"Grey Lands" - Rough Draft Work (Fantasy/Sword/Sorcery)

A knight begins his journey to find his King's son far in the forgotten North. (Note: This is a bit long, 7,000 words to be exact, enjoy and/or critique)

“The cold seeps into the bones this far north, stranger,” The speaker takes practiced steps to the prow of the ship, walking with the ease of one who calls the sea his home.

A dark form hunkers at his destination, “Aye, shipmaster,” It states sharply from a cloak’s hooded void.

“I’m no master in these lands,” The former answers, “Rather a humble boatman, and trader on occasion. I am called Hagen.” He juts out a gloved hand and grins widely beneath a braided beard the ashen color of a lifeless fire.

The latter opens his cloak to the bitter bite of the wind for a brief moment to accept.

“A sword? Are you a knight?” Hagen nods to a revealed hilt.

“Not in these lands,” The form retorts.

Hagen raises his brow in curiosity before asking, “Do you know of this place? Where it is we go? I have ferried many there and naught do I hear of them after. It is a dark place with evils made before even the land itself. You would do well to avoid it…”

“I’ve paid your fee, have I not? And you are the only captain who dares these waters.”

The boatman relinquishes his gaze, sighs then takes a step to lean on the ship’s gunwale. A very brief moment of silence passes before he turns his head once more, “You speak the Eincal tongue well, but I have an ear for accents, friend.”

“It is no secret, I am a foreigner,” The second grunts as he draws himself deeper into his cloak, trying to avoid further conversation. Most of the voyage was a quiet one, save for the boat’s constant protests against the sway and the slosh of the current.

“Though I know not your home, I have ferried men from your land. ‘Beyond the Giant’s Crest’, they crow. Far west by south, I hear. But all pay the toll just the same and they take to the dock, just as you will, and naught will I hear of you either.”

“None ever return?” The shadowed form responds to the challenge.

“Not under my charge, but, hearken, friend,” Hagen leans in and a grim memory takes over his expression, “I sailed this ship as a lad with my father at the helm. As we broke from the morning fog there stood a man upon that old dock, the very dock you will tread. Pale as death was he, and bloodied, even unto his shoulders from a great battle. We took him in, he freed himself of his rent mail and armor, I remember because I had never seen such before, he washed his body and abided in my father’s cabin, but never ventured beyond its threshold. Each night, he and father would feverishly speak at length in another tongue. More than once the man broke and wept into his supper-”

A shout from the distant coxswain at the wheel breaks Hagen from his entrancing tale and his hawkish gaze searches beyond his ship’s guest. “The fog awaits us, friend.”

The form in the prow abruptly awakens and stands to its full height.

It’s a man. Inside the cloak’s hood, the hard lines on his somber face are illuminated by the faint morning sun, while his brow spoke of a scholar or monk, his set jaw and dull grey eyes lent their creed to a hardened, born fighter. Broad shouldered beneath his heavy grey cloak, he wears fine mail to his hands and thighs. A knight’s tabard halved in the faint colors of white and red covers him, but what once had been snow white is now filthy grey, and the fearsome crimson striping the lower half barely shows through the mud of months of travel. “Lo, ye will be blinded by the Dark One’s breath…” The man whispers to himself.

“Huh?” Hagen grunted, suddenly noticing the stranger had risen. The man who had been quivering in the prow, now stood tall against the fog bank’s eerie malice; his calm face holding back a raging storm.

“How far to port?” The armored man pulls back his hood to show a cropped mess of hair the color of pitch.

“Not another league,” Hagen turns and waves to his distant coxswain, “Starboard! Ten-five!”

A call of assent comes back and the ship lists ever so slightly in response. The water below is black as night and calm to the point of appearing to be glass; a black glass that holds back unknown horrors waiting for any sign of cracks, so that they may break through to feast upon the unwitting and unprepared.

“Have you a name, stranger?” Hagen nods, “I like to keep a record of my work.”

“Brelod, son of Brogan, the Grey Land is my home. Beyond the Giant’s Crest,” The man, Brelod, gives a wisp of a smile before stepping up on a crate in the prow to get a better view.

“You are a knight, then? A questing man?” Hagen couldn’t hide his intrigue for his eyes had never left man since he stood and made awesome his presence felt. “Tradesmen from all lands come to Eincal, some mercenaries too, and I hear tales of the Grey Lands. A wild place, where ancient wyrms, great dire wolves and all manner of beast roam.”

“Aye, tis a place wrought by death,” Brelod says bluntly while quickly undoing his clasp and leaving his cloak on the ship’s deck, he points with a gloved finger, “The dock, shipmaster, it is in sight.”

“Stay a bit, Brelod. I wish to know of the Grey and its hallowed Knights…” Hagen offers, knowing the words are likely futile. All the knights who journeyed from that distant land eventually found their way to his ship and this very dock. All were just as somber and just as dark, yet an undying flame raged steadily somewhere within them.

Brelod works the mail’s coif around his head, but doesn’t remove his eyes from his bone-chilling destination, “Return in two moons time, I will regale you with tales few men have heard and fewer have borne witness to…”

The ship has barely closed its distance with the dock, but Brelod leaps from the railing with the other deckhands. He treads steadily between and around them as they are tossed mooring lines; lines that seem almost wasted with a dock so ancient and weather worn. Entire planks miss from its surface and one of its far massive posts, the size of a man’s body, had given way so that the dock listed backward. It will soon be claimed by the sea.

Brelod silently prays it would not be before his work was complete.

He doesn’t glance back, but he can feel Hagen’s eyes boring into him from afar. Brelod wanders if the man truly knows where he has berthed his ship on so many occasions. Does the man know he frequents the land of the dead more than any other living creature? A boatman indeed he is.

“Lo, ye will be blinded by the Dark One’s breath…” Brelod whispers again, keeping a hand close to the hilt protruding from the belt hanging low about his waist.

The dock becomes soft dirt the color of a dead man’s skin and stretching before him is a black forest. Its trees sway with melancholic groans in a gentle, yet malicious breeze and are doused in needles sharp enough to pierce whipped leather. The foliage beneath them is a moss unappealing to the eye, it is ashen and bears a faint resemblance to millions of crawling creatures gathered together to watch his arrival. But there, a path cuts through it all, faint, but it is there.

“Thine’s path be unhallowed, but ye must not fear to tread…” Brelod doesn’t pause. His walk from the dock carries him straight into the heart of that wretched place.

 

Niro Val’Dorren sits at Hagen Fredrson’s small oak table, drinking heartily from a flagon. It’s a fine wine, as is the flagon, which is decorated with the Eincal sigil, a weeping willow. He tips the drink again and the spiced wine leaves a warm feeling in the gut and a taste of cinnamon on the tongue. Most likely from distant Soskoto, or perhaps White Tree, Niro decides. He never had a liking for such, but he couldn’t refuse a man’s hospitality. As for Hagen himself, his awestruck expression hasn’t relented since Niro boarded four nights ago in Eincal’s port. Niro had quickly grown accustomed to such attentions, being not only a knight, but also being head and shoulders above every man he’d met.

He nods along as the captain rambles about the different people and groups he’d ferried and the dozens of ports he’d visited along the coast. “Have you seen Telham during the yearly Festival? Quite a sight. Drink and food from cities and countries I’ve never heard. Kings and their retainers walk the streets alongside the smallfolk. Women… Ah,” Hagen shakes his hands for emphasis, “The women dancers, my good man, would break even the stoutest of hearts… and weaken the legs of the strongest knight.” At this Hagen gives a sly smile.

“A beautiful city indeed,” Niro agrees leaning back into his chair, which groans unpleasantly under his well-muscled bulk.

“I have many tales, Ser Dorren and you are courteous, as a knight should be, to let an old man prattle of his finer days, but you’ve not sat at my table these nights to hear my stories of festivals…” Hagen drinks from his own goblet, although his reddened face reveals he may have had one too many already.

“No, Captain, I haven’t,” Niro breaks a small loaf of dark bread saturated in small grains and passes half to Hagen, who gladly accepts.

“I knew exactly where I would take you the moment you set foot on this aging oak,” Hagen spoke through chews. “Hear me, just as I have told each man who has come before… That land is cursed… Seek your glory elsewhere, knight.”

“I go not for glory.”

Hagen gives a start, blatantly intrigued, “Then do tell why.”

“You ferried a man… A knight, who is a close companion,” Niro, his voice low and serious, leans forward and the chair protests again, “Younger than I, he may not have spoken much, but wears a snow and crimson tabard.”

Hagen’s eyes sobered instantly, and the cheery color painting his face turned ghost white, “The man from the Grey Lands…”

“Aye, Brelod is his name. Tell me of him. Is he alive? Did he come back?” Niro prods for the information. He needed to know. Brelod never returned to the Citadel. Never sent a letter. The trail went cold the moment Niro arrived in Eincal. Everyone knew where the young knight had gone, but none would speak of it.

“I can't say…” Hagen drops his face, like a child scorned and almost on the verge of tears.

“Hagen!” Niro growls and reaches across the table to clamp a huge hand around the old man’s arm.

Hagen’s expression changes to one of struggle and pain, but not from Niro’s steely grip. One half of the old captain wished to divulge all to Niro, but the other half seemed to be fighting some inner monster that firmly held his throat shut. “Let me free! I know nothing!” Hagen shouts and begins battling Niro’s cinch.

But the powerful knight wouldn’t relent now, not now, not when he felt so close to answers.

Hagen flips the table between them and takes a handful of Niro’s thick jerkin before trying to strike him in the groin with a knee. Niro, a seasoned veteran and trained in the military arts, bats away the attack with his own thigh. The two tumble and Niro twists his muscled frame to land on top of the old man. Hagen, frothing at the mouth and fighting like a man possessed, sticks his fingers in Niro’s left eye. Niro gives a throaty grunt before pinning the captain to the floor. Helpless, Hagen heaves his body in ugly convulsions in an attempt to throw off the knight.

Suddenly moonlight spills on Niro’s back, there is a cacophony of boots on wood, then cold steel presses against his neck’s nape. Then a gravel riddled voice speaks over his shoulder, “Let the Cap’n go, or we keel haul you ‘fore mornin’ come, ya hear?”

Niro puts his hands up and mentally punishes himself for not keeping a cool head, but curses himself even more for not wearing his sword and allowing them to catch him off guard. Any other day and the rabble crew on this tub would’ve been slaughtered to the last man.

“We’re puttin’ in Shallow Cove in the morn’. ‘Til then you stay in ye bunk. Now get up.”

Niro stands and proceeds out into the night’s silvery glow. Cold wind breaks off the waves and glides over the deck. The water around is roiling and throwing the boat to and fro, but each sailor keeps a steadied well practiced stance. They are somewhere between Eincal and Shallow Cove Niro assumes from what the sailor said and due to it being the only port town between the capital city and Brelod’s last known destination.

The score of deckhands, knife and cutlass bared, have surrounded him. They stink. Rotten teeth, grime covered coats, and well-worn boots of fur and leather seems to be the pervading fashion. The points of their blades nick his gear as they walk him to the small stair leading to the cargo bay inside the vessel and eventually all the way to the small walled off cubby made for on-board guests under the captain’s cabin at the hind of the boat.

Niro keeps his hands level with his shoulders as he steps into the bunkroom.

One of the deckhands slams the door shut and the knight sinks down onto his bed.

A faint rattle and click tells him they’ve got him locked down, but he doesn’t dare sleep.

 

The next morning, Niro stands at the prow in full war regalia gifted to him by Lord Brogan himself; a suit of mail with coif over a gambeson, finely crafted steel bracers and shin plates, and a conical helm with cheek guards and nasal bar. Completing his armor is the tabard of pure snow and bloody crimson, bestowed to him when he was accepted into the family by Brelod.

High on Niro’s heart, stitched in crimson, are two crossed axes, the ancient sigil of the Val; the royal guard of the Grey Citadel, vowed to protect their charges until death. But of all this, the article most alarming to the ship’s crew is the tanned leather wrapped handle of a great-sword jutting over his right shoulder. A ferocious sight to behold, many of the sailors and deckhands, weapons still bared, keep a respectable distance, but eye his form with venomous rage.

Shallow Cove had come into sight early as dawn broke and Captain Hagen arrived at the cubby to escort Niro himself, though finding the colossal knight so armed nearly gave the old man a heart attack. Now fully docked, tied off and standing with his men, he took to offering apologies and trying to mend the incidents of the previous night. Niro blocks out most of his verbose and frivolous speech, until he hears, “…But Ser Brelod has gone. He will not be coming back.”

At this Niro turns on his addresser, “Gone? Where?”

Hagen immediately avoids his gaze and begins wringing his hands.

“Gone where, old man?” Niro takes a step and their collective group draws backward, but stabs their swords out at the air between them in an attempt to frighten. Niro ignores their childish attempts to threaten him, “He’s gone. But he’s not dead… Am I wrong?”

Hagen begins shaking his head. Fighting the inner monster clutching his throat again, “No questions! Get off my ship, and return to your homelands!” The old captain’s legs shake as he roars and steps back amongst his men.

Niro’s gaze, filled with disdain, doesn’t relent. He takes time to bore his eyes into each and every man standing before him before walking towards the gangplank. The crowd of sailors moves like darkness around light, continually pushing at his edges, but drawing away when he gets near. His heavy frame bows the plank as he disembarks and makes it to dry land. He finally removes his helm as he turns to watch a troop of sailors maniacally wrench the board back onto their boat.

Hagen approaches the railing, “There are many trade caravans that come here from Eincal. Look for them at the tavern, Gilded Lady. Perhaps, from there you may make it back to the Grey Lands. Farewell.”

Niro says nothing, but in an act of chivalry against his enemy, gives a curt bow of the head.

Hagen, seeming to hold back a torrent of tears, disappears amongst the men preparing to go back out to sea.

 

Niro lay under the scrutiny of each soul who passed through the Gilded Lady that day. He took a small table at the front corner which afforded a view of the building and its entrance. A bit small, but homely, the knight drank from a mug of mead and had eaten some of the pork, which the tavern keeper claimed to be aged in empty honey mead barrels.

And just as Hagen said, many a trader came through the tavern, clearly standing out in their outlandish garb, but none afforded any assistance. Most claimed to be returning west to their homelands, such as Soskoto, Pheneth and White Tree, while others simply refused to have him along, stating they had enough mercenaries guarding their caravan.

Niro, each time he was refused, would return disheartened to his small table and his mead. Each time, he would find the tavern keeper, an auburn haired woman of perhaps thirty, eyeing him. She didn’t mind that he noticed, even going so far as to adjust her dress’s hem around her breasts in his sight before attending once more to her duties. Niro mused over her lithe curves once or twice before remembering his oath to Lord Brogan.

Niro vowed, not only as Brelod’s Guardian, but as his friend, to find him and bring him back to the Grey Lands. To bring him home. Whether he be alive or… Niro couldn’t fathom the rest of that statement. The loss of the King’s only son, and a young knight loved by the people, would devastate the kingdom. Perhaps even give their enemies the opening they need. A chink in their armor. A place to land the final blow against a fading king and his lands. The Bor family, the Toldyric Order, King Ungul and his bloodthirsty Berserkrgang, and the countless other foes in the Grey Lands who would love to have the mighty Citadel in their control.

But now the trail has become cold again. With no way into the Darklands, Niro’s quest will end and he will go back to the Citadel in shame and there in the King’s Hall he will fall on his sword in his shame for all to see. A life for a life, such was the Val oath.

“Need anythin’ else, love?” The tavern keeper appears and breaks the morbid visions of his death on a cold stone floor. She smiles widely, shifting the freckles dotting her nose and cheeks while her jade eyes gleam with faint desire.

Niro can't find words for a brief moment, “Uh… No, no thank you. The mead is fine.”

She sits in the empty chair adjacent to him, lays her forearms on the table and slightly pushes her ivory breasts up, “Will you be… stayin’? We have plenty o’ rooms.”

“No, I have to find a way east by nightfall,” Niro avoids her blatant sexual advances by taking down some of his mead.

“I’ve a trader comin’ by tomorrow. He sells fresh barrels of mead, maybe I can help you in with him, he knows his way around the Eincal better than most,” She gives another smile.

“I would be in your debt,” The words were out of his mouth before he knew what he said.

“Then maybe you’ll be needin’ that room after all, love… I’m Elyra, call if you need,” She winks and leaves him alone with a fresh mug of the sweet drink.

Niro wipes his forehead and starts on the third mug.

 

 

Elyra lay in the bed, still panting from the lovemaking. Niro hadn’t invited her, but he couldn’t refuse when the woman appeared at his door in a simple white slip gown that didn’t leave much for his imagination to ponder at. Her passionate cries attracted the attention of another guest, and after finding their door rather easily, pounded on it and shouted in protest of the noise. He was quickly dissuaded from further action after a stark naked, and erect, Niro kindly asked him to return to his own room.

Elyra turns with a sigh and traces her finger over Niro, “Not many knights come through the Eincal, we have militia men, but no warriors. What brings you?”

“A man,” He says simply, slipping an arm under her and pressing her supple body to his.

“A man? I didn’t take you for that sort…” She giggles and flicks up an eyebrow.

“He is the son of my liege lord,” Niro waves off her odd attempt at humor. “A quiet young man, black of hair, and bearing snow and crimson heraldry much like my own.”

“Aye, he pass’d through with th’ old sailor Hagen…” She leans in and plants a soft kiss on his neck, but then draws a quick breath as though she wanted to bring the words back.

“You’ve seen him!?” Niro took her and thrust her out before him to look in his eyes. “Where? When?”

“I… I, uh…” Shocked by the abrupt change of moods the woman’s smooth lips waver, and only stammered half-words came to her.

“Speak!” Niro tries to calm his voice, but the throaty demand seems to only numb the woman further.

She searches his eyes with the same look Hagen had given, as if she were battling something inside. She shakes her head and her auburn locks fall into her eyes. She frees herself from him and slides from the bed. Not bothering to cover herself, she escapes into the black of the hallway, leaving Niro as quickly as she had arrived.

Niro leans up, grabs the short wooden stand at the bedside and hurls it across the room at the door, “Damn you woman!” The small stand splinters and fragments into a hundred pieces at the door’s threshold.

 

Niro, once more dressed in full gear save for his bracers and helm, awaits the faint blue morning light. It breaks over the east horizon and floods the cold northlands with an eerie sapphire glow. Summer is nearly here and his mind wanders to the Grey Lands. With the summer, the moor around the Citadel would come to life. Serfs and freemen would come to their ancestral plots and prepare them for planting. Knights and their squires would be out with palfreys and destriers, lance and sword to proudly hone their skills in mock games of war. The vibrant warmth of the summer sun will blanket the land and give life to the faded oaks on the hills behind the castle. And when the heat sets in, the mountains to the west will bring a cool breeze and the faint scents of distant wildflowers.

Niro used those memories to fuel him. Just as every questing man speaks of, it’s the fire of the Citadel Knight; a trait renowned from the Giant’s Crest to the Telham coast and even north to Eincal. Men stare in awe, women swoon, and adversaries cower at the sight of Citadel banners. This is the legacy he and all his fellow knights carry; a legacy forged millennia ago, when the ancestors of Lord Brogan cast down the last of the oppressive Black Wizards far in the Darklands at Highblood Tower.

The reflecting knight turns on his heel at the sound of a faint knocking at his door. He crosses the room solemnly and snatches up his great-sword along the way. Wrenching the iron ring on the door it opens with a painful screech and standing in the door way is a naked beauty. She swoons and rocks on her heels as though she were terribly drunk. Her long locks cover most of her face and perfect breasts. Her skin is no longer ivory, but a pale ashen almost transparent white.

“Elyra?” Niro leans his weapon at the door’s threshold and just as he puts out his arms for her she falls into him. He pulls her into the room and rips the quilts from the bed to protect her from the morning cold, but even through the blankets and the leather gloves stitched into his mail sleeves he feels the ice that is her skin. Now swaddled, he pushes back her hair to see her eyes are lolling about in their sockets.

“Help me… help me… help…” She mumbles over and over again deliriously.

 “What is it, woman?” He suddenly has to support her head as she goes limp. “Dead!” Niro cries and watches in utter horror as a trickle of blood courses a thin trail from her nose and over her lips. “Gods…” Is all he can muster.

Icy hands flash forth from beneath the quilts and clutch rabidly at Niro’s face and neck. Painful grunts emanate gruesomely in her throat as she struggles to get ahold of him. Her fingernails snap and split on the mail coif lying about his neck. Niro tries to fight her off, but she’s inhumanly strong and finally gets a solid grip around at his throat. He tightens his neck against the onslaught, but she’s crushing him. He takes one final deep breath and holds it before throwing heavy blows. She shudders under the strikes and there is a sick crunch each time his mailed sleeve connects with the soft bones of her face.

Niro can feel the veins bulging in his face and the pain around his neck is excruciating. Though her hands are ice cold, her touch is burning hot and sears his flesh. Black is creeping at the edges of his vision and in one last desperate move to save his very life, Niro grabs Elyra by the chin and back of her skull then wrenches with every muscle in his body.

Her hands fall away.

Niro, so abruptly freed, scrambles back against the post of the bed. He grabs his throat, drinks in the sweet air and shouts, “Gods damn you, woman!” Then slams his fist on the floor in rhythm with a violent coughing fit.

The knight rights himself and pulls at the collar and coif of his mail. He studies the still form lying at his side. Elyra’s once beautiful jade eyes have faded and glassed over. The awkward angle of her head is horrifying and now the broken bones of her neck stab unnervingly at the pale skin encasing them. Her face is beaten to a pulpy mess, and blood flows freely from her eyes, nose and mouth. Niro has to tear his eyes away from the carnage.

But something catches his eye at the open doorway.

It’s a young man, the same who had come to their door angrily in the night. He’s scared stiff by what he’s seeing with his mouth agape wordlessly flapping in revulsion.

 “Wait!” Niro shouts just as the man dashes out of view. Niro shuffles to his feet, sprints to the doorway, but the man is already gone. He wraps the belt of his sword over his shoulder and cinches it tight. He glances back at Elyra and steels himself for what he knows awaits him.

He rushes down the stairs and into the main room of the Gilded Lady. It’s abandoned. All the candles are snuffed and the tables are void of life. He bursts through the front door and out into the main thoroughfare of Shallow Cove. The sapphire sun is melting the frost of the night and steam is rising from the road in eerie clouds. A few shops line the road, but long fence rows and small thatched roof homes dot the town in every direction. To the north, in the quiet of the morning, Niro can hear the churning of the mill powered by a small creek emptying into the sea nearby.

There is a shout.

It’s the young man down the thoroughfare to his left and he is pointing directly at Niro.

A massive mob stands at his back. They’re armed with farm tools, hand scythes, forks, hammers, shovels and anything else they could get their hands on.

“Halt!”

Niro snaps to his right and meets the distant stern eyes of the town marshal. He’s an older man with a great silvery beard and dressed in boiled leather covered by a short, rusty mail shirt. He raises his wooden shield, which is bounded in wrought iron, and readies his single hand broadsword. “I’m Marshal Oli Tergr! Surrender your weapons!”

Niro throws up his hands as the Marshal takes a step toward him, “She was bewitched!”

“Surrender your weapons! I won’t ask again, Ser!”

“I can't,” Niro whispers.

“Surre-” The Marshal begins, but Niro doesn’t let him finish. The knight sprints between the houses directly in front. He knows the mill is north and he can see the peak of the massive barn housing it. If he can get north and east, he’ll get to the Dark Wood and eventually the Darklands. Hopefully the people of the town won’t follow him.

“Stop!”

He hears Marshal Oli howl.

Niro dashes right, bounds a fence, glances back, and sees Oli on his heels. The man’s elderly face clearly belied his physical abilities as the chase rounded more houses, cut through alleys and slipped leafless trees. The knight dares another glimpse over his shoulder to see the Marshal has disappeared, but shouts as he finds himself crashing through the front door of someone’s home.

Niro is stopped dead. The home’s freezing interior turn’s Niro’s breath to steam before it ever escapes his chest. A stench unlike any he’d encountered is stirred by the sudden draft pushed through the door and Niro is forced to smother his face with his mailed sleeve. Lying on the floor are the frozen bodies of a dozen people with eyes glossed over just as Elyra. He kneels to inspect the bodies, which are so awkwardly piled together it is challenging to distinguish where one person begins and another ends. Something foul is happening in this town. Niro touches the nearest limb, and just as he could see, the still form is completely stiffened from the brutal winter nights.

The knight doesn’t have the time to investigate the bodies properly. Seething shouts from the encroaching mob force him from the home, back out into the street and through a darkened alley at the side of the home. He emerges on an avenue rounding away into the town at his left and right, but fades into a field of dead grass ahead of him. Perhaps fifty paces away it dips down into the cold creek and the wide, tarred barn housing the mill and its massive water wheel.

Staking its menacing claim on the land beyond is the looming Dark Wood; its endless acres of burnt trees stretch before him in a sea of ever-black. Being so close to such a horrid place was the no doubt the cause of all the madness in Shallow Cove...

The Marshal suddenly bursts from an alley at Niro’s left screaming a bloody war-cry with his blade held high, but Niro tucks and rolls through the soft dirt just as steel sings where his form had once been. He’s on his feet straightaway and wrenches his great-sword free. Oli is already attacking and leading with a sweeping cut meant to gut Niro. The knight throws his hips back to dodge, then sets his feet before bringing his own weapon down from on high. Oli throws up his small shield and finds it quickly cloven in twain by Niro’s impressive stroke. The Marshal, unable to control his balance, falls to his rump in the frosted dirt, but throws up the point of his blade to keep Niro from advancing.

Niro lifts his weapon above his head once more, “Yield!” He cries, “I wish you no harm!”

“You should’ve never come here!” Oli shouts back, “Now they will kill more of us!”

“They?” Niro turns his head at that, and lets his guard down a bit.

Oli, seeing his chance, snaps to his feet and lunges with a throaty wolfish growl, but Niro turns the attack aside with a swipe of his mailed forearm. Off balance now, the Marshal has no defense and no time to get his sword ready to parry. He watches helplessly as a great blade, whistling death, makes an impossibly fast arc for his neck.

The next moment, Oli Tergr is pooling a crimson tide onto the pale earth beneath him.

Niro is dreadfully reminded of how ugly it is to see a man convulse in his last few seconds, as his body tries to keep itself alive by slurping air through the torrents of blood.

The colossal knight whispers a quick prayer for the man, but screams of revulsion and hatred break his moment of quiet. The mob has rounded the far end of the avenue and sees Niro standing over his victim.

“Damn you!”

“Madman!”

And other horrid insults were hurled his way as they charged in mass down the avenue.

Niro still heated from the short scrap, uses the adrenaline to dash and toss his form across the rocks protruding out of the creek’s rushing surface. In the next breath, he is leaving the mob behind and entering that place few speak of and few ever return from.

 

Niro sits before a faint fire.

It is dangerous to have such a bright light source giving him away, but it is even more dangerous to fight the night’s cold with no heavy cloak or furs to protect him. He charged through the forest as far as he could, while still keeping the coast in view. He knew that if he kept the distant shorelines close he would eventually cross paths with that decaying dock and its malicious blankets of mist. There he could tread the faint path of knights of old, far into the heart of the Dark Wood, into the heart of madness and despair; where men’s wills and bodies were once broken by ancient magics and the evil sorcerers who commanded them.

Niro snaps more twigs and tosses them into the dying light.

He thinks back to his teachings deep within the Citadel’s massive halls.

Of how in the dark beginnings of time, wizards crossed the east cold sea and brought vast knowledge and peace to the feuding tribes of this land. Teaching all they encountered languages, farming, smithing, scholarly pursuits, and all that which makes civilization mighty. But also all that which makes civilization wicked. Men, growing so vast and so abundant, brought war to each other with this new found knowledge as they sought to expand their small holdings.

And the Black Wizards reveled in their work.

Pitting men against each other, and playing as gods. Enslaving entire countries to their will and bringing death to the first who rose up to oppose them. It was a cataclysmic era, when mountains were raised, cities sundered and masses slaughtered.

Until the Citadel Knights first strode the Giant’s Crest with steely hearts and shining blades. One by one the Black Wizards fled lest they feel the bite of those blades; routed to their last refuge here in the Dark Wood. The Dark Wood where King Brennr and his fifty knights stormed Highblood Castle and its Tower. Throwing the shattered bodies of the wizards from the parapets and proclaiming an end to the suffering.

A fairy tale, filled with allegory and ideas of mighty heroes and their legends.

But Niro knew the truth was much more gruesome.

They had been warriors, just as he, who had plunged their hands into the filth and by sheer force of will brought forth an age when peace could be established; an age when knights, weapons, war, and wizards would be thought of as relics of that bloody bygone era.

Niro snaps another twig and tosses it to the fire.

 

By morning, the knight is already on foot and covering ground.

He walks the soft earth at the tree line, where not a hundred paces away is the cold North Sea. He counts the days as they roll past, a day, two days, and a week. He is not deterred. He wouldn’t return home without the young prince. Something told him that Brelod still lived. Niro only stopped when hunger consumed him or thirst weakened his immense frame.

On the fifteenth day, a fog joined the sunrise and he knew.

“Lo, ye will be blinded by the Dark One’s breath…” He whispers.

The knight quickens his pace to a light jog, but it is a half day before he is stopped cold.

For there, docked at the shore is Hagen’s oaken trade ship. Its sails rolled away and its deck devoid of life. Niro turns his sword in the sheath and makes to free the steel, but realizes the shine may give him away. The past fortnight had covered him in filth, the only article that remained immaculate was that precious blade slung across his back.

With the stealth of a ravenous wolf, Niro stalks along the tree-line carefully avoiding the litter on the forest floor. One misstep and the awful silence pervading his world would be broken. He ducks behind a fallen tree as a lone sailor appears on the near side railing to survey the bleak landscape. The sailor spins a long dirk’s point on the railing and hawks a large gob of snot into the black water lapping at the boat’s hull. He abruptly straightens, sheaths his dirk and looks off the prow into the wood.

A dozen boots clatter on the ancient dock, as a company of deckhands trudge back to their ship.

Like the wolf fastening his sight to the prey, Niro’s attention locks on the hunched caped form of Hagen Fredrson at the formation’s lead. The old man hacks and coughs into his gloved hand while mounting the gangplank. He is shouting viciously at his men as he embarks, they scramble in all directions without protest. Some move to the masts, others man the mooring lines, while a select few take their guard posts about the wheel and their captain. Upon arriving at the ship’s wheel, Hagen throws back his cape and calls out while gesturing to his deckhands.

The masts are quickly unfurled and oars are readied to push out to sea.

Niro cannot stop himself. The grueling days trudging through the muddied, horrid black that is the Dark Wood has assaulted his very soul. His knightly composure is lost when his mind fully understands that Hagen is escaping his grasp once again. “Hagen!” Niro gives the most terrifying war-cry his wilted lungs can muster.

Deckhands and sailors flinch and fall over one another to find the aggressor, but Niro like an unforeseen storm has already charged the dock. A couple of sailors untying the mooring lines stand against him; the first falls beheaded, and the second, who makes a resolute defense with his wide knife, finds himself nearly cloven in two from shoulder to hip.

“Throw away the plank!” Hagen screams in sheer terror and shoves the nearby sailors into action.

Niro, already caked in the visceral pieces of his foes, leaps the five paces from the dock to the ships railing high over his head and with the strength of an unleashed demon hauls his seething frame into the fray. A score of filthy deckhands surround him, but he cuts them down two at a time. Limbs and pieces of flesh are strewn in every conceivable direction as he swipes his great sword in perfect form, just as he was taught high in the mountains at the Citadel’s renowned war school.

He simply acts on pure instinct and chases his enemy down with a fury they could not hope to match. They flee with unspeakable expressions under his onslaught; some leap overboard and others slam themselves low at his boots hoping to hide among the dead. Niro wades through them and before he is aware he finds himself mounting the stair to Hagen’s wheel.

Two guards, with cutlasses shining, come forward to challenge him. Niro lifts his sword high and the first lifts his own blade to defend, but the knight, feinting with the sword instead delivers a vicious kick to the man’s midsection. As the former falls back, Niro stomps his foot to the deck and throws his entire weight into a perfectly timed stroke that eviscerates the second attacker’s skull and face. The first sailor, recovering from the kick, whips a quick combination of slices at Niro’s bloody form. He allows the attack to be fumbled in his mail before striking the sailor with a heavy fist. His foe retreats once more and gives the knight space to bring his own sword about.

The sailor falls to the wooden deck clutching shining steel protruding from his abdomen.

Niro leaves his blade in the man as he faces Hagen.

The captain mouths wordlessly and waves his hands in supplication. Niro takes a handful of his cape and coat then hauls him up face to face, “The Prince! Tell me!”

Hagen merely howls in response and kicks wildly at the air beneath his feet.

“B*****d!” Niro drops the frightened man to the deck and there he grovels and pleads.

“Mercy!” Hagen shouts and prostrates at Niro’s boots, “I told the young Ser! I told him to stay! Not to go into the wood!”

“Old fool… Tell me,” Niro shoves him away with the toe of his boot.

“He lives!” Hagen lifts his palms up, but his face sticks to the oak below. “He lives! Spare me!”

Reviews

[CodyLR]

Horseshit. you f*****g suck guy. just go f*****g kill yourself f****t