Bitterwood Watch

[Green is the new black.]

Chapter Four

Angry cries reached a fevered pitch as the ‘Flesh’ erupted from their prison. The slaves’ shear numbers overwhelmed the guards, trampling beneath blistered feet and crushing their skulls to paste with rocks. The stocky night warden, known as ‘Stout’ by his fellows, raised his axe and rushed the half-orc ringleader. Orun caught the weapon with his manacled chains and ripped it from the slaver’s grasp. He kicked out the sturdy man’s legs and wrapped the chains around the man’s thick neck. Blood would pave their path to freedom.

* * * * *

Ywain appeared at Orun’s side as he claimed the dead warden’s keys. A pickaxe hung at his waist, a torch in his hand. The human had already slipped his bonds somehow and helped the half-orc remove his cuffs. The other freed captives massed by the forest’s edge nearby, passing around hatchets and mining tools and any stolen weapons they could find.

“We’ve chased the last of the slavers to the fort,” said Ywain, pointing to shadows scurrying about the old, torchlit walls.

Orun nodded. “How many did we lose?”

“Fifteen, by my count. Most of them from crossbow fire in the initial attack.”

He scanned their ragged band. “That leaves one-hundred and seven, including us.”

“The slavers might attempt a counterattack,” said Ywain.

The half-orc gave a guttural chuckle. “They are too busy hiding in their fort for that. Even if they do, we will be ready.”

“Do you think our little army’s courage will hold?”

“We will see. They are too close to freedom to break now, but you can never be sure.”

“As you say.” His comrade shrugged. “Still, I’ll feel much more confident when we find our weapons.”

Orun knelt down and scooped up the dead warden's axe, examining the steel’s quality and testing its weight. He nodded, satisfied. The two walked over to the others slaves. Orun gave the keys to one of the miners.

“They can keep my scraps of iron if they want.”

“That's your prerogative. I’m getting my sword back.”

“Sentimental value?” Orun rolled his eyes and grunted, “Gith porakrim fhahai.” All weapons are holy.

Ywain narrowed his eyes. “Miburr pros lat-bosnauk.” Honor your brother’s blade.

A snarl echoed from woods. A throaty growl followed, and a chorus of harsh hisses. Ten yellow eyes appeared in the gloom. Five mountain lions with bared teeth emerged from the trees, ropes of muscle rippling beneath pale gray fur. The other captives scattered away from the big cats, but the wild beasts had eyes for only Orun and Ywain.

“This isn’t right,” said the human, slowly reaching for his pickaxe.

“No,” Orun agreed. “They are not starving. They would not attack a group this large.” He calmly met their gleaming eyes. The wild had taught him to respect the power of predators, but never to fear. I am not pray. Something felt... wrong about their movements, though. They seemed stilted, not fluid and natural, like puppets. This confirmed what he already suspected. He grumbled under his breath and gripped his new axe. “Blackbeard’s ‘pets’.”

The first lunged at Orun. He raised his axe just in time to block its snapping jaws with the shaft. Ywain sank his pickaxe into its neck and threw the dying cat into the muddy snow. The second pounced from the right. Orun ducked and threw the beast over his head. He raised his arm to ward off the third; its claws slashed bloodily across his unprotected forearm and chest. He roared through the pain and buried his axe into its face.

He rose to find the remaining three assailing Ywain. They stalked him, more like wolves than cats, growling and spitting. The human backed away, waving his torch at the wildcats and keeping them from assaulting his back. He swiped his pickaxe at the lead cat, but the other two crouched to pounce. Orun darted toward his comrade, but a mob of slaves rushed in first, bombarding the beasts with rocks and hacking at them with axes and picks. Orun grinned as his followers backed away from the three bludgeoned, mangled corpses. Their courage might hold after all.

He turned toward the fort, his gaze piercing the gloom. Atop the old stone battlements stood sorcerer in his tattered robs, his black beard blurring into the night. The unnatural man shrank away and vanished, but Orun had felt the unnatural man’s eyes upon him like a clammy chill. He flared his nostrils and growled.

The half-orc turned to Ywain. “We take the fort now.”

The human nodded. “Agreed. We’ve let them hide long enough. I know my part and you know yours. If we act quickly, perhaps we can save Vera and any other slaves still inside.” Orun grunted and turned to the army of captives.

“Listen up!” he roared. “Your only chance at survival and freedom is in that fort. We will kill our former captors and claim their provisions.” He idly pressed his thumb against his new axe, smiling as he drew blood. When he spoke again, his voice was calm, but seemed to rise from the frozen ground. “There is no glory or honor. Only survival. You fight here or soon find yourselves dead in the snow or back in chains.”

“I’ll get some men preparing a log as a ram while you gather the rest for the assault,” said Ywain. “The sooner we breech the gates, the better.” Orun grunted his assent; once the gates fell, their superior numbers and desperation would overwhelm the remaining defenders.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

A chosen handful of burly labourers rushed to retrieve a suitable log from the lumber stockpiles. Overhead, the moon emerged brilliant and blinding from behind roiling clouds. Like some heavenly lantern, its white scrutiny bathed the languid movements of a human shadow creeping back into the slave pits. Three smooth pebbles danced one after another to a measured beat, reaching in forlorn futility for its relentless gaze.

Ywain had accepted as unavoidable a delay in breaching the ironbound fortress gates. Any attempt to hide the ram close to prying eyes would have unsheathed their bid for freedom before they were ready. In any case, any fool could see that Orun was better suited to commanding the assault. The half-orc’s sheer presence inspired the slaves and drew the attention of the guards.

What they needed was time. Time to breach the defences before the commotion roused the guards from their drunken slumbers. To buy them that time, Ywain Lazarev would take the battle to the slavers in his own way.

Scattered quarrels whistled from the battlements, splintering upon pavestones and thudding into unprotected flesh. A gargled scream signalled somebody’s prolonged death throes. Others perished with little more than muted grunts. But the fitful shafts fell from the heights in their ones and twos, not the solid wall of resistance Ywain had feared. The ‘flesh’ still had their chance.

A hundred voices gave full-throated cry in search of freedom and vengeance. The renewed smattering of quarrels they attracted only fanned the flames. Bellows swelled into passionate roars, buffeting in seething waves upon the fortress walls. Ywain quickened his pace through the shadows. He didn’t have long.

He probed the filth-clogged drainpipes overhead with steely glare. His attention then returned to the equally filthy blanket he’d pilfered from the nearest slave pen. He would need inhuman acrobatic skill and upper body strength to access even the lowest of the apertures. But not a single guard walked the battlements to keep watch over the pits below. Not a single slave dawdled amid the repugnant stench and treacherous footing. Nobody before had struck upon quite the combination of inspiration and desperation to consider this route into the castle.

The black-haired shadow reached out to grasp a handhold upon the frigid stone. Only the faceless grotesques leering over the precipice, and the ragged murder of black feathers nestled in their midst, bore witness.

Let’s see what you crows make of this, then.

***

Shadows danced in fearful time to every hollow echo that rumbled through the thick stone walls. Empty hallways quavered in serenity as oppressive as any overseer’s whip. The lone guard wore rapt attention like a grim mask, the scars on his grizzled forehead drawn taut as he scanned the silent darkness. Broad nostrils sniffed at the cold, catching the first whiffs of something indescribably horrid.

The first pebble shattered upon the wall to his left, wrecking the tense tranquillity with its deafening clatter.

The second struck him between the eyes, even as instinctive discipline brought his weapon into a guard stance. Black blood splattered from craggy features, spilling onto the dirty rushes. Blinded by starbursts of agony, he roared with vicious rage, loud enough to set his own ears ringing in the confined corridor. But tempered by long years of experience as a mercenary, he only lashed out when he sensed his opponent was close.

The spiked cudgel sailed through the thick air, impacting with a thunderous crunch that splintered the far wall.

Then the third pebble slammed into his bald pate behind his left ear, the strength of the shoulder behind it threatening to crack open his skull. The resultant tidal wave of pain cleared his vision just enough to catch a glimpse of flowing black hair and angular features.

“… you!” he rasped. His shoulder dropped as he tried to rush his opponent into the door he guarded. But the elusive shade slipped from his grasp. He instead staggered, head-first and discombobulated, into the wall. His teeth rattled like pebbles with the impact. The metallic taint of his own blood spread from broken nostrils to the back of his mouth, overwriting the faecal stench worn about his opponent’s person like a mantle of leprosy. “You’ve… got… guts…”

“And now I have your knife, too,” the silky voice whispered into his wounded ear, just before the steel kiss carved his neck in twain.

***

Ywain had just enough time to pull his hand free before the door burst open. The blast of warm air disrupted the steady beat of hollow echoes rolling through the stone halls. The sudden flood of firelight casting the blood gushing from Baldie’s throat in a stark shade of crimson. He caught a hasty glimpse of pudgy jowls and greying hair, the silvery whisper of a naked blade.

“Wilhe…?” a cultured voice began before cutting off mid-syllable. The drawn broadsword – the filigreed weapon of a Rousayan knight that Ywain had most definitely set eyes upon before – caught the fleeing candle flame as it rose high for the killing blow.
Ywain’s stolen knife found its target first, having left his hand a moment before its counterpart could fall. Old Ovie’s dulcet tones erupted in the opening syllables of a vicious curse as crude steel embedded half its length in his right shoulder.

Sheer instinct caused the Overseer to twist away from the pain. The bloodied pebble that followed only glanced from his cheekbone rather than blackening his eye. But his movements did little to deter Ywain’s fist slamming into his fleshy stomach, propelled by a lunge from a two-footed crouch. Air left his lungs with a vicious whoosh, leaving the basket-hilted broadsword to slip from nerveless fingers.

Without missing a step Ywain swept it up in his left hand and brought it to rest at Old Ovie’s throat. The man’s apple bobbed as he froze, the keen steel drawing a thin trickle of blood.

“Hands where I can see them. I think you knew we would be coming.” The rogue ‘slave’ indicated the leather doublet that had prevented Baldie’s knife from penetrating vital organs. Old Ovie wouldn’t have been wearing that unless… “Have your little birds been speaking to you? Warning you of our escape?”

The overseer grunted, trying to cough life back into his lungs without slicing his throat open on the blade at his neck. Fat fingers, pink and babyish by the light of the fire, emerged into tentative sight from dishevelled sleeves. He was an administrator, not a warrior. His eyes settled on the guard at his door, almost decapitated by the knife in his shoulder. His jowls quivered as he relived the ease with which Ywain had just disarmed him. The fight bled from him like wine from a spilt goblet.

“Pretty sword… for a pretty… boy…” he gasped at last, as Ywain freed him of the matching belt and scabbard. His nose wrinkled at the faecal stench clinging to Ywain’s person. The gears in his mind churned, searching for a path – any path – out of his predicament.

“You thought we would come through the front gate.” Ywain continued as if he hadn’t heard, stepping back out of reach but keeping the tip of his blade at Old Ovie’s throat. His free hand fastened the belt at his waist, caught between bemusement and dismay at just how much weight he had lost. At least the overseer hadn’t bothered to remove his miniature crossbow from its pouch, or the spare bolts he carried for it. “Of course, you didn’t think that I’d be coming through the back one as well. But what I’m interested in, Petyr, is how you knew.”

Old Ovie licked his lips to buy more time. Ywain could almost read the thoughts speeding through his mind: he now had the opportunity to bargain for his life, but how did this trumped-up slave know his name? Self-preservation won out, but not before the mercenary had the chance to study the room in which he now stood.

“Information… for my life.”

“Not interested,” came the immediate response. Cold blue eyes rested on the collection of pilfered weapons mounted against the far wall, on the thick ledgers and pots of ink arranged on the broad writing desk, on the pillows piled high upon the king-sized bed. Mist swirled suspiciously in the shape of a human face in the oak-framed mirror mounted next to the oversized wardrobe. Ywain’s gaze rested for a moment on a flash of distinctive blue fabric among the clothes piled at the foot of the bedstead. Unhappy realisation tugged at his lips, creasing his brow.

“What do you want, then?” The sudden removal of the point of the sword from his throat spurred hope in Old Ovie’s voice. “Money? Pow…aaaargh!”

He degenerated into an agonised scream as the blade stabbed into the back of his legs one after another. Exclamations of primal pain, mixed with frantic profanities in an aristocratic south Salvic dialect, rent the perfumed atmosphere in twain.

“For now you can just stay here. I doubt you’d get far in any case before we track you down, but I’d rather spare the effort.” And now that you’re hamstrung, all you have to do is wait here for judgement. I hope you enjoyed your luxuries, Old Ovie, because you won’t be enjoying them much…

He caught the pungent sniff of oiled metal, the faintest whiff of black powder. Ywain threw himself out of the way even before his brain finished processing the implications. A thundercrack of sudden noise split his ears. The red-hot shot that accompanied it washed without harmover his shoulder. He regained his feet before the overseer had realised he’d missed, his blade changing hands as if by magic. Once again it ended a stroke at Petyr’s throat.

“Saltpetre, brimstone, charcoal… did you think I wouldn’t be able to piece those together? The only reason I haven’t yet blown you sky high, Petyr, is because you were at least intelligent enough to keep the refining facilities out of our reach.” A deliberate nudge of his blade dislodged the single-shot derringer from the fat man’s pudgy fingers. “I’ll be taking that, I think… a present from your superiors at Vorgruk-Stokes?”

The last of Petyr’s willpower dissipated beneath Ywain’s pitiless regard. His blubbering tremors reminded the rogue of a maggot, grown fat on rotten meat, exposed and wilting beneath the merciless sun. Mewling in incomprehensible fear, he dropped his weapon of last resort to the thick carpet with a dull thud. Blood streamed from his crippled legs, tears poured down his pale face, and a puddle formed at his feet of liquids malodorous. Ywain didn’t notice the pungent stink – the cesspit in the castle’s lee smelt far worse, and he’d just crawled his way through garderobe chutes. With a grunt he retrieved the derringer, along with another item from the floor.

Old Ovie was an administrator, a puppet, a fool. But not fool enough not to have any idea what the slaves would do if… when… they caught up with him. One look into the eyes of this vigilante upstart who had just shattered his delusions of grandeur promised him one thing in particular. It would not be over easily.

“I’ll be seeing you, Petyr,” Ywain promised as he headed out the door. Only the beady yellow eyes at the ornate window now watched over Old Ovie’s fate.

***

The hollow pounding upon the fortress gates had taken on a frantic pace, like a heartbeat infused with adrenaline. Ywain’s stride took on the pace to match as he hurried towards his next destination.

If Old Ovie had prepared for a slave revolt, then Orun had a nasty surprise waiting for him once he breached those gates.

All four orcish purgatories would not suffice to damn Ywain if he allowed his compatriots to face it alone.

[Green is the new black.]

“Heave!”

The crudely cut log crashed into the gate. Wood splintered and iron screeched as even the large, thick reinforced door buckled. Orun stood among the slaves, shouting orders and holding his new axe high as twenty men lifted the ram and the others crowded by the entrance. Several guards manned the ramparts with crossbows, firing into the mob. A bolt struck the ground by the half-orc’s feet. Two or three slaves went down in the first volley. Dozens panicked, pointing toward the archers and shouting. Orun’s bellow drowned them out.

“Against the wall and hold your ground!” he roared, waving his axe. His frozen breath gleamed in the moonlight “Heave!” The ram struck again with a thunderous crack. More crossbow fire rained down. More slaves fell to the ground, bleeding and dying and staining the snow red. “Hold!” Panic would kill them all, but if they kept their wits, a few archers wouldn’t even slow them down. “See them? The slavers cower behind their walls! Heave!”

The log smashed into the gate a final time, with a force that smashed the door off its hinges. Silence fell for a mere instant as the heavy slabs of oak fell to the ground. Twenty guards stood on the other side, frightened torchlit faces behind a wall of shields and swords. A ragged cheer erupted from the slaves as they charged through the gateway with their shovels, axes, and picks.

A strange smell stung Orun's nostrils, caustic yet sweet, his first hint of something wrong. He dove back just before the fiery arrow struck, igniting the slick of oil soaking the dirt. Fire erupted from the ground, singing his flesh as he scrambled back.

"Back, now!" he roared, but it was too late.

Engulfed in flame, the first wave ran blindly into the slavers' shields, where swift thrusts of swords and spears ended their misery. The rest finally funneled backwards through the gateway. Crossbows fired into them from behind as they fled and rained bolts from above. Fire now choked their only entrance, with a wall of enemies waiting on the other side.

A familiar voice barked from beyond the flames. "Unless you fancy a fiery death, you cannot assault the fort. Lay down arms and we will spare your lives." It was the captain. "You sorry wretches named me 'Cruel'. Give up or I will show you the full extent of my cruelty!"

Orun climbed to his feet, coughing as he inhaled a lung full of smoke. Time seemed to slow as he watched his makeshift army break. If they could just break through into the courtyard, their numbers would easily overwhelm the defenders. Yet, with the gateway filled with flames and a wall of guards waiting on the other side, how could they break through? Within moments, slaves' courage would crack like ice in the spring. He needed to act fast. But how could he...

"Follow me!" the half-orc roared, rushing forward without waiting to see if they obeyed his order. He dove into the gateway as more crossbow fire rained from the walls, rolling into a crouch at the door they had so recently smashed down. It was large and sturdy, despite the beating it withstood before falling. He dug his fingers through the icy mud under the door and began to lift.

He roared, straining against its weight, but managed to only lift the heavy wood slab mere inches off the ground. Finally, other slaves rushed forward. They crouched beside Orun, even as arrows flew just over their heads, gripping the fallen door and adding their strength. Some fell from crossbow fire, but they stood their ground. Slowly, they raised the door until it blocked the incoming fire.

"On my word, we push forward," Orun growled. "Hard and fast and don't stop." He pressed his shoulder against the door as more and more slaves piled in behind him. With enough speed, they could get through the flames. "Forward!"

* * * * *

"Keep shooting!" The one called Cruel stared past the wall of fire to the commotion at the gate. What were those wretches doing out there? Besides dying, that is. One of his men from atop the wall shouted something. Then the battered wooden door rushed forth from the flames. "What." The huge slab of wood crashed into his ranks and knocked him onto the ground. His sword fell from his grasp. Then the slaughter began.

Slaves poured into the courtyard, months of pent-up hatred released. His guards screamed as axes split their skulls. Chaos surrounded him and fear drowned his thoughts. Escape! He scrambled to his feet and bumped squarely into a muscular green chest.

"You!"

The half-orc's eyes burned into him. He shoved Cruel the ground and kicked him hard across the face. His head rang. His sword fell from his grip. The slave crouched, pressing his knee hard against the captain's chest. He felt an axe blade press between his eyes and then wind back.
"You know nothing of cruelty, slaver."

[Aegis of Espiridion]

The barbed quarrel keened against the wind. Glimmering in wicked silver, it flashed just wide and high of Ywain’s head.

Broken yellowed teeth flashed in the sputtering braziers. An angry grimace mutated into a cavalcade of sulphurous curses. Frost-chapped hands, crossed with trophy scars, struggled to work the reloading winch. Each whitened gash in his skin represented a slave ‘disciplined’ by the notched dagger at his hip.

If the crossbowman had a modicum more experience or common sense, he might have wielded his weapon as a club or ditched it in favour of the dagger. But his eyes, hollow haunted grey windows to his soul, betrayed only panic and haste and fear. Gnarled fingers wrapped around the thick oaken stock and refused to let go.

He was only a boy.

But he had tortured. He had murdered, again and again. And he had revelled in his sins. The scars across the back of his hands proved that.

Ywain tore half of his face away with one delicate flick of his wrist. His reverse stroke kissed the boy’s throat open to the biting cold. The last of the crossbowmen fell first to his knees, then to the battlements, as his blood sprayed and pumped into the night.

What would Fionan think of me now?

The mercenary moved on.

Stone steps led down to the courtyard before him. A panicked young guardsman bounded up them with axe brandished and shield raised. He spied Ywain striding in nonchalant indifference over the corpse of what once might have been a friend, and howled a primal curse. Bounding lopes strained into a full-on charge.

Ywain slipped from its path, air and water flowing around the force of the battering fist. His broadsword snuck low, evading the onrushing shield and slipping into the gap between leather hauberk and greaves. Momentum did the rest, and his opponent’s voice turned from anger to anguish. The ‘slave’ pirouetted on his heel to face the Vorgruk-Stokes guardsman. The latter scrambled to face him on one good leg.

Panting in exertion, sweat beading on his brow, the boy hid behind his shield of iron-bound wood. Fionan would have had a fit at the poor technique. Ywain knew that he could outlast his opponent as the leg wound bled out onto snow-stained stone. But he didn’t have the luxury of such time.

Sympathy flickered across his face as he lunged to the attack. Desperation grit the guardsman’s teeth, bracing against the impact. At the last possible moment Ywain switched broadsword from his right hand to his left. The gilded hilt glimmered in the torchlight. The boy’s shield whiffed against empty air. His axe slipped from nerveless fingers as the long-haired swordsman’s blade sliced deep across the tendons in his wrist. The slaver stumbled to the floor, parched lips forming the beginnings of a long scream of pain, only for Ywain to slip like a shadow inside his guard. One leather boot slammed down on the inside of the shield, pinning his good arm to the grimy granite. The other crashed into the boy’s chin. Wet brown eyes rolled upwards into his head, exposing only their blood-streaked whites to the stars overhead.

The clamour about Ywain began to fade as the focus of the battle shifted elsewhere. The momentum of Orun’s charge had driven the surviving garrison back into the keep. Pitched ranks of spear against axe degenerated into blind skirmishes fought in claustrophobic corridors.

Peering over the edge of the battlements, he identified Orun in the midst of the carnage. The big half-orc stood fixed in place, staring downwards at one corpse in particular. Ywain couldn’t make out whom from his current vantage, but he did take note that his comrade had crushed the dead man’s skull with his bare hands.

The mercenary rogue glanced at the body at his own feet, then backwards at the swathe he had cut through the crossbowmen on the parapets. Finally he looked down again at Orun in the castle courtyard, and the future represented by the blood dripping from his hands.

He hesitated no longer in stepping forth.

***

“Present for you,” he offered a minute or so later, too exhausted for half-baked pleasantries. Orun would appreciate the blunt approach. “One iron-bound oaken shield, crafted on your behalf by Vorgruk and Stokes.”

The half-orc bared stubby tusks in either snarl or grin.

“Piece of kurr,” he grunted, exhaling twin plumes of steam into the icy chill. His disdain didn’t stop him from grasping the shield in a meaty paw before strapping it to his left forearm. He then bent to retrieve bloody dagger and the warden’s steel axe from the mess at his feet. A jab of his jutting jaw indicated the wounded slaves who had fallen behind the main advance. “I told them all to stay clear of the main hall. With any luck, they’d have listened.”

“In which case…” Ywain turned until he faced the right direction, flicking away the worst of the gore that tarnished his knightly blade. Tall iron doors beckoned, left half ajar from when Vorgruk-Stokes defenders had rushed out to meet the slave charge. Darkness swirled in impenetrable depths just beyond the threshold, reaching out in shadowy tendrils to dim the gleam of the steel in his hand. “After you.”

“Wimp.”

Orun grunted again at Ywain’s slight bow. With practiced ease he strode through the mounds of dead flesh and pools of sticky blood that cluttered the cobbled courtyard. Ywain stopped only to liberate a loaded crossbow from the mess before trailing along. He might as well accept a gift too. It was not as if the amputated hands would ever need to make use of it again.

***

“Gentlemen.”

Like rolling thunder the baritone growl of greeting resounded from the shadows. It drummed with malicious command through the ears of the vengeant pair stalled in the entryway. Waves of paralytic chill washed through their muscles. Only their keen sense of purpose gave them the strength to shake free of their rigor.

A heartbeat later, Ywain’s crossbow snapped up to focus on the voice.

“Have you upgraded us from flesh now?” The faintest shadow of a smirk lingered at the edge of his lips. They stood too far away to gauge the speaker’s intent, but his disdainful silence at Ywain’s jab only amplified the sense of impending doom. The hall stank of musty hay, half-abandoned blood stews, and the acrid sweat left behind by too many bodies crammed in too small a space.

“I see you’ve been expecting us.” Orun waited just enough for his growl to settle before adding in spite, “Gregor.”

Blackbeard loomed in the shadows at the far end of the room. He stood on a raised dais in front of what looked like a disused pulpit, his tall lanky frame encased in thick robes of coarse black wool. Leathery features floated in the half-light, focused in fanatical fury. His beard, streaked with lines of grey, reached to the floor in unruly glory.

On one shoulder sat a giant rook, head cocked and vicious yellow eyes focused on the intruders. The other hand held a knife to the woman slumped at his feet.

Vera.

“Let me guess. This is where you demand that we put our weapons down or you kill the girl?” Ywain’s crossbow did not waver from the centre of Blackbeard’s chest.

Bushy brows soared in surprise.

“No.” Blackbeard paused with what might have passed for a wry grin beneath his obfuscating facial hair. “No, I do not believe that I am so foolish to assume you would weigh her life against the lives of all those who stand behind you. But I do need you to stay back long enough for…”

The rook on his shoulder squawked loudly. Its weight shifted, wings spreading wide in cagey suspense. Something flashed from behind Vera’s back, as Blackbeard’s hidden hand emerged from view. Ywain just about caught sight of feathers and meat held together by a long string, tossed in their direction through the floating dust motes.

Then it swelled. Bulged. Morphed.

Wicked beaks and curved talons sprouted from pulsating flesh. Black feathers multiplied, arraying into widespread wings. Beady yellow eyes shone from the shifting mass, disappearing beneath new folds of flesh only to re-emerge in completely different locations. From the size of a man’s fist, in a matter of heartbeats the lure engorged to obscure the dais.

Vera’s eyes widened as the new monstrosity entered her sight. She screamed, shrill and siren.

The sound set off sheer pandemonium.

Ywain cursed, loud and clear over the din outside. Quarrel left bowstring with an audible thick thrum, but the pulsating mass of black corvids swallowed the shaft whole. Grunting with effort he hurled the heavy crossbow into the swarm as well, but the pair of black shapes that crashed to the floor in its wake made little dent in their numbers.

He had just enough time to draw his blade before the cloud fell upon him.

Orun stepped in its path, axe and shield sweeping from side to side. Squawking crows fell to the dust in their twos and threes in time to the battle-roar building in the half-orc’s mighty chest. Beaks and claws ripped and tore at exposed skin. One particularly brave bird swooped in close to Orun’s face, reaching for his eyes. The half-orc leaned forward and grabbed a bite out of its muscular flank, blood spurting in wild abandon as he spat feather and flesh back into its milling brethren. They screeched in fury and redoubled their attack.

A focused blast of scything air cut three birds from the shadows. A second downed four more. Ywain leapt to his companion’s aid, using the bigger bulkier half-orc as a bulwark of solid leathery muscle. Silvery steel whispered as it stabbed past Orun’s guard, picking off those foes that made it past the flailing shield. Together they settled into a silent deadly rhythm, broken only by the steady fall of crow carcasses to the abandoned tables and floor. Their stand may have paled in comparison to the slaves battling with their erstwhile oppressors elsewhere in the castle, but that made it no less deadly.

Was it minutes? Mere seconds? Eventually the strenuous effort started to tell. Ywain’s swordplay lost its edge, the polished finesse that separated it from Orun’s brutal but uncomplicated technique. His breathing grew coarse and ragged, struggling to keep up with the demands his body placed on his lungs. But the birds kept dying.

And then respite. As suddenly as the swarm had appeared it now fled from the fight, streaming in raucous cackles from slit window and open door alike. Half-orc and mercenary stood in shock in the middle of the hall. Only the rise and fall of their chests, a pair of forge bellows in the starlit chill, punctuated the silence left in their wake.

Ywain’s eyes followed Orun’s to the pulpit at which Blackbeard had stood. It now lay on its side upon the raised dais, as if thrown aside in haste, revealing a set of concealed stone stairs leading into depths unknown. Free of corvine calls, they could now make out the faint but steady whistle of wind emanating from the exposed passageway.

“C’mon,” Orun gestured, wiping the blood from a deep cut above his eye. He held his axe steady, aimed point-first at Blackbeard’s route of escape.

“Chase the big bad sorcerer down into the dark dungeons. Now why does that sound like a good idea?”

But neither could Ywain accept the alternative, to allow Blackbeard to escape.

He followed anyway.

[Green is the new black.]

Down they descended into the dark depths. The fort's cobbled masonry gave way to far older stone as the spiral stairs opened into a wide hall. Orun raised his torch, shooting Ywain a questioning look. Light flickered across rows of rough-hewn granite pillars lining the walls.

"These are old Skavian catacombs," said Ywain, taking the torch and guiding it along a series of tiny alcoves tucked between the pillars. Some still had skulls sitting on tiny pedestals.

Orun grunted, continuing cautiously onward. "Half this country is built on top of someone else's ruins."

"Half this country is ruins, if you haven't noticed."

A scream echoed down the passage. They broke into a jog, to the end of the line. They reached a stone archway leading into a large chamber. Shadows moved on the other side. Orun and Ywain were both covered in bloody beak-sized wounds and the rush of battle slowly faded into weariness.

"Well, we've come this far," said Ywain. "Let's go kill a deserving bastard." Orun nodded. Never leave a job half done.

They rushed into the chamber, weapons out. It was a cavernous space, its far edges lost in shadow, obscuring its true size. A semi-circle of candelabras stood twenty paces away, illuminating the center. There, they found a familiar scene. The slimy human warlock Blackbeard held his knife to Vera's throat. Fresh tears stained her face. Orun groaned, rolling his eyes. This again?

"Here we are again," Blackbeard hissed. "And it is to work like this: you go back the way you came. I will wait until I am convinced you're not coming, and then I will release your friend and disappear."

"Friend?" Orun advanced, unperturbed. "No, how it's gonna work is I'm going to kill you whether she's in the way or not."

Vera blanched. "What? You can't!"

Another step. "We will."

"What Orun means to say," said Ywain, circling around the right, "is we know you've been working for them."

"That's not--"

Ywain pointed his hand crossbow at both of them, dead-eyed. "I already had a chat with Petyr." His free hand held out a familiar blue scarf. "You sold us out. Told the slavers about our uprising."

"I didn't--"

Orun took another step. "Men died because of you!"

"Enough!" Blackbeard yelled. "The hard way it is!" He titled back his head and, wraithlike, shrieked, "Cirothe! By your name I command you to arise!" A roar echoed from the shadows, shaking the entire chamber. Vera yelped and struggled in earnest against the warlock. He threw her to the ground. "Not too late for the two of you to run. Even I can barely control this pet." He took his own advice and darted for the far side of the room.

"I don't think so." Ywain fired his crossbow, striking Blackbeard in the back. The warlock cried out and staggered but kept running. Vera regained her feet and darted after him.

Orun growled, but a second roar banished any immediate thoughts of pursuit.

Ywain raised his torch. "What the hell is that?" The beast emerged into the light, all teeth and claws and barbs and as large as a bear. Lion's head with foaming jaws, great leathery wings. A scorpion-like tail ended in a vicious stinger as big as a sword, dripping with venom.

The half-orc met the monster's gleaming yellow eyes. "Never seen a manticore before?"

The human holstered his crossbow and drew his sword. "No, and I can't say I ever regretted it."

"Always wanted to kill one." Orun inched right, still holding the manticore's gaze, shield forward and axe poised to chop.

"We've established you're crazy." Ywain crouched, sword out and torch held low, silently circling left.

"RAAAH!" Orun shouted, beating his shield and lurching forward. The beast snarled and lunged. He stepped into it and braced his shoulder against his shield, throwing all his weight it. They crashed together. Jaws snapped just above Orun's head, but the impact sent the manticore reeling.

Ywain appeared, slashing across the beast's side. He narrowly ducked its striking tail, diving backwards. His sword trailed an arc of blood.

"I think you just made it mad," said Orun. The manticore roared again, its tail lashing out wildly. Orun raised his shield, but the venomous barb pierced right through it, missing his flesh by inches. He twisted the shield and tugged, binding the tail in place. The snarled and pulled hard, but Orun dug in his heels, refusing to release the deadly tail trapped in his thick oaken shield.

Ywain regained his feet and rushed back into the fray. "I've got the other end!"

"Trade you," Orun called back, bracing against their thrashing adversary.

"Not a chance." The human darted in and out, slashing at the beast's face and backing out of reach. Blood streaked across its fur, but it only struggled harder.

A sudden tug pulled Orun to his knees as he struggled to heep hold of his shield, and by extension the monster's deadly tail. His shield began to crack; he could not keep it trapped much longer.

"Kriran sha'zemaraum," Orun shouted. An old orcish phrase -- Strike with anger! Attack like you mean it. He raised his axe and chopped at the beast's tail, once, twice. The third severed the toxic appendage with a spray of blood.

The manticore let out a wraithlike howl. It spun around and charged Orun, a storm of tooth and claw. He scrambled back, claws raking across his back and arms. Dropping his ruined shield, he reared back and smashed his forehead into the monster's nose.

Ywain appeared from the left, springing at the beast and thrusting his sword between its ribs. It flailed and roared, spitting specks of blood. The human hung on, driving the blade even deeper. Orun raised his axe high and cleaved the manticore's skull in two, killing it once and for all.

"What a mess," said Ywan between heavy breaths. He scowled at the blood and spilled brains and pulled his sword free from the corpse.

Orun wiped his axe on its matted fur. "I'm hungry, so let's finish the job." They found a ladder at the chamber's far side. Tired muscles burning, they climbed. Distant wind whistled and a faint golden light filtered down from above.

"Orun, are you all right?" asked Ywain from a few rungs below. "You're... bleeding quite a bit."

"So I am." He casually eyed the lacerations that streaked red across his arms. The pain would return once his blood cooled, but he barely felt the wounds now. "I'll worry about my own injuries when I'm done inflicting them on others."

Orun reached the surface and dawn's soft glow washed over him. He breathed deep the fresh morning air, washing away the cavern's stench. They climbed through the opening, its disguised hatch already thrown open by their query.

'There's the fort." Ywain pointed across the raging river. "The tunnel must have passed under the river." The fort seemed less imposing from this angle, its walls crumbling and patched with crude palisades. Smoke rose from inside, where the slavers faced justice.

Orun turned his gaze to the footprints trailing along the cliff edge that overlooked the river.

"Let us hunt."

[Aegis of Espiridion]

As one their eyes flitted along the blossoms of splattered blood, blooming bright against the snow. The floundering bootprints their quarry had left behind in his frenzied flight formed a easy trail to follow. He and Orun had forced the slaving warlock from the comfort of his domain, into this world of barren grey illuminated only by a wan wintry sunrise. Gregor Blackbeard had little of the craft that an accomplished woodsman might possess. And though in the manner of all cowards he had planned this escape for some time, he had thought neither to rehearse it nor to disguise his current blundering through the barren undergrowth.

Once upon a time, capturing Blackbeard and handing him over to the King’s justice might have satisfied him. Even now, Fionan would choose that path. But Ywain had seen the danger of the man. If they did not end him now, he would continue to spread misery and discord throughout the land.

He bared his teeth despite himself, his lips curling into a feral grin. The prey fled before them. But they, the predators, still had the scent. They set off after it at a sprint, swift enough to run down their foe but steady enough to maintain through the drifts and difficult terrain.

To his left, the thin sliver of silver moon had yet to set below the crumbled walls and glow-lit palisades of Bitterwood Watch. The ground fell away at his feet in a rock face sheer enough to doom any unlucky man or half-orc who fell. Said cliffs culminated in the inexorable roar of the churning waters as they ate away at the stone far below.

To his right lay little but a low rise outlined in advancing red. Beyond that rise the dark sprawling forests reached to Archen and Tirel, uninhabited bar the occasional outlaw-infested ruin or wolf’s den.

“Your wound?” Ywain asked again as he ran, light-footed across the snow. Orun had little trouble matching his pace despite ploughing through the ankle-deep drifts like a charging auroch, but something in the half-orc’s inscrutable expression belied discomfort. A month or more of travel with his inhuman companion had made him more sensitive than most to Orun’s moods. He knew better than to pursue the line of inquiry in face of the irritable grunt he received in reply.

Or did the half-orc have something else on his mind?

“What?” he chanced.

“That gul’u,” Orun growled at length, jerking a broad jaw towards the fleeing shapes in the distance. Little better than specks against the snow, they grew more distinct with every passing moment. “What else does he have up those stinking sleeves.”

“Spooked?” Ywain frowned, slowing to duck beneath the naked branches of a cliff-hugging willow. A fragment of blue cloth tickled his brow, torn from Vera’s dress in her own frantic passage. The faint scent of soap mingled with cinder from the burning slave camp and salt from the nearby sea. “A wounded animal would turn at bay and bare its fangs. So he still has something to lose.”

“You shot him.”

“Barely enough to hurt.” In fact, Ywain wasn’t sure that the half-sized bolt packed enough punch to pierce Gregor’s heavy woollen habit. “Still, we’re chasing him.”

Orun grunted again. “He’s escaping. Unacceptable.”

Another ghost of a smile played about the mercenary’s lips. On that, they could agree. Ywain didn’t even have to glance across the river to remind himself of what the Vorgruk-Stokes man had done.

Or to remember that he had helped put an end to it.

Fresh adrenaline surged through his veins, and he put on an extra burst of speed. A handful of pebbles, dislodged by his passage, plummeted to their watery deaths a dozen manlengths below. The chase had taken them far downriver, almost to the open ocean now, where the cliffs ran closer to the raging waters and a harsh sea breeze whipped at their weary faces. The ground firmed up, deprived of the shelter that allowed deeper drifts of snow to build beneath the driving sea wind. Orun used the newfound footing to keep pace.

Grim determination writ upon their features, they pressed onwards. The sun rose above the horizon behind them, casting long shadows into their path. Ahead of them Gregor laboured to climb the next of the rolling ridges, occasionally revealing pockmarked features and wiry full beard in a worried glance over his shoulders. With every glance he found the hunters gaining on him, and redoubled his efforts to stay ahead. Vera fought to stay at his heels, a bright splash of azure on a plain of otherwise featureless snow and rock. With every passing minute Ywain and Orun’s advantage grew over their tired, inexperienced prey. Their paths would cross within the tenth-hour.

Then, in the lee of the next valley, the warlock turned at bay. Backing away in slow deliberate steps to the edge of the cliff, he raised both arms before him in triumph.

“You’ve failed, gentlemen!” he bellowed at their onrushing forms. His voice rolled with all the power of a roiling winter storm.

Ywain didn’t hesitate. Without breaking stride he aimed his left arm and pulled the trigger. Despite distance and headwind the loosed bolt slammed straight and true into Gregor’s left shoulder. He felt, rather than saw, Orun’s snarl of approval as it joined its partner already embedded there.

The big warlock didn’t even flinch. Baring broken teeth in a snarl, he took one unseeing step backwards towards the cliff edge. Another.

“Lotan! By your name I command you to arise!”

Realisation dawned in Ywain’s mind, sickening in its finality. Blackbeard did have another card to play. He hadn’t practiced his escape, not because he’d been lax and negligent, but because he could only play this card where the cliffs ventured close to the river and sea.

“No!” Vera screamed for him, breathless and desperate. If Ywain had ever harboured any doubts about the deduction he’d made from the distinctive cloth in Old Ovie’s chambers, her next words dispelled them completely. “Don’t leave me here!”

Still snarling, the warlock fell backwards off the cliffs.

Ignoring Vera, Ywain rushed to the empty patch of rock that Blackbeard had just vacated, naked steel drawn. He caught just a glimpse of sodden robe and sea-green scale before the tidal waters settled into place. Nary a hint remained of the prey it had just swallowed.

His expression twisted into something ugly. Exertion burned through limbs and lung as the efforts of the past hour caught up with him at last.

“Curse the Sway,” he spat as he turned back to Orun. “He’s gone.”

[Green is the new black.]

“No, NO!” Orun’s shout turned to a bestial bellow aimed at the sky. “Latmarr skator!” Void take you.

“The slimy bastard,” Ywain growled. He spat over the cliff and Orun could see that the human’s anger, for perhaps the first time, rivaled his own. “The worst of them always escape justice. What did that name even mean? The one he called out before jumping?”

“‘Lotan’?” Orun grunted. “Means “deep lord”, roughly. Another one of his pets.” The beastcallers of the far north would name the mightiest creatures and use those names to bind them with magic. “Did you see it?”

Ywain nodded. “Something scaly and big beneath the water.”

The half-orc muttered a curse. “Something that will take him far away.” He turned to Vera, who was not subtly inching away along the cliff’s edge. He leveled his axe at her. “Stay where you are.”

She froze, eyes wide and bloodshot. "Please, let us just talk about this.”

“Your talking has already cost many lives.” Orun took a menacing step forward. “We saved your life and you betrayed us.”

“No, I--”

“Actually, she was working for them even before we found her,” said Ywain. He turned to the girl, wearing the frown of a disappointed father. “You knew what these men were doing, and you helped them put others into chains.”

“But I--”

Orun cut her off. “Do you deny it?” Silence.

“What do we do with her?” asked Ywain.

“She pays for her crimes,” he replied, unwavering. “How many corpses has she climbed over to save her own skin?”

His comrade sighed helplessly. “And there is no other way?”

“Not for me. Woman or no, she is responsible for her own actions.” Orun looked back and forth between the two humans. Ywain finally nodded, and he nodded back. “Do me a favor, Ywain?”

“Yes?”

“Go make sure the other freed slaves are okay and check what supplies are kept in the fort.”

“I can do that,” he replied in a soft tone. He glanced back once more at Vera as he trudged away. And then they were alone.

Vera fell to her knees in the snow, tears streaming down her face. “Please, don’t kill me.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Orun loomed over her, a blood-stained shadow. When she didn’t immediately answer, he said, “I will hear your words. This is your one chance. Convince me.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” she blurted out. “I lived on the streets of Tirel before the Company’s men found me. They paid me well for my... services, and eventually realized that I could blackmail and interrogate rivals in ways their regular thugs couldn’t.” She kept rambling, unaware of Orun’s tightening fist. “It isn’t like I had many options. By the time they brought me out here to help with their slaving operations, I was in too deep to back out. I knew too much. Besides, thousands die on the roads in this kingdom anyway. What was a few slaves in comparison. I did what I had to!”

“No. You did what was easier.” Orun’s axe came down in a blur, cleaving Vera’s head in two. Such a swift death was better than she deserved, but even he couldn’t stomach dragging it out. For not the first time in his life, Orun wished he could have made the easier choice instead of the right one.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

The cobbled courtyard stank of death, of cloying blood and voided sphincters. Ywain worked his weary feet through the piled corpses and puddled crimson, through graves of leather cuirasses and linen rags. Here and there he recognised the empty eyes that reached for the dawning skies overhead: the arrogant gaoler who had backhanded him twice for daring to look up towards the sun, or the young guard he had seen shivering on the battlements so far from home, or a grizzled slave who had offered him a helping hand one night against the cold. Here and there he noted how the fort had changed overnight: splashes of fresh red painted upon the walls, abandoned braziers and upturned trestles marring the bodies of their erstwhile users, charred rushes and scorched doors where the rebels had resorted to fire and smoke to overcome their oppressors. Discipline and order had reigned once in Bitterwood Watch. Now only turmoil remained.

“So this is how freedom is won,” he murmured, more to himself than to the assembled cadavers. “Over the bodies of the victorious dead.”

He cast his mind back to the trail that had brought him here. Assif and Gregor, butchered in the mud; Ivan, slit throat casting a fountain of life into the pristine snow. Vera’s blue scarf, fluttering forlorn in the throes of an onrushing blizzard. The pleading fear he had seen writ upon her face at Chzovel’s Folly. Her same blue scarf in the pile of clothes at the foot of Old Ovie’s bed, the evidence that had damned her to the mercies of Orun’s axe. Had he done the right thing by leaving her with him? Had he only grasped at the merest excuse not to witness her fate?

Yes, he decided, and no.

In the snows of the north, either you earned your survival or you fed the wolves. The drifts left little room for bleeding hearts or indecisive minds. By saving her from exposure and hypothermia, by sharing their scant food and supplies with her, they had already granted Vera mercy. He neither begrudged Orun’s revenge, nor felt the need to partake in such acts of passion himself.

But where there was a whip, wasn’t there a way? Had he certain faith that his choices could not have lead to a different path, one in which the justice meted out to Vera did not leave behind quite such a bitter aftertaste?

Again he breathed deep of the death he had wrought. But he found no answers there. Bloody mud squelched beneath the heels of his leather travelling boots. A fell wind keened against the filigreed hilt of his blade. Triumph and defeat mingled in equal measure upon the tip of his tongue, and he hated himself for both.

Silence, daunting and absolute, gave way as he walked to muted voices too tired and too downtrodden to celebrate their victory. The survivors of the slave revolt had congregated in the main hall of Bitterwood Watch. A handful of washerwomen from the fort had joined them there, their expressions bewildered, guarded, and wary of the hungry looks in their direction. The pallid morning sun provided little respite from the biting cold and the adrenaline exhaustion, leaving most to huddle together and bare palms to the rekindled cooking fires. But a smaller group, perhaps more opportunistic than the rest, stood instead around perhaps the last door still standing in the keep. Their heated gesticulations gave lie to the argument in which their leashed voices engaged.

Ywain moved to join them, parting the resting and the wounded like the prow of an Aleran trader through the mirror-like western seas. Some nodded to him, recognising one of those who had led their fight and acknowledging his part in winning their freedom. Others met his gaze with hollow haunted stares, and he feared for their future in this harsh world of wilderness and winter.

I cannot be responsible for all their fates. But I might ensure, at least, that they all begin anew on equal footing.

Or else we will give birth to yet another Vera. Or worse, another Old Ovie.

“Greetings,” he called out to the small group who stood outside the vault that housed the keep’s perishables and supplies. Without food and water, blankets and gear, they would all die in the coming days. And without the golden profits the Company had reaped from its operation, none would find new lives to supplant their servitude. The thin, hard-faced men and women that stood before him now had recognised these facts before their wearied comrades. They had moved to corner the wealth before those less fortunate or less unwearied could act.

I will not let that happen.

“Greetings,” the call returned to him at length, spoken by a sallow-faced young man ravaged by pocking disease. He gave Ywain a respectful enough nod, nose wrinkling at the remnant sewer stench. But his eyes travelled cold and calculating across the swordsman’s fine features. Then he inclined his head towards the door, the other slaves content to let him speak for them. “We were hoping to get at the fruits of our labours. Not to mention we’re three bodies short from the guards roster, including that scumbag Blackbeard, and we have an inkling they might have fled in here.”

Ywain gave him an easy grin.

“I can promise you that Blackbeard won’t be joining us any time soon. Orun took care of that particular problem.”

No need for him to know the whole truth.

”That big orc? Good on him.” Sallow-face exchanged quick glances with his compatriots before turning back to Ywain. “Reckon you might lend us a hand in getting this door open?”

“Reckon I might,” Ywain replied. He accepted the proffered lockpick - in reality little more than liberated pewter cutlery twisted into a serviceable shape - with a twirl and a flourish. In truth he hadn’t had reason to use such a tool for a couple of years now: the knights of Rousay frowned on those of its members who displayed light-fingered tendencies, and to act upon them while in employment as a caravan guard would incur far worse a penalty. He had had no wish to part with his fingers, or worse, his entire hand. But now seemed as good a time as any to rehash his technique, and to hope they would not find it lacking.

With any luck Orun would return before he could get the door open. He might need the half-orc’s presence to prevent any nastiness that might occur when they realised he intended to distribute everything equally.

He drew his cloak against the cold that beset his limbs and the weariness that assaulted his mind. Spitting away the rancid taste of deceit upon his tongue, he set to work.

[Green is the new black.]

Orun emerged from the central keep exhausted and of foul temper. After curt inquiries with loitering survivors, the bloodied half-orc made for the company’s vaults. He shouldered his way down the corridor to Ywain. There, the human fiddled with the heavy door’s lock. He eyed the man, raising his heavy eyebrows and making a mental note of it. Such larcenous skills could come in handy.

The former knight looked up. “Good, you’re here. I almost have it open, but...” He lowered his voice, glancing between Orun and the several hungry-eyed former slaves lingering nearby. “I may require some assistance once I do, to ensure... equal distribution.” The half-orc gave a harsh chuckle. He had no patience for Ywain’s subtlety.

He turned to the others. “Back off from the door,” Orun growled, looming over the others, his voice distant thunder. Covered in blood and mud, he looked more beast than man. The former slaves reacted accordingly, squirming away from the savage orc. “Stand against the wall. We divide the supplies between everyone.”

One, a broad-shouldered, shifty-eyed miner named Sven swaggered forward. “Just because you led the revolt doesn’t make you the—GAH!” He stopped short as Orun’s forehead smashed into his nose, sending the man staggering back, clutching his face. “Why you green skinned little shit!”

“I wouldn’t test your luck,” said Ywain, eyes still on the lock. “Orun’s having a bad day.” Sven staggered out of the corridor just as the lock gave its final click.

The door creaked open. They entered the vault, efficiently sorting through the barrels and sacks piled along the walls. Bread, wrinkled pears and apples, dried meat, and root vegetables, enough to feed a fort full of mercenaries for months. Easily enough to provision the hundred or so survivors long enough to get them, if not home, somewhere warm and comparably safe.

Orun’s eyes settled on a small chest tucked in the corner. A quick shake revealed its contents and Ywain made short work of the lock.

“Hitting your stride, I see,” said Orun as the lid clicked open, unveiling a horde of gold, silver, and precious gemstones. “That…” He glanced to the doorway, where a couple of the bolder slaves peeked through, though the chest was blocked from view by some barrels.

“It’s a fortune,” said Ywain, running his fingers through the money. The half-orc nodded. Even one who spent most of his life in the wilderness knew that such a sum of money could keep a pair of men fed, housed, and swimming in mead, and women, for perhaps years. His heart hammered against his chest, his throat dry.

“We could take it.”

“Orun…”

“You know I speak truth. We could take it and none of them would be able to stop us.” He eyed Ywain; the human tensed, eyes narrowing. Good. One decision made easy. “But we should not do that, even though we can.”

Ywain exhaled, shoulders sagging with relief. “Indeed, my friend. We are no worse off than before our capture. Some of these people might have no lives to go back to. A few gold coins can go a long way to a man with nothing.” Orun nodded, and the human continued with, “That said, no reason our good deeds should go unrewarded.” He raked his fingers through the glittering riches, picking out an assortment of cut and uncut gems, red, green, blue, and clear shimmering diamonds. “These will take some skill to move -- can’t just spend them like a coin, so we may as well make good use of them.”

Orun grinned wide at his companion, showing his tusks and rows of yellow teeth. “Keep this up and I might start to respect you.”

[Aegis of Espiridion]

High noon came and went. By unspoken consensus, Ywain and Orun took charge of sorting and sharing out the stockpiled supplies. As the exhaustion of the night’s events wore off, their compatriots came to their aid. Orun had to crack three more skulls to help them see the right of the situation, but only one was fool enough to try to make away with more than his fair share. Three steps from the courtyard gates, a half-length quarrel through the meat of his thigh ended his flight. The mercy of the emancipated slaves extended to allowing him to crawl away and bandage his wounds, but not to replacing the supplies retrieved from his desperate grasp.

The shadows lengthened. A bone-bruising wind rose from the north, painting with wispy cloud the skies of ice and fire. A few wise heads urged that they wait until morning before braving the twin dangers of trail and element. But the desperate majority would have rather fought a second rebellion than stay another night beneath the battlements of the slavers’ keep. In their ones and twos and fours they trickled through the sundered gates, headed towards whatever hopes and memories that Vorgruk-Stokes had left them. Some boarded makeshift rafts and began the journey to the coast, from where they might make their way to Raiaera or Corone. Others chose the treacherous overland journey, hoping to survive on paths of frozen dirt until they reached the Wolf Road. There they might turn north towards Chinon and Rousay, or south to Archen and Knife’s Edge.

“So?”

Orun’s impatience carried across the windswept rocks, muffled only by a light flurry of sleet that slung icy needles into his face. Perched bow-legged on the overlook like some protective demi-Thayne, the half-orc watched over both ragged streams of humanity as they abandoned Bitterwood Watch. Once upon a time Vorgruk-Stokes had stationed a guardsman here to keep an eye on both landward and seaward approaches. Only scattered splinters of his scavenged shelter now remained, torn to pieces in absent-minded fury.

Breathless from the cold and from the steep climb, Ywain steadied himself on a nearby boulder. A triplet of smooth pebbles danced in and out of his fingers, playing with the dying light like jewelled marbles.

“His body, I found in the filth pits. What was left of it at least. His head, they’d mounted on his own mantlepiece. Mouth stuffed with his own genitals. It seems that not all the women who shared his bed did so of their own will.”

“Undur kurv,” Orun spat. His coarse glare held scant little pity for the dead overseer, but Ywain imagined that the sheer viciousness of the vengeant slaves roiled like acid in his stomach. Better to kill in a single blow, the mercenary could almost hear the half-orc thinking. Better that the final stroke sever all sentiment between executioner and executed. Better that rancour didn’t linger, that rot didn’t fester. “You searched his room? Anything useful?”

Ywain shook his head. Icy rain filtered through his flowing forelocks, trickling like tears down his face. The cold froze his nostrils, leaving only a sour aftertaste on the back of his tongue.

“He burnt all his ledgers and documents before they got to him.” Some small part of his voice spoke of grudging admiration for the depths of Petyr’s spite towards those who had brought him so low. “Even managed to set fire to his desk. Guess he regretted that when they pressed his face to it.”

“More scared of what we might find than what they might do to him?”

In reply Ywain tossed Orun the remains of a small pouch. The hemp, blackened and singed, crumbled in the half-orc’s grip. Grains of fine red powder trickled through his meaty fingers.

“Firesand,” the half-orc snarled, recognising the addictive spice at once.

“Not enough to distribute, but enough for personal use,” Ywain agreed. “It would have been unloaded by Fallienese merchants at Tirel. Any Vorgruk-Stokes merchantman that would have transported these slaves or their produce, would have passed through Tirel. The middleman who hired me in Archen, he tried to hide it beneath an excess of perfume, but he too stank of spice, and thus Tirel. And Blackbeard... if he keeps heading downriver, then chances are that he’s headed...”

“Tirel.” Orun snorted, a blast of vapour spiralling off towards the far horizon. The echoes of his voice trailed off, lost in thought.

Taking advantage of the lull in conversation, Ywain knelt to the packed dirt and retrieved three locks of hair from an inside pocket of his tunic. One blond, one black, one brown. With quick efficient movements he dug a shallow grave for each, then buried them in Salvic earth with a pebble each as a headstone. From here they would watch over the fort. Perhaps they could warn the next fool to occupy it against any selfish folly.

What would Fionan think of me now?

Ywain smiled to himself, feeling his jaw where Orun’s bruise had only just healed. He and the Knight-Captain shared a vision of Salvar just and free, where everybody could laugh and smile and be happy. Fionan walked a path of light towards that goal. Perhaps it was time that Ywain found his own path to walk. Just because he had no answers, it didn’t mean that they didn’t exist.

“In any case, I know where I’m headed next.” Ywain’s fingers travelled to the hilt at his waist, seeking reassurance upon the frigid metal. “I could do with a sturdy hand to keep me company. The way I see it, you’ve still got a score to settle against Vorgruk-Stokes, same as me. Plus there’s the matter of fencing these gems, which again is best done in Tirel. Care to share the road?”

Something approximating a guffaw escaped from Orun’s broad shoulders.

“Way I see it, manling... it is you who would be joining me.” Reaching down to his knees, he hoisted his sack of rations onto his shoulders as though it weighed little more than a feather. “Still, I can think of worse companions. Word of this disaster will spread and there will only be a greater need for sellswords. Further chaos beckons. I would have a good sapat-bosnauk at my side.”

“Axe-brother,” Ywain smiled. “I can get used to that.”

As one, they turned their backs on Bitterwood Watch. Silhouetted against the dying sun, they stalked into the onrushing night.