The Call (3 page)

Katja wanted to punch her airs out, or flee into the darkness and run home; but she could do neither, any more than she could lie with those deep eyes locked on her.

“N... no,” she reluctantly whispered. She
did
want to be strong. She didn't want to have to fear the darkness or people.

“It is difficult to deny the Call,” Serdra said and her eyes became less piercing. “Calm down. Soon enough you will consider this a minor event.”

Serdra finally released her and stood up. Katja watched her from the ground and then stood up herself. Her temper had cooled and fatigue from the walk and the fight and the fear weighed her down like clothes made from lead. Her pride still stung though.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked stiffly after a brief silence.

“I didn't bring my horse to this nasty hill. I will fetch it and then I can pick you up in the village tomorrow.”

“And bring me where?”

“I know of an isolated place where I can teach you the basics in peace.”

“And then what?”

“Then we obey the Call, Katja. Experience is the best teacher.”

Katja looked in the direction of the village, though of course she couldn't see it. She thought of the desire that had built within her, little by little, to go out into the wide world, and how everyone had gradually come to sense that she was different from them. She also thought of the good times. Of berry picking trips, spring celebrations, snowball fights and songs.

“So I just leave home?” she said quietly. “Just like that?”

Serdra looked at her a moment before answering.

“I wasn't exaggerating earlier: There are some very dangerous people who have a great interest in seeing our kind dead, especially when we are young and inexperienced. I'm quite certain word of your battle with the monster will get around. Perhaps an assassin will arrive at your bed one night. Or perhaps a company of mounted warriors with torches and spears.”

The woman looked at her in that hard way which made her so uneasy.

“Then your options will be to die with the death rattles of your kin in your ears, or to crawl out of burning ruins set on vengeance.” She put her hands on her hips. “I feel that has happened quite often enough.”

Katja didn't know what to say.

“Do you care for them?” Serdra asked.

“Yes. Yes... I-” She sighed. “What do I tell them?”

“Not the truth, at any rate.”

“I can't just vanish without a word!”

Serdra was silent for a little while.

“I can claim to be a bodyguard for some wealthy lady in Amerstan, and that I need an apprentice.”

“Don't men usually handle such things?”

“Not always. It is not always considered appropriate to have a man in the room. Do you have any better ideas? Because I don't want to waste time on a complex web of deception.”

Katja looked at the ground and shook her head.

Serdra suddenly grabbed her coal-black hair. Katja recoiled but Serdra just threw it over her eyes.

“You'll need to either shorten it or tie it securely. You don't want it blocking your vision in battle, or give a foe something to grab on to.”

“I came straight out of bed,” Katja said defensively.

“And got into an unexpected fight. A bit of preparation can save your life.”

Serdra took the spear, cleaned the head, hung the water bottle across her chest and wrapped the blanket around herself like a cloak.

“You can keep the cloak,” she said and was clearly about to leave.

Katja suddenly remembered that the cloak had fallen off her in the battle looked around until she spotted it. She also suddenly remembered that she needed to get back home. Down the hill. And apparently alone.

She put the cloak on, picked up the axe and looked towards home. She didn't want to ask Serdra for help, but she had undeniably needed help in the fight.

“Don't worry,” Serdra said. “I told you they lack courage. They'll hardly come near you again, and if they do just scream at them.”

Katja nodded limply.

“I will see you tomorrow,” the woman said by way of farewell and walked into the darkness. Her soft footsteps vanished only moments after her silhouette did.

Katja stared after her; the woman who had answered her lifelong questions to a certain degree and triggered something else in their place. Some intense anticipation  Katja was too confused to define. Was it fear?

She took a deep breath and felt it shake.

I'll have to sleep on this...

She rubbed her chest to get more warmth in her body and then strode into the darkness herself with the axe in both hands.

Chapter
2.

Katja pinched herself between the eyes. It had been very late when she snuck back into her bed and she'd been too riled up to sleep until the break of morning. And then of course she'd had to get up along with everyone else.

Thankfully she was excused from working in the quarry and had only minimal  household chores due to the healer's pronouncement that she should take it easy. It was a bit funny, given the night's events.

In any case, no one had protested when she strolled beyond the fields and grazing areas to the village's cemetary.

They had all been buried in a single ceremony and the burial mounds were like brown scars in the earth, an ugly reminder of the carnage of three days before. Maria's parents had wept as their daughter vanished under the dirt. She had been their only child, and there would be no more.

Katja knelt by her grave. She wasn't sure why she hadn't wept as well. She'd been disgusted by her own coldness. But perhaps she had just cried enough when the body still lay in the dust and gore. Perhaps she had just been dazed. She didn't know.

Katja put her hand on the cold dirt and tried to organize her thoughts. It felt like she'd lost more than just a childhood friend and a relative. In a way Maria had been more dear to her than her parents and brothers. It was she more than anything who kept her at home.

Maria hadn't cared about Katja's oddities. Not because Katja had confided her strange urges or because Maria had understood her, or at least so Katja thought, but because she just never cared. Not only that, but sometimes it seemed Maria considered them her most positive attribute. Her cousin had always been such an oddball, going alone on long walks which served no clear purpose or just sitting on top of hills, listening to the wind.

She had sometimes dragged Katja along with her. The two of them had gone off into the forest and talked, played, let their minds and conversations wander, talked about the wide world, life and what various objects in their environment resembled. She had gotten Katja to consider things that normally never occurred to her.

Katja dragged her fingertips along the dirt mound.

Songs had been sung and fragrant plants burned during the wake, which supposedly soothed the souls of those who died violently and sped their journey, but Katja doubted such things had any effect on Maria. She had always been so vibrant, so free, and done things her own way. She would vanish into the spirit world when she wanted to, and no sooner.

“Are you watching me, Dove?” Katja mumbled. “Are you rolling your eyes at my moodiness? Or are you just impatient to see what comes next for me?”

She felt a brief smile touch her lips and shook her head. Serdra would come some time today and Katja would finally leave home, as she had desired so much. Maria's spirit would almost certainly float about in the wind like a bird rather than amble about as a ghost.

They had gone their separate ways, until Katja died herself. Which, according to Serdra, could be extremely far off.

“Oh, what am I going to do without you?”

She took a grey pebble from the mound and rubbed the dirt off it. Maria had encouraged her to touch things now and then, to remember that they are real.

Katja put the pebble in her pocket and walked back home.

--------------------

Serdra appeared shortly before noon and handled everything very smoothly. She didn't so much as glance at Katja, but introduced herself to the village elders as was custom. She introduced herself as Olga Fransis, servant and bodyguard to a merchant in Amerstan, on her way home from an errand.

A weary traveller was always well received and she was invited to lunch when the people returned from the quarry.

Katja stayed away since Serdra clearly meant to make it seem like they'd never met, and Katja didn't have a lot of faith in her acting skills. One could surmise however that Serdra, as all travellers, would be asked about news and in turn told of local events. The most notable one, of course, being the monster and all that came with it.

Katja sat outside on a boulder now that the sun was peeking through the clouds and ate the egg bread she and her mother had made.

The thought that it would be the last thing the two of them would do together shot through her mind, and she tried to push it down.

She imagined the surprise Serdra would feign at being told the bloodthirsty monster had been slain by a wild, young girl, and how natural it would be to then ask further questions about that person.

And what would she be told? Probably not much indicating that she would be sorely missed. Which would give Serdra an opportunity to make her suggestion without arousing any suspicion.

At least that was how Katja played events out in her head. She was still digesting when Long-Alma, one of the elders, came to her and said an opportunity had arrived: An opportunity to earn money, go out into the world and perhaps find a husband in a great city.

Katja had been going on about her desire to travel for two years, and driven away every boy she'd been introduced to when people gathered, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not. So there probably was nothing suspicious about how quickly she said yes.

Her mother was in the kitchen and her father and brothers were eating out in the fields when she found them. The news came as a surprise but Katja thought she also detected some relief that she'd gotten such an opportunity, and perhaps at the chance to get rid of her.

They gave her the backpack the men of the family carried food in when going to work. In it she stuffed a blanket and the cloak Serdra had given her, hidden among clothes. Serdra claimed to be in a hurry and assured everyone that her mistress would see to all the girl's needs when she entered into service.

The woman produced a purse and counted thirty silver crowns into her palm. Tradition didn't require one to pay parents for employing a girl who was technically a woman but no one objected. Serdra insisted it wasn't a lot of money to her.

Her father gave her a good knife in a sheath, hugged her and said that now she could perhaps benefit from being a crude thug. She couldn't help but grin at the words. Her mother gave her soap and a jar full of dried tealeaves, and asked her to visit if she ever happened to journey this way.

Katja said she would, but gave no real thought to when that might happen. Something she had wanted for so long was finally coming true, and everything was happening so quickly she couldn't really concentrate. She half expected to wake up at any moment. But then she felt the pebble in her pocket, and reminded herself that this was real.

She bid her four brothers farewell, the fifth one having moved to a neighbouring village upon marrying a year ago, and put on the backpack.

And that was it. She looked at them, her family which she'd sometimes quietly cursed for standing in the way of her desires, and was surprised by how much she suddenly loved them. Pain had never been a part of her fantasies about running off.

She wanted to say something. Something profound, or something that would explain how she felt.

But she didn't understand it herself. So she just thanked them, bid them have good lives and repeated her promise to visit given the chance.

Then she turned around and drifted over the packed dirt towards the gate where Serdra awaited. The elders and those who had taken a break from work stood in a row and watched her leave. Most nodded and wished her good fortune, but as before she saw suspicion in the faces of many, as well as relief now that she was leaving.

How would they feel if they knew the whole truth?

She looked away from the row of faces at Serdra and her horse.

Whatever the truth actually is.

Serdra watched her approach with those deep eyes, and for some reason looked over her shoulder as she walked the final metres. Just what was she watching for?

“Well, have you bid childhood goodbye?” she asked quietly so others wouldn't hear.

“Didn't you say you were still a child, in this 'family' of ours?” Katja replied bitingly.

Serdra flashed her half-smile and mounted.

The horse was a gigantic, hideous monstrosity and Katja needed help from Serdra to get into the saddle. It was just big enough for her to fit behind Serdra, but the journey wouldn't be comfortable.

Oof
, she thought and wrapped her arms tightly around the older woman's waist.

Serdra kicked the horse on and the monstrosity started off with long, rough steps.

The horizon approached faster and faster with each unpleasant bump, and Katja turned in the saddle. The defensive wall and roofs visible above it faded into the distance faster than she'd ever seen. As the village gradually became a little spot in the distance, all the rest started disappearing as well: The river, the forest where children played hide and seek, the hills which became playgrounds during mid-winter and the flower hillock.

The feeling of freedom was still there and growing as her hair blew in the wind, but she nonetheless finally felt a lump in her throat.

The horse carried them downhill, and the little spot in the distance vanished entirely.

Katja turned forwards and squeezed Serdra's waist a bit more tightly.

--------------------

They initially traveled east along the road, through an area Katja knew from trips to festivals, but then Serdra steered the horse off into wilder territory. She still always managed to find routes that didn't give the horse too much trouble and the beast was rather nimble for his size.

Not that the journey could be considered pleasant. The horse seemed to have amazing stamina, given how rarely Serdra need to stop to rest and water him. Though Katja had ridden before, her backside was soon smarting badly and Serdra's back wasn't exactly a soft pillow. The woman was rock hard with thin but honed muscles.

Still, Katja had never made a habit of whining, and as the landscape climbed and climbed she felt free like never before and forgot all else for a while. She had never been this high up before and the view was impressive. To the south she saw farms and fields, the little scrub forests which still grew in areas not yet cultivated, hills in magnificent fall colours and later in the day she could glimpse Pepple Creek and the ocean. To the north the Animal Mounts towered over them; Horse, Cat and Dog. The snow line had creeped quite low and Katja shrugged as she thought about last night's northern wind.

Late in the afternoon Serdra suddenly stopped, tied the horse and walked up a cliff that provided a good view.

Katja slid to the ground. She was as stiff as a board but tried to carry herself well as she joined the woman.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I haven't taken this exact route before,” Serdra replied with her eyes on the horizon. Then she pointed at something in the distance. “That area is too neat and orderly. It is cultivated. We will pass north of it. I don't want people seeing us together.”

“Are you ashamed of me?” Katja asked with a smirk. “Or are you just shy?”

Serdra was neither angered nor amused.

“I don't want to leave witnesses to our journey. It could cause trouble later on, when word gets out about your monster-slaying.”

Serdra turned on her heel and started making her way down.

“Are you ever going to tell me what fearsome enemies you are expecting?” Katja asked as she followed.

Serdra stopped, but didn't turn.

“Well, that is the issue. Around here it could be anyone.”

She continued on to the horse and untied it.

“Now hold on, what kind of answer is that?” Katja asked. “Just what are you on about?”

“Weed. It's a very persistent problem in these parts.”

Katja crossed her arms and looked on as Serdra climbed into the saddle.

“That's no answer and you know it!”

Serdra met her gaze for a few moments.

“What do you think of Baldur's Coast? What do you think of your homeland?”

Katja hadn't been expecting that and hesitated while searching for an answer.

“It's a simple question, girl.”

“I... well, I don't have experience with other lands. I know the Outskirts are...” she threw up her hands, “savage, and there are endless wars in the Stone Foot lands so I'd say we have it rather good here. Why?”

Serdra leaned a bit closer.

“Old evil dwells in this land, Katja. Deeply rooted, and far worse than conflicts driven by greed, pride or old grievances. And if we are not careful it will swallow both of us.”

Katja didn't know what to say. This woman was annoyingly adept at causing such a reaction.

“I'm not going to discuss the details now,” Serdra continued, “because you need to learn many things in the coming days and I think it's best to portion information. Besides, it's just good for you to wonder a bit, and think.”

“The old people were constantly telling me similar nonsense,” Katja murmured. “I didn't heed them either.”

“Well,” Serdra said, unbothered. “How do you plan to make me talk?”