Originally published 2021, in the With Bone & Iron anthology released by Eerie River Publishing. Edited by Alanna Robertson-Webb & Michelle River.
I.
Had it been any other tavern, in any other town, every eye in the place would have marked the wilderknight’s heavy steps as he approached the bar. As it was, the Ill-At-Ease was mostly empty, and the handful of customers spread about did not care about one lonesome, dark-skinned stranger. Nothing interesting ever happened here, not anymore.
Straw covered the dirt floor, and a great, blazing hearth in the center of the tavern painted everything in warm, golden hues. The smell of roast pig and venison stew wafted out from the kitchen behind the bar. A gaunt serving girl with sad eyes and a fake smile made the rounds, giggling when a drunkard pawed at her. A group of farmhands around another table chuckled at something only they could hear.
The wilderknight was a big man, and tall, his face obscured by the hood of a thick cloak. Beneath the cloak he wore an old, leather cuirass pulled over a light hauberk, a bastard sword at his left hip. A pair of daggers hung at his right hip from the belt crossing his leather trousers.
He laid a pair of copper pieces on the bar.
“Ale,” he said to the innkeeper, voice full of gravel.
The innkeeper—a round, red-haired man named Brunnar—nodded. He poured the ale, slid the tankard across the bar and collected the coins.
The wilderknight took a long, deep drink, then tossed four more coppers onto the bar.
Brunnar eyed them. “You wanting food, then?”
“Looking for someone.”
“Who’s that?”
“Varg Valgrim.”
Brunnar swallowed. He pointed quickly across the room to a man sitting alone at a corner table, then swiped the coins from the bar and wobbled into the kitchen.
The man Brunnar had pointed to was bald, his face wedge-shaped, nose sharp and crooked. He wore a loose tunic and a seal-skin coat.
He motioned the wilderknight over.
When the wilderknight had taken his seat and pulled back his hood, the bald man cleared his throat. “Varg Valgrim. Who’re you?”
“Gedric.”
“I’ve heard that accent before. Where you from?”
“Yranor.
“Ah. You here about the bounty?”
Gedric nodded.
Varg sighed. “If you value your life, turn around.”
“Bit overdramatic.”
“You’re not the first bounty hunter the Shipping Guild’s hired for this,” Varg said. “Not even the first from Yranor. Won’t be the last, neither. They’ve practically been feeding men like you to the Hound of Oakenhall these past few months. Damn thing can’t be killed.”
“I’ve heard the rumors.”
“Not rumors. Truth. It can’t be killed.”
“There’s nothing in this world that can’t be killed.”
“Tell that to those who’ve died trying to kill it.”
“The Guild’s not willing to give up their best shipwrights, not yet.”
“The Guild’s in denial,” Varg said through clenched teeth. “I’ve told them, but they won’t listen. They’re too greedy to listen. Ears stuffed full of gold.”
“It’s bad form to speak ill of your employer.”
“It’s bad form for my employer to knowingly send men to their deaths—even if those folks are just bounty hunters. I don’t want no more blood on my hands. I’m done. I’m telling everyone the Guild sends this way the truth. So, I’ll tell you again: turn around.”
“The Guild knows.”
“Knows what?”
“They know what you’ve been up to, and they’re not happy.” Gedric brought a dagger up from under the table. “They offered me extra for your head.”
Varg’s eyes widened, his lips quivering as the blood drained from his face.
Gedric brought the knife down.
Naked steel lodged into the table between Varg’s fingers. He stared in silence, fingers trembling.
“Listen,” Gedric said. “Tell me how to get to Oakenhall, then disappear. When I go back to collect I’ll tell them I never found you. Heard you’d been eaten by a troll or something. Consider it a reward, for having a conscience.”
Varg looked up.
“If,” he said.
“What?”
“If you make it back.”
The wilderknight grunted.
II.
Dusk fell as Gedric nudged his horse, Shadow, to a stop at the crest of a hill.
He had left the Ill-At-Ease a little after dawn, as Varg had suggested, following an old road that trailed northeast through rolling hills and dense forests of alder, spruce and pine. Everything was dusted in a thin blanket of snow. There had been no sound of birdsong, or any other wildlife, as he travelled, and he found the unnatural silence unsettling. Passing through the small town of Illingrod had been even more so. Abandoned homesteads, and the smaller shops that made up the town’s central market, stared lifelessly at him from either side of the road—cold, quiet, and unwelcoming.
And if Illingrod was a ghost town, then Oakenhall was a graveyard.
From the top of the hill, several hundred yards distant, the blackened remains of the manor loomed like the broken rib cage of some long-dead leviathan. A ghostly wind howled through its gaping corpse, sending wisps of snow dancing down empty halls. A semi-circle of ruined longhouses surrounded it, along with an empty stable and an abandoned forge. To Gedric’s surprise he noticed smoke puffing from the roof of the westernmost house, a faint light glowing in one of its windows.
Great. The land was supposed to be abandoned—the Guild had said as much.
He didn’t need people getting in his way.
He sighed and urged Shadow closer. Nearing the manor, he caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye and pulled Shadow to a halt.
A massive, black wolf-like creature sat watching him from the edge of the forest east of the ruins. Its eyes blazed with an emerald fire like distant, angry stars.
Gedric’s throat went dry. He’d never seen a bargast that big. From this distance, even while sitting on its haunches, it looked to be at least two- or three-heads taller than himself. On all fours it would be bigger still.
Something howled behind him.
He turned in his saddle.
Nothing.
He glanced back at the edge of the forest, but the bargast was gone.
Gedric dismounted, taking Shadow’s reins and directing the horse to the manor. They’d camp there tonight.
He tied Shadow to a broken railing attached to the main entryway. He stooped to enter the ruined doorway, kicking aside shards of wood that reached for him like dead hands. Rubble crunched beneath his boots.
The eviscerated structure was nothing more than a mausoleum of ashes and mildewed wood; a ghost of a great hall, unfit even for ghosts. Walls and roofing had been torn asunder, with monstrous gouges and scratches scarring everything. Beneath splintered tables and chairs, shattered glass gathered dust. A great fire had burned through here, covering everything in a patina of black ash. Charred skeletons stared up at him, half-buried by the remnants of rampant destruction: some bore the armor of bounty hunters and mercenaries, while others bore no armor at all.
Gedric pushed aside a dangling beam, stepping deeper into the blackened heart of Oakenhall. No crunch sounded beneath his boots, though he felt something soft give under his weight. He looked down, finding a homemade doll. The white fabric was now a dark, blackish-gray, and straw sprouted through a hole in its side. It was missing an arm and one of its button-eyes. The remaining eye held his gaze, and he felt a chill creep across his flesh.
His thoughts returned to the longhouse, to the smoke billowing from its roof and the light shining in its window.
Wood creaked.
A monstrous, living shadow hit Gedric with the force of a stampede. He burst through the manor’s broken frame, plummeting to the ground several yards away, air ripping from his lungs on impact.
The bargast roared.
Dazed and wracked with pain, Gedric picked himself up, trying to find —
Claws slashed through the night. He rolled under them, quickly returning to his feet. He pulled his sword free from its scabbard, the blade singing a cold chorus of promised violence.
He swung.
The sword shattered.
The bargast was on him in a flurry of fur and teeth. Long, iron-like claws slashed through his leather cuirass, piercing through the small, interlinked rings of his hauberk and pinning him to the earth. Green-orb eyes blazed at him like hungry suns, and a ferocious growl showered him in hot, stinking saliva; its breath reeked of sulfur.
Gedric roared, bringing the pommel of his broken sword down again and again on the monster’s head. His arms reverberated with pain, as if he were beating a boulder.
The bargast snapped at the shattered sword, wrenching it from his hand. It landed somewhere out of sight with a sharp clang.
He groaned beneath the beast’s weight, struggling to pull his daggers from their sheathes. He screamed and stabbed them into either side of the monster’s snout, the knives splintering into glittering shards.
The bargast snapped at his neck. Gedric brought his right hand up in a fist and connected with its snout just as it was about to rip open his throat, feeling cartilage give beneath the force of his blow.
The bargast snarled, shaking its monstrous head, eyes surprised. It lunged forward. He knocked the great head back and forth with both fists, blood and spittle covering him.
It roared, claws raking across his chest. He screamed. It tried again for his throat, but he brought up both hands and grasped either side of its open maw.
He kneed the bargast in the stomach, wrenching the lower jaw back with his left hand while grabbing one of its great fangs with his right.
The bargast whipped its head back and forth, but Gedric held on. It snarled, trying to snap its jaws shut; he barely kept its mouth open, arms shaking with the effort. The fang sliced his hand to the bone.
In a desperate effort Gedric pulled with all his remaining strength. The giant tooth ripped free, trailing shreds of bloody flesh.
The bargast whined, releasing him, and pulling back. It shrieked, shaking its head back and forth. With a final, bewildered cry, it disappeared into the forest.
Gedric held the bargast’s fang in his tattered hand. He felt his strength trickle away like wine leaking from a wineskin, and as pain bloomed in his body, darkness enveloped him.
III.
Tir-Na-Vale looms before you. The earth is burnt black from years of battle, blood, and sorcery.
Victory here is an impossibility; blood cannot buy victory in Tir-Na-Vale, no matter how much is shed for it, but you keep such thoughts to yourself. Your duty is to your lord, as his duty is to his king.
Honor is everything.
The enemy is vast, like an unconquerable sea. Their pale, slender bodies seem to glow in the murk of the battlefield. The antlers crowning their heads appear as sharp, creeping shadows in the fog. Elves are wicked warriors, and even more wicked sorcerers.
Bodies rush forward from every direction brandishing thirsty blades, some wearing armor, others wearing nothing; a surging, cascading wave of antlered elves against a wave of fathers and brothers and mothers and sisters and sons and daughters. Teeth bared, mouths snarling, collectively charging toward doom.
And you are caught up with them.
You hack and tear and stab and cut for what seems like a hundred years. Screams become a buzzing drone in your ears, amorphous and undefined. Your muscles feel like water; your arms, legs and head grow numb, appendages in name only, phantoms in truth. Your world is black, except for bright, spurting splashes of crimson. Hovering over everything is the smell of blood, sweat and shit mixing with the sickly-sweet scent of discharged sorcery.
You don’t know why you look back, but you do. You watch in disbelief as your lord, and the lords of your comrades-in-arms, turn their horses from the battlefield, fleeing to safety.
Leaving all of you to die.
To shed your blood for nothing.
Something burns to life inside of your broken body at the sight of the retreating nobles—the men and women who demand you fulfill your duty to them, even as they forsake their duty to you.
You throw down your sword and shield, rip off the colors of your master’s house, and discard your armor as battle rages around you.
Victory here is an impossibility.
Honor is nothing.
Your blood is worthless.
You almost make it to the edge of the valley—almost make it to freedom—when darkness takes you.
IV.
Gedric woke.
A pale, blonde-haired woman yelped and stepped back from him, wringing a bloody cloth in her hands.
He’d been laid atop an old table in a drafty longhouse, his cloak and armor piled on the floor. He glanced at his chest where the woman had sewn shut the many gouges he’d received from the bargast; a foul-smelling balm was smeared over them. Several layers of torn cloth were bandaged around his midsection, with more wrapped around his shredded hand.
“You should be dead,” the woman said. Her face was gaunt, her high cheekbones sharp under skin lined and stretched by time and tribulation.
Gedric grimaced as he sat up.
“I thought everyone had forgotten us,” she said.
He grunted, tried standing. His vision went hazy and he grasped for the table, missing. The woman caught him under an arm.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Gedric wrenched his arm from her grip and steadied himself. “I can take care of myself.”
The woman huffed. “Hardly.”
“What are you doing here?”
The woman placed her hands on her hips. “I’m Lady Hredda Oakenbrok.”
Just what he needed— a damned noble. Gedric cursed the Guild. If the Oakenbroks were so damned important, why hadn’t they moved the woman somewhere else?
“It’s customary to share your name with someone who has shared theirs,” she said.
“Gedric,” he said, if only to shut her up.
Hredda smiled. “Thank you for coming to aid my family, Gedric.”
“I’m not here for your family. I didn’t even know anyone still lived here.”
Hredda’s countenance soured. “What are you here for, then?”
“Gold,” Gedric said. He didn’t tell her the Guild also wanted a report, an idea of how long it would take them to rebuild, to have the shipworks back up and running. But, based on what he’d already seen, Oakenhall was too-far gone. It’d be quicker for the Guild to just employ one of the many other shipwright clans that dotted Skellangard’s coast.
Hredda made a sound he’d heard many nobles make before—a sound intended to indicate indignation. To his ears it sounded like a small animal being trampled to death.
He ignored her and looked out the window behind Hredda. The afternoon was as bright as it could be under such a gray sky. “How long was I out?”
“A night and a day.”
Gedric’s brows rose. He didn’t think it’d been that bad.
“You were gravely injured,” Hredda said. Her tone insinuated that he was lucky she’d been around to save his life.
Gedric bent to pick up his hauberk and cuirass from the floor, wincing as pain throbbed throughout his body. He pulled the chainmail shirt over his head, then the leather armor. When he finished, Hredda placed something hard and sharp into his bandaged hand.
The bargast’s jagged fang dwarfed his palm. Clumps of dried blood darkened it, and strips of flesh still hung from the edge where he had ripped it from the jaw.
“How did you do it?” she asked. “No-one has ever so much as given the creature a scratch.”
He grunted. The truth was he didn’t know. His sword and daggers had shattered upon the creature, yet he’d been able to rip out a fang bare-handed. None of it made sense.
“Mama?”
Gedric startled, looking up to see a pair of painfully thin children—two girls not more than six or seven winters old—peering out from behind Hredda as they clutched her skirts. Wet eyes looked up at him from behind curtains of red hair.
His chest grew tight, and he felt lightheaded. One thought—a worry that had dug its way into his mind like a splinter—one he’d tried time and again to ignore, to pretend it didn’t terrify him to his very bones, overwhelmed him now. Was there a family somewhere out in the world still waiting for him to come home from Tir-Na-Vale? So much of his memory had been lost —
“Mama, did he kill the monster?”
“Hush, Frenya,” Hredda said to the tallest girl. “Didn’t I tell you and Astrith to remain in your rooms?”
“Did he kill it?”
Gedric remained silent as Hredda herded the girls back towards their quarters.
“Is it possible?” she asked when she returned. “To kill it?”
“Anything that bleeds can die.” He hoped so, at least. He wrapped his cloak around his shoulders. “You and your girls should leave this place.”
Hredda glared at him. “You think we choose to stay here?”
“Why else would you be here?”
“It won’t let us leave.”
His brow furrowed.
“It watches,” Hredda said. “It knows. If we try to run, it attacks. Corrals us. Tears apart another shelter as a warning.”
“The other longhouses—”
“We’ve tried to leave many times.”
“This thing has killed everyone here, except you and your girls?”
Hredda looked away and put a hand to her mouth, a tear rolling down her cheek.
Gedric sat down on the bench at the table. The kitchen was bare, yet there were signs of at least occasional meals: a dirty dish here, a half-filled goblet there.
“How are you staying fed?” he asked.
“It...brings us food.”
“The bargast brings you food?”
She nodded. “It...waits. It’s like it knows when we can’t go one more day without food, and then it’ll leave dead things at the door in the morning.”
“Dead things?”
“Half-eaten deer. Rabbits, sometimes. Squirrels. Rats, even, or a crow here and there.”
“How do you get water?”
“The well, behind the houses.”
Something was off, here. The fact that the bargast watched Hredda—that it could intuit when she and the children needed food—suggested a high intelligence. It wasn’t just an animal; it could think, plan. It punished the Oakenbroks when they went against its wishes. Its actions were spiteful, as if it wanted Hredda and her family to suffer. A trait he had only ever encountered in races like his own.
“My horse?” he asked, remembering he’d left her at the manor. “Is she—”
“She’s fine,” Hredda said. “Still right where you left her. I gave her some feed I found in your saddlebags.”
“Good.” Gedric stood up, ignoring both his pain and Hredda’s unspoken request for his thanks. He placed the bargast’s fang in one of his trouser pockets.
“What are you doing? You’re in no condition—”
“The blood’s not fresh, but I should still be able to track it.”
“Track it? I can promise you the beast will return here, and soon. Why not just wait for it? Give yourself time to heal?”
“Waiting gives it more time to heal, too.”
V.
The eastern woods were dark, cold and silent, and smelled sharply of pine. The foliage was so thick it blocked out what little sun was able to pierce the cloudy, gray sky, and the forest wallowed in a kind of blue twilight.
Shadow had stopped at the edge of a wide clearing where the bargast’s blood—just barely visible enough to track, as he’d figured—had led them. At its center a gnarled stump jutted up like a broken fang. A large, snow-covered mound rose from the ground next to it.
Gedric felt a tremble course through Shadow, then he felt it too. There was something oppressive smothering the clearing; a cold, suffocating weight hung invisibly in the air.
Something terrible had happened here, something that had left its mark upon the spirit of the land like an angry wound.
He pushed his uneasiness aside, dismounted, made his way to the stump.
It was several hand-spans wide and came to a sharp, pointy end around his chest. He ran his fingers over the jagged ridges, noting the irregular edge. A hasty cut; sloppy. Angry.
Gedric circled the stump, noticing strange carvings at its base partially obscured by snow. He knelt, uncovering the marks with a few swipes. If it was a language, then it wasn’t one he’d ever come across.
He turned, checked his surroundings, stepping closer to the mound living in the stump’s shadow. It was as wide as he was long, and only rose up to the top of his boots. He thought it might be a barrow, or a midden heap.
He caught himself as he tripped on something sticking out of the mound. He kicked at it, disturbing snow and soil, but it didn’t give. He knelt and dug around the object, clearing away dirt, snow, and clumps of something like rotted leather until he revealed a rusted, curved scimitar.
Gedric ripped it free from the mound and stood. A fractured arm bone hung limply from the scimitar’s hilt, charred black. He shook the bone free and appraised the scimitar; it wasn’t a thing of great craftsmanship or beauty, but once upon a time it’d been a sturdy blade.
He slipped the scimitar into his belt and made his way back toward Shadow. He hadn’t moved more than a few paces when something else caught his eye—something round and off-white.
He returned to the mound and pulled at the object. It broke apart, the rounded piece remaining in his grip while whatever had been attached dropped to the ground. He turned the round piece over in his hands.
The skull was large—bigger than his own—with a thick, protruding brow shadowing wide eye sockets. A charred piece of leathered flesh or tendon hung from its side.
Gedric bent and picked up the piece that had fallen off, held it in place beneath the skull. The jawbone pushed outward, two long tusks rising up from either side of the bottom teeth.
Spriggans....
But spriggans hadn’t been seen in these lands for a long time.
Gedric knelt at the mound and dug, grasping and pulling at whatever he could beneath the ash and snow. It felt like he was digging for hours.
When he’d finished, his lungs were on fire and his breath came in gasps. Sweat glistened on his brow where it mingled with ash and grime.
Then the gaping mouth of the mass grave devoured him whole.
VI.
You awake in darkness, under a great weight. When you try to push the weight off yourself, your hands come away slick and stinking of blood.
You are buried beneath the corpses of your fallen brothers and sisters.
You can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t move. You push and shove while someone is screaming, but nothing moves, nothing gives, and all around you is blood, blood, blood, trickling into your mouth, your eyes, your ears, your nose. Dirt and blood and dirt and blood and dirt and blood.
You kick, push, claw, and kick again until the weight is lifted. Then you’re shoving bodies and parts of bodies and armor and weapons aside, crawling, crawling, crawling through layer after layer of flesh and bone. Familiar faces stare sightlessly at you as you push them down and use them as stepping stones to make your frenzied ascent back to the land of the living.
Now you’re free, only to find you’re still in Tir-Na-Vale, the sky dark and rumbling with thunder as rain stabs your skin.
Then comes the moment you’ll never forget as long as you live, the moment you’ll never be convinced actually happened.
The moment, you realize much later, when you lost everything.
She is standing several hundred yards away from you, naked and radiant, in a field of corpses. Her antlers are withered hands grasping toward the sky, and her long, black hair dances hauntingly in the breeze. Two gigantic crows perch upon her shoulders.
You’ve heard the stories of the elves’ matron of war, the devourer of the souls of the warrior dead.
The Mabbigan.
A chill courses through you as she turns. Now blood is falling from the clouds, painting her alabaster skin in brilliant streaks of red. Her crows begin to caw, their voices so loud you fall to your knees clutching your ears.
The Mabbigan strides toward you, seeming to float. Her bare feet are black with blood. Her eyes burn brightly gold, and your vision grows dark as you stare into them, until those golden eyes are the suns your entire being revolves around.
She brings you to your feet, wraps herself around you, forces your mouth to hers and drinks deep of you. You feel something leave you, something you can’t name, and emptiness and darkness take its place.
The Mabbigan pulls back, a wicked smile on her beatific face, and she licks her lips.
“A deserter,” she says, but her lips have stopped moving. “A wanderer.”
She lets you crumple to the dirt as she strides away, back across the valley.
“Scavenger of darkness,” her voice sings. The crows on her shoulders flap their wings, the sound like thunder. “Harvester of sorrows.”
She disappears, and you are left with nothing but your name and this nightmare.
VII.
Hredda’s longhouse was burning when Gedric and Shadow exited the forest.
Thick, black smoke and wild, orange flames billowed from the house, igniting the half-light of dusk with garish color. Hredda was screaming.
Gedric snapped Shadow’s reins, sending the horse into a gallop. They neared the burning house and he saw the bargast sprint off toward the western woods with something limp hanging from its mouth. Hredda was kneeling in the snow, one of her daughters beside her.
She screamed again as the beast disappeared, lurching forward as if to go after it, but her daughter held her back by her skirts, wailing for her to stay.
Gedric brought Shadow to a stop in front of Hredda and the girl—Frenya, the oldest—and jumped down, kneeling quickly to grasp the woman’s shoulders.
“Astrith!” Hredda shrieked. “It has Astrith!”
He shot to his feet, turning in the direction the bargast had fled —
And stopped.
He looked down at Hredda and Frenya, huddled together in the snow in the shadow of the blazing ruin of what had been their last shelter. He watched as the longhouse was smothered in a bright, orange-black shroud of fire.
There was nothing he could do. Astrith was gone. Dead. It was pointless to chase after the monster; retrieving the child’s body wouldn’t ease Hredda and Frenya’s grief. It would only cost him time, time he’d desperately need.
Gedric moved as close as he dared to the longhouse and grabbed a splintered plank of wood laying partially out of the flames.
He walked back to Hredda with his makeshift torch and pulled her to her feet, placing the torch in her hands. She accepted it without a word.
He bent again and pulled Frenya up from the ground, then hefted himself back into Shadow’s saddle. He motioned for Frenya to climb up behind him.
“Hold on to me,” he said. She wrapped her arms around him, sniffling into his cloak.
Hredda cried. “What are you—"
“Just get on,” Gedric said, reaching down to take the torch from Hredda with one hand and then offering to pull her up with the other.
“But Astrith—"
“She’s dead.”
Hredda recoiled. He expected her to begin screaming anew. Instead, she let out a deep, defeated breath and grasped his outstretched hand. He pulled her up into the saddle behind Frenya.
Gedric snapped Shadow’s reins and the horse trotted into the eastern woods, back along the trail they’d made earlier.
The woods were now night-black, the only light that of the burning plank Gedric held aloft to light their way. Frenya sputtered and burst into tears several times as they rode deeper into the forest. Hredda softly hushed her, as only a mother could.
“I—I don’t understand,” Hredda said after quieting Frenya again. “Where are you taking us?”
“There’s something you need to see,” Gedric said.
“What?”
Proof of her family’s crimes, most likely. But he said nothing, and they rode on in silence in a lone sphere of light surrounded by darkness.
VIII.
When they reached the clearing, Shadow stopped again at the edge. Gedric had to click his tongue several times to get her to approach the gnarled tree stump and the mass grave.
Gedric hopped down with the torch, leaving Hredda and Frenya atop Shadow. He stepped over to the stump, illuminating it.
“Do you know what this is?”
Fear flickered across Hredda’s eyes, but she quickly regained control. “It’s a tree stump. Why—"
Gedric held up a hand to stop her. “Did you know about this clearing?”
“No,” Hredda said, avoiding his eyes. “I’ve never come out here. I took care of the manor and the finances. Lord Torgrom was the one who oversaw the lumbering and the ship-making.”
“Lord Torgrom?”
“My husband.”
“How did he die?”
“The beast…It tore him in two the day it first attacked Oakenhall. Killed him along with all…all our workers.”
A terrible understanding burned in Gedric’s chest. The vengeful intent the bargast displayed, the spite with which it preyed upon—and played with—Hredda and her girls. Reciprocation, perhaps?
Gedric stepped past the trunk and brought the torch over the mass grave he’d uncovered. Hredda cried out and quickly covered her mouth.
“Do you know what these are?” he asked.
“Tusker bones,” Hredda whispered.
“Spriggans,” Gedric corrected, gritting his teeth at the slur that had flowed so easily from her tongue. “An entire tribe, from the looks of it.”
“Tribe?”
“Did your husband ever say anything about spriggans living in these woods?”
Hredda shrugged. “Once, maybe. A long time ago.”
Gedric stepped toward her. “What did he say, Hredda?”
She swallowed. “Just that tusk—spriggans—had made their home far out here, but he’d said they were no trouble.”
Gedric looked up at her, his eyes hard in the flickering light of the torch. She lied with such practiced ease. “He said that? That they were no trouble?”
Hredda nodded slowly.
Gedric sighed, nodding his head as he placed his free hand in his trouser pocket to keep it from the cold. His fingers felt along the jagged edges of the bargast’s fang.
Time to end this, then.
He took his hand out of his pocket, withdrew the rusted scimitar from his belt.
“You’re not going to like what comes next,” he said, “but you don’t have a choice.”
Hredda began to weep.
IX.
The longhouse was a burning eye on the horizon a league behind them. Hredda and Frenya sat clutching each other atop Shadow, Gedric following behind with the torch in one hand, scimitar in the other.
“Why are you doing this?” Hredda asked again. “You know it’ll just run us down!”
“I’m counting on it,” Gedric said.
“You’re a monster!”
He couldn’t help but laugh at that, ignoring her tear-filled glare. The thing about monsters, he knew, was that it often took one to recognize another.
Behind them, he heard the crunching of snow as another monster gained on them.
The bargast was coming.
Gedric clicked once to stop Shadow in her tracks. He’d need to do this next part quickly, before the beast overtook them.
“Get down,” he said, motioning Hredda and Frenya out of the saddle with a flick of the spriggan blade.
Hredda dismounted first, turning and grasping Frenya under her arms to help her down.
“Walk forward.”
“What are—"
“Hush, woman! Just do as I say!”
The bargast’s footfalls grew louder.
Hredda shut her mouth and grasped Frenya close to her, her eyes stabbing Gedric hatefully.
“There. Stop.”
Gedric bent, dragging the scimitar in the snow behind him to carve a wide circle around himself, Shadow, Hredda, and Frenya. He moved swiftly through the inside of the circle, cutting down, up and side-to-side several times, making the seven-pointed star of Yrises—just like he’d seen the League of Light do back in Elba several years ago, when he’d taken a job hunting a cabal of necromancers.
He connected the last line just as the bargast bounded into the torchlight.
Hredda screamed, wrapping herself protectively around Frenya. Gedric stood unmoving, his breath catching in his throat and his heart thundering in his chest.
The moment of truth....
The bargast roared, jumping for Hredda and the girl. It seemed to hit an invisible wall in mid-air, yelping as it was thrown backwards into the snow beyond the light.
The circle had worked. But that meant —
Gedric stepped forward. Hredda gave him a panicked look as he moved in front of her, putting himself between the Oakenbroks and the edge of the circle.
The bargast moved cautiously from out of the darkness and back into the torchlight. A growl rumbled deep in its throat, its head down, its remaining fangs bared, emerald eyes burning like hateful, unblinking furnaces at the wilderknight. It moved along the edge of the circle, growling and sniffing, confirming there was no way through the invisible boundary.
It roared one last time, then slumped back on its haunches.
And spoke with a woman’s voice.
“The star of the Scarred God,” it said, motioning with its snout to the sigil carved into the snow.
Gedric nodded, slid the scimitar back under his belt. “It’s said it protects against vengeful spirits.”
The bargast cocked its head. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” Gedric admitted, “but the more I pondered your actions, the more it seemed...possible.”
“A daring gamble.”
“Ran out of options. You forced my hand.”
“True. Your presence disrupted things.”
“Thought as much.”
“They deserve everything I’ve done to them,” the bargast said, indicating Hredda and Frenya. “The lady especially.”
“Probably,” Gedric said.
The bargast snarled. “And what do you care?”
“Maybe I agree with you, with your course of action.”
“What?” Hredda cried.
“I know your people were slaughtered,” Gedric said, eyes on the bargast. “I know the what, but not the how, or why.”
“What are you doing?” Hredda asked.
The bargast laughed, its smile mirthless and wicked. “You are a cunning man, to have figured out so much already. But why should I trust you?”
“Honor demands that I allow justice to run its course.”
“This is not justice!” Hredda screamed. “Justice is restoring my family’s name! Our honor!”
“You would truly step aside?” the bargast asked Gedric. “Wipe out the sigil and give me justice?”
“You can’t,” Hredda said. “Please, Gedric. You can’t. Don’t listen to it.”
Gedric put a hand over his heart and bowed to the bargast. “I, Gedric, wilderknight of Yranor, give you my word.”
The bargast bowed its head in turn. “I, Sorin Rhoag, shaman of Orgru Tribe, thank you, wilderknight.”
Hredda burst into incomprehensible pleadings.
“How did your people perish?” Gedric asked. “Why were they killed?”
“I can tell you how,” Sorin Rhoag said, “but for the why, you must ask the woman.”
X.
Hredda shook with an uncontrollable rage.
“I did what my husband lacked the courage to do!” she screamed. “You tusker filth were taking up acres of our land, impeding our business!”
“But it is not your land,” Sorin Rhoag said. “The northlands have belonged to spriggafolk since time immemorial. You are the invaders here, not us.”
“The grave I found was recent,” Gedric said. “Six, seven years old at the most.”
The bargast nodded. “Several winters ago, under cover of night, Lady Oakenbrok came with a band of mercenaries. The tribe was slaughtered, including my two life-mates, and our two beautiful daughters. My own life was taken from me, by her command. Our sacred tree was hacked down, desecrated.”
“You got what you deserved,” Hredda said.
“Shut up,” Gedric said, pointing at her. “Or I’ll cut out your tongue.”
Sorin Rhoag glared at Hredda, the malevolent green stars of the bargast’s eyes seeming to burn brighter.
“But how are you in this form?” Gedric asked. “And if this happened so many years ago, why attack Oakenhall only recently?”
“Because I swore an oath,” Sorin Rhoag said. “A powerful oath, woven of blood and magic. I swore my spirit would not rest until my people and my family were avenged. That no weapon should harm the vessel I inhabited, nor any other magic. When my spirit fled my body, it found this beast wandering the wastes, and took it. Then I waited. I watched from shadows, until the Oakenbrok’s daughters were the same age as my own.”
“You didn’t kill them, though,” Gedric said. “Until Astrith, tonight. Why?”
“I want the bitch to suffer,” Sorin Rhoag said, and the bargast smiled.
XI.
Gedric stood silent for a long while, eyes downcast, avoiding the green blaze of the bargast’s eyes.
Hredda paced behind him while Frenya mumbled incoherently, shaken and frightened beyond the point of understanding.
He was shaken as well. Shaken by the anger and pain in Sorin Rhoag’s voice, by Hredda’s prejudice and the violence of her hate. He was angered on Sorin Rhoag’s behalf, but he was also angry at her for what she’d done to two innocent children. He could feel the anger taking root in the soil of his soul, joining with his own and budding to the surface, threatening to blossom.
He toyed with the bargast’s tooth in his pocket, thinking.
“Hredda is yours,” Gedric said, finally. “But leave the girl alive, with me. Killing Frenya won’t heal your heart or bring your family back, but sparing her might save what little soul you have left.”
The beast shook its head. “I am bound by my curse—just as you are bound by your own.”
Gedric stiffened.
“Yes,” Sorin Rhoag said, “I can see the aura of the elf-curse roiling about you like blackened chains. We are much alike, you and I.”
He knew they were, and yet he hoped they weren’t.
The bargast growled. “I’ve spoken true. It is time for you to give me justice. Or will you break your word to me?”
Gedric swallowed and shook his head. “No. You’ll have your justice.”
A strange look came over the bargast’s face, one Gedric could not quite decipher.
“You are an honorable man,” Sorin Rhoag said, approaching the edge of the circle and licking her lips. “A rare thing indeed.”
He shook his head. He’d made his peace with what he really was a long time ago.
Gedric moved to the edge of the circle across from Hredda and Frenya.
“Mama!” Frenya cried, pulling on her mother’s skirts. Hredda bundled her daughter up in her arms, clutching her to her breasts.
“It’s alright,” Hredda whispered. “It’ll be alright. Just close your eyes, love. Close your eyes. We’re going to see Papa and Astrith again, very soon. Hush, now.”
“Now, wilderknight,” Sorin Rhoag demanded. “Justice.”
Holding the torch aloft, Gedric broke the Yrisian circle in the snow, rubbing out part of the outer line with the heel of his boot. He pulled the scimitar from his belt and flung it beyond the circle, into the darkness.
“It’s done,” he said.
The bargast pawed at the invisible barrier. Nothing happened.
“It is done,” Sorin Rhoag agreed. “At long last.”
The beast made a roaring leap.
Hredda’s throat was gone in a surge of blood. Her lifeless body slumped over Frenya, pinning the girl to the ground.
Sorin Rhoag snarled over Frenya, and the bargast opened its gory jaws.
Gedric spun, pulling the fang from his pocket, and leaping upon the creature’s back.
He stabbed the fang through one of the bargast’s eyes, gouging through the viscous orb, and deep into the monster’s brain.
The monster’s claws flashed. With a whimper and a spasm, Sorin Rhoag died one last time, the bargast’s body slumping over both Hredda and Frenya in the snow.
An icy wind moaned in the night, the only sound in a world of sudden, violent silence.
“Frenya?” Gedric said breathlessly. “Frenya?”
No answer.
He rolled off the bargast, dragged it from Hredda’s body.
Frenya lay pinned beneath her lifeless mother, eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. Blood flowed from the mess the bargast’s claws had made of her.
Gedric’s shoulders fell. He knelt, cold and numb. The faces of Frenya and Astrith, very much alive—the day he’d first seen them—flashed before his eyes.
Children. They were just children.
It wasn’t...None of it had been their fault. It was so...pointless.
Needless.
He shivered as cold enshrouded him. The wind whispered about him, and he thought he heard a voice echoing from across time, from another life:
“Scavenger of darkness...Harvester of sorrows...”
Something broke inside of him then, something he’d fashioned within himself to barricade against the pain. All of it, everything, came pouring forth in a bitter torrent, flooding his defenses and drowning him in darkness.
The wilderknight wept bitterly.
XII.
Gedric shoveled the last bit of dirt over Sorin Rhoag’s grave. He’d buried her at the foot of the hewn trunk of the sacred tree, hoping she might rest with the spirits of her tribe; hoping she’d find the peace she’d been denied in life.
A light snow was falling from the sky, sprinkling through the open canopy of the clearing. It was a little colder than it had been the day before, but he’d worked up a sweat. Early that morning he’d built a funeral pyre for Hredda and Frenya, as was the custom in Skellangard, before he’d set about seeing Sorin buried with her people.
He picked up the sack he’d set next to the stump and walked back to where Shadow was waiting at the edge of the clearing. The horse nuzzled him as he tied the sack containing the bargast’s head to the saddle-horn. When he finished he stroked Shadow’s broad nose affectionately.
Gedric pulled himself up into the saddle, looking at the jagged stump and the new mound that rose from the ground next to it one last time.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
He clicked his tongue, and Shadow began trotting back through the woods. He’d make his way past Illingrod and spend another night at the Ill-At-Ease—just to startle Brunnar again and make sure that Varg Valgrim had heeded his advice—then continue on to the Guildhouse in Fringvast to collect payment. Then, eventually, south.
Back home.
“Somewhere warmer,” he said to Shadow, patting her side. She neighed in agreement.
The wilderknight rode on in silence, leaving the ruins of Oakenhall behind him.