Into the Deep Wood

The Obsidian Tower was the first thing they saw.

It was but a needle on the horizon, growing with each passing hour until a monolith rose above a hill of uneven roofs and houses. Even from so far away, they could see the sun reflecting off its glossy, even surface.

The trees were thick, but they would soon come to an end. The Deep Wood would thin, and the presence of the Nothing-touched would soon fade and give way to uncorrupted groves of vegetation.

They stopped within sight of Volkagrad’s walls, the armies spreading out and beginning to set up a seige.

“They fortified those walls recently…” Marat observed.

The sounds of the soldiers putting up tents far behind them, Yaro and Marat sat atop horses looking out onto the distant city.

The air was filled with frost here even though winter had gone, and each snort of their mounts came out like thick white bouts of steam.

“They better have. The pla-ce wa-s a dump all the way up to the High di-strict.” Yaro agreed.

“Think they got ballistae up there?” Marat scanned the walls, the piked wooden barriers built before them, and thin lines of darkness where the trenches would be.

“Kor-schey wouldn’t have expected u-s to get thi-s far. But probably.”

The general’s ever-existing frown got deeper.

“A siege can take months. Or even years. Many within the walls will die.” He said. “They won’t be soldiers. We have to find another way. Three days now. Val said three days.”

They sat silently for a moment, the horses shifting their weight about to keep their stiffening muscles warm.

“Go find Typhonos.” Marat said finally, waking from his thoughts.

The big man’s beard shifted, and eyes squinted in a knowing smile.

“You’re a ba-stard. More of a ba-stard now than before.” He laughed. “And when we win, you will be a victoriou-s ba-stard. So I’ll forgive you giving me order-s.”

Marat grinned as they both turned their horses and split in two different directions, but the grin did not last as he returned to the largest tents where the captains waited outside.

“Scouts returned.” One told him, his grim tone already delivering the news.

“How far?”

“They will be here in less than three days.”

“Fuck.” Marat rubbed the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath. That was no time for a siege. That was barely enough time to set up a defense. If the horde came before they could get inside the walls, they would not only be outnumbered but cornered as well.

Typhonos, followed by Yaro, walked inside the tent. The Western King looked pale, his eyes bloodshot from sleeplessness, but his authoritative posture remained.

“Let’s speak.” He said, moving toward the hastily set wooden table, a map laid out upon it.

“Have–” Marat started.

“Yes. Three days.” Typhonos interrupted him, patience already thin. “We either prepare to face them, or we retreat into the mountains in the east and lose the city. We have to prepare for either immediately. They were ready for us.”

“Not as ready as they could have been.”

Typhonos shot him what could have been construed as a glare, but of course, a king would never betray such emotions. Marat did not react.

“Dimos had a lot of faith in you, in the Ember Sword.” Typhonos said quietly, his tone restrained, forcing the other men in the room to shift around uncomfortably. “He spoke the truth of much. But he did not foretell his own death, and I no longer hold as much faith in prophesies or you as I once did.”

Marat felt his stomach twist.

Dimos was dead.

“Give me two days then…” He said sheepishly, “Your Grace. Two days.”

Typhonos studied the man, his eyes holding distrust for the first time in the years Marat had known the King.

“You’ve earned as much through your deeds.” He said after the most torturous minute. “On the sunrise of the third, we go into the eastern mountains, toward the lake.”

The sun rose on the second day, giving no warmth to the soldiers. Here, even at the height of noon, everything remained gray, the black, viscous fog unyielding, creeping low across the vast fields surrounding the city. The trees were cut down around it, exposing the land.

It was not long after the morning broke that they saw a single horse approaching from the direction of the walls.

It walked with a barely noticeable limp; the rider slumped atop it.

Marat rode out to meet it, and when he returned to the line of men awaiting him, in his arms, he carried a young girl.

She was eight or nine, a child, deathly pale. Her eyes were wide open, but stared nowhere, hands limply tucked against Marat’s chest. Her clothes were thin and ratted, her flesh cold and unprotected from the cold. What was more strange was her skin. It was slightly burned, but not by heat. Her hair stuck together as if singed, and skin raised in heated splotches. The same ones appeared on her horse.

They thought her dead, at first.

“Water. Food.” He commanded, his pace never slowing as he made his way to a tent. There, he set her down, revealing a large red stain at the front of her clothing that crept across her chest. “Get a physician, fast.”

“What ha-s happened to her?” Yaro jogged after the general as he walked fast toward Typhonos’ tent.

Marat did not answer. He pushed aside the heavy canvas doorway and slapped something down on the table with a cling.

Typhonos said nothing as he approached, and the man’s eyes stopped on a note, the top of it pierced with a metal royal brooch. The sharp pin of it, meant to be fastened to a tunic, was still smeared with the child’s blood.

“An animal…” Typhonos whispered as he read it. “Worse, a devil…”

“He will hang his own people outside the walls,” Marat said aloud as the other men followed him through the door at Yaro’s call. “Because of me.”

“Because of our cause.” Typhonos corrected him.

Yaro stepped forward, straining to see.

You bring death to them, Marat, so I would have you look at it in the eyes. For every day you wait outside my city, twenty men you mean to free will find their death at the end of a rope. I will make sure their bodies face south on the walls so you do not have to ride out to witness what you leave in your wake.

“It is no surpri-se that he would kill hi-s own…” Yaro muttered.

“I will ride out tonight.” Marat said. “I will find my way, and I will search the walls. And I will find a way to open the gates.”

“You will do no such thing,” Typhonos stopped him, louder than he had spoken before. “We have men for that, and I have sent them out already.”

“They will not return.”

“You will leave this place.” Typhonos stood, and all the men in the room shifted about. “And you will go back with the captains, and you will not dare to speak to your king this way again. You will not leave this camp.”

Marat held eye contact with him for just a single moment before dropping his eyes and nodding. He exited first, Yaro a step behind.

“You’re gonna ride out tonight.” It wasn’t a question.

“I am.”

“He-s gonna to-ss you in the lake.”

Marat stopped, looking at him.

“Dimos is dead. I am where I am only because of a name promise I owe. Because he said this is where I have to be. Typhonos is a gracious and honorable man, but he will send me away the moment he deems it best. We approach the third day. I will do what I have to. I will do what I can.”

Someone shouted from among the tents. It sounded like they were calling for a soldier. The two men’s pace quickened toward the voice.

One of the nurses stood outside the medical tent, frantically waving them over.

“The girl…” Yaro breathed out as their pace turned to a jog.

She was seated on the edge of a cot, her thin hair greasy and shoes tattered - but bandaged and wrapped in warm clothes. When the nurse followed them, the girl flinched away from her. She would not look at Yaro either, her eyes downcast.

“Hey,” Marat knelt down by her but did not dare touch her. “Do you speak Common?”

A nod.

“Do you know who we are?”

Another nod.

“Are your parents back in the city?”

She looked up at him, not even examining his scars, just at his eyes.

“The walls…” She whispered.

An answer he had been afraid of.

Marat was never good with kids. But this was not a kid. This was a ghost lost among the fog. Her eyes were absent, and her pale fingers trembled. No expression crossed her face at all. And so, he offered her his hand, propping his elbow on his knee. She looked at it for a moment, then placed her own in it. Her little fingers were cold as ice despite the warmth indoors.

“You’re safe.” He offered, but the words fell on deaf ears.

The blood seeped through the bandages where the brooch pin had been stuck in her flesh. She just stared, unblinking.

“That was the wrong thing to say.” Marat sighed. “We won’t hurt you. You’ll be fed and warm. But please, if there is anything you can tell us about the city, we can stop others from ending up… there.”

He closed his hand around hers and felt it warm slowly. She looked down at it.

“They built the wall…” She whispered to him as if afraid that the others in the room would hear. “There wasn’t one before…”

He nodded, his brows drawing together.

“Papa said we could take the stones when they left. We could fix the hearth and the pigpen.”

Yaro and the nurse both stilled their breathing, trying to catch the little girl’s words, but she only drew her hand away from Marat’s, her eyes dropping to the floor again.

He nodded, standing and motioning for Yaro to follow as he exited the tent.

“I only heard ‘bout half of that.” Yaro grumbled. “What’d s-he s-ay?”

“The peasantry took apart a section of the wall,” Marat said, his pace increasing. “They used it to build up their homes. Their King has let them live in squalor, so they used what they could get.”

“Oof.” Yaro huffed.

“I’m going to take ten men, any more, and it will be too hard to hide,” Marat said, crossing the threshold of the temporary armory, covered to protect the iron and steel from the rain. “We will find the weakness. And we will get inside.”

“Well call me a newt in a beer mug…” Yaro muttered, “Let’s go, then.”

“I will ask you not to do this with me, brother.” Marat looked the red-bearded man in the eyes. “You have been here through everything with me, but you never wanted it to be your war.”

“Little fuckin’ late for that s-ort of talk, i-sn’t it?” Yaro laughed, “Heart of the North and all? Could’ve told me back in Barzah I would have s-tayed out of the cold.”

“I need you to remain and look for my signal. We will light the walls, but I do not trust Typhonos’ faith in me any longer. I will give you the authority, and you must give the command. In his grief he may hesitate; it could cost us everything. Please, my brother.”

“Ah.” Yaro’s face twisted and he waved a hand to dismiss Marat’s words. “You ju-st don’t tru-st that I can s-neak around good. Alright.”

Marat smiled, grabbing a sword off the rack, but Yaro held up his hand.

“Take no offense, friend, but you are hor-se s-hit with a s-word. Better grab the hunter-s knife. Thi-s Nothing-touched immortal ba-stard will be your fine-st hunt.”