Heir of Iron

CHAPTER 3

It was in that forest of stony teeth, that the call of alarm went up from one of the workmen — smoke, and not of the burning city beyond. Salim's sharp eyes had picked the thin white line of vapor and ash out against the hazy sky, the ribbon of wood smoke leading to one of the tall spires of fang-like stone.

"Looks tae be another shepherd," Lidia said, squinting off into the distance from Bart's side, the day's passage had seen no worsening of his condition — and no betterment either. The stern-eyed Alchemist and her would-be apprentice had seen fit to keep him close at hand, and so again he rode close to the cart.

"I'll handle this one." Bart volunteered with perhaps a bit too much eagerness, reigning his horse to the side, Lidia's eyes flashed with worry, looking unconsciously to Naima before Bart broke away. "It's just another shepherd, they'll find the surcoat a comfort," he said, spreading his free arm to display the Eye-and-Horn Device across his breast; his armor remained a strain but he refused to travel without the trappings of his order after a fashion. He felt naked without the sigil over his heart, now more than ever. Naima simply nodded, same as the others as Bart spurred ahead to the distant plume. Only Rashid noted him with a raise of his hand as he went, marking his passage as a good sentry should.

The quiet was sudden and stark, this far into the Heartlands the hush of nature was almost a woolen blanket of silence beyond the immediate rattle and hum of the caravan. This far north of Lachheim itself was practically an alien landscape to the warrior-monk. As he wound around the great spire of stone to find its leeward, overgrown base — he then truly realized how sheltered he had been. First the thieves in Lachheim, truly a sight unseen, and now here, in the shadows of a great upheaval done in centuries past. He felt small, humble in a way that had nothing to do with his current lameness of body. Turning the corner away from the road, the great expanse northwards spread before him as the edge of the spire fell away. Bart's eyes widened, and his breath left him in a gasp.

The green hills rolled and undulated, the jagged tors and crags of stone spread out in a scattershot pattern shrouded in a soft blanket of green, softening still-crisp edges and bringing a great, verdant sense of growth to the land. In the dips and valleys, trees huddled and blossomed in thick walls of oak, yew, and ash. He could see settlements beyond, nested in those valleys and boughs — little villages of the hardy, earthy folk of the Heartlands — people unlike his home far to the south. Here, deep in the core of the country they were far from the sheltering arms of the Abbey and the easy reach of Lachheim's patrols. They were a hardier, cagier sort. The land reflected that, its people and their place in it. It was beautiful, it was dangerous. It dared one to try.

"Marvelous." he breathed. For a moment, the darkness swirled from his mind — wonder took its place, bright and hopeful.

The jagged spire rose above him as he turned his horse up its shallow overgrown grade, the thick loam softening its hoofbeats to a gentle rustle as the steely destrier made no complaints of the incline. The smoke was wafting from the top of it, where its overhanging tip formed a long, lazy shadow across the midday valley. The smell of cooking meat stirred the senses, wafting down on the breeze to Bart and causing his stomach to pang gently. Hunger twisted in him, and he blinked away an intrusive memory of the Wendigo's hideous feast — a constant presence since the fell thing revealed itself to him. He had seen it now and again, flitting at the edges of his vision. Hovering over others, and leering its skull-faced emptiness at him over meals and in the reflection of water. Only a moment's glimpse each time, a scant flickering impression that even now — he questioned if it was the creature's true presence or the lingering madness of his feverish recovery.

"Ho, the campfire!" Bart called as he approached — better to be polite than not in the wilds. A rustle came from the grassy knoll, atop it was perched a lonely stand of scrubby trees, defiantly clinging to the blanket of soil atop the jagged tor. Over the edge of the green horizon poked a head, a young face peered down at him from beneath a hood. Dark eyes and bare features seemed to widen with recognition as the figure pulled back its hood to reveal a scarred, pale visage that Bart remembered from before.

"Pappy, it's the Ser from the road!"

Another figure rose to look as well as Bart continued to approach, dark armor and severe features overshadowed the tiny female figure, and another hood drew back from sharp cheekbones and piercing gray eyes.

"Ah, Bartholomus! I had feared the worst!"

Parias.

Bart's mount slowed its canter to a walk as he came upon their campsite, the two having put together a fire in a clearly common site for the surrounding locals, the grass long-retreated from the packed, sandy circle of stones beneath the stand of trees. Their cookfire burned mildly, small and contained — over it a leg of some sort hung on a spit of sticks, crisping and crackling but otherwise unrecognizable as any particular animal. The smell struck Bart anew, his mouth watering a bit as he reigned his mount aside the sellsword and his ward.

"Hail, Parias," Bart said in a somewhat stiff tone, the brawny mercenary raising his eyebrows as he propped his hands on his hips.

"Some greeting, I had given you up for dead with the rest of the defenders," he replied, his voice that gravel-filled baritone, and yet there was a distinct note of relief in it as he looked to the southern horizon, pulling Bart's gaze along reflexively with it — the massive columns of smoke that marked the burning city impossible to miss by any means from the spire's elevation.

"It was a near thing, but I and the Order Redoubt remain standing," Bart confirmed, hesitation creeping up in him as the little girl bounced.

"Come, sit! Pappy was just preparing supper!" she coaxed him, her dark hair and eyes still a sharp contrast to her milk-white skin, but her tone was mellifluous and youthful — it urged him to stay. His gut twisted in an audible gurgle, which got her sellsword guardian to raise an eyebrow.

"Your gut seems to agree. Come, we've got room by the fire, and meat to spare in exchange for news." he offered in a mild, friendly tone. "We were gone from the city well before the first fires were visible."

Bart hesitated again, an unsure feeling warring with the desire for a simple chance to sit somewhere that wasn't a saddle. Unarmored, he felt vulnerable. His axe hung from his saddle — but Parias was similarly bereft of his weapons, the Knight-Brother seeing the wicked curved blade in its scabbard against a far tree along with packs and supplies.

"I can spare some time, I did come bearing warnings." Bart agreed after a heavy consideration, swinging down from his saddle, landing some paces away from the mercenary and his ward.

"Well, if you came to warn us Lachheim is burning, I fear you're stating the obvious." the gray-eyed man said with a deadpan sort of smile, Bart and he eye to eye as they stood — the Church Knight realizing he had not truly stood adjacent to the man before. Even without his armor, Bart was a big man, and rare was the instance he met someone able to both look him in the eyes and match him in bulk — yet Parias did so, the two men standing off a moment as the gray eyes flicked over him, an eyebrow raising in question. "You wear the colors, but not armor boy?"

"I was... injured, in the fighting. I am in recovery still," he said, rolling his shoulders some for effect, warding off the stiffness of the long ride. "The armor tasks my wounds yet." Parias' eyes narrowed a bit, flicking back towards the road.

"Dangerous for you to be alone as such, is it not?"

"My faith protects me."

Parias nodded his head with a silent 'ah', gesturing to the campfire as Ishtar took his horse's reigns, tying it up to the nearby tree over a grassy area, where the brawny beast began to idly graze for tender shoots. Bart sat across from them as Parias set back to turning the shank of meat across the fire, the fat and flesh sizzled and crisped with small leaps and cracks of the coals beneath it as drippings fell onto it. Bart swallowed heavily but cleared his throat nonetheless.

"Lachheim does burn, clearly — yet the reason why remains a danger." he began, lacing his fingers and leaning onto his up-tucked knees. "The Empty Queen has returned to Northsea. She assaults the Heartlands, Lachheim is likely already fallen — God help those good souls."

Parias' eyebrows went up, and Ishtar covered her mouth with her hands, shock on her doll-like features.

"Oh Ser Knight that's horrible, all those families, the children..." the girl gasped, drawing Bart's attention as her guardian stayed silent, sprinkling some mixture of spices upon the meat as he turned it. The girl he realized — was much, much older than he'd first guessed. Rather than barely being out of the rosy blush of childhood, in better light and lighter clothing, he realized the tiny, thin girl was easily closer to Lidia's age. Her body was lean as a yew sapling, and she practically had no breasts nor hips to speak of, but her eyes and face showed as she spoke that she was far more mature than her ravaged body let on. She wore a riding cloak, but the gloves and heavier clothes he'd first seen her in were gone, instead she wore a sort of long, thin dress belted at the waist and open at the neck, her hands similarly to her mouth were covered in scars — the familiar cuts of blades, wounds suffered in defense... or in battle. Bart had many such himself.

"Such is the cost of war," Parias said grimly, his own eyes level. Stoic. Bart knew little of the man, but the turn of his lips and deadpan set of his gaze were now familiar to the Church Knight: he saw them in the mirror more often than not.

"Yes, it is what I was here to warn you of. We presumed this fire to be one of the shepherds here in the middlelands, we've been passing word of the Queen's ravening forces as we travel." Bart said, meeting Ishtar's gaze again, "They are unlikely to be content with just Lachheim, and the northern reaches between here and Fort Ivory are largely isolated, undefended."

"Do you think they'll make it this far north?" she asked, fear glimmering in her nearly-black eyes. Bart drew in a breath, his mustache bristling over his lips as they pressed together in a neat line.

"It is all but certain — and these 'Ghuls' of hers move with animalistic speed beneath the bowls of the earth."

The girl's teeth caught her lower lip, and she turned to Parias who had adopted a similarly grave expression, eyes distant — locked firmly on the burning city, but he raised a hand and gently patted her leg while still turning the spit. There was something... off about the whole thing to Bart, the way she scooted close to him, the way he stared at the fires. The gleam in his eyes was intense, yet the accompanying expression was unreadable. Bart felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise, and his lack of armor suddenly felt quite like being naked.

"It's good you escaped, Bartholomus. You would do nobody any good dead too early." Parias spoke suddenly in that droning, distant voice of someone deep in thought. Bart jutted up a single eyebrow at that.

"Too early?" he challenged, Ishtar looked up suddenly and then she smiled wide,

"Too early for your pilgrimage, you are still off to meet the Lady of White, yes?" she explained, Bart's eyes tearing slowly from Parias' stolid stare.

"The Lady in White, but yes. I make as much haste to her as I can, my wounds have slowed us greatly," he explained, unconsciously touching his chest.

"You seem whole, perhaps it was your mettle that was cracked more than bones." Parias said roughly, his eyes finally turning, that cold gleam in them; "The gentle, passing kiss of the grave unmakes many doughty warriors. The limits of mortality."

"Their strength sharp, straight... but brittle, like glass." Bart recited absently, and there seemed to be a twitch of recognition in Parias' face, a subtle tilt of his chin as Bart continued; "An adage of ours, for warriors who never know loss — until it breaks them... no, I don't fear death. It is something else." Bart said, and Ishtar leaned forward, pressing.

"You said your armor taxes you, Ser Knight, but you are still so large and burly — big as Pappy!" she said, concern in her voice; "Did they... take something, from you in the hurts?" she asked, eyes flicking over him as if to seek out a missing limb or member. She wrung her scarred fingers together — and before he could object, she reached across the middle distance, and seized his bare hand. Bart felt a tingling twist in his guts, a primal urge to tear his hand away from those tiny, scarred fingers. Her eyes met his and Bart felt... oddly compelled to speak to her. Those dark eyes questing in his gaze for something. He couldn't look away from her as that prickling sensation started again, a chill ran through him as it had when he'd glimpsed the yawning skull lunging at him from the darkness of the grave.

"I... I was dead, actually." Bart admitted suddenly, coming out of him in a gush of words and a shudder, his free hand curled into a fist over the scar in his breast, wrinkling the Eye-and-Horn on his chest. He told her then, feeling as if the words were being pulled from him like a knotted rope, pouring and coming out in fits and starts — yanked free from him by the too-cold grip of her fingers. They were strangely strong, uncomfortably tenacious. Cold sweat formed on his brow as he recounted the fight with Humbaba, and the impaling wound that had felled him — and the crippling weakness that had tasked him. He told it all.

"I came back... wrong." He said, holding up a hand, the faintest of the tremors he'd struggled with since then shaking it as the stress mounted. "Something inside me, something clawing at me. I cannot trust my strength, it simply... leaves me." He said, avoiding the taint of the Wendigo... he had already spoken too much, his eyes searching the air before him with rapid flicking... he had said so much, unbidden. His head felt foggy as Ishtar's fingers tightened and she slid closer to him.

"Do you remember what it was like, on the other side?" she asked. Eyes too intense, her tongue moistened her lips in a quick swipe of pink on pink. "Was it cold? Was it dark?"

Bart leaned away from her, the intensity and intimacy of the question setting a kink in his guts, Parias' hand raised and grasped her about the arm pulling her back to him. Her hands slid away from Bart's, and a breath left him he didn't realize he'd been holding.

"Now, Ishtar. That's an uncomfortable question to ask a man," Parias chided her, meeting Bart's eyes again. The encounter had taken a decidedly uneasy turn as Parias took a thick-bladed knife from his hip, prodding the turning meat. "Few are the warriors that haven't come close to the grave, at least once, truly the best among us ride that edge as close as they dare."

Bart nodded, raising a hand to his head. He was dazed, foggy, and felt the oncoming flutter in his chest that often heralded a fit, Parias turned that steely gaze on him, having sliced a piece of meat from the shank to test its flavor.

"I know the thing you saw in the dark," he stated plainly. Bart blinked through the fog, focusing on the dark-armored sellsword like a bloodhound.

"How?" he asked — nay, demanded. Parias raised an eyebrow.

"I have fought in many places, many battlegrounds. Reikstand isn't the only place that calls out for soldiers of free birth. The battleground draws many... dark, things to it. Little understood, ancient beings. Older than our petty little sandcastles we call cities and civilization. It's no surprise, considering what else you described." he raised that gobbet of meat to his teeth, tearing it free from the knife. Bart felt his mouth water again, pairing grossly with the queasy swirl of his guts. Parias' gaze was level, sober.

"It's called Wendigo."

Like someone tolling a bell — Bart felt his entire view of reality shift, the fog in his head became a dull roar, and he wavered slightly, forced to catch himself as Parias looked into him. The light around him flickered, though neither of the others reacted to it, the older man carving another hunk of meat off and passing it to Ishtar — who ferociously tucked into it, gnawing and worrying at the dripping meat despite its steaming heat. The sound of her eating was loud in his ears, chewing. Chomping. Feasting.

"It's very old, some kind of pagan entity. Something that's been with us as long as hunting, killing, fighting, or fucking has. It's a powerful creature — beyond that of any of our petty rulers or their pawns." he said, curling his lips in a thoughtful frown full of disgust — whether it was directed at the Wendigo or the 'petty rulers' was impossible to say.

"How do you know this?" Bart asked, dazed and weak — he struggled to hold off the seizure that was trying to claim him. Parias raised his knife, watching the oils and grease running down the blade like blood.

"I've seen it," he said, running his thumb along the blade, before slowly, carefully sucking the juices free, those thin lips wrapping almost sensually around his thumb as he did. "Once, a very long time ago. Here in these lands, back in the Gray Plagues."

"You fought in the Purges?" Bart rasped, surprise warring with effort as he felt something press in around him. His hackles rose again as Parias nodded. Ishtar tore at her meat savagely.

"As you said — these lands are vastly undefended, and there were more than a few sellswords alongside your doughty Order. There were as many conventional battles as there were contests of men of power," he said, and Bart felt the pressure mounting, almost painful — like the air itself grew too heavy. His head began to pulse, and his eyes widened... as the air behind Parias split.

"I saw it here, over the battlefield as the Radiant Order cut into the heart of one of the cultist sects, it rose up over them like a specter." He described, Bart's face going pale as a great shadow rose up over the man, covering the campsite, daring to strangle even the light of the sun in its lengthening darkness.

"It was a thing of beyond, my mind could not truly grasp what I saw... but I remember the darkness in its eyes. A skull like a deer turned predator." he continued, cutting at the meat again, and that sweeping curtain of reality once again was drawn aside, and out of it loomed that impossible skull. Black flesh and tarry ichor pulsed and poured down it as it leaned out of that slash in midair like an actor might the curtain of a stage.

"It wore the darkness above it like a cloak, and within it swirled teeth, so many teeth." the sellsword continued in a haunted tone, and as he did it, the white flecks within the rent torn in reality blinked into existence, the atrocity drawing that slit in reality around it like a mantle, a stole of rule — and within it were a million gnashing teeth. Human. Animal. Other... things, he could not recognize. Nothing but teeth. Ishtar's tiny mouth tore hungrily at her meal. Chomping. Biting. Worrying.

"It swept its hand over the Church Knights, and it was like night had fallen over the area, and out from its long shadow... monsters came clawing out, hungry, slavering things — these 'Ghuls' as you called them," he said, and looked back up to Bart, and blinked multiple times as he saw the Knight-Brother's ashen pale face and horrified expression. Beyond him, the Wendigo tilted its head at him, raising one of those four, horrible, many-jointed limbs to its impossible skeletal maw. It shushed him silently — and Bart found no words could exit his throat.