Previously…
On the long road to Farhaven, after the caravan fought off a beastman attack and entered an eerie, ancient forest, Sepp and Skivor became mysteriously cut off from the rest of the party, lost in the deep woods...
Check out the Chapter Index for all previous installments
“There! Look, Sepp!” Skivor was gesturing down the long track to the caravan, just as three Dunmarrow ran to meet them. They took their charges by the arms and into the middle of the path, asking of them in harsh and stilted Merchant’s Tongue:
“What happened?”
“Where was it you were taken?”
“Have you been harmed?”
Their eyes were darting around for danger, hands on their sword hilts, ready to brandish their blades in an instant.
“We are unharmed,” said Skivor slowly and clearly, “a little shaken,” he glanced for a second at Sepp, “but we are okay. Was anyone else taken?”
“Taken?” spat one of the northmen.
“Aught took you? We are watched here?” said another.
It was then that Captain Karel marched up, and moved his men aside.
“The merchant woman from Mul Manatar was lost also,” said the captain in a cleaner Merchant’s Tongue as he approached. “She emerged only some minutes before you both. She said, too, that she was taken, and that it was by the woods. I would have you confer with her now.”
The captain had ushered them forwards to the caravan and dismissed his men when Barosh and Seva came running up.
“Serpent’s Breath!” Barosh laughed with nervous relief.
“What in the world happened?!” Seva said, her dark gold eyes wide and staring. “All of a sudden you were gone and it was so quiet and the northmen were shouting-”
“The forest took us,” came a voice in an unfamiliar accent. The Manatarian merchant, Saror. “I have, ah, never seen forest like this before, not even in Voorland,” she gave a flicker of a smile through her heavily accented but clear Merchant’s Tongue. “I wanted to see more of it and...I was gone. You were gone, too? Both of you?”
“Aye,” said Skivor, “we stepped off the path for only a second, I think, and before we knew it...nothing but trees and fog around us.”
“You saw nothing?” asked the captain.
“Not a thing. Eerie place, that forest,” Skivor said, looking back into it. “Best we put distance between these woods and ourselves. I can’t speak for your homeland, captain, but Voerlund woods are hard and strange, and there there are old parts of them here untouched by man. They do not like to be stirred in winter.”
“Ah, that is the whole of the northland,” replied Karel with a grim smirk.
“The vastlands around Mul Manatar, they are same, in stories. Suddenly the emptiness, it swallows you up. That’s how I knew it was these woods.”
“How was it you all escaped?” the captain asked.
“Ah, I sat in one of the grey beams,” Saror pointed to the fragments of ashen light in the forest, “and I prayed for guidance, I had no fire. Those are the sun’s lights, and it was sun spirits that showed me the way out, they must have seen you, too!”
“Yeah, they did…” Sepp had been quiet, looking back into the forest the whole time.
“You saw them?” Saror stepped forward, her eyes wide with excitement, Sepp turned to meet her.
“I saw them, aye. Tall and slender and the wings, that dust...” he couldn’t help but look back into the treeline. Saror’s hand drifted to her mouth to cover her grin.
“It is blessed to seem them,” she said placing her other hand on Sepp’s arm, “you must have, ah, an air about you, as we say back home.” She said so with a smile that was more of dim awe than mirth.
“I’d a notion they were the lanterns of the dead,” said Skivor, “but it sounds like we owe the Manatar gods something then, eh?”
“I would say you do,” the captain interjected. “But lest any emptiness open up and scatter us, we should move onwards, the wagon will be fixed anon.”
The lazing aurox had been shifted and set back to their duty, not that any of it seemed to bother them. Had it not been for the human beings all around, Sepp was certain the burden beasts would have been entirely content to dwell in the slumbering green forever. The growing cold slowed them none, either, unlike the humans in each wagon that pulled their coats and cloaks closer as the sun set off for the horizon. Karmov had joined them back in their wagon, and Sepp saw now the northman remove a curious article of clothing from within his leather jerkin. It was a scaled cap he went to pull over his shock white hair. It had a brown trimming—the inside was of the same material, a short, thick, wavering kind of hair or fur. The mercenary noticed Sepp’s inquiring look.
“It is from a winterfin, a big Dunmarrow fish that grows coarse hairs, very warm. It was once believed they were just a story. Now we wear them.” The northman chuckled to himself as he sat back and checked outside one of the side flaps. S’eth, must be bad if even they’re feeling this cold was the apothecary’s thought.
Chatter in the wagon was low and infrequent. There was a kind of restlessness to the lowering day, despite the excitement earlier on. Sepp and Skivor recounted the experience in full for the benefit of their friends, though there was little else to say or answer. Sepp went over his vision several times, mostly for a fascinated Skivor.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before. I’ve seen what my dad called elementals, little things here and there, you know, in the distance and the like, but them…”
“Well, we’ve seen beastmen, and you said those were elementals right?” asked Barosh.
“Yeah, but...they’re all flesh and such, they’re like animals, or something. And besides, beastmen don’t come from a god, do they? These...I mean, these were spirits of a sun god, that’s what the Manatarian lady said.”
“Shouldn’t it have been the World Serpent,” asked Seva, “or some other Voerlund thing?”
“Aye...neither of us were praying, though,” said Skivor, stroking his moustache in thought.
“Hey, I’d be pretty pleased if a foreign deity came to my rescue, especially if I didn’t even ask!” Barosh said. He was right, thought Sepp. They did owe that sun god something. He must ask Saror about that, if there was some offering he and Skivor could make.
As it got dark, the Dunmarrow set the lanterns on the wagon sides alight. They wouldn’t be stopping for some time now, to make up for the sojourn earlier. The wagon quietened down as they dozed off or studied the murky world outside. Sepp began thinking inward, though. Truth be told, beyond the awe, the whole episode—the whole place, really, had shaken him a little. Something of the gloom and weirdness of the sleeping forest had been getting to him. Making him think of things he’d rather not think about. Like the war. Like horse-headed beastmen. Like his father, and that familiar and until now happily forgotten trembling heaviness in his chest that came when the still fresh memory of the raid on the village invaded his mind in silent moments. He’d been dealing with that pretty well, he felt. But it would continue to come for some time, he had no doubt of that. And it would linger, the question perhaps forever being unable to be answered. If he was out there, which Sepp felt a conflict over he couldn’t even comprehend, his father was almost certainly worried about him. But he almost certainly wasn’t angry, either. Serpent’s Breath, he’d kill for news on the situation back there. Soon, he thought. Had to be a village or town coming up soon. Rest until then. No use worrying yourself over every nonsensical thought that comes into your head.
So instead, he thought of the sun spirits. The moth folk. Sun moths? Best name for them he had. He went over that one glimpse again and again in his own time, in his own detail. Like tall, slender people, with smooth but not terrible faces, more like as seen through a haze, and they were dancing or maybe swimming in the air, in a beam of greyish light, and they had moth’s wings for arms, and with each slow, rhythmic beat, a light, shining dust came from them. He had seen two, maybe three, two much higher up, one much closer. Of everything he saw, one particular detail, or rather it was a feeling, a strong feeling, stood out to him, and that was that they had been looking down at him, or more properly, looking after him and Skivor, as they stepped out of the forest. The way, he was absolutely sure, however alien their features may have been, the way that a friend or a parent, or even an animal looks after someone dear going into the distance. He swore to himself over and over again, as everyone half dozed the cold away in the wagon, that he was sure of it. And he felt better for it. Or at least not as shaky. And he wished they had their guidance in getting out of these strange old woods.