Child Of Storms (Volume 1) (14 page)

             
A ruddy-faced, stout-looking warrior with a beard and thinning hair approached Jorn. His name was Edain, one of Orbadrin’s captains. He would command the troops heading south with Jorn.

             
“We’re ready, thane-son,” he said.

             
“We ride at once,” Jorn said.

             
Edain nodded. Jorn turned back to his horse, checking his saddle one last time and adjusting its straps. When he looked back up, Yrsa was standing next to him. She was clad in a glaringly-white fur cloak with the hood up over her head to shield her from the biting wind. Jorn looked away from her.

             
“Jorn,” she said, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “I…I just wanted to say goodbye.”

             
“Goodbye,” he said without looking at her, instantly regretting his attitude.

             
“Damn you!” she whispered. “You think any of this was my choice?”

             
Jorn turned and looked at her. He realized she, too, must have suffered these last few days.

             
“I know,” he said. “I wish things could be different. I wish we could have made a life together here. Or anywhere.”

             
“My father, he...” she said, her voice cracking. “It’s so unfair, Jorn. I almost wish Thulgin does not survive. Then, when you are lord of The Westmark, my father could not possibly refuse to give my hand to the most powerful thane in all Linlund. ”

             
Jorn glared at her. “Never say anything like that again, Yrsa.”

             
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. It’s just so unfair.”

             
“What can we do? Be happy, Yrsa. Be a good wife to Thulgin. And tell him I’m sorry.”

             
“Sorry? For what?”

             
“He’ll know,” Jorn said.

He reached out and took her hand. It was small and delicate compared to his meaty paw. He squeezed it gently, then turned away and mounted his horse. It was a struggle to hold back his tears.

              The entire party were soon mounted and ready to ride. Orbadrin emerged from the hall and stood on the porch silently, flanked by a pair of servants and Thane Halgaad, all this time kept deliberately ignorant of everything that had transpired between his daughter and Jorn. Yrsa climbed the stairs in sullen silence and stood next to her father with bowed head.

             
“My son!” Orbadrin exclaimed. His booming voice carried far in the winter stillness. “Go! Claim that which is yours! Return someday the mightiest of thanes!”

             
Jorn rode up to the steps of the porch. He drew his sword briskly and raised it in salute to Orbadrin. The old man bowed deeply. Jorn sheathed his weapon and rode off through the gate, Ironhelm and the others close behind him. It took an effort to not look back as he rode off. Directly ahead he stared the whole time, speaking to no one until they were well beyond Falneth.

Six

            
 
Jorn insisted on riding at the head of the company, ignoring the dwarf’s entreaties. Ironhelm grumbled that Jorn was too exposed in the event of an ambush, but Jorn would not relent.

“Grang’s teeth!” he swore. “I’m not some virgin princess on the way to her marriage bed. I ride at the head.”

Ironhelm muttered something under his breath about obstinate young fools and eyed the thick pine trees on either side of the road and the steep, rocky hills all around.

They passed the crossroads where the assassins had attacked three nights ago. The dusting of snow the night before covered up the blood-stains. The only thing to alert someone anything abnormal had occurred there were the heads of the assassins, stuck atop pikes on either side of the road.

Ironhelm glared at the heads, shaking his head. He had never heard of wizards working as hired killers before. It was clever, he had to admit. Posing as traveling magicians, they had worked their way into the same room as their target without anyone raising the slightest objection.

“Do you know the road ahead, laddie?” he asked Jorn a few minutes later. “How far from home have you been?”

              “Vistinar twice and as far as Swordhaven once,” Jorn said. “My brother and I were there, um, three years ago.”

             
“Ach,” Ironhelm muttered, scowling. “Swordhaven! Wha’ a stinking sewer.”

             
“Tell me, Lord Ironhelm,” Jorn said. “What does a dwarf of Thunderforge care about the affairs of men?”

             
“Braemorgan is a great friend of my people, laddie,” Ironhelm said. “He has done us many a service over the years, he has. I could hardly refuse him this favor! Aye, tis true.”

             
“Why is he so concerned about the Westmark?” Jorn pressed. “Or me?”

             
The boy was starting to remind Ironhelm of those exasperating children who respond to the answer to every question with yet another “why”?

             
“Ach.” Ironhelm grunted. “Sometimes it’s bes’ not to ponder the ways of wizards.”

             
“Why?”

             
Ironhelm glared at Jorn for a moment, then decided to change the subject.

             
“It’s a full six days’ ride to Loc Goren this time of year,” he said. “Four days south to Linnerrhyd. We turn west there, and pass through Brame’s Notch into The Westmark. But before Linnerrhyd there are many places where we must take care. Aye, we should be safe in the lands of Thane Ossrid just up ahead but then is the Forest of Aethnen. Aye, many dangers there.”

             
“Brigands and stray trolls,” Jorn said. “Nothing that would bother an armed company this size.”

             
Ironhelm shook his head in frustration.

“Ach! Your cousin has many spies,” he said. “He could easily spare a few to make sure you never make it to Loc Goren, laddie. You don’t think the assassins back there were the end of it, do you?”

_____

              They did not reach the hall of Thane Ossrid that night, crossing over into his lands as the sun began to dip low in the west. A small stone marker on the side of the road marked the southern boundary of Orbadrin’s domain and announced the northernmost limits of Ossrid’s authority.

             
Barely a mile past the marker was the village of Sklegenholm. It was a small place, but unusually situated. As they approached from the north, snow-covered fields spread out before them both right and left. Come spring, vast acres of barley, potatoes, and parsnips would be planted there. In the dead of winter, however, all was barren and the wind came roaring across the dormant fields without cease.

             
On the right emerged a broad lake nearly a mile across, a vast field of ice. Sklegenholm was built upon a peninsula jutting out into the lake, a tiny hamlet surrounded by a tall wooden stockade.

They approached Sklegenholm across the narrow neck of the peninsula, guards atop the gate alarmed at such a large party of armed men. Jorn called for a halt, approaching the gate by himself. He was known to the men of the village and the guards recognized him. They looked alarmed, casting wary glances at the travelers. It took a few minutes of gentle arguing but finally Jorn looked back at the others and waved them ahead.

Inside the stockade, the village was little more than a tiny collection of a dozen humble structures. Most were the cottages of the poor, little constructs of stone with thatched roofs. There was, however, a smithy, a guardhouse, and an inn within the cramped perimeter.

The inn was small, drafty, and not very comfortable. It was still better than sleeping on the cold ground, though, so they took their lodging there. The innkeeper balked at housing such a large group, but he agreed to let the company sleep in the common room. The men, for their part, were glad just to get off their horses and have a roof over their heads for the night.

The mutton stew spooned out by the innkeeper’s wife was bland and over-cooked, but at least it filled their empty stomachs. These were battle-hardened men used to hardships and they were not about to complain about the shortcomings of a third-rate inn. At least there was plenty of ale.

             
Jorn leaned back against the wall of the common room after they had settled in, enjoying the warmth of the fireplace to his right. He drained his mug of ale and raised it, calling for more. The innkeeper’s wife, a harried old woman not used to caring for such a crowd, came over a minute later and filled it up to the top and shot Jorn and annoyed glare.

             
“Don’t give me that look,” Jorn told her. “You’re making more coin tonight than you usually make in a month.”

The common room had a low ceiling with thick beams overhead. Below them, matted hay covered the cold dirt floor. A pair of goats lay curled up in one corner not far from the fireplace and a few chickens roamed about. Jorn’s men sat on long benches drinking ale and talking quietly. A few locals sat huddled over their drinks in the far corner of the place, eying the soldiers grimly but saying nothing.

              “What do you know of The Westmark?” Jorn asked Ironhelm. The dwarf was seated next to him drinking his ale quietly.

             
Ironhelm shrugged.

“It’s the most importan’ place in the wes’ of Linlund, laddie. It must be held, at all costs. Aye, tis true.”

              Jorn frowned. He knew that much already. He also knew The Westmark made up the southwestern corner of the Kingdom of Linlund just as Orbadrin and Halgaad’s lands made up much of the northwestern corner, but that was all common knowledge. The Westmark, he was further aware, was wedged between the wild tribes and rugged mountains of the Slave Coast to the south and the Great Barrier Mountains to the west.

The Great Barrier Mountains
. Their very contemplation filled him with awe. Those legendary peaks were higher than any in all Pallinore, from one end to the other. They were also well-known as the home of dragons and all manner of hideous and terrible monsters, a perilous place avoided by the sane.

Beyond the mountains men spoke of the Trackless Wilderness, the subject of a thousand legends and tales but in truth a complete mystery. The only certainty was that the mountains, and whatever might be beyond them, were the source of the endless waves of gruks, trolls, and worse which plagued the lands of men more and more with every passing year.

In Orbadrin’s youth, Jorn had often heard, the most they had to deal with was the odd wandering troll or gruk now and again. Now the gruk raids had become unceasing, and even bands of trolls on the frontier had become commonplace. 

             
Jorn studied a map of Linlund his last night in Falneth, examining it carefully before stuffing it in his bags to take with him. The Westmark, he saw, was a long, thin valley running north to south between the Clegr Hills and the Great Barrier Mountains. It was a fertile land a full seventy miles in length at its longest point and nearly forty miles across at the widest. He remembered now its details, picturing the lines of the map again in his mind. There was the Brugerwyn River, which began in the north, ran past Hárfjall, and then down the length of the valley. It ran by the market town of Hellath Du, past Loc Goren, then to the sea.

The situation worried him. He was going to claim a land more than five times the size of Orbadrin’s and would be a far greater Thane than either Orbadrin or Thulgin could ever hope to be. If he could win it all back from Einar, that was. Jorn’s cousin held all the land west of the Brugerwyn and every major town and village except for Loc Goren and Iynheath, as well as Vilrik on the coast of the Bachwy Bay. Einar currently had control of more than three quarters of The Westmark.

Somehow, Jorn had to figure a way to get it back.

_____

             
They set out again in the morning, riding out of Sklegenholm along the narrow, muddy track south. The terrain was flatter here, but still thickly-wooded. Now and then they passed farms, stone farmhouses silent and tiny amidst the vast expanses of snow.

At noon they encountered a party of warriors in the service of Thane Ossrid. A patrol of fifty armed horsemen stood
blocking the road ahead, warily sizing up Jorn and his men. Once more Jorn rode out in front of his men, Edain by his side.

Their captain recognized Jorn at once and greeted him handily.

“Son of Orbadrin!” he exclaimed, grinning. “Grang’s teeth! We thought by the look of your company we were in for a fight.”

“Wittwulf, my friend,” Jorn hailed him. The two grasped hands firmly.

“We did not mean to give alarm,” Jorn said.

             
“Why do you ride south at such a time of year?” Wittwulf asked.

             
“We journey to Vistinar, with a message to the King,” Jorn lied.

             
“It is good you are well-escorted with so many men, Jorn,” Wittwulf said. “The road south has become flooded with robbers. We hunt a troll that has been devouring cattle in these parts.”

             
“That is grim news,” Jorn said. “Good luck to you.”

“And to you, Son of Orbadrin.”

              They rode on, two columns of mounted warriors passing on the muddy road.

             
“A troll wandering through Ossrid’s lands?” Edain remarked once they were out of earshot. “Grang’s teeth! That was once a thing unheard of.”

             
“Much that was once unheard of is now commonplace,” Jorn said.

_____

             
The road wound through a series of gentle hills and past a pair of large lakes, their ice shining brightly under the midday sun. A few small cabins lay clustered together along the side of the road next to the lakes. A pair of men could be seen out on the surface of the lake, as well, lowering their fishing lines through a hole cut in the ice. A pretty girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes peeked out the door of one of the cabins, smiling and waving shyly. An old woman appeared a moment later, pulling the girl back inside and glaring at the travelers.

On the far side of the second lake, atop a steep hill nearly a mile from the road rose a slender stone spire a hundred feet tall.

              “What is that tower?” Jorn asked Ironhelm. “Men know nothing of it, except that it has always been there.”

             
“I don’t know a thing about tha’, laddie,” Ironhelm said.

             
“There are no markings upon its surface,” Jorn said. “And there are no rooms within, only a single staircase running the whole way to the roof. Some say it was built by giants, or maybe elves, but no one knows why.”

             
“It’s not the work of dwarves,” Ironhelm said. “Tha’ much I’m sure of.”

             
“I can’t help but wonder about it,” Jorn said. “I’ve heard men speak of strange noises and flashes of light coming from the tower at all hours of the night. They say wizards come and go all the time, and that a strange hermit lives over there near its base on the far side of the lake. I wish we could take a closer look.”

“Ach. We’ve no time for tha’, laddie!” Ironhelm growled.

“I would wager Braemorgan knows what it is,” Jorn said. “I’ll ask him when we get to Loc Goren.”

             
“It’s not the work of dwarves, tha’ much I know,” Ironhelm said again. “We’re not tower builders of any sort. And I always say tha’ the business of wizards is bes’ left to wizards. Aye, tis true.”

             
The shadows soon grew long as the sun sank low in the west and they reached the northern edge of the Forest of Aethnen. A large rock as tall as a man stood at the edge of the road. Its inscription declared the spot to be the southern edge of Thane Ossrid’s domain.

             
“Ach! The forest of Aethnen,” Ironhelm said. The dwarf knew that leaving this would be the most dangerous part of the entire trip. Aethnen was a wild stretch of land, outside any established law.