They were the embodiment of Arakvan’s dejection and grit, and that looming, imperceivable sadness of a waiting warfare intangible only greyed their violets and harsh greens.
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“Horrid lot,” the white-furred said, low and crude and devoid of any aim to his words. Speech was his own harassment. “Better dead. These quakes… Teroe could suffer rogues no longer. Stirred its belly.”
The serpentine chuckled, twirled his sabre. “Fine armours on that swollen dreg, though. Captain, may’ve been. Would’ve been a pretty thing, had you not rent it atwo, what with him inside. Pretty, warm thing, might’ve been.”
“He knew the barrier crossed, when first he and his bagmen tread unto the mountain,” the first groaned. “He knew the Cleft offers no descent not a grave. Higher, or comeuppance, yes? Better he rests in the ditch than above, amidst culled rock.”
The fleshless one perked up, leapt near the maw of the ruins before them, then turned back with gleeful eyes and a crackling throat. “But then there is our good grave. Lower, we go.”
A stump of brown fur rolled his eyes and past. “Giddy, aren’t you? You’d rather it here, beside the long dead, before a right bed, I’d wager.”
“Gonna pretend you don’t feel the freeze, Guht? That the cold’s of no bother—indecent deed be damned? Dreamspeak… Let my nights be with the dead, if there is good sleep at last. To be warm again, but once it was our always, you recall? Down on the ground…”
“If the world was without swords, yes, yes. I say you are asleep again, to fool yourself with ancient wants. You’ll eat the good captain and his batch quick as a rat, when the skin’s off. Groan then of old peace, with your belly full and chin bleeding.”
The furthest two of the pack strode on, into that stone chasm that broke the cliff face. Three remained to meander about the terrace, idle and disinterested, yet searching for signs of combat returned to them like deserters uncertain at the field’s fringe. Horral nearly felt pity, looking down. Their worry was ceaseless, their every venture in unrest, for while men could savour some calm when the swards parted and in the divide emerged a hamlet, a kinnit was left at shut doors to wander further, ever onwards, until up sprouted a place so detached, vicious that it would not begrudge them the malaise of their presence. And so was the Cleft, as cruel and cold as they come, and there stood its denizens, in a lair of ruptured stone.
That axehead of ammolite came drawn. Eidrik felt his sympathy, knowing too well the maltreatment levied against Arakvan’s diseased and unsavoury flock, yet these kinnits were of Teroe. It would be folly to expect mercy from killers so seasoned. Horral understood just as well, and with a quiet breath his caneblade extended.
“Eidrik,” Ulf murmured. “Fell the serpent-man. The axe will overwhelm him. Horral, you’ve speed over the thin one. Gut him and mind his feet. And this bearish cur I will kill myself.”
In sight of the firmness in his command, they readily concurred, considered only the first step to violence before Ulf shattered their concentration. He leapt out from the alcove. Beastial eyes rose fast upon him, so when his feet hit the earth his sword was locked already, with the axe of the brawn, furred kinnit. In a moment, the sabre of the serpent-man sped upon him, but a fallen Eidirk jolted through. The third rose perspiring, shocked at the carnal burst, and when his hammer was ready to crush, Horral’s cane clanged against it, battered it aside, wrapped below the head, and thus were the duels drawn.
“Bandits!” roared the ursine.
“Call not for help!” Ulf answered. “Your kin fall in turn.”
Then did the bear malformed come ardent in his assault. Mighty was his axe, certain to break with fury what it fell against, and by its blows was Ulf driven back as if fighting a flood, each strike a caging hope proved vain by the spark. But where it gathered force, Ulf slipped away and to his swiftness, and soon the axe could not touch him. He repelled it, sent its volleys astray. Much ferocity expired in empty air and the kinnit’s heart came heavy. Ulf closed in, sensing ripe retribution, then unleashed his power. The kinnit’s guard was scattered. A myriad of firm bludgeons blew his iron aside, pummeled that bulk of force backward, until at last a precise thrust sent his pommel whirling, and through an open chest Ulf drove his blade. The thing, more bear than man, roared an unbridled agony, but of resurgence rather than relent. With a shaggy fist he clutched the blade impaling him and met the outlander to his madness.
And so was his soul tribute to the frenzy. Bloodied and staked in malign energy, the kinnit fostered an unyielding but barreling assault. Ulf stole back his sword and found retreat between parries. Such wrath was admirable, but a shallow accolade in the warrior’s grim charge. It did not suffice to startle, and in quick time Ulf gored the skull from its shoulders. Headless, it struck twice before recalling to tumble, then with a thud it did, where white fur in a puddle darkened.
In the midstwhile a thunder surged to his back. Eidrik would not tolerate exhaustion, pain, in the drive for survival. He arrived against that serpentine cur with a flurry, each swing hard, too violent to accommodate the capacity of his own muscle. His opponent was cold of blood and of monstrous dexterity, so far from that opal basher he strayed, under, around and jabbing. It gambled on Eidrik’s tiring and lost, for the furrfiend refused to bow his axe and pant and allow his drained spirit to sap his hands of their muster. His power persisted, impossibly so, growing with each grunt until the furrfiend was coated in sweat, baked red. Then he gave a cry of war and overhead his axe fell as if descending upon wood to be split. A foolish guard rose against him, but the serpent’s sabre chipped apart from its hilt and clanged upon the stone. For a first time, the kinnit’s eyes did widen in fear. A sidelong blow tore into his gut to lay those pupils lifeless.
Against his enemy even in age, Horral was more ruthless, more ready, breathing his reliefs before victory was claimed. The Baelgarth against him, wet with dripped ichor, was outmatched by a foe so seasoned. The hammer was struck at the pommel, once and twice more until it cracked, then a high slash parted the hammerhead from its oak. Defenseless but brazen, the kinnit fought on with a splintered staff. It was inept against Horral. With his hilt under a skinless fist, he tore his enemy apart in three foul, rapid cuts.
There was no peace. Returned from the bowels of the cliffside crypt came the brown-furred and the skinless upon them. The ursine mate leapt from his steps slashing, eager and with vulgar thought answering his own fears, his brown hide a chestnut wind broken only by metal. Eidrik came to and axe met axe. The other stalled, stepped stuntedly, nearly amused. He formed a grin frail with no flesh to soften it and spun his spear expertly so, clearly no gutter flock. Ulf frowned, then rose with caution to oppose him.
Eidrik and his match were balls of iron, bouncing off one another, revenging with blasts that shook the stone beneath them. Mighty was that Baelgarth, but in speed he paled. Eidrik stepped beyond the reach of the kinnit’s blows, caught a slack axehead again and again. Beneath such strength it splintered, cracked as glass does to a battering, then, in a final sweep of his ammolite, fled the kinnit’s grip. Defenseless, he swallowed steel. His jaw, maroon and ruptured, fell loose. Voiceless, the kinnit gagged, collapsed.
The last of their number moved well. He was experienced, his health satiated on the rush of warfare. Carnage thrilled him, clear by his dazzle of spear and gaze. He seemed content, completely, to face one so hideously adept as Ulf, yet the Northman exchanged no pleasure. To Ulf stood only another creature to be felled then forgotten, and he fought with keenness to kill, fast and far in every slash. The kinnit savoured that contempt, let it swell the infection of his eyes. He sought to pierce Ulf’s legs, that lagged behind the swiftness of his hands, then laugh at the ooze that left them, though Ulf allowed him no quarter. The fashion through which he shifted and his form altered were alien, unnatural. They skipped convention and reached distances that ordinary men should never know in one breath. The spear was lost to the cloak, the grin to the charge, then the outlander’s blade ripped into his chest. On his back, the kinnit’s merry failed him. The smile stretched to gasp.
Ulf stepped over him and drew his sword high.
“Enough,” he ordered.
The chest opened. To Ulf’s sides emerged Eidrik and Horral like loyal cavalry, only to see that the battle was done, briskly so. That terrace was made wretched. It stunk and its every crack held guts, yet the victors moved on.
“A fierce cast,” noted Eidrik. “But not soldiers. Not disciplined. Guided only by good instinct, like Scourgers. Perhaps the mountain unnerves 'em. These Baelgarth seem too keen on death. Too desperate, as if to end their own persecution. I wager it is only an age more till the last are by blue and gold undone. Galehaven will not wait forever to dress this peak with its flag.”
“Our coming was an early salvation, perhaps,” said Horral. “Briefer, I hope. All-Father’s mercy, if ever the Crimson Clad look to climb. This is their home, Eidrik. They would not stomach guests of our ilk, but such violence as this—it is a pity.” A distant gawk fell upon the corpses, as if their gnarled skins were the clothes of children, torn apart. “Were Thedrun kinder, a coming such as ours would never be met with murder. There are guilts to bear, ours or otherwise.”
Ulf shook his head, carried on. “Do not slow for your sympathies. These curs—be they beasts or bastard sons—would feed us to Teroe’s pits without qualm. They rot in their solitude, away from man’s hands. That is clemency.”
Onwards he strode. They followed. The jaw of the crypt demanded them, whilst other paths decayed into grand plummets. In it was darkness. Shade spanned forever, silence gained thick. Horral produced from his cloak a match touched in sulfuric sticks. With a flick against the wall it shone bright and blue. In an instant, the way was revealed to them, warbling navy like a grotto half-submerged.
Corpses shelved the walls. Murals of long blades influx and shapeless beasts untamed devastated the floor and ceilings. What laid there was ancient and robbed, and only robes and rags remained to those entombed bones. The iron rings of champions marked them in simple glories. The steel of the stalwart laid amidst refuse, though rusted, chipped. In times past, to be shelved was an honour, but Arakvan had corroded what dignity the crypt retained, while the centuries sent maggots to dine.
From Ulf, Horral, and Eidrik the dead were offered no special restraint in passing, nor shock beside their entropy, the theory of sacrifice, or even the effect of mild unsettlement. If ghosts persisted in the old crypt, they must have grieved again. The three wayfarers were far too accustomed to the sight of the skeletal to be perturbed then. They were nothing more than trapped puddles of an older hail, and beyond did storms breed and birth unending. It was so that they came deep into the tomb before their pace jutted, though deeper meant higher and, with a cold breeze that claimed no direction, they carved through darkness and nearer the summit of Teroe.
When at last the gloom retired its frights, they stood on a balcony. Its railing was aged and beaten. Beyond it lurked another valley of Arakvan; it laid quiet but waiting between pillars of Teroe, thorned and starched under a fogged shimmer. Pinks scouted the clouds.
The balcony was of ordinary stature. From a sway in its stone came a path winding upward, splintered but defiant over a nipping gorge. Its ground was a mosaic of blue and white stone, an italic mesh dancing through its convolutions, circled around the stall’s heart where a coffin loomed. It was rich with indents of war waged and golden triumphs, a flat appraise, though the lid laid askew, the body within was only bone, toppled, deprived of its wealth, and air had rotten its every refinery.
Horral came first out from that darkness, then Eidrik at his heel, and behind, with a distance great enough to spare their shadows, strode Ulf. Hardened were their gazes, as before the railing and its escape stood two more of the Baelgarth, ready for a long while and in wait. They had heard the footsteps of their intruders echo up the crypt. By hardened gaze alone, it was evident they had prepared themselves to slay whatever the dark granted to them.
One was feathered in a steep black. Tall, burly, with eyes of earnest. He was a hawk made man, with a glaive in his right fist and a short sword in his left, but still did his human essence attach itself. His plumes parted to show scabbed, sickly skin. His black sheet broke to demonstrate the wrinkled white of his flesh. In sight of himself and shame of his taint, his frown was deep, a nurtured malevolence. He wore plate mail, stripped from some nobler corpse, embedded with royal livery in dyes of amber and gold. To his side stood a shorter kinnit, born of a bull, supposedly. Though scrawny, her head was malformed and made large, and from it curved great horns that could gore what her body was hopeless to move. She was clad in iron, bore twin blades. Her fur was grimy and brown, and like her kin it was abrupt with human patchwork, granting her an ill appeal, as if either tried ardently and failed to resist the corruption of feather and fur.
Horral and Eidrik squared against them, man-to-man, while Ulf strafed the chamber’s edge, never relieving them of his watch.
“Trespassers,” greeted the bird-man, with a glum detest. “Is it your hate that has brought you so far, to be nude in our winds, or are you only the land’s mad, desperate to see the Cleft’s end? To know, perhaps, if even such a thing might exist?”
Horral stepped closer, jumped his chin. “Indeed we seek its end. We would pass unbloodied, if could be, though I will make no perversions for peace. I am no liar, as the blue-gold charlatans that once promised you paradise here. Five of your friends are dead upon the lower steppes. A killing done by our hands.” He shot steel from his cane again. “I do not believe that is an offence you can forgive.”
“It is not,” the kinnit answered, with a beak half-maimed by sprawled, manly lips. “Though our age knows little honesty, furrfiend. It is for that gift that I will send you quickly into death.”
“Forgive me,” said Horral. “That, I cannot allow.”
“You are not above your ilk of the south, furrfiend. All blessed men. Beside the damned, all morbid. You think your coming, your pace, whatever purpose these rocks hold for you so worthy that it is more than our lives. Our quiet. This harsh, wind-bitten leisure we have clung to. Yours is the deception of the corpses, furrfiend, that man the Cleft’s bottom. Pierced through by my glaive. You will learn, as did they, that your greeds mean nothing, so high above the land you know. That Varcull’s claim is made and your reign fated. You will learn, as did they, that here your journey ends.”
And Horral felt his words. He shriveled beneath them, coiled under that soft malice. What bestowed him such privilege as to teach the earth’s corners man’s butchery? What merit was there in breaching the yard and flattening the palisades raised? Then his eyes fell hard onto Ulf, who approached already to the hawk-man’s flank, and he felt all the fright and wonder of a force wild and yet eclipsed by Arakvan’s leprous touch. Could that outlander, Horral asked himself, be worth the toll? Before his convictions were formed, the Baelgarth answered the break of their gate. Horral sealed his frets under a frown.
He has to be, thought the old fiend.
Ulf snapped into action. The bird-man, sensing the threat of his lurch, veered to match him, while the bullish creature leapt forth to pair the furrfiends to her blades. Despite her gaunt frame, she proved swift, repelling the axe and caneblade both, then strong enough to answer their advance with returned power.
The hawk-man was a hurricane, coursing against and around Ulf’s defences. Yet the Northman was quicker, with an eye more keen, and upon that steel gust he rallied his force. Two blades—one weighty, one swift—made the kinnit beyond reproach. What came quick and near to shedding his plumes was parried by the short sword and what charged from afar was pounded by the arch of his glaive. Ulf was split between distances. Wickedly, the kinnit cawed at him, though it was akin more to a shriek, dribbled through by man’s bitter intent.
That wail was the melody through which the battlings of the furrfiends sounded. Quick, combined, they matched their mutated aberration, made war with its horns. She swatted the caneblade sidelong with her gores, clove Eidrik apart from his aim. They hastened upon her, sure they could overwhelm her guard, though the twin swords moved skillfully, precisely to catch each swing. Some unseen power in her thin limbs shoved all blows aside, then from her throat rang a croaking neigh. It wanted so hatefully to be human, gaining velocity by the discordant umbrage of its own call.
It was for only a moment of exhaustive assault that Horral’s resolve wavered, in sight of that bull’s enraged but vulnerable, mortal thrill, yet a moment was more than enough. She slipped under Eidrik’s axe and the force of his strike threw him past her, then with one blade she caught Horral’s slash, and with the other whipped steel against his chest.
Hesitance vanished and fright usurped its spot in the soul, like pus seeped through blood’s wound and into its stream. Horral pulled back as far and fast as he could, struck by visions of a body hewed apart and demise aboard the mountain. It was indeed a rapid retreat, but her reach was greater. The blade caught his left shoulder and slid down his breast. It was shallow, but deeper than needed.
He winced, cried out, staggered until he found his back. Blood seeped from his core in an instant and the bull closed in. She dropped a stab upon him, but an urgent swing of his cane smacked the kill away. The pain pulled him from his true sight. His breaths slowed, his arms failed. His blade waned in his grip, though Horral could not feel the hilt’s sensation leave his hand.
Eidrik bore witness. There was a gut pummeling of immediate failure, souring his energies, but it was too quickly overtaken by the feral agent, and that agent was fury, in its most senseless form.
The bull-woman tried again at Horral, but Eidrik stole her. Lowering his axe for the swiftness of a free hand, Eidrik threw a fist against her cheek. A tooth flew from her crooked jaw, chased by red spits. As she stumbled, Eidrik gazed down at his beaten friend.
Already, Horral’s eyes faded from their focus. They could not find their brother looking down, praying to be received, in the lobby of a darkening limbo. His hands twitched and his cloak sogged, like damp laundry cast aside. Eidrik could not understand how a face of such weakness could rest upon a visage always so serene in its confidence, so resolved to strength. When Eidrik came to terms with the hurt that coursed through Horral, and impassioned he did, Eidrik found the bull-woman again, but with an otherworldly thing masking his eyes.
She witnessed it, readied to repel it, but could know it only as evil.
Unhinged, ammolite drove through the air. It bashed her blade time after time, then swept with such ability that it carried on to swat her second. She readied a gore though Eidrik allowed his urge to carry him, and following his slash he spun, to return with power renewed. The axe tore her snout apart and threw the kinnit onto her side. Her breaths were then rasped, unsteady, murked in a clog that rendered each pant a dreadful heave. Yet she rose, to dive at him with two stabs.
As if barring a door, Eidrik slid his axe sideways and shut his staff down over her twinned lunge. Her wrists bent, cracked. The axe turned and tore upwards again. Its long hilt struck under the chin. A nasty gush fled her jaw and the rip of her snout, though then she could not recover in right time, whilst it poured over her own tongue. It was in terrible shock that she beheld ammolite tear into her gut, wedge deeper, then—with Eidrik’s contempt faced to her—jerk out, dragging a clump of sundered intestines with it.
He slew her under an abominable bellow. The bull-woman dropped her twin swords and collapsed over the wound, curled into a fetal position and breathed no more.
Eidrik then flew to Horral’s side. His frenzy was forgone in full and his gentler upset restored, as in his friend’s eyes was a light adrift, and in Horral’s hands was a grip that could answer Eidrik’s own no longer.
Ulf, in the meantime, kept the hawk-man at bay. While he warded off the kinnit, his stare worked through the adrenaline of the quarrel. The platemail was dense, too much so to cleanly cut through. Only were its well-guarded ligaments and the beast’s head itself exposed to a killing blow, but the Baelgarth’s glaive and blade worked too quickly to allow an assault so plain. In seconds more of exchange, Ulf found his chance.
He drew near and with a low slash beckoned the hawk-man’s sword. Where the kinnit ravaged, Ulf feigned and in quick time leapt back. To match his margin the glaive whirled, inches short of the right speed and thus inches short of wrecking Ulf’s chin. Rather than close that gap with the blade’s plunge, Ulf whirled a hand through his cloak and emerged gripping a grey, cracked crystal.
In one motion, he crushed it into his fist and his uppercut was dust. The kinnit reeled back from and coughed at its taint. Instinctively, his glaive cleaved the gap between them, certain his foe would advance, but that grey mist was whole and unchanged. The kinnit came puzzled, shivered at the hilt, but before his answer was realized Ulf’s blade launched through the fog—thrown—and shot between his eyes, to stab out the back of his half-raven skull.
Falling, breathless, the hawk-man died instantaneously. It was only a tinge less swift that Ulf reclaimed his blade, with a deep inhale and reborn disinterest, knowing the affair was done. A mess of feathers wrapped around his boots. He would not be bothered by it. Packaged limp in its deformity, it looked close enough to a monster. The whispers of Eidrik enlivened his senses however.
He and his mate laid at the foot of the crypt, with a short armoury littered about them and the hewn bodies of the Baelgarth drenching their panicked ground. Eidrik was wet with a berserker’s dew, with all fingers rapid and undecided. He propped Horral’s head upon his knee, begged him to keep his eyes wide. Red was in the white of his scalp, slurring whispers and batting blank eyes. Eidrik cradled the old man like a child and in his embrace Horral seemed young again, though he wet his brother’s lap. Ulf saw, scowled, though under his upset was something more—akin to recognition. The Northman looked no more.
“Keep your damned eyes open, Horral!”
“Come on, come on, bastard. Breathe, damn it, breathe!”
“Just a flesh wound—that’s all! You’ll be well, Horral. I swear it!”
It seemed so very familiar, though with none of the fondness a memory should rightfully yield. His body was well but his heart failing. The blood loss was inconsequential, for it found its origin in a decrepit chest. Ulf gazed out over the open wall of the tomb, over the railing, where lower summits spiked up and a sprawl of crags tread unto the rock beyond. A steady wind came over the long way of stone. He could see clearly the first field and Teroe’s forfeit. Eerily, his eyes slid over his shoulder to the furrfiends.
There they laid. The old man’s skin paled and scarlet filled his belly. He seemed no different from the Baelgarth who laid massacred. Weaker, even, without their inhuman girth or grit, with wrinkled skin coursed through by burning veins. They were unequipped to contest crimson. The old fellow’s service would slaughter him. Could it be kindness to end them sooner?
“All-Father’s eyes…” panted Eidrik. “See us… See us!”
The furrfiend sped through the cloak of he and Horral, emptying out vials and vats and padding cloth and searing skin. He would give his own bones to that dying elder had he the force of will to tear them out, and it was clear by the pulse of his gaze that he loathed himself for lacking it.
“Damn it, breathe, Horral!”
Already, the screams lured predators out from their cracks and pits. Too long had they lingered in that dreary crypt. Ulf considered it well: Horral could evade all the heartache of resisting and Eidrik would not need to know the morrow’s shame. He would not need to taste regret, feel it sour his lungs. He would not need to wander and hollow until his knees gave in beneath him. He could die still sad, still with a heart. That was a mercy. That would be kind. The Baelgarth’s butchering was an ignoble thing and too willingly had they partaken. The promise of their twilight was abided by. Eidrik and Horral were killers proven, plagues on the land and, above all, plagues that dragged at his heels like iron chafes.
The sword turned his wrist a lethargic inch.
There would be no finer moment. Horral was already succumbed, Eidrik was black of heart with his senses in the stone. In one cut, he could be rid of them, all their intentions—malicious or bothersome.
He stepped closer, cast his shadow over him and brought his boots just beyond the little pool of Horral’s blood. Eidrik still scrambled about the wound to clutch at its leakage, to spare himself that crestfall of the red glimpse. One cut, Ulf thought, and all of it was done. Focus restored, the path thinner. Alone with resolve.
“Please…” Eidrik begged, his sorrows and furies overlapped, confused.
Please. And there it sang. Ulf could imagine nothing so insulting as a plea. When chance fails you, when might wavers, when the mind can enforce itself no longer, then arrives the plea, and it arrives heavily, by an escort of tears. He heard it from Eidrik and the stars both, screams accosting the sane ear. Intrusions of the moral upper story the land in man’s beggering dreams. It was a thorn in his skull and dabbing his head he could not retrieve it. Cold swept over him, a chorus for the rhythm of a wish.
Ulf stood on snow, still as a relic from storied frosts. Entombed in the unfurled disfavour. He knew what awaited inches from where he stood, under ash and the lessening storm. To jump his eye was to cripple the muscle. Ulf knew, in full heart, what cowered upon that bank of snow, clutching the chilled beloved, crying mercy to the clouds. And up Ulf looked, high to the uncaring blizzard, as if its swirl of white tendrils was of warmer grace than what laid below. Below, so near to his feet.
“Please…” said the voice weakly, beaten, forlorn.
He could not see the voice that begged. He lacked the will to bow his head. No, Ulf could not look into those misunderstanding eyes again, but at the defiant blink his stomach churned, showed to the shuteye disgust. It was to condemn him that the clouds wailed their deeper cold. He shrunk against its dudgeon, felt an impulse to shriek.
“Please…” it echoed, over the dunes of frost.
It wanted for only him. It penetrated the gall that betrayed it. Shame shot down. Ulf’s gaze dove against the culprit and victim too, a surge of action unsure whether to wrap itself around them or cut them apart and forever quiet their pleading. Yet when his eyes fell, the snow was gone, the cold was tame again, and Eidrik crumpled below him, holding Horral and murmuring need. His grave face had come distraught and like a tragic step in forsaken history, Ulf saw him. He despised the sight.
“Your remedies will not save him,” Ulf stated.
From Eidrik, there was no response. There was only the begging and the wounded breaths. Ulf clenched a fist and brought it before Eidrik. When the furrfiend raised a glance, he saw a flask of leather, wrapped in twine, sitting in Ulf’s hand.
“But this may,” said the Northman.
The flask was snatched from his grip. Its cap rolled off and was left to skid over the mosaic, its whites and blues. Through Horral’s cold lips ran hastily a pulp of dark, dim orange. Every last drop sputtered down into his throat, though Eidrik paused after each swig, to shut Horral’s jaw and force the liquid to fall. Soon, the flask fell empty over the stone, cracking in its discardment. Still, Horral did not breathe. His skin only came paler. The veins seemed as if they were about to burst out from their flesh.
A cloak twirled in the corner of his eye. Eidrik did not look up but he knew, in some corner of his mind that could feel only contempt, that the outlander had left to trek again into the mountain beyond.
“Please, Horral…” he whispered. “Not yet…”
Eidrik was touched then by a presence never before his own, in the ribs of the Cleft. The limp old man was a baggage of tons in his arms. He swore over his bleached sprawl, that if by Ulf’s deeds schemed and indelicate his friend did not awaken, that he would give chase. To the ends of the world unknown he would haunt his black stranger, until the belly was pulled open and the heart twice gouged. This, he swore, and the vow did clutch him in some shaking, deep-seeded odium his thoughts could not name nor in reason grasp. Even his quiverings seemed less an aching than the wanting stammer of madness. Eidrik’s eyes were shadowed then, their emerald greyed, cast over in soon-storms. When he could feel the body in his arms shiver no more, the light of thought too deserted him. Eidrik could see only the ammolite of his axehead, enshrined in a then eager and singular mind. It was a disc of scars beyond count, though by his vow at that crypt of new, foul lootings, the axe would bear at least one scar more, before it could be cast aside and at last forgotten. He pledged to make ruptures of the very earth.
Then Horral’s chest came high and with a burst he breathed. Concocted adrenalines stabbed his heart through. A quaking in his breast riled a vicious gaze, but viciously returned to life it was.
Eidrik erupted, alive again. He said a thousand things, made a hundred provisions more, chased each rise of the old man’s chest and was intense and tender to the cut that split it. He consoled and comforted, wrapped himself around the frail breaths of the old furrfiend. Their form molded into one bloodied rock and there it stayed, rocking back and forth, gently but of course unshakable.
If Arakvan’s hollows and deeps did permit any joy so exotic it could indebt the soul, brand it with gratitude, then Eidrik was certain in that instant he felt it, amidst the carnage of that awful crypt, under mountain shadow. The furrfiend believed, as each breath from his brother pressed raggedly against his hands, that that was the happiest he could ever be in his long, enduring life.
_____