Brotherhood Saga 03: Death (61 page)

He knew they could.

*

The knock that came at the door late that night was enough to wake Nova. Sitting up, he brushed the sleep from his eyes and waited to see if he’d just been imagining things. When a second knock followed, he sighed and crawled from bed.

“Is someone here?” Katarina asked.

“Yeah,” Nova grunted. “I think so.”

“Who could be here this late?”

His common inclination was to believe that it was Odin who had knocked at the door—that his friend, gone for so long, had returned from the forest with a man he knew nothing of to say that all was well. The idea wasn’t too outrageous, considering the circumstances, but he knew better than to think such a thing. It wasn’t Odin. No. Odin wouldn’t be back for months, if not a long, long time.

“Nova,” Ketrak said from the doorway. “Did you hear—“

“I did, Father.”

Taking a dagger from his nightside table, Nova undid its clasp and drew the blade from its sheath as he made his way toward the door. Given the darkness of the night, he wouldn’t have been able to see anything even if he wanted to. The scones had not been installed. No light would shine upon this situation.

The knock came again.

Nova leaned against the door. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“It’s me,” Carmen said.

Nova unbolted the door before letting Carmen inside. “What’re you doing here so late?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Not with me, no.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The shuffle of Katarina’s footsteps drew Nova’s attention to the top of the stairs.

“There’s been an attack,” Carmen said, “on a settlement called Kaprika just two days
south of here.”

“Kaprika?” Nova frowned.

“I hadn’t heard of it either,” the Dwarf said, her laugh tinged with unease. “At least, not until now.”

“How do they know it’s been attacked?”

“The scout never came back. He was supposed to report in after he delivered a message to the commanding officer.”

“Is it Herald?”

“They… they think it’s Undead.”

The frigid current that passed along Nova’s skin was not caused by the partially-cracked door. Rather, it came as a result of the knowledge that the dead were not silent—that sometimes, when stirred from their holy slumber, they could wander the earth and do the bidding of those who wished others wrong.

“How do you know?” Nova asked.

“There’s been reports of refugees seeing people with mortal wounds walking the roads. That
’s… clear enough, I think.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Dora put out a call with the last watch. She wants to send men to the settlement.”

“Us?”

Carmen shrugged. “I put my name on the list,” she said. “I know I can’t ask you to go, but I thought I’d let you know.”

“When are they leaving?”

“Within the next hour.”

Wrapping his arms around himself, Nova looked from the Dwarf, to his father-in-law, then to his wife, who’d begun to descend the stairs
with slow, quiet steps, as though disturbing the conversation would somehow shatter the already-fractured mirror it was displayed upon.

It’s happening again,
he thought.
I don’t… I can’t—

He’d swore that he’d never leave his wife after the war—that he would remain here to ensure both her and her father’s safety. Now, with a baby on the way, the stakes were raised—so much that the flag atop its mast
was all the more capable of being blown away with just the right amount of wind.

“Nova,” Katarina said.

“I’m not going,” he replied.

“You need to.”

“What?”

Ketrak’s startled expression must have m
irrored his own, for the shock in Nova’s heart was only leveled by his grief.

“You have to go,” Katarina said.

“I can’t, Katarina,” Nova said. “I—“

“If something really is happening… and only two days from here… it means we’re all in danger.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“He’s right,” Ketrak said. “Katarina, honey—if something happens when Nova isn’t here—“

“But what if something happens if he isn’t
there?”
Katarina asked. “He taught me, Father. You saw me with the sword.”

“But the baby—“

“I would never let anything happen to our baby.” She caressed the growing mound in her stomach and looked up at Nova. “I don’t like the idea of a bunch of guardsmen going and dealing with a problem they have no experience with. At least you’ve fought what you might encounter.”

“But you—“ Nova started.

“The priests will stand vigil,” Carmen interrupted. “Candles are going to be arranged across a perimeter on the road and the houses are going to be blessed. They can’t pass into consecrated ground.”

“We’ll be fine,” Katarina said. “I’d feel much more comfortable if you stood between us and whatever it is that’s out there. For the baby’s sake.”

“All right,” Nova said. “I’ll go.”

“I’ll wait here,” Carmen nodded.

With one last look at Carmen, Nova started for the stairs.

Before he could mount them, he brushed his hand along his wife’s arm.

“I’m sorry I came knocking,” Carmen said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nova replied. “She’s right. My family’s safer if I’m between them.”

Dressed in a long shirt, light leather armor and a fur cloak and hood, Nova waited near the assembly of men that stood at the edge of Ornalia. Scythe propped against his shoulder, he tried to fight back waves of
discomfort as he watched several men in robes place and light candles along the road.

“Are we being led?” Nova asked.

“Yes,” Carmen said. “By him.”

The man was as thin as a rail and stout as could possibly be. Dressed in a robe that bore nondescript markings likely to counter the various affiliations of any wandering dead, he stepped forward with his intricate tri-ringed staff that bore overlapping insignias of a sun upon its head and nodded at the men in his midst. “Gentlemen,” he said.

“Father Mercutio,” several of the men replied.

“You know why you are here and you know what we are doing. There is no denying what we are walking into. This place… great and beautiful Kaprika… has been defiled by something marked by the passage of magic that is not often seen in our world. I do not know what to expect, nor do I advise you to act in any preconceived way. Know that the people here may be afflicted and now under the control of powers beyond us. They are not alive anymore. They are dead. The best thing we can do for them is to end their existence.”

The men nodded. While visibly shaken, they seemed content with the knowledge of what they were about to do, though many reached up to grasp pendants of their patron saints or Gods.

“The pages are delivering the mounts. We will leave soon.”

Their group of thirteen was marked with a torrid discrepancy of men. Within their m
idst were a handful of castle guards, upon their breasts heavy plate armor and large double-handed weapons. Local hunters flanked their sides, bows at the ready. Peasants whom Nova imagined knew little of trained combat adorned their midst, and along with Carmen and Nova, the two most unarguably-experienced of the party, Father Mercutio helmed the party, his head bowed and lips silently moving in prayer.

“Where could they have come from?” Nova whispered to Carmen. “I thought the Elves and Dwarves had driven the armies back into Denyon?”

“There’ve been rumors that a body snatching took place. They don’t know if that’s true, mind you, but if a Necromancer wanted to infiltrate the kingdom, what better way than to use one of its own people?”

   Nodding, Nova shivered, drawing the wings of his cloak across his shoulders and trying his hardest to dispel the idea from his mind. Such things were vastly uncommon within the modern world, but if fable were any indication, it had occurred many a time—how, from the depths of a body so riddled with corruption that it could barely exist, a creature could first kill, then inhabit the form of another. They’d speak the same, for their bodies would no longer be different, and though their appearance would not have altered, the mind would no longer be there.
Such rape upon the body could not be compared, for to have one’s identity stripped away and then reassembled exceeded far the idea of cruel and unusual punishment.

With a shake of his head, Nova reached down to finger the dagger at his belt, then sighed.

So far as he understood, no one here possessed the Gift.

They needed a mage—someone who could completely and totally overpower an enemy if the need arise.

What we need,
Nova thought, then began to falter soon after.

What they needed… he realized… was someone like Odin.

Which isn’t going to happen. Not anytime soon.

Turning his head, Nova looked down at Carmen just in time to see her fumbling with something dangling from her neck. “
What’s that?” he asked.

“A hammer,” she replied. “Thor’s Hammer.”

“Is he—“

“My God? Yeah. Sort of. The Dwarves believe in a lot of different gods and worship all of them, but Thor… he’s the Dwarven God of War.”

“Which would explain why you carry his sign around,” Nova nodded. “Carmen… there’s a Dwarven God called Odin, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What is he the God of?”

“Death.”

How ironic,
he thought, then sighed.

Carmen pressed a hand against his thigh. “He doesn’t just deal with people dying though,” she continued. “He deals with where they go after they die.”

“You mean like Heaven?”

“Well… sort of…” Carmen leaned back against him. “You see, the Dwarves, we fell from the sky—or, most specifically, a great tree. It’s called Yggdrasil. It twists high into the air and sprouts out near the top to hold a platform where a great mound of earth grows out of it. Our people also call it the Nine Worlds.”

“Why?”

“There’s supposed to be nine great parts in the world where we can all go—sorta like your Heaven and Hell thing, but I think ours also has to deal with before you are born, while you are living, when you die and before you go somewhere. That’s where the Dwarves say most of the people go. The ones who hurt the weak and kill the innocent go to a nameless place made of fire. Warriors, though… they go to Valhalla.”

“What is that?” Nova asked.

“A place in the sky where a great ship sails upon the winds to the places beyond the stars.”

“Why do they go there?”

“Because great people who do extraordinary things are special. They’re never forgotten.”

The fleeting image of Miko turning to look at them from the woods of Ohmalyon entered his mind.

“No,” Nova whispered. “They ar
en’t.”

The camp was left dark save for a lantern balanced atop a tree stump. Pressed into his bedroll, trying to sleep, Nova fought the restlessness that plagued his mind regardless of the fact that he felt they were being watched.

You’re fine,
he thought.
Don’t worry about it.

Still—the sensation was unnerving, akin to having a feather dragged across your skin in preparation for its sharp matter to be plunged into your flesh. His scythe, always close, rested right beside him, though his dagger lay closer, its hilt in his hand.

The snap of a twig made him bolt upright, dagger drawn.

“It’s ok,” Carmen laughed beside him. “It’s just an elk.”

The creature, who raised its head upon taking notice of the group, bolted back into the woods on the opposite side of the road.

“This is a good thing,” Father Mercutio said from his place near the lantern.

“What is, Father?” one of the guards asked.

“The animals are here,” the blonde-haired hunter said. “They haven’t been disturbed.”

“Our four-legged brothers are the first to leave if something has happened,” Mercutio agreed. “They are often the wiser of us. They care not for possessions. They live only to survive.”

Frowning, Nova once more burrowed into his bedroll, though he already knew it would be to his regret. The stillness of a northern Ornalan night was something he’d never come to accept. After not only his and Carmen’s encounter with the werewolf, but his and
Odin’s fight with Marsh Walkers, it was any wonder he was able to lay down without a fire, let alone sleep.

Everything’s going to be fine,
he thought.
You have nothing to worry about.

Just as he closed his eyes, he couldn’t help but wonder.

Do we?

“This is it,” one of the hunters said. “Kaprika.”

The sadness in his eyes was nothing compared to the desolation before them. There existed no broken homes, no shattered glass,
no desecrated corpses or even an amalgamation of heresy related to Necromancy. No bones, no blood, no circles, no sacrifice—there was nothing, which made the darkening skyscape even more terrifying.

“Father Mercutio,” Carmen said after she cleared her throat.

“Yes, dear Dwarf?” the priest asked.

“What do we do now?”

“We search,” he replied, “for the ones who are lost.”

Dismounting, Nova took hold of his horse’s reigns and offered Carmen a hand. After she dropped onto the ground with a mighty
thump, she drew her mace and swished it about her wrist before nodding and waiting for one of the peasants to take the horses.

They were instructed by Father Mercutio to round the settlement and search any accessible stores and homes.
These,
he said, would be the candidate homes for whatever it was that had happened—where victims would be stored or the undead barricaded in by the residents of this plantation. Two guards stayed with Mercutio—the rest were beckoned forward in pairs.

“You got a bad feeling about this?” Nova asked, holding his scythe steadily before him.

“Not yet,” Carmen said. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t get one.”

Nova said nothing. He merely allowed Carmen to lead them toward their instructed destination.

The edge of the settlement stood at a point where the manmade clearing ending—where, at the head of it all, a building that resembled a chimney in shape but was likely a longhouse stood. Upon its tower rested the remains of a cross—hanging limply in one place and almost-completely eaten away by flame at the other.

“Any coincidence that the priest sent us here?” Carmen laughed.

“No,” Nova said. “I—“

Something rustled in the nearby bushes, cutting him off midsentence.

Nova spun. Scythe gleaming, the rubies along its surface caught and reflected what little sunlight pierced from the eastern sky. “You hear that?” he asked.

“I heard it,” Carmen said. She, too, stepped forward, mace brandished. “It was probably nothing though.”

“There isn’t supposed to be anything here. It had to be
something.”

“The wind, maybe?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not worry about it.”

“Just watch my back,” the Dwarf replied.

“I’ll do that.”

At the foot of the longhouse, Nova glanced to his left and right, then gestured Carmen forward.

Carmen mounted the steps.

The sound of her footsteps along the stone only further intensified his nerves.

Sighing, Nova tightened his hold on his scythe and started up after the Dwarf.

One foot fell, then a second.

A clod of dirt crunched beneath his boot.

The sky rumbled and with it belched blackened clouds.

“This is not good,” Carmen said as she reached the top step. “Not good at all.”

“What?” Nova frowned.

The Dwarf pointed.

Where most obviously a handlebar had been laid into the door
there were a series of blunt strikes and scorch marks, mocking them with the still-fresh smell.

“On three?” Carmen asked. “One… two…”

She kicked the door open.

Nothing stirred inside.

Stepping forward, Nova braced himself for the worst.

Many of the older settlements of Ornala had been built in a way that would provide comfort and warmth while still offering protection from the outside world. Wrought with stone, decorated with intricately-sewn furniture and animal skins, the longhouse spanned some thirty feet until tapering out into a smaller, nondescript room. No windows had been built into the stone—likely, Nova imagined, for an event like this.

“Doesn’t seem like anyone’s in here,” Carmen mused.

“No,” Nova agreed. “There doesn’t.”

“We should probably look around though, just in case we—“

A shuffle along an armchair broke the conversation.

Raising her mace, Carmen edged forward. “Come out,” she said. “We don’t want to—“

Nova expected a creature to appear—maligned, malformed and bearing upon its face nothing of its former countenance. What stepped forward, however, was a dog—red-furred and looking extremely malnourished.

“Oh no,” Carmen cried, falling to her knees. “Are you ok little guy?”

“Carmen,” Nova warned.

The dog’s low whimpers silenced Nova before he could continue.

“There there,” Carmen said, extending a hand palm-out so the dog could sniff it. “It’s ok. We’re here to help you.”

The dog edged forward, lifted its head just slightly, then extended its snout to sniff Carmen’s hand.

The Dwarf smiled.

The dog shuffled forward and pressed its body against hers.

“It’s gonna be ok,” Carmen smiled, ruffling the dog’s fur. “We’re gonna get you out of here. You’ll get fed, brushed, played with. I’ll even let you sleep with me.”

“Something’s wrong,” Nova said.

“What’re you—“

“If the owner’s gone, why is the dog still here?”

The realization in Carmen’s eyes struck horror in Nova’s heart.

Something stirred in the hideaway room to the side.

The dog whimpered and cowered behind Carmen.

Nova stepped forward.

The creature stumbled from the storage room as though it had just been woken from slumber. Black eyes blinking, long, four-fingered hands flexing, it tilted its horseshoe-like head up to examine them as it fully took notice of the intruders, its white skin gleaming like water upon sun-struck skin.

“What is that?” Carmen asked.

“I don’t know,” Nova replied, fighting to maintain his nerves as the dog whimpered at his feet.

Standing, Carmen held her mace before her.
“Back!”
she cried. “Stay back!
Back!”

A sound like water running through a cave drifted from the creature’s head.

Nova stumbled back. He blinked to try and clear his vision.

“What happened?” Carmen asked.