Previously…
On the long road to the port city of Farhaven, the party encountered trouble in a strange, ancient forest where Sepp and Skivor were trapped, but escaped with the aid of Manatarian sun-spirits. After Sepp learned about the gods of his fellow travellers, the caravan left the forest for the wide wintry country…
Check out The Path of Poison sub-section for all previous installments
The forest had finally been left behind. Sepp swore, along with the others, that they almost felt the weight of the strange somnolence lift as soon as they left the treeline. They rode through much of the night, and in fact, it was the cold morning haze that made them tired again. They’d been up through the whole night. That whole spell in the woods had messed their schedules up somewhat, but winter was fickle anyway—sleep came whenever it was needed. No use wasting the daylight though, as Captain Karel had rather quickly decided, and they were once again back out so the Dunmarrow could inspect the wagons and feed the aurox.
In the distance, the forest looked like a great dull smear across the broad hillside. It must have stretched over that span for leagues. No doubt it would have engulfed even some of the larger towns back in Silverden. The land they entered into now was like a single vast blanket of rich, earthy hues, interspersed with lumps of slightly taller vegetation and large conical mushrooms, but every so often, long grey bluffs and sombre crags shot from beneath that blanket to reach for the steely sky, sharper and more jagged than what the murk of last night had suggested. It was silent. Utterly still and silent. No birds, no firehawks, no roaming beasts. Amidst the restless, undulant landscape, under the odd winter sun, there were the impressions of shadows in everything, around the wrinkles in stone, in little pits in the rolling grass, like the night was waiting to spring back up again.
"The winter does not do them justice," Karmov said, as he went to meet his captain, gazing across the landscape. "Come a long summertide, these dreary stones will spring to life in a striking, stately beauty. Perhaps you will be in this land long enough to bear witness.”
It was somehow not at all surprising the hear a Dunmarrow speak like that, and Sepp was inclined to believe him. But, he thought now, the land held less impressions of a slumbering stateliness, and more of age, raggedness, weathering, of being time-worn, a place draped in a furtive hardness that held secrets. This was ancient land, after all. A lot of people, and a lot of events had passed over this place. That kind of stuff remains, Sepp felt. They must. They happened.
It seemed to be the case with even the stoic Dunmarrow, and it wasn’t just Karmov’s words that made Sepp think so. Barosh joined him in watching the northmen prowl about beyond the track the caravan followed.
“They look...do they look, I don’t know, nervous to you?” Sepp asked.
“Yeah,” came the troubled reply. “Something got them spooked, you think?”
“There is something a bit brooding about this place,” said Seva, who had slunk up to watch with them. Four of the northmen had gone up to a high, slanting crag, and it seemed they were up to something atop it. Sepp noticed two more stood at the base, and looked up to the others every so often, who now each held a hand into the air—or rather, as the three of them looked—held something in their hands into the air. They didn’t speak, or make motions, or anything. They just stood there.
“You know, I, uh, I think I’ll go take a look around the plants here, see if there’s anything of use,” said Sepp.
“Sure, yeah, let us know if you find anything good. A don’t stray too far, eh?” Seva replied after a short second. They were all still looking up at the Dunmarrow.
“I’ll tag along, do you mind?” Barosh asked, though there was a tinge of something else under his usually cheerful tone.
“Wouldn’t mind the company out here…”
Every so often, there was a mere breath of wind, a sigh, but it was weak, and made no sound. It shifted the grass and the shrubs just a little, and whatever way the sun was shining over this country, it made one or two of the shadows of the landscape shift, too. Sepp was looking, but there wasn’t much of medicinal use around here. Maybe some good padding for a poultice or some such, the kind of material you mix the actual medicine into to spread around, but nothing that itself helped heal. Some edible mushrooms grew to their waists, he picked bits off and chewed them thoughtfully, showing Barosh the right ones to look for. He kept up the search though. It occupied his mind, but from what, he wasn’t sure.
“So, nothing good out here, huh?”
“Not really. But a lot of stuff goes in winter. If there’s aught, Sun or Serpent, show me the way,” Sepp waved his hand out with a half-hearted motion.
“You think they’ve finished feeding the aurox yet?”
“Nah, they’ll eat for a while, I reckon. Poor things must be hungry in the cold.”
They were quiet for some moments while Sepp kicked around the bare vegetation, before speaking up. He turned to the farmhand.
“Barosh, are you getting a weird feeling out here?”
“Uhm, well it’s pretty lonely, but it’s winter.”
“You don’t get...an eerie kind of feeling? The way the Dunmarrow are acting, Seva’s tone, all that? Even yourself—”
“Ah, I’m just tired, been a weird day. Or night.”
Sepp simply furrowed his brow.
“Yeah, this place is weird,” Barosh admitted, turning away. He was looking into the distance when he said “Is all of Voerlund going to be like this? Beastmen, strange woods, monsters…”
“No more than Silverden is full of weird things.” Sepp tried making his tone sound casual, and Barosh accepted it.
“We really were lucky back in Yamesh. I mean, caravan troublemakers and the like aside, nothing bothered us, you know?” Barosh was still looking into the distance. “Take one step out and its drakes and thugs and the coldest, harshest wilderness I’ve ever seen.”
Sepp was somewhat stunned. He wasn’t used to hearing his friend like this.
“True enough, it was a quiet place. But sure, it’s not like either of us ever went terribly far beyond it until now, you know? I bet Seva or Skivor could tell you things.”
“I suppose you’re right, Yamesh was pretty much all my life.”
“And sure, we’ve made it out of everything that’s happened, haven’t we? Even on our own.”
“Yeah, we have. But, I don’t know, Sepp, sometimes I think about what if you hadn’t come across Skivor, Seva and myself back then. I don’t know if we’d have made it, just us three.”
Sepp didn’t know what to say. He had the awful feeling Barosh was right. That first time, against the beastmen...
Suddenly, Barosh audibly shivered, and whatever it was flowed over Sepp who likewise made a shudder.
“Woah, woah, what was that?” exclaimed the farmhand, spinning about, his hand falling to the hatchet at his side. Sepp would have found the action somewhat extreme if his own hand hadn’t flown to his hexes in that same instant. “It was like something-” Barosh stopped, and swore out loud as he turned to Sepp, looking directly behind him. Sepp followed his glance.
There was nothing.
Barosh came up and grabbed Sepp by the arm.
“I just saw someone duck into that grass.” He unhooked the axe from his belt. Sepp looked at him, the question clear. Barosh just shook his head. “It was a person.” Sepp resisted the tug at his arm as his eyes flew over the landscape. It rose in solid waves, where foam would be as on the ocean, the rugged, shadowy heath spread its rough, scraggy shades of grasses. And in that grass, rather close to them, a black shape was peering out before it fell back into the ground. Sepp stumbled into Barosh, not daring to turn his back to that landscape. They walked with wide, irregular strides over the uneven loam, not speaking. Then it came again. A flowing of something not quite air, a sensation of movement without sound, pushing them aside, it rushed between the two, a soundless gust that died the second it passed them. They both saw but did not acknowledge the black shape rising from the earth just within the edges of their vision.
The caravan was just up head, the wagons visible at the top of the low rise they now ran up breathlessly. What met them then was something else: a wind, a great cold wind, firm, that ended in a kind of rush before fading away. It stopped them in their tracks.
“S’eth,” swore Barosh as he flinched, “you feel the bite in that?”
It had been like they passed through a wall of ice, but, Sepp felt, not oppressive. They stopped, and looked about. The air was chill, but fresh. The landscape looked different somehow, and neither of them could quite put words to what exactly had changed in the mere few minutes after they had all but ran from the plains below to the gentle rise to the track. A shift in the cloud overhead then let the sun throw its rays over the land just a little stronger. That shadowiness which had lurked in the dips and wrinkles seemed to have, well, gone with the wind. Barosh scrambled up ahead and looked back, his eyes darting about the sleepy winter country. Sepp followed, and they quickly found themselves on the earthen trail, just a short ways from the last wagon, and shared a nervous laugh. It was then Sepp who noticed, before he saw anyone or anything else, the Dunmarrow descending the crag they had been atop of.
“To your wagon, friends, we are on the move,” spoke Karmov as he marched up to them. The fellow’s voice was noticeably brighter. They each gave a glance back towards the plain before jogging up to meet him.
“Karmov,” Sepp called to the northman and moved up to him, “is there something going on out here? Barosh and I, we were taking a look around down there, and we, well, we’re almost certain we saw people out there-”
“That is nothing you need concern yourself about,” the northman said with a sly squint.
“Did you folks do something?” Barosh enquired with a slight grin. “The frost god? We felt-”
“Merely Dunmarrow business. In the wagon, friends, the day will not last long,” the northman motioned with his head.
Back inside and on the road, the four bundled themselves in cloaks. That biting wind came several more times, each time freely entering the wagon. Karmov had donned his fish fur hat again and seemed happy enough to tend to the maintenance of his black-tinged blade while the others talked, ignoring or responding to questions with only a single glance up and back down.
“So!” announced Seva, “I learned something interesting from Saror, the Manatarian merchant,” whose name she pronounced very carefully, “I was out walking and, well, you know, we’re the only ladies here, so I thought to make friends, and I learned I have a Manatarian name.”
Murmurs of mild surprise and interest passed between Sepp and Barosh, and Skivor nodded.
“Very exotic!” said the farmhand with a grin.
“Hey, so does that mean you have family out there?” Sepp asked.
“Not that I know of, but sure it’s just a name, though she did seem surprised.”
“What does it mean?” Barosh piped up.
“Saror said it comes from the name of...where was it,” Seva looked up and around trying to recall it, “she said it’s a district in, I think, the south-shore, called Sevashtar, or Sevas Ashtar.”
“What’s that mean?” Sepp asked.
“Seva’s Command,” she replied, quite pleased.
“An old warrior’s name, then?” Barosh enquired.
“From over a thousand years ago, she said, near the end of the second Voerlund Empire.”
“Pff...now there’s a name,” Barosh sat back, “I’m not joking when I say mine is the old name for a harroot.”
Sepp laughed. It seemed perfect.
“It’s a hardy name for a good staple crop, thank you!” Barosh said with mock insult. “Here, what does Sepp mean?”
“Seppesh is a word they used way down south for, would you believe, ‘a growth of beautiful but deadly plants’, my, uh, my mother was from the far south. My dad said—Master Búcher said it was supposed to be graceful and fearsome,” he finished with a laugh.
Barosh buried his head in his hands with a grin and mild swear.
“Can’t say it doesn’t suit you, though,” said Seva, “considering the, well, your work.”
“Yeah,” Sepp replied, “it is a pretty funny coincidence, isn’t it?”
“We don’t know what ‘Skivor’ means yet!” Barosh turned to the silent woodsman. “Probably some old kind of Voerlund battleaxe!” The older fellow shrugged.
“Karmov?” Sepp nodded to the northman. The Dunmarrow sat forward, not needing the question to be asked.
“It means “cold river”. My brother’s name, Dorach, it is a word for the night in an old dialect. My captain’s name is, if you will believe me, ‘captain’. But you must never speak this to him,” the northman said with a chuckle before he returned to oiling his sword.
Thanks for this installment. I’ve truly enjoyed this adventure!