Heir of Iron

Riding them. Bart shuddered at the description, and he did not need to turn his head to feel the specter of the skull-faced, slavering monster looming over him from a nearby shadow. Be it only for his eyes or not, being ridden was an apt descriptor for this creeping presence. His resolve hardened as Naima continued.

"Leviathan, however, has a flesh-vessel like our Holy Ones do. It is Gigas' eternal opponent. It is a creature of base, atavistic violence. The cold, hungry predation of the abyssal ocean. It is in every way Gigas' opposite — where he is savage and true, it is mindless and hateful." she said — a chill in her voice. A chill Bart recognized very intimately now.

"You speak as if you have seen it," he said, his voice quiet, reining his horse closer to her by the cart. Naima's face was distant, but she shook her head.

"No... not like I have The Learned One, not as you will The Lady. No. I saw it, as one does a nightmare. Distant and hazy." she said, and there was a cold in the air as if the creature's name had invoked its presence. Bart knew now that to be possible.

"Some nights in Khorrit, when the skies are clear and the Sea of Glass is calm, you can see the great reflection of the Twin Maiden Moons across its vast surface — it's how it got its name after all," she said with a little smile at humanity's love of literal names.

"The elder sister's reflection was visible from my room as a girl, and once on one of those clear nights, I looked out across the sea towards the Ossuary of Man... and I saw something break that glimmering reflection." she all but whispered. Her eyes grew wide, pupils dilating and her voice drew in a note of panic.

"It was too large to be real, the wake seeming illusory and dreamlike at such a distance — like watching a boat in the bay, yet this was leagues upon leagues away, so massive, so impossibly, inescapably huge." she said, and her voice was that of a child, "It cruised through the moonlight so far away that it cut across the horizon's edge in that glowing reflection, and the whole time I could not look away — it was as if the sight and shape of it pulled the breath from me, drew the warmth from my limbs. The crushing depths of the ocean, the coldness of void, it pulled at me, and for a moment — I saw it crest the surface a veritable march's distance away, yet so big as to be almost ponderous in its movement through the air." she said and her pupils dilated once more as she was simply there, seeing the shape again — fresh and unfaded, burned into her memory.

"I remember teeth and little else. It had a scaled, serpentine tail and carapace-clad thorax of impossible size — almost crablike — but I remember even far away from it... it had so many teeth." she hugged herself with a shudder. Closing her eyes she took a breath before continuing.

"I only saw it a moment, from a distance so far as to be as nothing to it, a speck... but in that moment. It saw me. That feeling of cold, The crushing weight — a moment's attention from this monster before it vanished down beneath the sea." she said, and silence reigned in the conclusion of her story. Bart understood that, and much the same understood more of his own situation.

"So you think there any credence to it then? The Wendigo come calling back to its old territory?" Bart pressed, Naima, shaking herself from the vivid memories. Bart knew how that felt now, the sight he'd had of the Wendigo in his dream, and again above on the rise — they had yet to fade in clarity nor freshness, written indelibly on his mind. It seemed memories of the Astral were theirs to keep, in both wonder and horror equally.

"It tracks, as I said." she reasserted with a shudder, meeting Bart's gaze with a raised eyebrow, "If you intend to make a play for the lands — why not send their old oppressor?" she asked, and Bart grunted his agreement. It was pragmatic enough, and the leering presence in his wake confirmed it.

"It has likely been here — or upon the back of a ridden host — since the first fires of this invasion."

That sentence hit Bart like a thunderstroke, and the darkness around him seemed to cackle dryly as he put the idea through its paces. Had he done this? Had he been the stormcrow of all this suffering? Ridden, as she had said, unknowing and heedless of the corruption he sowed in his wake? The thought twisted him around inside — and in his saddle, looking back at the columns of smoke behind them. He stared at that dark plume, and the misty shadow of the Ossuary behind it, framed in horrible poetry by the flames of civilization as it burned. Had he burned this city with his naive heroism? The shadows offered him naught but that mocking sense of smugness.

"Bart?" Lidia asked, Naima's brow furrowing in concern as he turned back, scrubbing a hand across his face.

"It is nothing, just... the thought of someone carrying such a thing upon themselves, like a plague leeching into the others... it drew my mind back," he said, closing his eyes pointedly. Naima nodded and Lidia reached out a hand, he felt her tiny fingers on his shoulder and he sighed.

"If this creature is out and about I would take the traveler's heed, and venture to the villages to the west. I would seek out what there is to know of this 'Old Rawhead' and its habits, perhaps there is a secret to the creature's undoing to be had."

Naima and Lidia nodded — the latter perking up visible in fact; "A stopover for stories ye say?" she inquired, and Bart nodded, gathering his reins a bit.

"A stopover for stories — forewarned is forearmed," Bart said and spurred his horse ahead towards where Nazir and the others led the convoy, guiding them towards the western fork coming up upon them in the road.

The left-hand path beckoned them quietly.

CHAPTER 4

Bart and Nazir lead the party down into the shadowy valley. The lush, green ravine was comfortably cool, ensconced in between a multitude of the stony spears that jutted so sternly from the ground. They were even more overgrown here in the depths of the cool grassy hills, vines, and trees climbing their shale-like surfaces. Fires puffed smoke into the distance, the greasy black of homestead fireplaces. From the cart, Lidia's head peeked up as she watched the shadow of one of the spires cross her face where she lay, reclining across the roof as Naima drove it on.

"Oy, Hayseed," she said, getting Bart's attention as he looked back at her, "Ye ne'er got around tae tellin' me about these big fook-off rocky spikes," she said, and Bart made a face of consternation,

"You're right, we got sidetracked by other topics. Truth be told, none in my studies really know how they got here," he said, Nazir raising a brow as he fell back midway between the dandy's white palfrey and the cart.

"Surely they cannae jus' 'ave sprung up out o' the ether," she said, rolling over to hang cat-like over the edge of the cart as it rocked, Naima turned her gaze up to Bart again — clearly intent to grade his knowledge once more. No pressure.

"No, no," Bart said, shaking his head. "They are the remains of the tip of Crownspeak." He said, pointing across the horizon — even here in the dipping elevation of the cool, misty valleys they could see the jagged, tiara-like expanse of the massive mountain at the center of the northern range — dead in the middle of the Sidhewood.

"Oh, nae wonder there's so many of them." the little thief said somewhat dumbly, and Bart laughed.

"Yes, turns out there's a great deal of stone in a mountain. However reports of the earliest days of the Verdant Crusades are apocryphal at best, pure legend at worst — none can really decide what precisely caused it, but it was a great expenditure of power."

"Some say God himself tore the tip free of the mountain, and in a fit of pique, hurled it onto the Queen's forces here in the Middlelands — like a great, big handful of stones!" Nazir added, his expression intense as he as well, dropped back to Naima's cart.

"God, was it?" the Alchemist gently chided her brother, who grinned wider.

"Stories are my specialty, but as Brother Bart said — much of it has fallen to legend. I like to think that it was God, though." he mused, stroking his well-manicured mustache; "There's a comfort in the idea of him leveling the field for us."

"He did, dear brother." Naima said sweetly, "He sent the Lady and her siblings to us, and gave us his power directly." she said, stroking the golden bracelet on her left wrist absently.

"True, true — but that's hardly as dramatic as a divine handful of sand in the queen's eye, isn't it?"

Naima merely chuckled, Bart picking up the thread for Lidia as they passed under another spire — its shadows mercifully empty, the Wendigo's presence deciding to leave him be for the time, "We do know that they fell upon the forces of Queen and Man alike as if it were stony rain, the prevailing theory I was taught was that the Queen herself, reach long in the wake of the Black March — clashed with the nascent Lady in White, and their dueling powers tore the very land around them asunder."

"A theory I was taught as well." Naima said approvingly, turning her gaze back towards Lidia's supine form; "The Triune was much stronger during the Crusades, their powers untapped and raw. The strength of the Lady on the day of her birth was like unto a True Goddess itself — it very well may have happened as such."

"What happened tae that power?" she asked, and Nazir piped up, spreading his arms around him.

"They give it to us! To the land, the trees, the animals, and the soul of all things born under the golden sun and twin maiden moons!" he crowed, grinning, turning in his saddle to her; "They pour their might, wisdom, and love into the earth to save it from the Empty Queen's hunger."

"What he means, is that the Queen sups from the very heart of Tor-Laraan, of our world." Naima clarified for her brother's pomp; "She would drink it dry, were it not for what the Triune pours back into the lands of their own power. It costs them much, limits their strength — but it staves off the Queen, pushes back her influence."

"So th' Lady and the Learned One the Big Beast ain't as mighty as they once was?" Lidia asked, frowning a little, and Bart shook his head.

"No, they spent much of themselves breaking the Queen's hold on Northsea, and much more still through their blessings." Bart spread his hand to her; "We, are their power now."

"Bartholomus Mueller, The Fist of God!" Nazir agreed with a grinning show of white teeth.

"Something like that." Bart chuckled humbly, the dandy laughing it off as they continued down further into the misty, cool expanse of woods — the shadows of the centuries-old conflict seeming less dark than they had before.

Further down the road in pleasant quiet, Nazir fished into his effects within the far cart — and produced a strange instrument. Bart furrowed his brow at it as the lithe man settled it into his lap, sitting sidesaddle as his palfrey trotted sedately along — by all accounts it resembled a lute, but both the body and neck were narrow and deep like the keel of a boat, and its pegs were artfully crafted of silver and deep-stained wood, the belly of the instrument round like a gourd and covered with a brilliantly tattooed hide where the strings ended. Grinning, he set it across his lap and set to strumming — immediately it carried far and wide, like echoes in an empty room.

The sound wasn't the dulcet, sweet strains he'd expected of a harp or the like, but oddly flat notes with a cool clarity that echoed smartly across the quiet valley air with a precise yet soothing drone. Nazir's delicate fingers flew across the strings in rapid staccato notes that bridged across scales and tones so precisely that one could hear every pluck and pull of a string clearly, and yet they carried together into a cohesive, echoing tune that echoed the land that made it — an oasis of focused calm, each rapid vibrato-filled motion of his hands brought a swaying back and forth rhythm to the music, like the patter of rain and the sway of trees in the break of late spring showers on the scorching sands. It was a generous instrument, much like the people who made it — why use one note when you could offer two? Why two when there was a bounty of six? The spilling, trilling sound rattled and skipped across the air with a growing warmth to balance the cool, crisp notes. The strings spun a tale of distant shores, distant sands, and the rhythm of a life of vigor and purpose.

Bart found the music enthralling, and his eyes drifted half shut as he let the rapid notes wash over him. Nazir's capable hands altered the tone, bringing it to the green lands around them and adding their sighing breeze and swaying trees to the landscape of sound.

Off from the distance, however — a counterpoint played. A curious, almost tentative strum of similar, tinny, plucked notes rang out. The party raised their heads to the far end of the path they walked, flanked by spires and in between thick with ash and oak, Nazir raised his hands again — and played another little fritter of notes back.

As if in answer, the mysterious player returned with its tinny chorus of strings. Nazir grinned wide.

He led the unseen player into a fairly simple tune of tight notes and got a return note that almost seemed inquisitive as it ended. The lean southerner looked over the Bart and winked.

"I think we've met the local flavor," he said, and launched into another, merry sort of tune — a rambling, woodsy sort of folk song that one would expect from this region — a bit off for the strange southern instrument's curious tones, but it gamely met the challenge with a touch of exotic flair. The little ditty ended on a similarly inquiring note, having slowly laid out a scale of tones in careful measure. The returning ringing of the song was game and robust, full of a youthful exuberance that drew a laugh out of Nazir as he joined in — the two stringed instruments enmeshing into a cheery, chaotic duet that set the southerner laughing.

The white palfrey trotted ahead of the group, Nazir's playing gaining a playful, coaxing trill as he looked to the trees — strumming out a rapid, questioning little couplet and waiting — and from the trees came an eager response, and from them walked a thin figure.

He was lean, perhaps fourteen or twelve summers old — but strong of limb and hard of eye, his body and build clearly conditioned from long hours walking and running. Blue eyes peered at them from behind messy chin-length auburn hair and pale skin made ruddy across the nose by long hours under the sun. He had a slender, crude instrument slung into his fingers — looking much more familiar to Bart with its long, slender neck and fat, gourd-like belly. A massive wolfhound trotted warily beside him, and a small crook was tucked into his belt. A shepherd boy. He smiled a bit, and played a little bit on the simple but well-made little instrument — Bart knew it as a Midland Bania — a cheery little strum of its four fretless strings in harmony as a bit of a greeting. Nazir cackled and bowed in his saddle, hopping down.

"Well met my young friend, it is rare to find so keen an ear for music so far from home!" the dandy crowed, clapping for the young lad — a trend that spread through the group, even Lidia giving him a lazy little clap with a crooked little grin, though Bart had noticed she'd pulled her ever-present red hood down over her face a bit. The young man blushed and gave an awkward bow, resting his arms across his slung instrument. He was friendly — but still a wary distance away, and could very easily vanish into the trees once more if he needed. Canny.

"Oh aye, tis' nothin' o' note. Gets lonely up on the hills, an' the flock likes a little ditty now and then." the lad agreed in a mild, friendly tone. Bart raised an eyebrow as a variation of Lidia's own accent echoed back to him. He turned an eye to her and she only smirked at him a bit, nodding.

"Music soothes all, man beast, and soul!" Nazir agreed readily, looking around; "Oh in our joy I have forgotten all my manners, I am Nazir!" he said, sweeping another bow, and plucking a few strings on his own playfully. "May I have your name, good lad?"

"Callum, but ye can call me Cal. S'what all o' the elders call me." He said, nodding and smiling. "Ye're a bit off o' the Kingsroad ain't ye Mister Nazir, sir?" he inquired cautiously, and his hound's eyes locked onto Nazir with a fierce focus, the big, shaggy animal clearly smarter than the average mutt.

"That's my doing, neighbor." Bart cut in, gently guiding his own horse up and spreading his arm to show the Eye-and-Horn device on his chest, the youth's eyes widening in recognition at the sigil.

"Ye're a Church Knight!" He gushed, Bart nodded, looking back to the south.

"I come bearing news."

"Aye, the fires ye?"

Bart nodded, and the boy did so in return, his excitement tamped down with a sudden serious face;

"Ye're gonna wanna talk tae th' Chief, Ser," he said, and Bart felt a little surge of respect for the earnestness of the young lad. Barely more than a boy, but he carried himself with a sureness of food and a straightness of spine that inspired a good degree of confidence. Little wonder he was out here alone, even so young.

"Wonderful, would you show us the way, my young friend?" Nazir said, still keeping his distance a bit from the young man — the hound's keen eyes were still fixated on the brightly dressed dandy warily — and the young man nodded, a brightness returning to his eyes.

"Aye, iffin' ye show me more o' that strange fat-bottomed bania o' yours," he said, peering at Nazir's instrument. The Southerner laughed.

"It is called a rabab, and I would be well-pleased to do so!"

They set out at a walk, the long-legged lad not as quick as a horse but his prudent distance ahead of the party even as he and Nazir exchanged pleasantries spoke volumes about the kind of people he and his kin were — even with the assurance of Bart's colors flying true and the friendliness of Nazir and company, the young man was wary and alert. The people of the Middlelands had suffered long, and in the press of the Black March had been forced far into the wilds by both the Empty Queen's deadly march, and the crush of refugees that boiled out ahead of it. They were a taciturn people, and it was no wonder they chose to stick with clan and claimed soil far out into the rolling hills and grassy downs between Lachheim and the Northern Sidhewood.

Nazir once again surprised Bart, as the leisurely walk continued at a sedate pace, he simply chose to drop down from his mount — and boldly proceed to the boy's side under the alert stare of the massive, shaggy gray hound.

"I hope your fine animal will pardon my boldness, but I've never been all too fond of talking down at people." Nazir said with a cheerful smile, looking back at his horse as she snorted and casually followed the lead cart; "Literally or figuratively."

Cal looked at him warily, and the massive dog's brush-like tail swayed warily and seemed to look to its young master for an answer. Nazir once more pressed: "Does she have a name?"

"Thistle," Cal said in a quiet tone, and Nazir grinned even wider.

"An appropriate name for such a fine animal, pretty and yet — beware!" he said, and strummed a little dramatic trill on his Rabab. Cal seemed to immediately relax, and the two fell into conversation about the animal, the instrument, and everything in between.

"He collects friends the way you do scars," Naima said in a wistful tone, Bart turning his head to see the alchemist watching her brother and the young Midlander going back and forth, music sounding anew as Nazir handed the ornate rabab off to the boy, showing him the frets — the dutiful hound's tail wagging now as it followed the two. Bart smiled.