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Andrew M. Trauger

BK 3: Chapter Nine: Elinwyche




Moffe led the Dragonslayers along a narrow trail through the lightly forested low hills near the Maz Nabor.  Most of the deciduous trees had already cast off their foliage.  Even with the early onset of winter, the warden did not expect to see barren trees so soon.  Even some of the evergreens were devoid of foliage.  Dried vegetation lined the edges and the mound of the trail between soggy ruts carved by generations of farm carts.

“This is not a healthy grove,” he remarked.  Skeletal limbs tangled overhead against a cold, gray sky.  He scanned the exposed branches.  “Where are the birds?”  He strained his ears for the rustle of small creatures among the fallen leaves, the howls of distant wolves, or the snarl of a mountain lion.  Even a single birdsong would have set his mind at ease. 

“Gives me the chills,” Kiyla said.

Cora shuddered.  “Well, it is winter.”

The brawler shook her head.  “Not that.  I need some noise.”

“She’s right,” Moffe said.  “It’s deathly silent.”

Kiyla’s sharp sigh punctuated the stillness.  “We need Elric.”

Moffe couldn’t promise the man’s life, but he could offer something.  “I have learned to trust the Sacred Assembly.  They will do what is best for—”

Cuauhtérroc held up a hand and dropped into a wary crouch as he readied his Brother Cudgels.  Pointing further down the trail, he motioned for everyone to clear aside.  He maintained a low stance, sword out front, and crept along the trail with slow, noiseless steps.

Moffe whistled a soft trill and reached out an arm.  Further encouragement would have to wait.  Within seconds, a red-shouldered hawk lighted on his forearm.  After brief words with the bird, it winged away to fly low circles overhead.  With a quick glance to the sky, Moffe slung his shortbow into a hand, nocked an arrow from his quiver, and settled in behind a winterberry bush in partial bloom.

Cora scooted next to the warden.  “What just happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Moffe replied.  “I missed something, apparently.  Something he heard.”

Cora scrunched her nose at him.

Moffe chuckled quietly.  “I know how that sounds.”

“No…I know what Cuauhtie’s doing; I’m trying to figure out where you got the hawk.  There hasn’t been a bird for miles; you said as much yourself.  Can you just whistle and make birds appear out of thin air?”

The warden lifted his eyes to his avian friend.  “That’s Clement, my confidante.  He remains far overhead and often out of sight, keeping watch over me.”

“Clement?”

“He was named after my fath—”

A distant scream shattered the stillness.

Moffe whistled shrilly and pointed down the trail ahead of Cuauhtérroc’s prowling.  Clement pulled out of his circle and glided westward.

A second shriek sent Cuauhtérroc into a run.

“Come on!”  Moffe bolted from the hedge.  “That wasn’t fear screaming.”

They raced down the trail and rounded a bend.  Cuauhtérroc ran farther ahead toward a stalled wagon, speeding past a gaunt man in ragged clothes.

The man’s eyes gaped overly wide in a sickly shade of yellow, and his tongue hung several inches past his chin.  Spindly arms flailed at his sides as he broke into a dead run heading straight for them.

Moffe raised his bow and sighted his arrow on the man’s chest.  “Stop!” he called across the bowstring.  “I will drop you.”  He lowered his aim to thigh height. 

The man spewed incoherent babble, his tongue waving and flapping against his cheeks.  Moffe pulled his bowstring and focused on a leg.  The crackle of tautness rippled through his bow as he pulled the string to his ear.

A volley of arrows broke through the surrounding trees and pierced the man like a tailor’s pin cushion.  He toppled, sprawled, and rolled to a muddy stop on the trail.

Moffe spun left, then right, scanning down his arrow shaft for a company of archers.  The forest was empty.

Kiyla went to the man’s side and stood over him with clenched fists.  “That’s rinkin messed up.”

Moffe lowered his bow, viewing his soundless surroundings through narrowed eyes.  The trees remained still; the wind held its breath.  No leaves crunched underfoot; no distant call of a wolf or croak of a bullfrog.  The forest was dead, but it had obscured the archers of a dozen arrows.  Few could manage a feat like that.  Not even Dehrian.  But if the forest was hiding them—Moffe chilled at the thought.

Finding no one, he joined Kiyla at the dead man’s side.  Jaundiced eyes, wide and protruding, refused to close in the face of death.  The man’s tongue lolled across the muddy soil like a wounded snake, twitching with random impulses.  Shabby clothing covered little of the man’s emaciated body, which bore the grim hue of the grave.  Moffe checked for a pulse and withdrew his hand with a start.  He was ice cold.

“Cora, come look at this,” he said.

“I’d rather not.”

“Tell me what you see,” Moffe said.  “He’s not wearing much for cold weather like this.”

Cora remained several steps away and cast only a fleeting glimpse at the body by the warden’s feet.  “He’s a peasant.”

“But his skin is pallid, and he’s deathly cold.”

“Moffe, he’s dead, all right?  I don’t need to peer in on him to know that.”

Kiyla crossed her thick arms.  “He ain’t bleedin’.”

Cora clamped her mouth shut.  She shook her head, her green eyes darting this way and that.  “No…”  She backed away, glancing at the corpse before staring wide-eyed in panic at Moffe.  “Please no!”

The warden set his jaw.  “Then you concur; he died long ago.”

A shout from Cuauhtérroc near the wagon spun Moffe about with a readied arrow raised to his chin.  Kiyla and Cora ran ahead, but Moffe moved with greater patience, his attention focused on every observable hiding place.  Somewhere within those trees were a dozen bowmen; it was impossible for the forest to hide them all in plain sight.  He knew arboreal concealment.  There was always a trail.

But as he neared the wagon, he could find no one.

A woman’s body lay near the side of the road, her clothing thin and tattered.  Like the man before, she was filled with arrows, and none of the wounds bled.  A few strides away sat a wagon in the middle of the road.  A lone donkey, harnessed to the wagon, calmly chewed on a clump of dried grass between the wheel ruts of the path.  The gray-skinned driver’s body sprawled across the seat.  His severed head lay on the floorboard, and neither head nor neck oozed a drop of blood. 

“I keel dees man,” Cuauhtérroc muttered when Moffe arrived.  “But he do not bleed.  Dees is bad juju.”  His cudgels tossed aside, he clutched his longsword close to his chest, and its pale blue glow uplit the savage’s face.

Cora fidgeted and paced.  “We have to get out of here.  Now!  This—we—I…”  She clutched her lute, as if its presence brought comfort.  Perhaps it did.

Moffe lowered his bow, frowning at the long-dead bodies.  There was no need to ask why the savage dropped his clubs and took the man’s head.  Many kinds of undead shrugged off blunt weapons.  “We can’t leave.  Elinwyche is near; we’ll be there before nightfall.”  He rolled the dead woman over with a booted foot.  “They will need to know about this.”

“This?” Cora said with a squeak.  “This is the undead, Moffe!  You don’t rink around with this.  You don’t just stroll into a village and announce the walking dead are among us.”

“They could be in danger.”

“We’re in danger!” Cora screeched.  “What are three undead doing out in the middle of the forest?  Why is the donkey living?  They should have eaten the donkey!”

Moffe scanned the forest again.  “Who killed them?”

Cora stomped a beeline for the warden.  “Are you listening to me?”  She pushed up on her toes to get nose-to-nose with him.  Her emerald green eyes burned with both fear and fury, a lethal mixture of explosive chaos.  “They’ll kill our bodies and destroy our souls.  You don’t live to talk about this, Moffe, you—”

Moffe put a finger to her lips.  “Shh.”  He glanced sharply left and right, positive the wind had shifted from nearby movement.

Her eyes flared with indignance.  “Don’t shush m—”

A quick spin put Moffe behind her with a hand clamped over her mouth.  “Listen!” he hissed in her ear.  “Somebody killed these undead, and they’re watching us.  I don’t know who they are, but they’re not attacking us, which means they’re protecting us.  Which means there’s a larger problem here.  This…needs our attention.”

Cora mumbled dissent into his hand.

“And you need to calm down,” Moffe said.  “The walking dead are killed just as living creatures are—bladed weapons, mainly.  You killed a dragon, right?”

Cora nodded.

“Then you can kill the undead.”  He released her mouth, then grimaced at his wet hand.

“But I don’t want to kill the undead,” Cora protested.

“Can we go get Elric?” Kiyla asked.

Moffe shook his head.  “No, we’re going to warn the people of Elinwyche and make sure they’re safe.  We’ll proceed with vigilance but also confidence.  Clement watches from above.”  He raised his voice to the woods.  “And others watch from hiding.”

Cora grabbed his arm and spun him back around to face a simmering glare.  “What are you doing?”

“Doing what’s right.  But if y—”

“That’s what I thought.”  Cora poked his sternum.  “Stop it.  I lead the Dragonslayers.  You’re our escort to Ordin’s grave, not our moral compass.”

Moffe stepped back and raised both eyebrows.  He provided a half-bow with arms spread.  “Excuse me, milady.  I didn’t think you’d have qualms of this kind.  But if you object…”

Cora huffed at him.  “No…I don’t object to warning villagers of danger.  I do, however, object to you assuming control.”

The warden steeled himself.  This is why the Blade Masters has no women.  “I’m accustomed to making quick decisions.  Are you the actual leader of this group, or are you just peeved?”

Cora’s green eyes burned.  “Just…just confer with me first.”

“Very well.”  The warden scanned the perimeter forest.  Still no sign of the surrounding archers.  “We will go to Elinwyche with warning.  Be alert for movement in the trees.  Ordinarily, I would have scouts going ahead, but I think we should remain close.”

“What about this?”  Kiyla patted the sideboards of the wagon.

Moffe nodded.  “If Cora has no objections, we’ll take it back to the village.”

“I do not,” Cora said with an icy glare. “But we are not taking the driver.”

Kiyla folded her arms.  “I ain’t touchin’ him.”

Moffe smirked, grabbed two fistfuls of the headless driver’s shirt.  He dragged the body off the seat and tossed it into some nearby bushes.  “There.”  He cut a quick glance at the two women.  “Is that better?”

Cuauhtérroc picked up the severed head by the hair.  “You forget dees.”

 

*************                 

 

Shortly before nightfall, with the first flakes of snow glimmering in the vestiges of evening light, the trail widened and the trees withdrew from the roadsides.  Boulders of various sizes lined the road, directing traffic into a large clearing in the midst of the forest.  Near the center of this clearing nestled a village, its cottages built closely together and sometimes conjoined in haphazard ways, as if their construction had sprawled without much planning.  Abandoned fields, at one time plowed, lay fallow and weedy around the cluster of buildings.

Cora’s mind churned as they neared the village, and her nerves walked a razor’s edge.  She longed for normal woodland ambiance, but the omnipresent silence amplified the slightest sound.  Every creak of the cart or scuffle of a boot sent shockwaves through her spine.  The forest was empty, and undead horrors roamed the land.  What a horrid prelude to visiting a gravesite!

A crude sign posted near one of the boulders read: “Elinv.”  Moffe kicked over a board lying in the ditch.  Under a layer of moldy leaves and termite trails, it read: “vyche.”

Moffe peered at the village ahead with a frown.  “It’s been a while, but I remember Elinwyche as a more cheerful place.”

With the sun giving up its last light, Cora expected the streets to be emptied of people, especially with the onset of winter.  But it was early evening, and there should have been lamps burning in the windows and smoke pouring from the chimneys.  Elinwyche was cold and dark, as if it had been abandoned.  As they crept into town, signs of life appeared—laundry hanging askew on a line, a dog’s bowl by the stoop, a child’s toy quietly gathering a light dusting of snow in the barren yard.  But there were no launderesses, no dogs, and no children.

“What happened?” Cora whispered.  “Where is everyone?”

The first appearance of a person startled her.  A man rounded the corner of a building as if summoned by her question.  A second man soon followed, emerging from a different direction and falling in behind them.  Neither said a word or gestured in any way; they simply stepped onto the road and followed.

Kiyla began walking backwards, keeping her focus on the men.  Her stance lowered and her hands flexed at her sides.  “What do you want?” she barked.  “Go home.”  When neither man responded, she shot a confused glance over her shoulder at Cora.

Cora shrugged.  If I knew what’s going on…

Within another twenty yards, other townsfolk had joined them, some coming alongside the wagon, and others stepping in front of Moffe and Cuauhtérroc in the lead.  Each was emaciated, with thin faces and feeble bodies.  None spoke as they pressed in but quietly tightened a circle around the Dragonslayers.

Cora’s spine turned to jelly.  “Moffe?”  Her voice warbled with the vibrato of dread.  She reached for her lute.  Would a lullaby work?

“Nobody panic,” Moffe announced.  Beside him, Cuauhtérroc had his longsword in one hand and a single cudgel in the other.  Panic was exactly the thing dancing through any sane mind.

“What do we do?” Cora asked.  “They’re closing in on us.”  She strummed the opening notes of a lullaby.  Please don’t attack me!

“I’m gonna jump somebody,” Kiyla said.  “They need to get back.”

As they neared the village center, doors creaked open like yawning mouths on desolate houses, revealing pitch blackness inside.  Entire families shuffled out to join the swarming mass.

Groans formed on the villagers’ parched lips.  They reached out with thin fingers tipped with dirty, split nails.

Cora gasped and bit off a screech as bony bodies bumped and jostled against her.  “Moffe?  What’s going on?”  Unlike the three encountered on the road, these people retained relatively normal skin tones and features, if barely.  She sang the soothing melody of her spellsong, blanketing the nearby villagers with tranquil notes.

“I’m not sure,” Moffe replied.  “These people are not well.”

“Dees people are hungry,” Cuauhtérroc said.  The donkey at his side flinched and tossed its head as villagers clawed at its neck.  The savage pushed them away.  “Dey need dees food.”

“I agree,” Moffe said, “but it’s deeper than that.  Something visceral, I think.”

Kiyla shoved a villager away with enough force that three people fell over.  The gap closed instantly as others pressed in, stepping over and upon the fallen.  “Ain’t hunger,” she said, her words like verbal jabs.  “We need Elric.”

Movement ground to a standstill.  With empty groans, the villagers reached with gnarled fingers for anything they could grab, pulling and scratching with ravenous desire.  Eyes clouded by unreason stared from dark, sunken sockets.

Cora’s skin crawled.  “Moffe!”  Her voice escalated as she dragged out his name.  She grabbed the sideboards of the wagon to climb above the fray, but a multitude of clutching hands pulled her down.  The lullaby had accomplished nothing.  “Cuauhtie!”

The pale, gaunt arms of a small girl enwrapped Cora’s legs.  The girl’s mouth opened as she leaned in for a bite.  Cora screamed, and the dam burst, spilling a torrent of words and actions thus far held in check.

“Get back,” Moffe commanded, but it was like blowing against the wind.  He shoved one away only to have the space filled with two others.

“Get off me!” Kiyla yelled.  She kicked and shoved, tossing frail bodies into each other like cordwood.  For a moment, the brawler cleared enough space to hoist Cora into the back of the wagon, then she jumped in.  The crowd clambered forward, scratching and gnawing as they piled on.  Kiyla kicked one and drove a fist into another, clearing the wagon as bodies careened over the edge.

Cuauhtérroc swung his arms with wild abandon, slicing through one and crushing another.  Bodies fell to his left and right.  Still, the throng pressed, a relentless mass of clutching hands and open, moaning throats.

Moffe grabbed the savage’s arm.  “Don’t kill them!”

With the clarity of a silver bell, rising as a descant above the chorus of moans, a beautifully eerie note split the air.  It rang loud and clear, like the melody of a pixie’s panpipe mixed with the yowl of a cat in heat.  Cora had never heard its like; she had no idea such a sound was possible.

As if lulled by the sonorous tone, the famished villagers backed away into a wider circle and slipped into a form of trance.  Their eyes rotated back, and they swayed as if staggered by a drunken stupor.

A lone villager remained in the wagon, and Kiyla drove her fist into his jaw, expediting his retreat to the expanding circle.  She chuckled.  “Elric woulda liked that.”

Then all fell silent.

Illumined by the glow of magical light affixed to the underside of a parasol, a tall figure in brightly colored garments rounded a nearby building.  A crown of long gray hair stretched around his head from one ear to the other, leaving him bald on top but showering his upper torso in an ashen waterfall. With half-closed eyes, he hummed an atonal melody, his head lilting slightly with the cadence of the tune.  He appeared to transcend the surrounding chaos, blissfully ignorant of the mauling riot, humming along with a sleepy, contented grin.

Through the fog of distant memories, Cora struggled to recall the haunting tune.  She knew a melody was buried in the atonality somewhere, but the more she tried to find it, the more it eluded her.

With a flourish, the man ended his performance.  As he neared, tying his curtain of gray hair into a single ponytail, the crowd of villagers parted shamefacedly to make room for his approach, forming an aisle through which the man casually strolled.  A dozen or more bodies—blood dribbling from broken noses or missing teeth—lay strewn about the ground, but no one paid them any heed, least of all this musician.

He bowed in front of Moffe and indicated the villagers with a sweep of his arms.  “They call me…Jangles.”  His voice grated like he had gravel in his lungs.

Time seemed to pause, leaving Jangles stooped over in a silent bow.

Moffe glanced back at Cora.  “Any ideas?”

Cora shook her head.  Despite the twisted scales and tortured intervals, the man used music to subdue the riot.  Not even Devin Rhynn could control so many.  If this man was an elder songsage…

“I am Moffe Stattalonn,” he said, extending a hand to the bowed man, “warden of the—”

Jangles righted and motioned as if to accept Moffe’s handshake, but his eyes locked onto Cora.  He brushed straight past the warden and snaked up to her.  With the gracefulness of a well-heeled courtier, he scooped her hand in his.

“Isn’t she lovely?”  Jangles studied Cora’s form as if she were a vintage painting of inestimable value.

Men had ogled Cora before, and the effect had always made her want to laugh aloud or slap the eyes from the man’s head.  But something in Jangles’ approach was electrifying, unnerving in an intriguing way, like the promised relief that follows a tooth extraction.  His power promised pain, but his eyes revealed much knowledge, things only gained by daring the exposure of forbidden places.

“Excuse me,” Moffe said, loudly clearing his throat.

“What’s your name?” Jangles cooed.  His gray eyes, tinged with pale flecks, traced every contour of Cora’s face.  “Where are you from?”  A prickle of energy crawled up her arm, a tingle that delighted her senses but filled her with dread.

“That’s none of your business,” Moffe countered.

“I heard the voice of an angel.”  Jangles peered deeply into Cora’s eyes.  “And I’ve heard angels.  You and I could make beautiful music together.”

Cora squinted at him.  “I don’t sing in tritones.”

“Nice rejoinder,” Jangles said with a wry grin.  “Can you play me something?  Perhaps a tune I’ve never heard before?  Consider it a challen—”

Stepping forward, Cuauhtérroc placed a hand on the older man’s shoulder and stared him down.  “Dees is not your female.”

“Is she yours?” Jangle said with a derisive laugh.  “I swear I’m not going to do anything.  At least, nothing you could imagine.”

“We encountered three undead on the road,” Moffe said, moving into the man’s field of vision.  “What’s happened to Elinwyche?  Can you explain the emptiness of the forest or these emaciated people?”

Jangles shrugged, his attention returning to Cora.  “Maybe just the snippet of a song, my lovely?  Or perhaps the song of a snippet?”

Moffe grabbed a fistful of Jangles’ vibrant vest and spun him away from Cora.  “I’m serious.  This place is experiencing an unholy decay, and as a man who cares deeply about the health of the woodlands, I need some answers.  And you need to leave her alone.”

“Ah, but if she were alone…” He pulled Moffe’s hands off his vest.  “…I certainly wouldn’t leave her.”

“Answer the question,” Moffe growled.

“Which one?  I’m no good at juggling.”

The warden’s jaw clenched.  “What’s wrong with these people?  Have they no food, no work, no fires?”

Jangles double-clapped and trilled a quick succession of notes.  In response, the small crowd of villagers dispersed back into the surrounding huts.  The wounded crawled and limped away.  Within a minute, everyone was gone.

“There,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets, “is that better?”

Moffe folded his arms at the wrists, his hands strategically near the pommel of his sword.  “Of course not.  They are clearly in your thrall, yet you take no responsibility for their wherewithal?”

Jangles chuckled.  “My good man…Muff, is it?”

“Moffe,” the warden muttered.  His hand slid around the hilt.

“Yes…that.  There’s no answer I could give you that you would either trust or believe.  So, what’s the point?  You’ll remain dissatisfied, and I won’t get to admire the redhead.”  He turned back to Cora.  “Perhaps we could love beautiful music together, minus the music.”

Cora recoiled from the brazen innuendo, but she was at a loss for words, as if her tongue had been glued to the bottom of her mouth.  She fought for a retort, but clarity had abandoned her.  A soft grunt escaped her throat.

With a much louder grunt, Kiyla jumped from the wagon.  “Rink off!” she growled and shoved her palms into Jangles’ chest.

The tingle left Cora’s arm.  Like an image materializing from a thick fog, clarity of thought returned.

Cuauhtérroc enwrapped Jangles with strong arms, dragging him farther away from Cora, and Moffe pulled his sword and placed the tip against Jangles’ multi-colored vest.

“That’s enough,” Moffe said.  “Starting right now, answer me.  What is happening to Elinwyche?”

Jangles struggled against Cuauhtérroc’s grip, then he relaxed.  “The answers you seek lie with the village elder, but only when he’s lying.  I promise.”

Moffe rotated his arm, twisting the tip of his blade against Jangles’ vest.

Cora gasped.  “Moffe, no!  Don’t kill him!”

“He’s a fiend,” Moffe replied.

“No, he’s an eccentric songsage.  He certainly hasn’t done anything worthy of death.”

“Look around you, Cora.”  Moffe’s eyes darkened.  “He controls these people, so I lay this waste at his feet.”

“Better than laying waste to my feet,” Jangles quipped with a bounce of his eyebrow.  “Actually, this is all a waste, and I need to move my feet.”

“Shut your mouth,” Moffe growled.

Cora jabbed a finger at the warden.  “Stop it, both of you.  If you kill him, it’s murder.  Besides, he might possess the answers you seek.  His eyes hold much knowledge, and they don’t lie, whatever he says.”

Jangles tried pushing the warden’s blade away with a finger.  “You should listen to her.  I should listen to her.”

“Where is this elder?” Cora asked.

“Follow me, and I’ll take you to him.”

Cora nodded.  “Cuauhtie, let him go.”

Moffe held the tip of his sword against Jangles’ sternum.  “No, Cuauhtérroc, I don’t trust him.”

Kiyla cracked a few knuckles.  “Me neither.”

Cora sighed.  “I suspect he doesn’t trust us right now, either.”

The warden’s eyes narrowed.  “Are you so naïve?”

Cora paused as the question thumped her on the forehead.  She had heard that before.  Once was an opinion, twice a theory, but three times started looking like fact.  Jangles was an old songsage, so she understood him.  Or did she?  His word choice was filled with double entendre and innuendo, just as Devin Rhynn always rhymed his speech.  Apparently, old songsages go off kilter at some point.  Cripe, that’ll be me in fifty years…

Cora relaxed her stance.  Maybe it was naïveté, but she had to stick up for the songsage.  “It’s all right; he’ll help us.”  She stared at him until his cheeky grin faded.  “Won’t you?”

Jangles dipped his head toward her.  “I’d rather you glared at me so I could swim in your emerald eyes, but as that would only—”

Won’t you?”

He nodded with a wry smile.

“Let him go.”

Moffe hesitated.  “Cora, I don’t think this is a good—”

“My decision, Moffe.”  Cora folded her arms.  “Let him go.”

Moffe sheathed his sword, and Cuauhtérroc released his grapple.

Cora drew a fresh breath.  “Now, take us to the elder.”

Jangles brushed wrinkles from his vest and shirt, stood tall, and walked forty feet to a large house by the village well—the only house with candlelight glowing through its windows.  “Here we are.”

Moffe glared with irritation.  “You could have pointed.” 

“True,” Jangles said with a wink at Cora, “but that would have spoiled my view.  Besides, I like to do the unexpected.  You might try to expect that, but then I’d have nothing to do.  So, don’t.  It would be unpleasant for us all.”

The warden muttered a curse under his breath as he knocked on the door.  Soon, a portly man in thick garments answered with a puzzled expression, as if visitors to his house were rare.  “Um…can I help you?”  His eyes narrowed as he scanned the Dragonslayers, but he reserved a deeper scowl for Jangles.

“Are you the village elder?” Moffe asked.

“Come in,” he said, but he pointed at Jangles.  “Not you.”

Jangles grinned as if he fully expected the rejection.  “Well, if you leave nothing for us to say, then I’ll say nothing and leave.”

The elder locked the door behind them.  “Make yourself comfy.”  He shuffled across the room through stacks of discarded household items to a high-backed leather chair and fell back into cushions long ago conformed to his shape.  With a small grunt, he yanked a wooden lever near the armrest.  To Cora’s surprise, the chair, in a series of metallic groans, pops, and squawks, reclined without rocking and supplied a footrest from its underbelly.  A Dareni contraption…in this impoverished hamlet?

Comfy was the last thing Cora would make herself.  Piles of things filled every square inch of the floor that wasn’t a walkway—clothing, shoes, and coats formed layers between wooden toys, farm implements, and glassware.  A narrow path cut through the medley from one door to another, with a side path to the mechanized chair.  The walls labored under the weight of countless shelves, curio racks, and framed paintings; and the floor creaked and buckled beneath the mounds of debris.  A fire roared in the fireplace below the mounted head of a black bear, which served as a rack for innumerable hats and scarves.  How an errant spark from the fire didn’t engulf the room in a raging inferno strained belief.

The others were no more able to settle in than she.  Cuauhtérroc gawked at the bear’s head over the mantle, hesitantly reaching to touch its teeth.  Moffe scanned the towering stacks of detritus with a raised eyebrow.  Kiyla fidgeted and paced inside the aisle carved through the teetering towers of dishes.  She shook her hands and breathed deeply through flared nostrils.  Finally, she stomped for the door.  “Can’t do it.”

“Where are you going?” Cora asked.

“Anywhere but here.”

“It’s cold and dark, and I’m not sure it’s entirely safe.”  Despite having vouched for Jangles, Cora’s trust in him eroded like a swollen river washing away a sandbar.

Kiyla whipped her head to one side, cracking several vertebrae in her neck and tossing her ash blonde braid across her shoulder.  “I’ll manage.”  She was outside on the stoop before Cora could reply.

“I’ll go with her,” Moffe said.  “See what the elder knows.”  He closed the door behind him, leaving Cora with a head as filled with questions as the house was filled with junk.

 

**************                 

 

“I can handle myself,” Kiyla quipped as Moffe joined her on the stoop.

“You think I came out here to protect you?”

“Yeah.”  Kiyla sniffed and stepped down into a light flurry of snowfall that sparkled in the window light.

“Well, I did.”  Moffe said.  “You do realize that evil hovers over this village.”

“Couldn’t say.  How long till Elric’s raised?”

The warden paused.  “Several days yet…are you worried about him?”

“I—we—need him.”  Kiyla hoped her tongue hadn’t betrayed her, but the curl of an infant smile pulling at Moffe’s lips said enough.  She could handle herself, true enough, but she preferred the company of a good man, which meant someone who could handle her.  She glared at the warden.  “Don’t read into it.”

“It’s none of my business,” Moffe replied, holding up his hands.  “My job is to escort you freeblades to Ordin’s gravesite.  What you do behind the woodshed is not something I want to know.  My group, the Blade Masters, never accepted women for this very reason.”

“Stuff it,” Kiyla barked.  “I’m gonna get Elric.”

“Hold on a minute.  You can’t just leave.”

Kiyla’s eyes burned as fists balled at her sides.  “Watch me.”  With a toss of her ashen braid, she stormed a path through the snow-frosted grass around the elder’s house.

A small stable at the edge of the backyard housed a single horse, a black gelding calmy crunching on a pile of old hay.  By the smell of things, the stable hadn’t been cleaned in days.  Groping about, she found a candle lantern but no way to light it.

Moffe caught up to her and offered her a flint.  Within seconds, he had a small flame going and lit the candle.  The dancing light illumined his worried face.  “This makes no good sense.  It took us two long days to get here.  Snow’s coming, and you do not want to be overnighting in the wilderness in the snow.  Especially by yourself.  Especially if you don’t have a flint.”

Kiyla shook her head and pulled a woolen saddle blanket from a shelf.  “I’m takin’ the horse, moron.”

Moffe recoiled as a crease formed between his eyebrows.  “Whoa, you can’t steal another man’s horse.  It belongs to the elder, and he would indict you for theft the moment you retur—”

“Shut up,” Kiyla said as she hoisted a saddle onto the blanket.  “I’m bringin’ it back.  It ain’t stealin’.”  She buckled the saddle around the animal’s girth and belly, pulling the straps tight with a deep grunt. 

Moffe grasped her arm.  “Of course it is.  You know this isn’t right.”

Kiyla brushed him off and fitted the bit and bridle.  “I’m comin’ back.”  Grabbing the pommel, she jumped into the saddle.  “With Elric.” 

“Kiyla…he won’t be raised until Odhasaim, and that’s four days out.”

Her jaw set firm.  “Don’t leave without us.”  With a tug on the reins, she pulled the horse around and kicked it into a gallop back east.

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