Bitterwood Watch

[Aegis of Espiridion]

The clamour of men at work washed over a stack of stale hay hidden in the soot-stained alleyway. Merciless depths of winter blighted the roads in and out of Archen with insurmountable drifts. But here, the snow glittered only as a dusty sprinkling on the rooftops. The niche formed only one dead end amongst many in a veritable labyrinth of log halls and grey granite.

The air froze his skin, though he bore it without fleeing indoors. Ensconced in what little peace and quiet he could find, his breath barely registered in the crisp air. Impassive grey eyes trained upon the pallid clouds overhead. Mammoth beasts of burden travelled in slow convoy upon a sky the hue of a cornflower field, passing him by on their lazy route from somewhere to nowhere.

What’s that supposed to mean? Ywain asked his roaming mind, wry amusement tugging at his lips. He didn’t fail to note the symbolism for his own life, after leaving the knighthood of Rousay and taking up the life of a wandering mercenary. Roadweary after a hard week’s ride, he closed his eyes and settled back against his prickly bedding for another nap. Somewhere in the distance a crow laughed.

Not all was well in the Gateway to the North. The scarcity of smoking chimneys bore evidence to the fact that only now had the recovery begun from the devastation of the Civil War. Half the houses were boarded up and empty, and of the half that remained in use, less than half were more than half full. Magnificent domes marked its places of worship, pockmarked with battlescars and surrounded by rubble. The castle in the centre of the town had suffered far worse.

His caravan had arrived midmorning with its precious cargo of timber. A plentiful resource in the northern boyaries, the rebuilding effort in the south ensured much demand. The fresh gold in his pocket attested to the money that flowed anew into the city. The scent of sawdust and the rasp of woodplanes hinted to the work that went into reconstructing the once-mighty nation of Salvar.

Not that any of that had anything to do with him. Rousay was so far north, so far isolated, that it might as well not have existed on the maps of either King or Church. And Ywain had no care for either, who in his opinion both acted as guiltily as the other in exploiting the common folk for their own needs. He despised politics, especially politics that did not serve but to line the pockets of the powerful.

All he wanted for the time being was a long, restful nap.

He got his wish until the sun rose past noon, when a shadow strayed across his face and refused to budge. Annoyed, he spoke up, peering up at the intruder from the corner of one slitted eye.

“If you’re looking for something, old man, you won’t find it here.”

The old man in question wasn’t that old, but he smelt that way. His face reminded Ywain of a weasel or a ferret, smeared in grime and crowned with cropped stubble. He held a velvet bowler hat in one bony hand, his small frame enclothed in a tailored suit of brown wool. His eyes had the same dull auburn colour, shifty and profit-seeking.

“'eh, na why would ya say that? Looks ter me as if I’ve found meself just wot I’ve been searchin' for.”

When he smiled, he revealed teeth almost unnatural: pearly white and perfect in their alignment. Ywain couldn’t place the accent, but it wasn’t one that he’d heard before. It annoyed him even more that he had to wake his mind up to make the effort to understand it.

“You don’t want trouble with me.”

“Oh, nah trouble, nah. I’m not bleedin’ rathead enough ter get into a brawl wif a knight.”

The mercenary stiffened, surprised that the man had made the connection. “What makes you think I’m a knight?”

“Mate, ya’re either a knight or ya’ve pecked the sword off one. Either way, means that ya’ve got skill at ‘rms. Furthermore, ya came in from the norf off that caravan, as an outrider. That means ya kna the lay of the land back there. As I said, looks ter me that ya’re exactly wot I need.”

“Is that so?”

“Ya ‘urt my feelings. I’m a legitimate businessman, see. Wot I ‘ave for ya is a dolly business proposition. Nah need ter get aw up your backside.”

Arms behind his head, lounging on his pile of hay, Ywain looked anything but tense. His elfin features remained calm and unruffled, his lithe frame loose and relaxed. That didn’t mean that he missed the crowd of shadows invading his personal space, or the watchful eyes prickling his skin. If he was going to do business – a big if – then he wasn’t going to do it under threat.

“Tell your goons to scram. I’ll listen, but only if it’s worth my while.”

“Oh, don’t mind big ol’ Auroch ‘ere. ‘e may be as ‘uge as a bear, but ‘e’s as stinky come as one too.”

“He can stay.” It wouldn’t hurt to keep his guest comfortable, and Auroch didn’t look the smart type. Dumb… or as the suited man put it, ‘stinky come’. “The two with crossbows on the rooftop opposite, and the three knifers hiding round the corner? They go.”

The suited man grinned again, once more showing those perfect teeth. He removed his free hand from its pocketed warmth for long enough to give a cheerful whistle and a dismissive wave. Ywain felt a lot lighter without all the invisible daggers aimed in his direction.

“Done, mate. I ‘ope ya don’t mind me sayin’ that ya’re exactly the kind of bloke I need.”

“A business proposition, you said? You represent Vorgruk-Stokes?” The caravan south had been one of theirs, and Ywain had appreciated the prompt pay. It wouldn’t hurt for a freelance mercenary to cultivate a working relationship with the biggest potential employer in the country.

“Et’s just say I’m your bog-humble middleman, mate. Powerful parties don’t meet wif ya in person, see, and people loike me get ter ran ‘round doin’ their biddin’.”

“That’s not a yes.”

“It’s not a nah, either, is it?”

For the third time that obsequious grin. Ywain found himself tiring of the charade.

“Cut to the stick. What’s your business?”

The smile dimmed, and in its place crept a furrowed frown. The suited man either had a fondness for drawn-out preambles or a dislike for people cutting into his stride, or perhaps both. A heartbeat passed before he composed himself and let the information flow.

“A geeza needs eliminatin’. Brigand, goes by the chuffin’ name of Orun. Likes raidin’ supply caravans belongin’ to the company, plunderin’ and pillagin’ as ‘e wants. Ya clock why we don’t appreciate ‘is custom, I ‘ope.”

The man’s accent didn’t make it any easier to accept the tired cliché at face value. But it did explain why the caravan master had seemed so tetchy on the journey south, and why the wagons had abandoned the well-known main roads despite the dangers of the deep snow. Ywain sighed, wondering why he’d interrupted his peaceful nap for this.

“And you’re wandering the streets of the city picking up random mercenaries to do the job?”

“Oh, we’ve got our best and finest after ‘im too. But ya can never be too bobby, can ya, in this world. Ya’ve got a strong sword arm, and as I said, ya kna the land. Brin’ us proof that ya did the deed, and ya’ll be well compensated.”

“How much?”

“A fousan gold kings.”

Ywain whistled in appreciation, suddenly a lot more interested. “Must be worth a lot to you to see him dead.”

“He’s made quite the chuffin’ fortune leechin’ off of the company’s caravans. Particularly fond of stoppin’ isolated villages from getting food and medicine, it seems. Been at it for a while na as well. Wif the Civil War over and things getting back ter normalcy, we’d loike ter get rid of thorns such as ‘im. Extreme prejudice, if ya get me gist.”

“Works alone?” The questions came to mind quick and fast now.

“As far as we can tell, yeah.”

“How will I know him when I see him?”

“He’s a big ‘airy brute, carries an old iron axe and a battered wooden shield. Red eyes, white hair. You’ll prolly find ‘im runnin’ away from Archen and the company’s men.”

“Distinctive enough.” His terse words cut off, but his head churned over the description as he committed it to memory. “How many others have you scraped off the streets to do your dirty work?”

“Three. Aw caravan mercs loike yaself. The city’s not exactly short on sellswords since the end of the war, and a job’s a job, ‘specially one that pays as well as this.”

“Fair enough. No need to send an army after a single fugitive, after all.” He was being sardonic, but the suited man’s grin betrayed nothing.

“Precisely, mate. So, wot say ya?”

Ywain waited long enough for a suitable dramatic pause before giving his answer.

“I’ll think about it.”

His suitor responded with a predictable lack of pleasantry.

“Wot sort of bollocks is that? Listen, if ya’ve a problem, let me kna and I’ll just move on and leef ya to your nap. Not me problem if ya’re interested in lettin’ innocent people starve and die ‘cause ya can’t be bothered to get off your jacksprat arse.”

A whiff of musty cologne caught Ywain’s nose as the suited man threw up his arms in agitation. To the mercenary’s keen eyes, only some of the emotion seemed faked. Auroch grumbled, but true to his description, did not show the slightest interest in the actual content of the conversation.

Then again, with a polehammer that big…

Ywain thought twice of the temptation to rise to the bait. He had the feeling that the ‘businessman’ wanted him in on the job more than he let on, despite his accented bluster. Who might be the ‘powerful parties’ who had such an interest in him? What it was that they asked of him? Stopping a brigand from starving poor villages in the snowbound Salvic wilderness sounded simple. Too simple.

“Fine. I’ll leef ya be. If ya get interested after your thinkin’, be at the norf gate by sundahn. I’ll make sure they ‘ave a ride for ya.”

Ywain allowed the suited man to get to the end of the alleyway before aiming one last question at the trimmed back of his woollen suit. His voice, raised so that it would reach, echoed off the mortared granite.

“How would I get paid?”

He couldn’t see the middleman’s face, but he felt sure it was smiling again.

“Brin’ ‘is head ‘ere. We’ll find ya once ya get back to town.”

A nonchalant wave over his shoulder, and the businessman sauntered out of sight.


***

His name was Polecat, not that it mattered much to the inhabitants of Archen. He styled himself a businessman, and he indeed acted as a merchant, but only rarely did he deal in such mundane commodities as timber and ore. Vorgruk and Stokes of Archen were only one of the many who claimed his services. His travels had taken him from Radasanth to Blightwater and even to far-off Cathay. Ywain was not the first unsuspecting napper that the suited middleman and his accented Common had approached.

He watched from the shadowy eaves of the tavern opposite Ywain’s haystack, bowler hat pulled down low over his grizzled face. Auroch sat inside by the comfortable fire, nursing a pint of mudmilk and awaiting his master’s command. The rest of his men he’d sent ahead to prepare for his journey back to Corone. The sun hung low in the west by the time he finally spotted what he’d hoped for. A nimble shadow detached itself from the alleyway and headed towards the northern gates of the town.

“Well, I’ve done what ya asked me ter do,” he murmured to nobody in particular. “’ope ya’re satisfied.”

The frozen puddle at his feet shimmered and smiled as Polecat exited stage left.

[Green is the new black.]

Chapter One

The sun set over Salvar, flooding its frozen wilderness in a hellish glow. Arctic winds swept down from the north, whistling through icy pines, which blazed like a crystalline fire in the waning light. Above, hungry crows circled in the bloodied sky like squawking cancerous specks. There was death in the air.

Blood dripped from Orun's ax, still clutched in his large green fist, splattering into small pools on the dirt road. His breathing slowly steadied. A grisly aroma stung his nostrils, wafting up from three brutalized corpses clad in bloodied leather and mail, strewn about a fallen log in the road. The half-Orc knew the trick well: block the road with a log or other obstacle, forcing wagons and carriages to halt right before an ambush.

This time, however, Orun had ambushed the ambushers. He had cut down two before they realized their peril. The third had dropped his weapon and fled, but that did not save him. They were scum, worse than bandits, assailing defenseless travelers along the road. Unworthy to even stain his blade. He snatched a coin purse from the mutilated mass of flesh that had once been the vermin's leader.

His pulse calmed, and the green-skin warrior finally felt the subtle prick of fearful, disgusted eyes upon him. They belonged to a traveling family, apparently well-off given their thick, warm clothing and plentiful provisions. The three of them, a mother and father with an adolescent daughter, stood in front of their wagon and held onto each other for comfort more than warmth. They had been traveling south along the road when they fell into the trap. Why would anyone travel these roads on the eve of winter? He didn't care. Because of him, they would remain alive and free; what else mattered? Of course, that did not stop the family from cowering before him, perhaps thinking he meant to devour them.

On one hand, Orun could understand their reaction. At that moment, he surely looked more beast than man, with his tangled mess of white hair matted to his skull with sweat and blood and specks of gore splattered across a face inherited from his Orcish father. He carried a shield stained with old blood and wore a mismatched patchwork of boiled leather, heavy fur, and steel rings over an imposing frame leanly muscled like a mountain lion. His appearance could frighten many. On the other hand, even Orcs thought it rude to glare at someone who had just saved your life. Few things spoiled Orun's mood quite like ingratitude.

“Humans,” he muttered bitterly, hanging his axe on his belt and turning north to resume his trek. He had wasted enough time already and needed to put more distance between himself and Archen. Between himself and his pursuers.

“Stop! Orc, stop!” shouted the father, finally finding the nerve to speak. Orun could not place the accent; all humans sounded the same, anyway. “Those bandits stole that money from us. It’s ours.”

The green-skin turned and eyed the man dangerously, a low growl forming in his throat. He was not amused. “My name is not 'Orc'.” His voice rumbled low and a dangerous gleam crept into his dark eyes. “And you should thank me, you ungrateful..." He turned and spat into the snow. "Those were not thieves, just after your coin. They were slavers. If not for me, you would be dead, and they..." He nodded in the direction of the man's wife and daughter. They clutched each other tighter. The father fell silent, shocked at the implication. Or perhaps by an Orc's ability to speak so concisely. He spoke truly though, and the dead three were not the first slavers he had found on the roads.

"That... that is ridiculous!" stammered the father. "There are no slavers in Salvar! It is outlawed."

"Then consider your gold the price of your ignorance." The half-Orc left them. He should not have stopped to help them; they didn’t deserve it. It would just serve as another hint for his enemies from Archen to follow.

* * * * * *

In centuries past, the world's 'civilized' nations took slaves from more savage and backward regions like Dheathain and Fallien. Now, it seemed that slaves were taken from the civilized lands and sold to the savages. Some dead king had outlawed slavery in Salvar, but that never stopped Vorgruk and Stokes from profiting in the flesh trade. Orun had learned this first-hand in Archen, when he discovered dozens of captives bound in chains, hidden in an abandoned warehouse. Men. Women and children. The choice had been obvious; he killed their keepers and set them free. No one should live in bondage.

Only afterwards did Orun begin to learn the operation's full scale. Maps and documents he found at the warehouse shed new light. Slavers under the employ of the Vorgruk-Stokes Trading Company had been setting up ambushes along the northern roads for years, kidnapping travelers that few would miss. And only when he fled Archen, chased by a squad of city guards and a dozen hired swords, did he realize the depth of his folly. For two months he ran north, evading the company's men in the rugged steppes and using the stolen maps to ambush their slavers along the roads. Yet, with every ambush he merely struck the hornet's nest and by the stormy start of winter, the hills swarmed with angry Vorgruk-Stokes bees. It was only a matter of time before his luck failed.

Weeks drifted by as Orun left the road entirely and trekked even further north, through the infamous Salvic wilderness. Skavia, the humans called it. Harsh weather gripped the land and battered the half-Orc, grinding him down like a chisel against stone. His resolve waned more and more as winter bared its icy fangs, forcing him through miles of knee-deep snow and over treacherous cliffs. Fierce, frigid wind bit through his tattered furs and into his flesh like needles. Even the sun brought no respite with its deceptive light; it served only to blind the eye as it glittered in the windswept snow. Only his Orcish blood and his own stubborn pride drove him onward, forcing him to endure where most would succumb.

Eventually, the jagged cliffs gave way to rocky hills covered in forests. He sighed with relief. The ancient pines would provide some protection against the wind and help obscure his position from potential pursuers. The air felt different here, cleaner and calmer with the fresh lingering smell of sap. Feeling more secure in the forest's embrace, Orun risked a fire to drive the numbing cold from his bones.

Half-frozen and fatigued, he slumped against a tree trunk and let the fire's warmth wash over him. For the first time in weeks, he took time to truly think. What am I doing out here? he wondered. It was a fair question. What did he hope to accomplish, freezing and starving to death in these frozen wastelands? Could a single Orc right every wrong and free every soul from bondage? He could barely keep himself alive, with his rations dwindling and wild game so scarce. Yet, could he give up and walk away even if he wanted to? Even wayward wilderness wanderers like Orun knew well the price of crossing Vorgruk-Stokes. They were a great leviathan, holding all of Salvar tight within their coils. Where could he run? How far would they chase him?

He supposed he could turn west and head for the old city of Lovstek, the largest settlement in Skavia. But then what? Wait out the winter and hope that he never wakes up with a bounty hunter's dagger in his throat? On the other hand, old ruins and forts dotted the eastern reaches. Perhaps he could find some shelter, and take a river barge to the port city of Tirel. Still, it seemed such a long way to go, only to catch another ship and sail to a foreign land.

Then again, maybe he could just continue north and cross the frozen seas to Berevar, the Orcish homeland. The stoic half-blood sighed longingly at the thought, even as the crackling fire cast a hellish glow over his face. He had heard so many stories growing up, telling of the savage, untamed land ruled by the mighty Orc clans and other feral races that the humans had chased from Salvar so long ago. He longed to go there one day, to return to his father’s people. Would they even accept a half-blood into their midst? Or you could turn and fight. The thought came unbidden. He pushed the suicidal notion from his mind and closed his eyes.

Foul winds howled like tortured souls through the valleys that night. It kept Orun awake, though he had long since grown used to sleeplessness. The local humans called the region "the haunted woods", though the only things haunting this place were bears, wolves, and Orun.

Suddenly, a branch snapped. Orun went rigid, his senses on edge as they probed into the silent void of night. At first, nothing. Then he heard muffled footsteps on frozen earth and hushed breaths. These were not the noises of a wild animal, but of men. Their stealthy approach and the tingling apprehension between the half-Orc's eyes meant one thing; they had found him.

He grit his teeth, but kept still and composed through sheer force of will. Let them think they can sneak up on me, he thought. Let them believe that they could prey on a predator.

Slowly and naturally, he stood, stretching and acting oblivious. He glimpsed movement in his peripheral vision; three shadowy forms lurked in the darkness like rats, weapons in their hands. He curled his lips in a silent snarl and pressed his back against the tree trunk, drawing his knife and closing his eyes. The trio of intruders neared him, whispering urgently amongst each other. Orun waited and listened.

Without warning, he spun sharply and hurled his knife into the darkness. A wet thunk followed. A cry of pain. A feral grin flashed across his face as he kicked snow and dirt over the fire. The light died. He heard the panicked bounty hunters scrambling. At last he opened his eyes, vision fully adjusted to the dark. Now he would hunt them.

His cold-numb muscles burned as they returned to life, propelling him into a sprint. He reached the wounded human first; he was crawling away, leaving a bloody trail in the snow. Orun drew his axe and hacked off his fleeing foe's head with a single chop, savoring the sound of the man's last breath gurgling from his neck.

“Beast!” A second hunter charged from the gloom and thrust a heavy spear at Orun's chest. The half-Orc spun aside instinctively, letting the weapon glance off his boiled leather. He launched forward, axe flailing as his foe scrambled back. The human stumbled on a loose rock and faltered; Orun capitalized, hacking through boiled leather and giving his axe another taste of blood. He hacked and chopped viciously into his enemy until his blade grew dull from carving flesh and splitting bones; he left his foe a mutilated heap in the snow. Finally, he pulled his shield off his back.

The forest fell eerily still. The half-blooded warrior closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. The frigid air stung his nostrils. He waited in the silence and for several long moments heard nothing. Had the third attacker fled? No. He still felt that tension in the air, the weight of anticipation.

Movement! The crunch of snow. Orun dove forward just as a spiked mace swept through the air and smashed into a tree with a splintering crunch. Orun rolled and climbed to one knee, raising his shield just in time to block a second fierce strike. The force of the blow sent a shock of pain through his arm. The half-Orc snarled.

“Savage,” spat the human. He swung again, his mace striking Orun's shield like a sledge. Agony shot up through the half-Orc's shoulder. Orun's foe was a mountain of a man standing a head above his fallen comrades, so bulky and hairy that he might have descended from mammoths. He wore layers of thick leather studded with iron and brass, but only a massive wooly beard protected his head.

Orun grinned wildly and lunged forward from his kneeling position, brutally bashing his shield into his foe's face. Rotten teeth shattered and the huge man roared with pain, staggering back. The half-Orc pressed his advantage, pummeling the bounty hunter's head and face with the butt of his axe again and again until he dropped his mace and fell. Orun tossed aside his shield and grabbed the human by the throat with his free hand, slamming him against a tree. His foe struggled, flailing futilely with his fists. Orun held firm his grip and head butted the man's nose, leaving blood smeared across his green face and his opponent's scream ringing in his ears.

“Now, maybe we can have a civilized conversation.” His voice came out as a growl, but something about his articulation made the human's eyes widen. “Ah yes, I'm just an Orc. Perhaps I should communicate solely with grunts and blows to the head." He gave a cruel laugh. “You should know how this works. Who sent you?” The hunter spat. Orun’s muscles flexed as he tightened his choking grip.

“You know who sent me!” he shouted through a strangled throat. Blood ran freely down his face, forming crimson pools in his beard.

“Not good enough."

"Drink piss."

Orun bared his jagged, yellow teeth. He lowered his captive, letting the man's feet slide forward along the ground. With a single vicious motion, the half-Orc stomped on top of the human’s knee. A wet, sickening crack; a tormented howl. It took nearly a minute for the fallen hunter to catch his breath and speak again.

“No-nobody… crosses the investors... by accident! Nobody destroys their property and just walks away! The flesh trade is worth mountains of gold in this wasteland!" Orun knew that already, of course; he wanted to see how much this human knew.

"How many more of you?"

"Just three." The big man's breaths grew ragged. "But... but there will... be more. They have your trail, Orc. You are dead. Every... slave you freed... is dead, too!"

Orun growled angrily, filled with renewed resolve. He crushed his captive’s other knee beneath his boot before hurling him to the ground. His voice was as cold as Salvar and cut through the sell sword's moans. “You’re pathetic, just like your masters, making coin on the bondage of others. I will see you all burn. Pass that message along to your keepers, if you can crawl all the way back to Archen before the wolves find you."

Without another word, Orun vanished into the night, leaving the man to die. New determination filled his heart. No, he could not right every wrong in the world by himself, but no true Orc would deny the call of war. No more running.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

Earlier…

“Hsst.”

The urgency in the hissed command brought them to their heels. Ascertaining that no obvious danger lay in wait, Ywain crept forth to join Gregor, the sullen one of his three companions. The tracker sheltered behind a snowy embankment, his keen grey eyes peering into the darkness. Stubby fingers fumbled as he undid clumsy snowshoes.

“What is it?” the rogue mouthed. The driving wind muffled sound and masked their tracks through the valley, but he saw no sense in taking unnecessary risks.

Gregor tapped his ugly nose once in reply and pointed uphill, where drifts of snow faded into heavy forest. Ywain knew better than to question the man’s sense of smell. Four days out of Archen, he had dug up a trio of savaged bodies from the roadside just by the faintest whiff of dried blood on a nearby branch. His pulse quickened. Had they caught up at last?

The other two drew close, joining the tracker and the rogue in ditching their supplies alongside the snowshoes and snowpoles. Snow as treacherous as thin ice had choked the roads north, disguising the lay of the land and complicating navigation. Abandoning their mounts at Timberhall, the winter gear had allowed them to continue tracking their quarry on foot. But there would be little to no snow to fight on beneath the protective canopy of the trees. Useful for trekking long distances at speed, the equipment would only burden them during combat.

Assif, the young one, prepared his thrusting spear. From dawn till dusk on their journey north he had regaled the band with tales of his conquests. The scullery maid in Pestovo. The noblewoman in Knife’s Edge. The brothels of Ettermire and the harems of his native Irrakam. He even spoke in fond remembrance of an elven refugee desperate enough to offer him her body in return for a meal. His lecherous eye had alienated many the travellers they met, including a family who spoke in fear of a wild ‘beast’ haunting the roads, killing and robbing as it went. Ywain would not have paid much attention to their tall tales – they had survived the encounter, after all – except they had mentioned a bloody iron axe. Only then had he asked for more details, but the father had spurred the wagon away in haste when Assif reached for his young daughter. Crucial information had slipped like water through their fingers.

Ivan, the blond one, hefted a vicious spiked mace that would have taken two normal men to lift. The big man had absently identified Gregor’s three bodies as men of the company even before finding the incriminating coin. He’d tried to mask his fear, passing it off as caused by the cawing of the carrion crows that circled overhead. The smallest of hesitations in crossing a snow drift, the unsure wobble of feet as the path approached a sheer cliff, the nervous glances as they passed through dense forest; all showed that the man had no experience in travelling the land. He had never worked as a caravan guard as he claimed. More likely he had made use of his mountainous size as a city watchman. He was the plant, the Vorgruk-Stokes man posturing as a mercenary to keep an eye on them.

Whatever their personal circumstances, Ywain had no reason to question their allegiance to the bounty. Assif dreamed of buying all the whores in Archen. Gregor had his eyes set on a plot of land south of Knife’s Edge. Ivan just wanted to leave Salvar for Scara Brae.

When at last they stood ready, Ivan suggested a simple plan. None of the others dissented. Pairing off, they crept away into the night. Long silent minutes passed as they ascended the hillside, encroaching upon the glow between the trees.

The crack of the branch echoed like a gunshot.

Ywain cursed whichever oaf had made the noise. The fire made it easy to guess their quarry’s location, but with a warning like that he would doubtless now be alert and moving. The rogue gave a quick hand signal. Assif nodded assent, doubling back to cover the other two.

Ivan’s plan had called for a swift pincer manoeuvre. In and out before their opponent knew what had happened. Now it wouldn’t work, and…

Don’t whisper, you fools!

Too late.

The whispers disappeared, but the screaming began.


***

The sounds of battle had ceased and the ominous solitude had returned by the time his vision readjusted to the night. Noise carried well on the hillside, but the wind chose that moment to howl once more. Ywain cursed again, his senses robbed by the darkness and the weather. How many of his erstwhile companions lay dead or dying? Should he check on them, or should he pursue the bounty?

The mercenary’s thoughts churned. A hunted animal knew better than to double back towards exposed danger, or to risk walking into more opponents. His quarry would neither head back to the fire nor travel in the direction that his pursuers had appeared from. He could take only so many paths through this forested, rolling terrain. If Ywain acted quickly enough…

He still had his opportunity. And all four orcish purgatories would damn him if he let his quarry get away. The chase had gone on long enough already. Furthermore, he now had a score to settle. He might not have been friends with the other three, but the time they had spent on the trail together had birthed a strong sense of camaraderie.

Decision made, he backed away from the glowing remnants of the fire. Darkness cocooned him once more as he started to run, long legs propelling him fleet and sure over the frozen earth.

His slender silhouette slunk at speed through the close-packed trees, a shadow within shadows. Like an immaterial phantom, his tread whispered light and inaudible through the depths of winter. Every now and again he paused, senses primed for any unnatural noise or movement.

There.

Luck favoured him. A stray moonbeam through the empty branches gave him a flashing glimpse of a figure that did not stand quite as tall as Ivan, but more than made up for it in broad muscular torso. Ywain adjusted course to an intercept point, arriving there in plenty of time to catch his breath. Here he would ambush his prey.

He checked again the direction of the wind, the lay of the land, the pale halo of the moon as it floated behind swift-running cloud. The scent of pine hung in the air, touched by a hint of tinny blood. A handful of snowflakes darted across his face, though the canopy of trees protected him from the worst of the brewing storm. Empty air between the trunks left room for swordplay, but not so much that he would have no cover if his opponent overwhelmed him with brute strength.

In silent purpose, his sword whispered into his left hand from the fur-lined leather scabbard slung over his shoulder. His right let the sheath drop to the ground, then loosened the holster at his hip, drawing from it a scaled-down crossbow. A quick glance reassured him that a half-length quarrel already lay in place, taut against the whipcord string. Ready, he backed away into a crouch beneath the shadow of the nearest tree, erasing all evidence of his existence, watching… waiting…

Suddenly he was not alone.

The darkness made it difficult to pick out fine details. But immediately Ywain knew that his quarry could not be human. His employer’s description of red eyes and white hair had piqued his interest. One look at the hairy dull-green skin and brutish facial features finally confirmed his initial suspicions.

Half-orc.

Was it coincidence that he was one of the few people within a hundred leagues who could tell the difference? Probably not, Ywain realised, as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. If his employer knew about his career as a knight, then good coin said that the suited man knew about his upbringing in Berevar as well.

A fierce grin sculpted his features, caught between fury at the deception and triumph at having uncovered it. So be it.

Unsurprisingly for one who had eluded so long a hunt, the half-orc did not barrel through the clearing like a blind ox. Hugging the trees on the opposite side, he sniffed the bloodstained wind and sent his dark gaze scouting in every direction.

So be it, Ywain repeated as he sighted down the stock of the crossbow. He had to be quick and violent, lest he end up like Gregor, like Ivan, like Assif. Once the quarrel flew, there would be no mercy.

He waited until his quarry stood opposite him, still skimming the edges of the open ground in wary caution. He waited a heartbeat longer until the dark eyes no longer looked in his direction.

Then he darted out from cover, accelerating to full speed. His broadsword glinted in the dim light as he brought it a ready position across his body, catching the half-orc’s attention.

In that same moment, Ywain pulled the trigger.

[Green is the new black.]

Something was wrong.

Orun slid to a stop and sniffed the air, listening. His pounding pulse urged him to move, but a deeper instinct rooted his feet firmly in place. Silence fell over the forest, but not the peaceful quiet of solitude or rest. No, silence gripped the air, cold and deathly like a crypt. A hunter's silence.

He felt movement before he heard it. First, an itch crept between his eyes. His ears pricked at the swish of cloth and light footsteps. A whisper within a whisper; a glint of metal in moonlight. The half-Orc spun about with his shield to the thwak of a crossbow. The bolt struck his open right side, piercing leather armor and drawing blood. It didn't sink deep, but it stung. He growled and pulled the arrow out. That was his first mistake.

His foe sprang from the shadows, light and lean, sword flashing. Orun staggered to the left, taking a gash across his right arm. That would have impaled me. He struck out with his shield, but found only empty air. His attacker rolled aside and then lunged at him, clearly aiming to end the fight before the half-Orc could draw his axe. Orun was ready this time. He knocked the thrust aside with his shield and stepped forward, punching his opponent in the face. The force of the blow sent the man sprawling to the ground.

Orun drew his axe and spat. "Don't you know that monsters haunt these woods?" His foe only furrowed his brow. This man was also human, but lithe and lean and clearly more polished and professional than the others.

The human regained his feet, wiping the blood from his lip, and the two faced each other as equals for the first time. The fight turned eerily quiet then, punctuated only by grunts, muffled footfalls, and the hiss of steel. Fire battled earth as Orun stood firm against his foe's chaotic assault. The man's sword flickered through the air like a lick of flame. Its confounding pattern threatened to overwhelm the half-Orc's defense, but Orun was no novice to be confused by fancy tricks.

Wood shavings flew as the sword struck his battered shield. Orun circled, vigilantly warding off incoming attacks. He struck back repeatedly with his axe, but his opponent moved too quickly, always leaving only empty air for the half-Orc's iron. "Nodal flakem," Orun snarled, slipping into Orcish. Stop dancing! An annoyed grunt escaped his throat. Even so, he could sense equal frustration in his foe; the sturdy shield checked the man's assault, despite his sword's superior range and speed.

Then, just as the fight fell into a steady tempo, the human suddenly shifted position. He switched his stance, leading with his left foot and unarmed left hand, holding his sword closer to the ground in the other hand. Orun lowered his guard as his foe tested with a series of quick jabs at the half-Orc's legs. His motions became fluid, no longer rapid and sporadic like fire, but flowing like water. What are you up to?

His foe's feet were the first tell, spreading further apart ever so slightly. Next came the moment of stillness, the calm before a storm. When the human advanced again, Orun knew something was off. He quickly pulled his axe close to his chest and adjusted his grip, holding the weapon tight just below its head. His opponent surged into motion and lunged forward. Orun raised his shield to block, but the first attack was a faint. In the blink of an eye, the human switched sword hands, pivoting instantly to strike the half-Orc's unshielded right side. That was his first mistake.

Orun wheeled around and stepped back, swiping out with his axe to knock aside his opponent's sword. The man recovered quickly, but so did Orun. With sickening force, he bashed his attacker, his shield striking flesh like a battering ram. The might of the blow hurled his foe to the ground.

"Jutan flauk gijakob snagamarrim lat oflhai!" the half-Orc growled, his breath freezing in the Salvic air. He took a step forward, repeating the words in Salvic. "I've watered the dirt with the blood of slavers stronger and fiercer than you."

[Aegis of Espiridion]

“Mirdautas vras, arataus,” he snarled back in pure instinct. It is a good day to kill, brigand.

The half-orc glared at him from across the clearing, stalled and silenced by the unexpected Orcish phrase. Ywain wiped the blood from his broken lip with the back of his gloved hand, already feeling the skin begin to bruise. The leather chafed against the cut, but the pain gave him focus. He staggered back to his feet, his mind struggling to form cohesive sentences.

“Nobody... accuses me of slaving... and doesn’t regret it.”

He fought back dizzy nausea, gritting his teeth as the world spun inside his head. How he hated shield fighters, with a passion! How dare they hide behind their walls, letting the inanimate and unfeeling take the brunt of their opponent’s wrath! How dare they turn defence into offence just by using their shield as a makeshift club! But Knight-Captain Fionan had been the best user of a shield in Rousay, and they had often sparred against one another. He knew how to fight one.

He exhaled, slow and steady, focusing his mind on the part of the world that didn’t spin. The half-orc’s eyes narrowed as Ywain shifted stance again, this time to a hanging guard. Somehow it felt like cheating to resort to the sword artes of his days as a knight, but he had already failed to deliver the killing blow in ambush. He dared not deny that this Orun had skill, and that it would take everything in his repertoire to best his foe.

The silence had only just settled when his sword sliced through empty air. The half-orc instinctively ducked a shoulder as an unseen force pummelled past and smashed into the tree behind him. Wood splintered and branches trembled, dumping heavy loads of snow onto the ground. Puffs of icy dust obscured the view.

Through the mist came the tip of Ywain’s sword, lithe limbs extended behind it in an athletic lunge. Again the half-orc’s instincts and experience saved him. Turning his duck into a backwards stagger, the thrust of fine steel impaled the air where his throat had just been. Orun lashed out again with his shield in blind riposte, this time making glancing contact with the mercenary’s side. A harsh ooof echoed through the night as the air left Ywain’s lungs.

Orun raised his axe for the killing blow. But the treacherous snow robbed him of his footing at the apex of his swing. In the instant it took him to regain his balance, Ywain darted back out of reach. Once again the two combatants faced each other across the open clearing. A sudden burst of howling gale masking the man’s exertions as he fingered his ribs. The half-orc muttered descriptively crude Orcish curses as he pulled free of the drift.

Ywain had just about twisted his body in time to divert the force of the shield blow. He gave quick thanks that none of his ribs seemed to have broken. But unlike him the half-orc breathed none the worse for the wear. The trickle of viscous blood from the gash on his muscle-bound arm had stemmed already. The rogue managed a wry scowl, a late question of his decision to pursue the bounty alone.

“I can see why Vorgruk and Stokes want you dead rather than brought in alive,” he spoke, his voice thunderous and earthy as it sang through the deserted forest. “I know of bull aurochs that come to paddock with less trouble than you.”

Orun snorted in derision, spitting his words from the depths of his thick neck. “Yes, your keepers don’t take slaves that can fight back.”

Ywain responded by settling into a loose defensive stance once more. He didn’t like relying too much on his artes, but the half-orc left him no other choice. He began to circle his opponent with measured steps, always away from the meddlesome shield. His blade danced between his hands, its flight followed by Orun’s blood-red eyes, keeping the half-orc guessing.

“Let’s just make this clear before we go any further. I’m not a kept man, just a hired one. And I certainly don’t take slaves.”

Orun wrestled his thick forehead into a frown, sensing Ywain’s earnestness. The man did not react in the same way as the others he had fought. It felt wrong, almost as if…

“You truly don't know? Are you a fool?”

The frown infected Ywain’s face as well, the signal for both combatants to pause. As one they considered the pieces of the puzzle that they already knew and their options given the current circumstances. At length, the young man lowered the tip of his blade.

“Speak your piece, Orun Half-Orc.”

You had better not be playing me.

[Green is the new black.]

A trick?

Orun mirrored the human by lowering his own weapon, but kept his shield raised and his eyes sharp. Thoughts swirled into a chaotic cloud in his mind. Who was this man? What did he know? Friend or foe? His heartbeat slowed in the battle's lull and the mountain chill instantly gripped him, making his limbs feel heavy and stiff. His desire to fight faded. His foe was faster and needed only one lucky hit to end Orun's life. A wise warrior knew when to talk, so he talked.

"Your employers lied to you," he said simply. "The Vorgruk-Stokes trading company has been raiding the northern roads for years, even more during the war. Capturing travelers, binding them in chains, and shipping them off to foreign slave markets. I found their hideout in Archen, an old building filled with dozens of men, women, children, all bound in chains. I freed the slaves and killed everyone else. Since then, I have wandered these wilds, seeking out and killing any slaver I could find. That is why they want me dead, not because of simple banditry."

Silence fell between them, broken only by the creaking of trees. Even in the low light, Orun could see confusion and doubt infect the human's face. How could this man have come so far without knowing the nature of his employers? Had Vorgruk-Stokes hidden their slaving operations that carefully? No wonder they had pursued Orun so relentlessly.

"That's quite a story," the human said at last. "They said you were attacking caravans filled with food and supplies. You say slavers. It's a lot to accept without proof."

Orun snarled. "Proof? A lone Orc raiding food caravans? For what, fun? And then the trading company hires bands of mercenaries to hunt down one 'bandit'?" He spat out the last word like bile. "All that and you're asking for proof from me?" A pause. He lowered his shield and hung his axe on his belt. "Come. I will bring you to your proof. I doubt he has frozen to death or crawled back to Archen yet."

[Aegis of Espiridion]

Ivan, Ywain realised in a heartbeat. The big man had made little effort to hide his allegiance to Vorgruk-Stokes. So he might still be alive. Part of his mind now looked back in guilt at his decision to pursue the bounty without checking on his comrades. The rest still churned over Orun’s accusations.

He’d expected, of course, that his suitor had not told him the full story. As Orun had defended himself, lone brigands did not target caravans carrying supplies to isolated villages. In his experience, individual highwaymen ambushed noble carriages and stole gold and jewellery to fence in a nearby town. Perhaps the ‘businessman’ had assumed that Ywain would fail to notice the hole in his tale. It had only piqued his suspicions on the journey north.

He hadn’t expected to uncover organised slave-trading, though.

Levying such accusations against the most powerful and most respectable trading house in Salvar would invite only ridicule and scorn. But spoken loud enough and often enough, the same trading house would find it more than annoying, perhaps even bad for business. Ywain could even understand why Vorgruk and Stokes wanted the man silenced, to the point where they sent out teams of mercenaries to do the job.

Their measures did border on the extreme, though, especially for a voice that had yet to grow so loud. Taken in conjunction with Orun’s claim, it almost implied that they had something to hide. And the suited man had emphasised dead rather than alive, which meant that the company found it too risky to make an example of him. Dead men, after all, told no tales…

“Very well,” Ywain said when the silence had hung for long enough and no further insight emerged from the thoughts churning through his mind. Another flurry of snowflakes danced through the clearing, freezing the acidic adrenaline in his limbs. “Let’s see what your proof has to say.”

He could always take Orun’s head afterwards, should the half-orc’s proof fail to materialise. The bounty remained an attractive incentive. Though Ywain had interest in neither land nor luxury nor safe passage to another realm, a certain orphanage in Rousay could live handsomely off the donation for years.

Ywain did not think of himself as a particularly intelligent man. Such a man would have doubtless found the answers to his questions before leaving Archen. But he did know his limits, and following the trail would provide him with the requisite information. First, Orun. Now, Ivan.

Keeping his eyes on Orun, Ywain reached down to scavenge the crossbow from where he had tossed it aside. Crisp snow pierced his fingerless leather gloves, freezing the skin at the tips of his digits. Red flowers blossoming on its surface where his bloodied lip dripped in slow merciless time. He circled back to retrieve his scabbard as well, replacing his sword in the fur-lined metal before slinging it over his shoulder by the worn leather strap. Only then did he signal his readiness to leave.

Barren treetops bore a fresh burden of white, their trunks coated towards the north wind. Large fluffy flakes settled upon his woollen travel cloak and onto the ground at his feet, mingling in his long dark hair and leaping into his eyes. Moonlight glinted in the uneasy howl of the wind. Ywain followed Orun’s powerful build as it forged a path back to his camp.

The truth they sought lay groaning in the cold mud nearby, unable to stand on a crushed knee. A bedraggled trail of upturned rock and snapped twig spoke of his desperate effort to reach the supplies they had left in the valley bellow. Ivan’s flinty grey eyes, flecked with agate green, lit up when Ywain stepped from the trees. They fell again into dark anger at the sight of the hulking half-orc that followed.

“I suppose there’s a good reason why you’re standing without your sword at his neck,” the big man growled through grit teeth.

“Questions, and answers, Ivan.” Ywain shrugged, though his pupils reflected sympathy and pity. This far from civilisation, with neither horse nor sledge, Ivan was a dead man no matter how the dice rolled. “In particular, questions that I need answered, and answers that you can give me. I’d rather not Orun break your other leg. In fact, I’m sorry things had to come to this at all. But I’m well aware where your loyalties lie. So let’s make things easy now. Tell me what you know about Vorgruk-Stokes, and in particular, their slavery operation.”

[Green is the new black.]

The man named Ivan hesitated too long before answering. He looked past the half-Orc and directly his former comrade. The gears of deception turned behind the injured man's shifting eyes. A simple denial would never do; he needed a story. Orun had a mind to cut out his tongue right then, but he wanted to hear what bold lie the slaver would concoct.

"Slavery?" Ivan gave a calculated pause and sighed for effect; Orun sighed in disgust. "There's no sense in hiding it from you, my friend. There are slavers on the roads, but not from Vorgruk-Stokes. Not anymore, anyway. Several of our agents went rogue and took to banditry and kidnapping, selling off captives as slaves. We've been tracking them down, but didn't want it getting out that some of our men turned to slaving. But of course..." Ivan turned to Orun, another calculated move. "You know that already, don't you, Orc. How long has it been since you left our service to terrorize the roads?"

Orun's fist crashed into Ivan's jaw with a wet crack, sending the big man's head snapping back. The blow hadn't come from anger, as the half-Orc showed only annoyed impatience.

"A clever tale, but now you will give us the truth," said Orun, his voice as cold and dead as a winter's night. "Or I will pluck out your eyes and make you crawl through the snow to find them."

"How civilized." Ivan's voice quavered. "Is that how it will be? You torture me for some... some confession? Torture me until I admit to whatever you want?" He turned pleading eyes back toward Ywain. "Is that what you want? What will it prove?" This time, Orun kicked the slaver hard in the chest, sending him rolling through the mud and snow. He was the tired of the charade.

"I need no confession from you, slaver," the half-Orc spat, as he stepped closer and drew his knife from his boot. "You will give me information. Your masters are bringing their captives somewhere in this region to hold them. Where is it?"

"Why do you want--" Ivan began to speak, but then stopped himself and cursed under his breath.

"No more denials, then? Good. I want to know because I'm going to burn it to the ground. Now talk, or I will carve the answers out of your flesh." Orun brandished his knife, but the slaver remained stubbornly silent. "Very well." The half-Orc pressed the knife's blade against the slaver's hairy jaw until he drew blood, and then traced a red line up his face toward his eye. The big man growled and clenched his teeth against the pain. Orun had nothing but time.

Finally, Ywain spoke up. "Wait. It doesn't need to be this way." He stepped forward as Orun ceased his grisly work. "Ivan, I don't know how involved you were, but we traveled together. I'd rather not see you carved up over this, but you need to give us another way. Help me and I can help you."

Silence hung between them for a long moment. Orun idly twirled his knife between his fingers, eyeing the slaver with no small amount of malice. Ivan's face shifted between defiance, anger, and fear. Ywain looked on with quiet pity. Orun wanted to slap the sell-sword; that sympathy would only get him killed one day.

"I'm just a... problem solver," said Ivan at last, his once mighty voice reduced to a hoarse whisper. "I don't care what the Company does. They keep paying me, and I keep making sure nothing gets in the way. I'm not a slaver. I just protect their investments."

"You help them keep free men in chains," the half-Orc growled. "Onreinnal. You are dirt."

"I'm not proud of it! A man needs to eat. He needs shelter." Ale, women.

"The slaves, Ivan," said Ywain, his voice softer. "Where are they being kept? Tell us and I'll leave the medical supplies for you. From there, it's up to fate."

Ivan sighed roughly. "All right. You win, you traitor. We're keeping them in a series of caves in the hills to the east."

"The Whispering Hills?" Orun asked.

The Company man hesitated. "Yes. Do you know them?"

"I know of them."

"Thank you, Ivan," said Ywain. "You know where we left our packs. They're still there. You should be able to make it if you take it slowly. Good luck, and I'm sorry." As Ywain walked away, the half-Orc crouched again next to Ivan, gripped his knife, and cut the slaver's throat without a word. He stood, coldly meeting the brief flicker of surprise across his new companion's face.

"Come with me or don't," said Orun. "But leave your bleeding heart behind."

[Aegis of Espiridion]

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Ywain returned, his voice flat. “If it makes you feel better to slit his throat rather than leave him to winter’s mercy, then don’t count on me to stop you. I’m more concerned about whether we can trust his words at face value.”

Dark blood trickled down the sliver of gleaming steel, hissing with heatas it fell to the icy ground. Orun’s beady red eyes bore like daggers into Ywain’s unflinching stony grey. Doubtless the half-orc appraised for any further signs of what he saw as weakness. A handful of tense breaths passed before he grunted, the “we’ll see about that” left unsaid and poised like a naked blade over Ywain’s neck. His attention turned to wiping his knife clean.

Ywain studied the half-orc for a moment longer before looking away himself. He prided himself on his ability to tell fact from fiction, an ability that had served him well in Rousay and that had come to his aid once again today. Orun, for all his willingness to resort to violence, spoke truth about Vorgruk-Stokes and their association with the slave trade. Ivan, for all his calculated bluster, had told a poor set of lies. All the clues that Ywain had picked up since Archen slotted into place when confronted with the Company man’s admission. But Orun’s aggressive and ruthless tendencies would lead them straight into danger if not checked. The mercenary rogue made a mental note of his misgivings.

Carefully he stepped over to where Ivan’s body lay upon the hard-packed earth, still warm. Green-flecked pupils stared into the cloudy night, blank and uncomprehending. Carefully he unsheathed the short dirk that he kept tucked into his belt at his back, shorter and sharper than the knife that had ended the big man’s life. Carefully he reached down and sliced away a lock of blond hair, binding it in a crude loop before slipping it away into a breast pocket.

He stood back up to find Orun looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. Ywain shrugged.

“Give me a moment to gather what I need,” he told the half-orc. He didn’t expect a reply as he turned his back. He didn’t get one. Muffled footfalls echoed upon the hard rock as he abandoned Ivan’s motionless corpse in the darkness.

He only had to follow his nose. Gregor’s body had fallen amongst the barren trees, trying to crawl clear of Orun’s assault. Not far from that lay the ugly tracker’s head, eyes wide in shock and pain, proud nose buried in pooled blood. Further from the campfire he found Assif, hacked into a unrecognisable heap, slender hunter’s spear cloven in twain. Ywain fought to suppress the instinctive reaction of his stomach to the heady stench of such brutal savagery. Coursing anger and fear accompanied the realisation that he himself had come that close to ending up lifeless alongside them.

Unlike Ivan, they had not known of Vorgruk-Stokes’s misdeeds. They had not done the evil to deserve their deaths. Simple mercenaries, drawn like him by the coin but ignorant of the political undertones of what they had entered into. They had paid the ultimate price for their short-sighted foolishness, and he had so nearly joined them in their folly. Repeating his ritual, he gathered locks of hair from both dead bodies.

Should he have walked away from the suited man’s proposition back in Archen? Would walking away now solve anything? No. Somehow he had attracted the attention of powers greater than anything he had bargained for when leaving Rousay. He could only salvage the situation by meeting it head-on.

He found himself wondering what Fionan would make of it all. Stalwart and noble, he would no doubt tremble in suppressed rage at the accusations of slavery. He would swear a solemn vow to bring just retribution down upon all who dared to tempt the law in such a manner. Would he trust Orun, though? Would he exonerate the half-orc in self-defence, or would he also swear that Orun would one day face justice for murder?

No matter; his old friend played no part in this particular tale. Here in the wilderness only Ywain and Orun mattered.

Swift shadows swallowed him whole as he retraced his steps, back down the slope to where they had dumped their equipment. An oppressive silence closed in, isolating him from the bloodshed and giving him more time to ponder.

He did not trust Orun, plain and simple. But he needed the vigilante’s help in dealing with the parasites he had just uncovered in the festering heart of Salvar. From his childhood he knew how to deal with an orc. An armour-piercing bolt to the back of Orun’s head would suffice. If the half-orc planned treachery, he would not find Ywain an easy target.

Canvas bag slung over his shoulder and an extra pair of snowshoes carried in his free hand, he began the hike back to the half-orc’s encampment. Only one thought reverberated through his mind, like the echoes of a dead man’s screams.

One way or the other, justice would be served.

[Green is the new black.]

The moon's waning half hung in the sky, a lonely, lidded eye gazing upon the now-silent woods. Dawn would soon break, bringing fresh wind to sweep away the scent of blood. Then, the dead would become just another set of frozen corpses claimed by the Salvic north.

Gently ruffling wings disturbed the silence; a crow landed on a leafless branch.It looked around, orange eyes gleaming in the moonlight. After a deliberate pause, it flew down from the tree, settling upon a very tall, very dead bearded man with slashed throat. It perched upon his hairy chin and let out a single, resonant craw. A strange light flashed in the crow's eyes.

The dead man gasped, air gurgling though his ruined throat. The bird pecked impatiently at the corpse's face. Finally, he wheezed three words, “Coming... Whispering... Hills,” before returning to death. The crow tilted its head, as though considering the words, before burying its hungry beak into the dead man's eyes.

* * * * *

Chapter Two

Sunlight broke over the horizon as Orun and the human walked. Wearing stolen furs and snowshoes, the half-Orc traveled faster and more comfortably than he had in months. Cold wind broke against him instead of cutting through him; snow that once dragged him down crunched harmlessly beneath his feet. They trekked onward until the sun reached its zenith, flooding the frozen wilderness in blinding white light. With barely a word spoken, the pair agreed to stop at the base of a hill to eat and rest. Hard biscuits and dried meat composed their meal, taken from the dead mercenaries' packs. The two sat in silence as they at, Orun leaning against a rock and the man who called himself Ywain perched on a fallen log.

Finally, the human broke the silence. “What's your angle with all this? Why go up against the trading company just to free some slaves? What do you hope to gain?” It felt strange, speaking without the rush of combat heating their blood. Orun had not carried on a real conversation in... months.

After a long, thoughtful pause, he replied, “When a man sees others in need, he should help them.” The half-orc took a bite of dried meat and continued before swallowing. “When he finds others in bondage, he should free them, should he not? Do you never feel called to seek justice for those who cannot do it for themselves?” He snorted. “Or does my Orcish blood...” He searched for the right words. “...preclude me from such acts of humanity?”

“No, not at all.” An inscrutable expression flashed across Ywain's face. He looked about to say something else, but shook his head. “But even the ram knows not to lock horns with something too large to bring down. If you just wanted to help people, there are many more sensible ways to do it.”

Orun grinned, showing rows of yellow teeth. “And yet here you are. What does that say about your good sense?” He laughed, a harsh guttural sound. “To speak truth, I didn't know what a deadly and... persistent enemy I was making until it was too late to turn back.”

“Really, now?” The human raised an eyebrow. “How did you manage that? It sounds like an interesting story.”

“Ha, 'interesting'. You could say that.” And so, Orun told his new companion the tale, of the warehouse full of captives in Archen, the slave trafficking he uncovered, and his time evading and ambushing Company men in the wilderness. When he finally finished, he said, “I can either keep running, or I can turn and fight. I choose to fight.”

“If you had known the sort of enemy you were about to make, would you have still freed those slaves in Archen?” Ywain asked.

Silence hung between them, broken only by whistling wind. “I don't know.”

[Aegis of Espiridion]

The muffled veil lay heavy upon their chests, weighted restraints of law and order that neither Ywain nor Orun could shatter. He dug his steel-clad toes into the snow, fidgeting as always whenever his hands lay idle. The crisp white surface gave way with soft, supple crunches, and he revelled in the act of rebellion. Soon, he knew, he would not be able to resist the urge to dig for suitable rocks to juggle.

Orun reminded him of Fionan in more ways than just his use of a shield in battle. The half-orc possessed a similar forthrightness and sense of justice, if one a lot blunter than his old friend. He wouldn’t win a popularity contest against the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Knight-Captain, but Ywain had never succeeded in that either.

”Didn’t we swear it on our swords when we were children? We bear arms to ensure that others can laugh and smile. Don’t forget that, Ywain, no matter what path you follow… what burden you bear… whether you’re praised or hated…”

Ywain hadn’t forgotten any of it. Fionan had chosen a lawful path, the slow and ponderous revolution of a good man trying to change society from within. He aided the weak and protected the innocent more dutifully and earnestly than any exemplar, but always he did so with one hand tied behind his back.

It took too much time. Time in which more people suffered for the sins of the corrupt and the immoral. Some problems only needed a simple, absolute solution.

In that respect, Ywain felt that he would get along well with the half-orc.

He looked up from the pebble-strewn snow, from the mulchy mess his foot had created beneath the half-buried log upon which he sat. Orun’s steady red stare bore into him, assessing him in suspicion. Ywain met and held the contact.

“But you did,” he said at last, almost too loud now as his voice echoed into the high heavens. “You did set them free, and here you are now. The hunted, the hunter.”

Ywain paused to let his words settle, then grinned. It hurt his jaw to do so, straining the beautiful purple bruise that Orun’s shield had placed there.

“And here I am with you. I suppose you’re not the only one guilty of getting into things with only a vague idea of the consequences. In fact, I’m dumber, given that I feared the worst and didn’t heed the warnings.”

Orun grunted, a coarse sound that might have concealed a guffaw. Ywain took it as a sign that luncheon was over, and swung his lithe frame upwards from his perch.

“In any case, we’re in it together now.”

“Why, you got a plan?” Other than keep walking and get lucky?

Ywain allowed himself another lazy grin.

“Amal shufar, at rrug,” he quipped into the biting wind, drawing a disgusted glance from the half-orc. Where there's a whip, there's a way.


***

Sheltering forest once again gave way to rolling hills. The omnipresent wind waxed and waned like a swift-changing tide. Even hidden beneath bowed hoods, they found no escape from the dazzling sun that bleached every step of their path. The light reflected upon the unblemished snow beneath their feet, always finding the shortest path to searing their eyes. When at last looming twilight provided sore-needed respite, Ywain’s head throbbed from cold and from exhaustion.

The orc’s bulk and constitution made him far better suited to ploughing through the rugged terrain than the lean human. A lesser man might not have kept up with Orun’s pace. Layers of heavy fur hung from his muscled torso as he gauged his bearings against the reddening horizon. Eyes set deep in the crags of his face, his silhouette upon the latest crest looked a pillar of strength and tenacity against the worst that Skavia could throw against him.

Funny then, that Ywain first spotted the anomaly in the next basin, perhaps half a league distant.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. A rock.” Orun grimaced in the direction of Ywain’s outstretched finger, dismissive snort materialising before him in a plume of frozen steam. The wind blew it into Ywain’s face, and the human reeled from the rich stench of half-digested meat. “A log, lying in the snow, casting a shadow because the sun’s setting.”

“Logs don’t move,” Ywain pointed out, pulling furs around his body in wary caution as the wind picked up once more. "And they don't wear blue scarves."

“A trap, then. They’ve done that before.”

The mercenary’s eyes swept his surroundings, running from ridge to ridge across snow stained by crimson ember. Emptiness and loneliness greeted him in turn. No other living thing could be dumb enough to risk travel in this environment. Ambush seemed unlikely, and the doubtful tone of Orun’s voice told him that the half-orc had reached the same conclusion.

He knew that any plan he might suggest only spelt trouble. If they descended into the basin they would lose the light that much quicker, and what scant warmth it provided along with it. They would have to abandon any thought of reaching the next sheltering copse before nightfall, though they might seek protection in the glacial debris scattered at the valley bottom. The omnipresent spectre of death from exposure loomed over their heads, a threat very constant and very real.

“So we’ll be careful. Whoever that is might need our help.”

“Whoever that is travelling alone, all the way out here…” Orun grumbled in dark humour. “Fine then. On your head be it.”

“Duly noted.”

Ywain ignored the rampant howling in his ear, and the voice that kept telling him how many ways this could go wrong. His snowshoes began to pick out a cautious descent.

[Green is the new black.]

This is stupid.

As man and orc descended, the sun vanished, as though pushed from the sky by the sudden wind. Freezing gusts formed a vortex in the great bowl of frozen earth, battering them without mercy. Orun could picture the crows descending upon their frozen corpses come dawn. Yet, as they neared the mysterious form sprawled out in the drifting snow, he could no longer distance himself. This was no longer a random, blurred shape, but a person. And when a man sees another man in need, he should help him.

Orun, with his longer stride, reached the basin's bottom first. He rolled the unfortunate traveler over and discovered that it was a woman. Straight black hair framed a pale, narrow face almost blue from the cold. How did she get here by herself? Ywain approached as the half-Orc knelt beside her unmoving form.

“Is she...?” The human left the half-finished question dangling like a loose thread.

“She still lives,” he replied with a blink of surprise as frozen breath escaped her lips. Clothed in rags and a brown threadbare cloak, she would never have survived long in such the harsh Salvic winter. Where did she come from and what was she doing out here? “But she won't remain so for long out here. We must find shelter.” He pulled off a layer of furs and wrapped the small, unconscious woman in them before scooping her up. “You made us come here, human. Now where do we go?”

“I'm thinking!” Ywain snapped, struggling to keep hold of his map as he studied it in the fading twilight.

“Think quickly, or this was for nothing.”

The woman stirred in his arms, speaking strained words. “Must find... Chzovel's Folly...” She fell silent.

“'Chzovel's Folly?' What is she talking about?”

“It sounds like the name of an old fort,” replied the human. “The ancient Salvarians left forts all over this region, leftovers from some war or another.” He traced a finger across the crinkled parchment, gripping it tightly against the wind with his other hand. “A keep with that name is marked on the map.”

Orun looked down at the woman and then scanned the edges of the basin. “Perhaps she was looking for it before the elements overcame her.”

Ywain nodded. “It's a long shot; these maps are old and copied from even older ones. The fort might not be there at all, anymore.”

“She thought it did. Unless you have a better plan.”

“Not as of now, no. Based on our previous heading, we should find it not far to the north. Come on!”

* * * * *

Orun lost track of time. Even after they escaped the basin, icy wind battered him relentlessly. With a vital layer of fur now warming their rescued charge, the cold pierced him like needles, numbing his body and mind until only the urge to push forward remained in his thoughts. The lost woman grew heavy in his arms as fatigue and cold finally threatened to overwhelm him. Twice, Twain had offered to take her and both times Orun declined. He trusted his own endurance and determination more than any human's.

They nearly tripped over the fort. Orun's foot struck a pile of old masonry buried in snow and nearly tumbled, reacting fast enough to simply go down to one knee. Standing up, he peered forward through the dark and swirling snow. A jagged, stout silhouette loomed before them like some great sleeping beast. A tower rose above the ruins, a bastion against the elements. Orc and human exchanged a look and nodded, rushing for shelter.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

The tower, an ugly square construct built neither to please nor to last, at least provided some small semblance of shelter. The three stragglers cowered in its shadowy lee from the icy wind and the driving snow. Through numb lips and frozen minds they prayed that the storm would not bring the structure tumbling down upon their heads. So thick did the curtain of whiteout blanket the nightscape, that Ywain dared not entertain thoughts of gathering wood for a fire. He huddled close to the other two dark forms against what solidity the standing walls could provide, conserving heat and energy.

As his body shut down in the face of misery and cold, he fought to keep his mind in action. Baleful black gaze glittered from the depths of his hooded furs.

Better to die with eyes wide open, he remembered from his youth. Would that I die awake than asleep.

The name Chzovel meant nothing to him. He had no idea why anybody might consider this particular location his Folly. He could walk from one end of the frontier fort to the other in a matter of breaths, unlike the border castles of the Marcher boyars further south. In its prime, it might have housed a garrison of twenty. In times of peace they would have patrolled the surrounding tundra and kept an eye out for raiders. In war they would have manned a watch beacon and scattered at the first sight of an invading horde. Ywain did not envy them their duties: cold, desolate, lonely, and at the mercy of wrathful blizzards such as the one that pinned them now.

Piece by piece, he picked out details of their lives through the howling veil. The masonry that Orun had almost lost his footing to: remnant crenellations from the gatehouse ramparts tossed from the wall like an unwanted toy. The dilapidated shadows opposite: living quarters shared between man and horse for warmth and protection. The battered buildings on the far side of the compound: chapel and storehouse and perhaps even a small smithy. An icy well in the centre of the courtyard: unreliable at best and long since scoured away.

Cold, desolate, and lonely. Chzovel’s Folly indeed.

Orun stirred from fitful half-slumber, a steamy snort signalling his return to the realm of the corporeal. With a start Ywain realised that he must have contemplated his surroundings for hours on end. The blizzard had at last lessened its fury, leaving behind a silence that deafened him as soon as he noticed it. He could just about make out bulbous outlines in the obese clouds that roiled overhead.

Beady red eyes flared into life beneath rugged brow. For a frantic moment Ywain found himself staring at the unbridled bestial ferocity caged within. Then the feral look dissipated and the half-orc grunted noncommittal acknowledgement.

“We’re alive,” he said in dry irony, as if the mere fact of their survival ranked among the wonders of the world. Picking ice from his lashes with one long claw-like nail, he stretched cramped muscles to the accompaniment of a cacophony of pops.

“Mostly,” Ywain gave his response, matching the half-orc in wry humour.

As one their eyes travelled to the woman who lay between them, silent and still but not a snowbound corpse. The faintest of rises and falls of her chest marked the life flowing through her veins. Her lips had frozen almost as deep a blue as the frost-tainted scarf around her neck. Then they exchanged another set of glances, the same unanswered questions floating through their respective minds. Who was this woman? How had she come to wander these remote wastelands, dressed in attire that should have killed her in minutes? And how had she known of Chzovel’s Folly?

“Well, one thing’s for certain.” Ywain groaned as he urged fresh blood into stiff muscles, pushing to the back of his mind all the aches and pains he had acquired keeping pace with Orun the day before. He rose in weary pleasure to his feet, stifling a grimace as he took a step towards the stores. With any luck, he could still salvage some of the wood stocked there.

“I think we need to risk a fire.”

[Green is the new black.]

Soon a healthy fire burned, spreading warmth and flickering shadows throughout the ruined tower. Black smoke drifted lazily though a large hole in the ceiling; for once, Orun was glad for the cloudy sky. Bit by bit, the leaden cold fled from his joints and feeling returned to his fingers and toes. The exhaustion remained, an old friend so often by his side these recent months.

Orun and the human sat quietly for a long while, as was fast becoming their routine. The wind finally calmed, leaving only the crackling fire filling silence. He rummaged through their remaining supplies, mentally rationing their remaining food to account for a third mouth to feed. They could hold out for a week, unless they foraged or hunted.

He sighed and rubbed the wide bridge of his nose. Had it been wise to risk saving the woman? They had enough to worry about without someone else to look after. Then again, since when did he make a habit of wisdom? She should tell an interesting tale, if nothing else. She will owe us that much, after what we went through, he thought. Women do not just appear in snow storms for no reason.

The ragged survivor woke with a start, coughing and shivering. Ywain stood up, but Orun got to her first. She opened her eyes and gasped, scrambling away from the green, red-eyed beast looming over her. He chuckled; she made him think of a frightened fawn. Ywain shot him a chiding glance and seemed about to say something, but sighed and shook his head instead.

“Please,” the woman whimpered, pressing her back against the cold stone wall. She clutched the fur cloak to her chest. “Don't hurt me.”

Orun grunted. “It would make little sense to kill you after saving your life.”

Ywain appeared beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Being stuck in the middle of nowhere with two strange men, I am sure she fears more than death.” He turned the woman, stepping toward her and crouching. He spoke in the soft, calm voice of one trying to sooth a frightened horse. “You are safe with us. No harm will come to you, or to your virtue.”

Orun snorted. “She's too skinny for my liking, anyway.” Did the human truly think that a few sweet words would make her take him for a noble knight from some story? Why bother setting her mind at ease, anyway? She would learn the cold, cruel truth of life eventually. Besides, they still wanted to extract at least some useful information from her, and frightened tongues flapped more freely.

“Forgive me,” she said, finding her voice. She looked at Ywain, avoiding Orun's eyes at all costs. “You just startled me. I didn't expect to stumble upon a man and an orc out here.” She chewed her lower lip and glanced back and forth between her two rescuers. “What are your names?” she asked at last. “I am Vera.”

“My name is Ywain, and this is Orun.”

“Orun and Ywain,” Vera echoed, as though deciding how the names felt on her tongue. She finally looked at Orun, and then back at the human, examining them both. Her eyes settled on Ywain's face, where the firelight revealed the dark bruise Orun's shield had given him. "What happened to your face? I hope you didn't get hurt saving me!"

Orun snorted, but Ywain replied, "No, my friend here and I had a misunderstanding yesterday."

"Does that happen often?"

The human shot Orun a glance. "That remains to be seen."

The half-orc crossed his arms. You wouldn't see it coming.

“Where am I?" She scooted closer to the fire, putting Ywain between her and Orun. How did I get here?”

“This is an old fort, Chzovel's Folley,” Ywain answered. “We found you in the storm. You mentioned this place before falling unconscious, so we brought you here.”

“I do not remember much about last night.” She no longer sounded afraid, but she remained tense; her voice retained a nervous edge. “But thank you. For rescuing me from the storm.”

Orun spoke up. “How did you know about this place?”

She flinched at his voice. “I... I saw it on a map. I hoped to find it and hide for a while.”

“Hide from who?” asked Ywain. “Were you captured by the slavers?”

She bit her lower lip and hesitated. “How do you know about the slavers?” Orun cut off Ywain’s reply.

“Not important.” The half-orc settled his unflinching gaze upon her. “Do you know where to find them?” Vera did not answer immediately, instead staring at her feet, lost in her own thoughts. His companion opened his mouth, but Orun silenced him with a look.

At last, she said, “There was a hidden cave east of here, where they held captives before moving them to their final destination. I was held there with a dozen others for three nights before I slipped my bonds and ran.”

“Would you be able to find it again?” Ywain asked, his voice touched by eagerness. “Could you lead us there?”

“Yes but... I don’t... they...”

“You will bring us there,” said Orun, his voice a mountain, unyielding and stern. “That is the price of the favor we paid you, and for our continued aid.” He narrowed his wild red eyes. “Unless you would prefer to brave the wilderness alone, dressed in the same rags we found you in. You may live long enough to feed a pack of wolves.”

Ywain shook his head reproachfully. “Orun, this is not necessary.”

The half-orc held up his hand, once again silencing his human companion. “In these lands, survival is never handed to you. You must earn it.” His eyes never left Vera. “Choose.” She finally looked up and met his gaze; a sudden strength flashed in her eyes, but vanished just as quickly.

“Fine.”

He had known that she would relent, though not so easily. He nodded in the same way a judge slams his gavel.

“We move at dawn.”

* * * * *

“We are nearly there. It is just beyond these trees.” Vera pointed to a small pine grove at the base of a rocky hill. The sun hung high and bright in the sky, giving only the illusion of warmth. The trio hiked without rest from first light, taking advantage of clear skies and calm winds to cover considerable distance. The rest and food did Vera good, for she managed to keep pace with the two men.

They ventured through the pines and into a small clearing. There, they found a cave leading deep beneath the hill. The clearing showed signs of recent activity. Footprints and hooveprints had stirred up the snow and dirt into a mess of icy mud. The air still smelled of blood and piss and rot. Vera pointed out the horse that had died in the journey – its decaying body slumped beside the entrance, covered in flies and crows.

“It seems we’ve missed them,” said Ywain, stating the obvious.

Orun grunted. “They will return. We might find some clues inside.”

Vera eyed the cave mouth nervously. “I will wait out here, if you don’t mind.”

Ywain nodded. “You did your part, Vera. Once we find what we’re after, we will see you safely to the nearest town.”

“Thank you.”

Without another word, Orun and the human ventured into the darkness.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

“They call these the Whispering Hills.”

The narrow passage tore at the half-orc’s thick hide, though Ywain had no problem slipping through. He fought to protect his torch as he edged forwards, long dark hair streaming behind him like a pennant. Moments later he realised that he had no real need to. Wan sunlight, filtering down from a gap in the rocks overhead, rendered the artificial light unnecessary. An occasional flurry of snow fell through to join the tired drifts on the stony floor.

“Does this dratted wind have anything to do with it?”

“Probably,” Ywain responded with amiable care. Hand on hip, he peered past the rocks protecting their entrance. Other such cave-mouths dotted the walls; to whence they led only the Thaynes knew. The constant murmur of the tunnels made it difficult to concentrate. Though the cave spared them the worst of winter’s chill, his nose still ran wet with every breath. “Nobody here.”

“Nobody?” Orun growled in restrained irritation, snuffling like some shaggy beast of burden.

“That I can see,” Ywain clarified. He knew better than to underestimate the half-orc’s senses, or to value his own eyes over his companion’s. He stepped back to allow Orun a chance to look around.

The half-orc spurned it, stalking into the open with a raised shield the only concession to danger. Ywain shrugged to himself, then followed. It only took Orun the briefest of moments to analyse his surroundings.

“There,” the half-orc pointed, to a patch of the short and hardy grass that stubbled the tundra whenever the snows receded. Stunted and brittle, Ywain realised, signs that something had recently slept on it. “And there.”

This time his outstretched finger, tipped with grimy ragged nail, indicated the ground at his feet. What Ywain had taken to be a tuft of the dried grass, instead he realised to be half a length of frayed rope. He reached down to turn it over in his fingers, noting the dark stains that had sunk into the woven hemp. Blood.

“Well, it doesn’t look like she was lying about what they were doing here.”

Orun spat a thick gobbet into the lee of the wind. “Doesn’t help. There aren’t any of them…”

He stiffened, a wary gleam suffusing his coarse features. Stubby ears prickled, nostrils flaring as they tasted the air yet again. Together in concert, they found what they sought.

Yellowed tusks bared in a vicious grin.

“Scratch that. Here they come.”

The first of the slavers sauntered in from the right, a shadowy form coalescing at length amongst the wan sunbeams. His loose surcoat bore the distinctive intertwined arms of Vorgruk and Stokes, worn over layers of thick boiled leather. Ancient scars criss-crossed his hairless pate, trophies of a brutal and violent life. Slinging a tapered cudgel over one broad shoulder, he smirked when he saw them waiting for him.

“Well, well, well,” Ywain muttered beneath his breath. “The Company’s dogs this time, not some unfortunate cat’s paws.”

“Meat,” Orun declared. “Blood and bones for my axe.”

A second, younger man appeared behind the first, holding a polehammer at half-haft. A woman with pale hair shorn short and a pair of daggers gripped tight in tattooed hands followed him. Both also wore the Company’s surcoat over travelworn leather. Muted scuffles, reverberating from the other tunnels over the whistling wind, warned them of the imminent arrival of further reinforcements. None were likely to take their side in a confrontation.

Then a fourth man appeared from ahead, shouldering past the nervous tick in the young man’s cheek and the manic glimmer upon the woman’s lips. His features registered in Ywain’s sight, younger than Baldie and better looking than Nervous. The tight ponytail held back his long dirty brown hair, exposing his fine-boned cruelty for all to see. Handsome, in the same way that a gryphon was handsome just before it clawed out a man’s throat, the sight of the man curdled Ywain’s blood.

Gaunt fingers grasped like claws through a matted river of night. Vera’s pinched face contorted in agony as her captor dragged her into the light for all to see.

“I’m sorry,” she managed through gasps of pain. “I’m sorry.”

Cruel licked his lips. Baldie and Tattoo laughed. Orun grinned back, hungry for battle.

Ywain set his face in stone.

“We’ll come without trouble,” he called in resignation, words echoing in hollow discord upon the frigid rocks. He lowered his torch in appeasement, causing wild shadows to dance in the labyrinthine nooks and crannies. Their eyes never wavered.

Orun snapped to attention like an angry troll. The fury radiating from his fur-clad bulk might have melted the snowdrifts piled high behind him. Did Ywain imagine the flicker of understanding beneath the half-orc’s brutish grimace? He hoped not.

“We fight!” he roared, red glare catching the human flush in the face. For a moment Ywain thought he knew what it felt to cower beneath an orc’s battle lust. Thankfully, Orun neither raised his axe in challenge or bowled him down through the momentous power of his charge. “Forget the woman. She allowed herself to get caught, let winter claim her bones. I would rather go down with an axe in my hands than…”

“Than live?” Ywain asked beneath his breath, almost too gentle for the slavers to hear. “Than live to fight another day? Than live to win another day?”

“COWARD!”

Something surged from deep within Orun’s eyes, and Ywain wondered if he had pushed the half-orc too far. Then, with great effort only witnessed by Ywain, the red-eyed greenskin regained equilibrium. With one last glare at Vera’s silent wide-eyed pleas, he spat a globule of disdain and lowered his weapons.

They didn’t bother to struggle when the net flew over them. Even when Baldie stripped them out of arms and armour, even when Cruel leaned close to whisper hoarsely in their ears, they endured in humiliated disgrace.

“You’re headed to Bitterwood Watch, boys,” the latter snarled, baring pearly white teeth filed to a sharpened point. “They’ve got use for bruisers like you… so long as that meat stays on your bones, that is!”

One after another the slavers dragged them bound and gagged from the cavern. By then, the rabid murder of black wings had stripped the horse’s carcass bare.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

Chapter 3

On its journey to the Sea of Scales, in the wastelands north of Archen but south of Kalev, the languid waters of Mother Zon met the frothing whitecaps of Sister Solga. The Vorgruk-Stokes outpost known as Bitterwood Watch nestled in the forked arms of their embrace. Tumultuous winter rapids bordered it on three of four sides. Rolling hills cocooned it for leagues in all directions, undermined by caverns both natural and man-made, crowned by evergreen softwoods and blankets of deep snow.

This far from civilisation, the land belonged to the wild and the hardy. Only the strong survived, those able and willing to take advantage of the less fortunate. And in this particular niche of the world, strong implied Vorgruk and Stokes.

Under the supervision of cudgel-bearing guards in surcoat and leather, the weak and the chained worked the land. They quarried stone from great open-pit mines, chewing away at the hillsides like some ravenous beast. They delved deep underground for saltpetre and brimstone, and they burnt charcoal from the abundant lumber. The fruits of their labour, and oft-times the labour themselves, travelled by barge to the sea, and from there to the four corners of Althanas.

And there was no shortage of said labour, brought in by the wagonload from the surrounding boyaries. Refugees fleeing from the south, villagers captured from the north. Strong backs for the sailing galleys, pretty faces for the pleasure houses. Travellers, townsmen, peasants, paupers. Every day they arrived, building up in the pens like excrement in a chamber pot, before ever so now and again another barge arrived to skim off the excess.

The weak outnumbered the strong by almost ten to one. But they had no weapons, no armour, no furs to keep them warm or maps to guide them through the wilderness. Many passed through the fastness like a whirlwind through a pig-farm, too bewildered to resist. Those who caught the eye of the Overseer for their strength, toughness, spirit, or pretty face might stay for longer, until the land wore them out and they passed on to even more brutal hands. A few, a poor brave few, attempted escape. The guards never bothered to send out pursuit. The snows swallowed them whole, and triumphant cawing in the distance soon signalled their demise.

The crows always unnerved newcomers to Bitterwood. Like storm clouds driven by the gale wind they flocked overhead in rabid murders. The shimmering dance of their dark wings blotted the wan sunlight from view. When the weakest collapsed from fatigue or fever, cold or hunger, raucous murders descended within moments to claim their prize. None knew how many had died to their attentions, vicious beaks ripping out their eyes and tearing strips of flesh from their bones. But all knew better than to provoke them as they watched from the battlements, rank upon rank of feathered death.

Sometimes the slaves caught sight of a figure alongside the Overseer. They knew him only as Blackbeard for the luxuriant, unruly growth upon his chin. None could guess at his true name, or his age, or his origin. None even knew his exact purpose at Bitterwood, except that he stood high and mighty indeed in the Overseer’s councils. Time and again he would watch over their return from the quarries and the mines and the hills, half-hidden in his tower, fevered gaze focused and unyielding upon the ants scurrying so far below.

So, so far below.


***

“That one.” The pudgy finger, encrusted with gold rings, stabbed at Orun and beckoned him forth. The ring of spears surrounding the slaves shifted to make just enough space. On the battlements above, massed crossbows stifled any thought the half-orc might have entertained of tearing the jewelled digit from its hand.

“Those two.” This time the finger indicated a young farmer from the Andvalls and his pretty brown-haired wife. A tide of low snickers washed through the assembled guards. They knew that the overseer had something interesting planned.

“That one.” Before the steel-tipped spears could jab at his back, Ywain moved to obey. His heart sank when he realised that the overseer had chosen the four proudest slaves out of the score or so brought in by the wagons. Those who remained, Salvic peasants all, cowered before the armsmen with heads bowed. The Civil War had taught them that to resist meant to be hurt. They’d had enough of pain.

“And her, of course.” Vera unceremoniously stumbled forth to join them before the hard-faced overseer, her face contorted in a rictus of pain and fear. The ground at their feet stank of sweat and voided bowels. The air sang like a lute strung too taut.

The overseer’s caustic glare, lost behind the fleshy folds of his flaccid face, bathed them in acidic appraisal. Then he spoke again, his voice carrying through the crisp morning like the crack of a well-oiled whip, his words chosen with the languid care of a stiletto stabbing through silk.

“Vera, take her to my quarters. See that she is... prepared.”

Was it the Andvallian who hesitated, or was it Vera? The overseer gave Cruel a terse nod. The armsman in turn drew his blade and plunged it into the meat of her husband’s thigh, avoiding the vital artery but twisting the steel as he drew it from the flesh. The peasant bellowed in searing pain. His wife shrieked in shrill fear. The birds overhead drowned them both in a deafening cacophony of callous cawing.

The overseer allowed them to continue for just long enough. Then his hand cut through the air, as curt and cold as a north wind.

“SILENCE!”

To Ywain’s surprise the corvids obeyed, a cloud of flapping black wings settling to their perches in unison. So did the farmwife. Only her husband still made sound, choking on the fire that spread from his wounded thigh.

The pudgy finger indicated the two women once more.

“My quarters. Or theirs.” Now it stabbed at his men, and they played their part by leering at her in lascivious lust. “It’s up to you.”

This time they obeyed without hesitation.

Ywain glanced to his right, where Orun’s baleful glare promised only death and destruction to those who held the spears hemming him in. He knew his own face bore a similar look of hatred and disgust.

Again the overseer nodded at Cruel. Again the courtyard shivered beneath the sick slurp of steel entering, then leaving flesh. Again the farmer gasped, agony that soon degenerated into stifled sobs.

“Let me be clear,” the cultured voice seemed to whisper into their ears, a barbed rasp coated in honey. “If you cause me trouble, you cause trouble to your fellows. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for that, would you?”

Cruel wore a mask of euphoric ecstasy, reflected in the abuse that Ywain and Orun had suffered on the torturous journey from the Folly. Baldie remained impassive, professional, but Tattoo mirrored Cruel’s pleasure in a scything, sadistic laugh. Nervous stared after Vera and the Andvallian woman as they disappeared through the gates of the fort, licking the sweat from his lips.

The slaves, to the last person, dared not answer the overseer.

“I thought not.”


***

The farmer died three days later, his wounds turning gangrenous and poisoning his blood. Ywain and Orun dumped his corpse in the river at spearpoint, and watched it float lazily downstream beyond the realm of the living.

His wife spent two nights in the Overseer’s chambers, then two more in the barracks. On the fifth evening, she learnt of her husband’s death. By nightfall she had escaped into the wilderness. By moonrise the crows feasted.

In the meantime, neither human nor half-orc remained idle.

[Green is the new black.]

Placeholder.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

The days whiled past, lost in an endless routine of backbreaking work and death-like sleep. The dawn arrived later each time he woke, strengthening winter’s chill grip on the Skavian wasteland. With every new morning slaves did not wake from their slumber. With every passing meal their diet of grubs and gruel grew more appetising, but filled their stomachs less.

With his rudimentary knowledge of woodcraft, Ywain found himself assigned to the logging and charcoal burning crews. Unlike those who spent their time in the mines, or the quarries downstream, he could at least breathe of fresh - if often soot-tainted - air. He wondered at times whether Orun would prefer the woods to his caves, even exposed as they were to the fury of the elements. Then the rain and sleet and wind would whip at his body, and the cold would torment him by infiltrating his joints and stiffening his limbs. The grass was dead no matter which side of the wall he fell into.

“You’re a fit one,” the guards would prod him as they checked off his quota of lumber, taking note of his lean muscle and the defiant spark that still glimmered in his eye. “We’ll soon see to that.”

So it was that Ywain more often than not spent his evenings mucking out the filth pits. Knee-deep in half-frozen slurry, he worked alongside other misfits and miscreants to ensure an uninterrupted flow from castle wall to the river. It stank, as human excrement usually did even in the depths of cold. He had to listen to the disheartened grumbles of those waiting for their turn, though they soon learned not to bother him. He had to end his day with a cold swim in cleaner waters, lest he spread disease through the camp and reduce the Company’s return on its flesh. But here, at least, the high walls actually sheltered him from the worst of the winter weather.

Once upon a time, the fortress had served as a rallying point and supply depot for the border watchposts such as Chzovel’s Folly. Vorgruk and Stokes erected slave pens outside the original structure, then filled in the moats to protect their valuable possessions with a curtain wall. Ywain found it ironic that slaver and enslaved alike treated what remained of the old outer defences with equal disfavour. Everybody had to piss and to shit, after all. The fates saw fit to remind him of that whenever the garderobes in the main tower spilled fresh excrement on his head.

On his third week of evenings spent shovelling muck, the skies opened in a wintry deluge. Taking refuge on the high ground in the lee of the main tower, Ywain discovered something interesting.

“... Gregor.... crows...”

He recognised the cultured faux-hauteur, even through the unrelenting splatter of raindrops on half-frozen nightsoil. The overseer, pudgy and pitiless. He shifted his weight, leaning close to the frigid stone. Closing his eyes, he concentrated.

“The Company... more...”

This voice he didn’t recognise. Deep, dark, throaty, as though the mountains themselves channelled their anger into the stone. Unwanted chills ran down his spine, unrelated to the cold rain at the nape of his neck.

The walls above must be projecting conversations from the overseer’s rooms, he realised, craning his neck for a better view of the tower walls. He made out three apertures in the stone overhead, each large enough for a man to crawl through, before he had to shade his eyes from the piercing icicles that fell from above. Ancient mortar crumbled beneath his fingers, giving him hope that he might find the leverage for a climb. Snarling grotesques manned the battlements above, and crows with eyes of livid yellow, but not a single human guard. After all, what person of sane mind would climb into the castle, from the filth pits?

Into the main tower, that no slave except chosen and guarded washerwomen could access?

Into the main tower, where Old Ovie has his quarters?

Stepping back from the wall, he worked his way through rivulets of frigid filth to more stable ground. The eyes of his fellow slaves followed him, guarded and suspicious. He gave them a nonchalant smile.

“What do you bet I can climb that?” he hollered at them over the driving rain.

They exchanged glances, confused as to why anybody might want to waltz into where Vorgruk and Stokes gripped tightest. At length, one of them ventured a tentative reply.

“Why would you do that?”

Why indeed?

[Green is the new black.]

Placeholder.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

“Five more dead in the quarries today.”

“Winter will get us all, mark my words.”

“That or the whips.”

“You heard about Tom o’Penny?”

“Got lost in the mines and never came back. Likely found somewhere warm to stay.”

“Ha. Knowing old Tom, he drowned in some stinkhole looking for gold. The whips always found his back, that one.”

“How’re the woods?”

“Cold and wild. The wolves are getting bolder. Saw one fighting a crow over a dead fox the other day.”

“Crows. Wolves. Whips. Rather that I had died on the trip here, or they had passed me along to whoever wants me on the coast…”

“Might get that wish quicker than you’d like. Remember the six wagons the hunting parties came back with, said they raided an Andvall village to the north and picked it clean? Three whole barges came upriver to take them away. Linda told me that the crews are feasting with the guards tonight, while Old Ovie entertains the captains in his room.”

“’bout time. The pens are fit to burst, and the wait for the pits too long. I don’t need to wait four hours to empty my bladder. Too old for that.”

“Too old for anything, you are.”

The speaker dropped his voice dramatically, mindful of the crows crying bloody massacre on the walls. Even still, he felt as though the yellow eyes from far above pierced the back of his neck like stilettos, unveiling every last one of the plans they had laid with such care. An illusion, he told himself, unconvinced. Too late to turn back now.

“Pass it along to the greenie. The pack leader says tonight.”

His companion trudged onwards, back bent and eyes narrowed, welcomed ‘home’ by the grimacing grotesques guarding the gatehouse. His response, almost imperceptible, was a nod and a single word.

“Tonight.”


***

Nightfall found Ywain standing in the lee of the tower once more, eyes closed and mind focused. Through the walls came the voices, one cultured and haughty, the other deep and dangerous.

“My birds are restless.”

“They’re always restless. Never shut up. Always hungry. Never content. Why am I not surprised, that your birds are restless?”

“They smell something in the air.”

“The flesh. Their shit. Blood and death. Gregor, your birds don’t have noses. How can they smell?”

Gregor, Ywain had realised, referred to the one his fellow slaves called Blackbeard. The Overseer, Old Ovie, was in fact named Petyr. Gregor Blackbeard rarely called him such, which said much to the young mercenary about their relationship.

“Something is happening. My birds whisper to me on the wind, my beasts speak from the snows.”

“And your other pets?”

A pointed silence, however brief, brought to mind bared teeth and macabre grins. Gregor waited just long enough for that gruesome image to imprint itself before answering.

“You would do well to heed me.”

“This is me heeding you. I have my own little birds. They speak too. I trust them a lot more than yours.”

“And what do they say?”

“The usual. The men grow restless. The flesh grow unhappy. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The snows grow deep and impassable.”

“… you mock me.”

“Mock you I do not. I know your uses. But believe me when I say I have mine, too. Now pray excuse me, I have captains to entertain. Good night, Gregor.”

“Very well. It is your decision, after all. May you wake up warm in the morning.”

The traditional greeting, so benign in everyday conversation, came across as a threat even through walls of thick stone. Ywain wondered just how much menace Blackbeard had to inject into posture and tone to achieve that effect. He wondered whether Old Ovie recognised it.

Then he shrugged and laid down the three pebbles he had been juggling, one after another, in the knee-deep mud. It didn’t matter to him what they felt or realised. He and his companion would show them how ‘unhappy’ the ‘flesh’ could become.

Would Fionan approve, he wondered to himself. What would the Knight-Captain think of this plan, that put at risk all their lives in the name of liberty and justice?

It didn’t matter.

Tonight.


***

Old Ovie and his lieutenants did not tolerate laxity in those who stood duty over the slaves. More than one guard who had dozed off on watch had found themselves on the wrong side of the curtain wall, barred from the cosy tower barracks that they had called home. Those who remained learnt much from the watchfulness of the crows who shared the battlements.

Hence the plan dispensed with all semblance of subtlety.

In the darkest hour of the night, the thin crescent moon scuttled in and out behind swift-moving clouds. With great resounding crashes the great iron gates buckled once! Twice! Again! One of the grimacing grotesques fell from its perch, adding to the cacophony as it splintered upon the hard-packed dirt.

On the fourth mighty blow it burst open. Tossing aside the bench he’d used as a makeshift battering ram, Orun strode out from between the ruins of shattered hinges.

One beefy paw reached out and grabbed the nearest gaping guard before he could retreat. With a simple flick of his fingers, he broke the neck of the young man known among his fellows as Nervous.

“Tonight,” he rumbled, and all hell broke loose behind him.

[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.