Chapter 4

  The three fugitives from the small out-of-the-way village sat shivering under the scant protection of two trees that had fallen across one another some time recently, hidden from the cold rain and the biting wind.

  The inadequate shelter offered by the trees was the best they could find.

  At least the rain will help put down the fires in the village, Glem thought.

  Near their shelter, Glem used the heavy knife that always hung from his belt to quietly cut some of the low boughs from the pines to improve their temporary accommodation and make it harder to see in the dense forest.

  “Girls, gather these up and toss them over the top as I cut them,” Glem said as he handed them the first of the boughs he had cut.

  “They'll help with the rain and keep off some of the wind. Hurry now.”

  Glem had felt better the last few weeks than he had in years.

  He took off his heavy cloak and threw it over the shelter before the boughs went on, offering a layer of additional protection for the girls.

  I'm glad I was able to grab the cloaks before we ran; it was a near thing, though.

  “Can't have you get sick on me… Then who would take care of me?” Glem muttered.

  “I'm cold, and I wanna go home. The soldiers have gotta be gone by now,” Alyra complained all too loudly.

  “Hush, girl, don't be foolish. In the morning, we'll scout around and see if it's safe. I'm afraid that there won't be much to go home to,” said Glem softly as he stared up at the warm glow in the distant sky. The reflection of the fires burning in the town is the only thing warm tonight, and the last warmth we'll be finding for a while, Glem thought.

  “Alyra, Rues, come, get under the cover and out of the rain. Try to get what sleep you can. I will sit the watch tonight,” Glem said gently to them.

  Rues, her back against the downed tree, shivered in the rain, sick with worry for her little brothers and mother. The boys were tall but young and they didn't have her father's strength yet. He was a tank of a man, with hands harder than the iron he worked in his forge, seemingly indestructible.

  He will be fine, even if he must beat all the soldiers himself. They will be alright. They have to be alright! Rues thought. “They will be alright,” Rues said softly into the black night, as if speaking the words aloud made it more true.

  “Of course they will,” Alyra said fiercely as she pulled Rues against her to help warm them both. But Rues said nothing more; her words had been uttered for herself.

  Glem stood near the edge of the shelter while the night dragged slowly on toward dawn. The rain continued to fall steadily in the hours to come, with clouds hiding both the stars and moon. The blanketed darkness provided some small measure of cold safety against the patrols sweeping out from the village all night, looking out for anyone who may have escaped. The girls’ fear of the patrols and fear for their friends and families made their sleep run from them.

  They rubbed at their eyes and yawned relentlessly, but it didn’t make rest any more attainable. A deep feeling of despair threatened to overwhelm each one of them.

  This is a bad night to be back out in the world after being removed from it for so long, thought Glem as he stood quietly half a dozen yards from where the girls tried to rest.

  Worry for them roiled in his stomach and made him uncomfortable. No thought for his own comfort, since he had long ago come to terms with the more unpleasant aspects of men.

  In the wet, heavy night, Glem’s mind was in overdrive.

  How will the girls deal with the carnage that’s sure to be scattered through the village?

  If we're lucky, the soldiers will have thrown all the towns folks' bodies into the last building before they fired it.

  But somehow, I doubt these are the type of soldiers to show that kind of respect to an enemy. Poor girls. In the morning, we'll go back to town and see if anyone else made it away safely.

  We can gather supplies and any weapons we can find and put the town to our backs.

  Glem worried about a particular board in the floor under the small table in the kitchen. He resigned himself to the need to pry it up. The three oilcloth-wrapped bundles below it had long since seen their time but in the twilight of his years, no man should have to take back the remnants of his youth and look too closely at them.

  “It'll be necessary, I'm afraid,” whispered Glem to the darkness.

  Glem felt his years as he moved softly through the forest to the creek to fill a water skin. He searched the forest carefully as he went, looking for any sign that the soldiers were still there or that any of the others from the village might have survived.

  He slowly circled the hiding place where the girls had fallen asleep, in an ever-widening spiral out from that point. He searched. Old habits, long forgotten, came back without thought as he looked for the small signs of something out of place, man’s passage through an unknown woods. On the edge of a small meadow a few hundred yards away, Glem paused to watch where the path from the village crossed it on the far end.

  Crouched in the woods with the sun that had just begun to rise behind him, he knew he was invisible to anyone from the other side of the meadow.

  Glem heard the faint creak of wagons just after dawn, going completely still in his spot like a rabbit freezing in the undergrowth at the sight or sound of a hunting party. He hunkered down under a bramble of wild blackberries.

  “There they are,” he whispered. “One, two, three wagons.”

  They're loaded heavy too. They are even taking the oxen.

  They moved slowly forward, noticing the oxen team that pulled the last wagon in line. Nearly fifty soldiers with them, with more than a dozen well-mounted and armored. Cavalry? This isn't some poorly trained group of bandits; those are professional soldiers, Glem thought.

  “Hmm, no way to tell whose men they are. We are a long way from anything strategic in this little backwater,” Glem mumbled, noting there was no wind to float the pennant, and the soldiers on foot weren't wearing surcoats.

  The standard-bearer leaned down to speak with one of the foot soldiers walking next to him. He kicked his horse to a trot, moving up to the front of the line to talk with another soldier. The movement of the trot caused the pennant to unfurl for a moment. Just long enough for Glem to make out the sign of the house of Gan'nar.

  The king of the south had invaded Laterius.

  “War,” whispered Glem. “The fool has to know that a raid this deep into Laterius is a declaration of war.”

  Glem waited quietly until the troop had passed, and the sound of wagons faded to nothing before he began to move again. He heard the birds' songs, that had died off in fear, start again.

  Glem quietly gathered some of the early blackberries from his cover, stuffing them into his pockets. He knew that there might not be any food left to find in the village, and the girls would be hungry from having slept rough for the night.

  As softly as he had come, he moved back into the forest.

  This didn't use to be nearly this unpleasant, Glem thought.

  “Alyra, Rues, wake up. We have to get moving,” Glem said as he shook them gently awake. “Breakfast is thin this morning, I’m afraid. I was able to gather some blackberries. Careful though as some'll be before their time yet.” He emptied his pockets.

  Alyra and Rues began to shove the berries into their mouths; both made a face whenever they got an unripe one. Glem watched them with amusement despite the situation. The faces were funny but he passed them both the waterskin to wash down the berries.

  “Steel yourselves, girls, we are going to sneak back to town, now that it's morning, and look around, but I’m afraid that what we are going to find won’t be pleasant. I saw the soldiers leave this morning so it should be safe,” Glem told them.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  ***

  Tyrup studied the carnage wrought by the blacksmith and his family. From experience, he knew that fighting commoners in their own homes could turn out to be a nasty affair but it had been a lesson that these unbloodied soldiers needed to learn. The cocksure soldier selected for the demonstration had done so admirably and died horribly in the process.

  Tyrup, however, was unprepared for the enormous price this instruction would cost. Six men in total fell to the blacksmith family, a kill ratio of 2:1 in favor of the blacksmith. These were unacceptable losses when facing a trained army, much less when eradicating civilians.

  With a deep breath, Tyrup savored the metallic smell of spilled blood and charred remains present in the forge. The blackened and still burning body of a soldier, thrown alive into the forge fire, smoked and sizzled as the remaining fat in his body cooked off.

  Four more had fallen to hammer strikes to the head and face, an easy death in comparison. The final soldier lay broken over the anvil in the center of the room, the horn of the anvil pierced through his armor and became embedded into his spine.

  The blacksmith’s wife was pulled roughly from the house and thrown next to her dead family. She sobbed, kneeling over her two sons in fear of what was to come. Her anguish pleased Tyrup and soothed some of his rage over the loss of so many of his men.

  “See what their overconfidence earned them? Death! Killed by commoners! There is no glory here, only failure,” he screamed to the soldiers. “Now, watch what happens to those that oppose us.”

  Tyrup grabbed the now screaming mother by the hair and dragged her to a small anvil at the side of the room. He pulled her head onto the anvil, face up, and grinned maniacally.

  The woman’s eyes were wide with fear as she struggled to get free, knowing the fate about to befall her.

  “This is what happens…”

  The mother screamed as the hammer swung down onto her face, and she was silenced.

  An expensive lesson, the Captain knew, but one that had obviously been driven home to those standing outside the partially burned forge.

  “Burn this place to the ground,” he ordered angrily. “Start searching the village, make sure there are no survivors. Scavenge what you can and load it into the wagons. Bring the girl with us. Go! We leave in thirty minutes.”

  ***

  Glem and the girls moved as quietly as possible through the soggy forest, the sound of water dripping from the trees and heavy undergrowth of ferns, a palpable weight that pressed down on them. The girls each clutched at the small ubiquitous belt knives used for day-to-day chores as if they were real weapons.

  The gray, acidic smell of smoke and wet char hung thick in the air as they crept slowly toward the town. Glem paused their small group near the tree line to study the edges of the village as they began to come into sight.

  The roofs look wrong, thought Rues.

  “Stop,” Glem said softly. “Let me take a look before we go in, just to make sure they are all gone.”

  “Why is it so quiet, Grandpa? Is everyone still hiding?” Alyra asked Glem.

  “I hope so, girl, but I am afraid,” Glem said as he glanced at the girls.

  Alyra wore her fear openly like a badge, the knuckles of her hand white on her knife, her eyes wide as she swung her head around and looked for others.

  Rues, silent, stared straight ahead, looking right through the walls of the closest small houses to where her family's home and her father's forge stood near the far edge of their tiny village. She lifted her eyes only to watch smoke streamers drifting up into the gray morning.

  They could see from the edge of the forest that the roofs of the village houses had mostly collapsed in on themselves and taken the walls down with them in places.

  The thatch had burned on the few remaining roofs, leaving the rafters looking like the rib bones of some long-dead beast.

  “Come on, let's move closer into the first row of houses for a better look. Rues, Alyra, stay behind me and against the walls when we get to them. We are going to move from building to building, together, while we look for others,” Glem directed in a voice that was deeper and more commanding than Alyra had heard before.

  Glem took one last hard look at the town from their cover and glanced over at the girls. “Let's move,” he said before leading the way as they moved up to the first house; the biting smell of something copper and fetid got more robust as they approached, reminding him of the past. The outer stone wall of the first house was still warm, radiating the heat leftover from the fire that had destroyed it, an unpleasant comfort after the cold night.

  Glem looked through the houses at the bodies of many of the animals that had belonged to the village. They lay where they had fallen during the fight the night before.

  Bodies not yet beginning to smell, Glem thought.

  Glem listened for any sound from the village as they crouched next to the wall; only the birds had started to recover from the destruction becoming more evident.

  “Only animals,” Glem said.

  “That's good, right?” Alyra said. “It means they all got away?”

  “I hope you're right, girl,” Glem whispers.

  Rues stared silently in the direction of the smithy again. “I … I have to…” she said as she darted around them, quickly slipping past Glem’s clumsy grab at her.

  “Goat dung,” Glem said.

  He stood up from his crouch and stepped out from their cover to chase after her.

  Glem came around the edge of the burned house after her and stopped short; he saw Rues on her knees, most of the way across the muddy, torn-up former town green. Glem and Alyra moved quickly across the muddy green to Rues, where she knelt motionless, staring again at the smithy door. The roof to both her childhood home and her father's forge had collapsed entirely. One wall had fallen into the forge, and it left only the massive stone uprights and the cross piece on top of them that once surrounded the door still standing.

  Rues threw her head back and screamed, an undulating primal scream that changed to a keening as Glem and Alyra approached.

  Directly in front of the forge door, a single large stone post with a hitch ring stood in front of the scorched uprights. A considerable hammer with its haft pointed to the sky stood in the center of the hitching stone.

  Alyra wrapped her arms around her friend as she began to sob, “I'm so sorry, Rue.”

  “They can’t... they can't be gone,” Rues cried as she gripped tightly to Alyra and buried her face into Alyra's shoulder.

  Glem searched the forge for any sign of hope, despairing about what he would find. He walked deeper into where the master smith’s great anvil still stood, so large that it took a team of oxen and a specially built cart even to move it. The smaller anvil lay tipped over and covered in gore. The forge’s thick stone walls were scorched and cracked from the heat of the coal pile that once fed the fires, and the coal burned where it had been stored in barrels along the wall.

  Glem noticed a glint of something partially buried on the forge floor, and he reached down and picked up a thong with a large medallion on it.

  It was covered in bloody earth from near the toppled anvil until he brushed it off.

  The sign of the Southern Kingdom stared back at him. Glem walked back out to the girls and looked to Alyra; when she glanced up, he shook his head.

  “I am going to kill them all!” Rues said into Alyra's shoulder.

  “I am going to kill them all!” Rues screamed again as she pushed away from Alyra and jumped to her feet. She ran to the giant hitching post and grabbed his great hammer from the top, then thrust it up and shook it at the sky. “I AM GOING TO KILL THEM ALL,” Rues screamed a last time before she collapsed to the ground, sobbing endlessly.

  “Girl, those that came for them look to have been introduced to the business end of your father's hammer. Unless I'm misreading the signs,” Glem said gruffly as he pulled both girls up easily to their feet. “We need to gather supplies if there are any left, and I think that's what they came for. There doesn't appear to be anyone still left in town.”

  “They may be hiding in the woods as we did, or they are dead or taken as slaves. We can't stay here, though. Let's get what supplies we can find, and we'll go to Eshly to find help. Can the two of you see what buildings look to be the most intact while I see if there is anything left of our place? Don't go into any of the buildings. Just look. The buildings could be unstable or have deserters from the army hidden in them. Go quickly and meet back here in ten minutes. We will go through the buildings together for safety,” Glem said.

  Glem walked swiftly to the house where he and Alyra had lived the last many years.

  It was a ruin.

  The door into the house hung off its fixings, partially fallen against the rubble from the roof. Only the skeletal fingers from the most significant supporting beams of the roof were still in place. He shouldered in the door through the fallen debris, gazing around.

  The heavy dinner table still sat in a position of prominence, with several of the smaller beams from the roof having fallen across it and charred the surface.

  He heaved a deep sigh and pushed the beams away from the table. Glem grabbed the end of it and swung it sideways to clear the boards underneath. He knelt and carefully worked the tip of his belt knife between the boards of the floor, slowly working the knife back and forth as he pulled up three thick boards to reveal a hollow space underneath.

  He gave another big sigh and reached into the exposed cavity to pull out three bundles, each carefully wrapped in heavy oiled canvas. The first one was a smaller bag that jingled with coins. He opened it to peer inside and remove a great signet ring, and after a long look, slipped it into his pocket. The next bundle was heavy, about three feet long and six inches thick.

  Glem set it aside as he moved to the last oil-wrapped package and set it with the other two.

  He untied the thongs that secured the bundle with trepidation and pulled back the heavy oilcloth to expose a pommel. Even the dim light that filtered into the house showed an emblem matched to the one on the ring he had slipped into his pocket.

  He quickly wrapped it back up and gathered all three bundles.

  Glem grabbed the thongs that tied them and slung the bundles over his shoulder to leave.

  He cast a last look behind him and noticed a small stuffed doll tucked under the remains of a bed. Somehow, Alyra's childhood doll had survived the destruction and Glem shook his head in wonder, then grabbed the doll and stuffed it into a pocket of his cloak.

  When he returned to the standing stones in front of Rues' family forge, the girls were there, already dragging a small cart.

  “I told you not to go into the buildings. They might not be safe,” Glem said.

  “Leave off, Grandpa. We were careful. There’s no one left here,” snipped Alyra.

  Glem investigated the cart. The girls had found some potatoes, a handful of last year's apples, a hunk of hard cheese, and a small cooking pot. Not great but considering the state of the village… “Good provisions. You didn't happen to find any beer they might have missed, did you?” Glem asked somewhat hopefully as he tossed his bundles into the cart.

  Nothing came back, so it seemed to be a no.

  “What did you find, Grandpa?” Alyra asked.

  “Nothing, girl, just some old tools I thought I was through with,” Glem replied as he leaned heavily on the cart and coughed violently for a moment.

  Both girls, suddenly concerned, rushed to him.

  “Are you Ok, Glem?” asked Rues.

  “Fine, girl, I'm just not as young as I was,” Glem wheezed to her. “Let's get moving. We are going to want to get a ways down before it gets dark.” He grasped the cart’s handles and stood up, then took the weight lightly and began to walk out of town. Rues, still cradling her father's great hammer, looked at Alyra and back at the graves of her family. Tears streaming down her face, she ran to follow Glem, with Alyra close behind her.