Visions of Glory
by Ralph Benton
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 2
Bromin tried to move with an easy grace, but his guts churned. What fresh hell now awaited? They followed the man to the wagon ruts that led into the water. The first beams of sunlight pierced the woods.
“It’s Laefman,” a swordsman shouted. A figure clad in Turyl green struggled through the milky waters of the river. Something about his manner repulsed Bromin. The man moved with unnatural, jerky steps. What was wrong with his face?
“This way, my lord,” Laefman shouted in a jolly voice. Bromin felt the men’s eyes on him at Laefman’s call, each relieved not to be so singled out. Laefman’s left arm pointed straight back the way he had come, the way to the sanctuary. He stumbled over submerged rocks, but his arm never bent, his path never wavered. “She’s just up the mountain, my lord.”
Laefman trod the road now, dripping water. The men stepped away, gasping with disgust when they saw why Laefman stumbled.
Bromin stood frozen. Even as his mind screamed at him to act, he could barely breathe. Laefman’s eyes were nothing but red-stained black pits in his terrifyingly cheerful face. His smile was ghastly, the muscles taut and strained. Bromin could see nothing but that face, nothing but bloody black holes and a death’s-head grin.
Laefman walked straight as a spear towards Bromin. “Come, lord, she’s waiting for us. She can’t wait to see us, lord. It will be oh, so lovely, lord.” His arm was like an iron bar. Bromin’s legs and arms twitched as he spasmed between pulling his sword and running in panic. In seconds, Laefman’s hideous face would touch his own. What should he do? What should he do—
Shirvold tackled Laefman and pinned him to the ground. Ox jumped in and worked to bend the pointing arm, levering it backwards. He pulled until they heard the sharp crack of snapping bone. Laefman seemed not to care as long as he could see Bromin and tell him how wonderful it would all be.
Bromin backed behind two men. He burned with shame at the act but told himself he was more valuable whole and in command.
Therabine cut through the crowd that circled the melee. She paled and staggered when she saw Laefman’s face and flopping arm. She recovered quickly and pulled a small bag from her vest. She poured greenish-gold powder into her palm and cupped her other hand over the powder while she whispered into the gap between her thumbs.
“Let him go,” she said. As soon as Shirvold and Ox rolled away, she tossed the powder over Laefman’s face.
As the dust settled on his skin, Laefman screamed in a high-pitched wail. He clawed at his head with his good hand while the other flopped at the end of the broken arm. He curled into a ball, scratching and hacking at his face, strips of bloody flesh dropping from his fingers. He rolled onto his back and began kicking the ground at a pace faster than any man could run. His boots flew into the air and, in seconds, his heels wore down to the bone.
Bromin felt a scream of his own coming. The men were wide-eyed, frightened, backing away. Panic was dissolving his command. He looked to Therabine. “Do something!” he yelled. “Do something, you miserable old crone! What did I bring you for?”
But she could only stare in horror at what her attempt had wrought.
Bromin pulled his sword and raised it to strike at the neck of the wretch below him, who was now making a bubbly growl while tearing out his own throat.
He couldn’t do it. He tensed, failed, and tensed again. Why could he not act?
“Strike, jarl!” Shirvold bellowed. “Strike!”
With a sharp gasp of release, Bromin brought his sword down with a swift and sure stroke, severing the head and hand that tore at it. The legs slowed as the body curled up like a nightmare vision of a newborn baby. The bloody hand, which had once been so frantic to rip and rend, twitched where it had landed in the dirt.
The remaining company crept closer to view the ghastly scene. Bromin fought to keep the morning’s ale in his stomach. Bird songs and sunlight filled the air.
Shirvold looked around at the faces. “I told you that we would see unnatural things. This is not like any battlefield we’ve shared. Look at him! That’s witchery, it’s plain to see. Look at him!”
Men clutched the worn pouches that held their great-grandmother’s knuckle bones and dangled around their necks. Bromin, an educated man, knew it to be a folk ward of dubious value, yet he held his jarlstone with equal fervor. He wondered if he would be able to step through that milky water and into the dark shadows from which Laefman had emerged, blind and frantic with delight.
The last few days of late summer marches under a warm sun and a slivered moon had softened them. Amused banter about witches and goblins made the quest seem quaint, a fairy tale brought to life. Only now did they realize that they faced unknowable dangers with a crippled captain, an addled sorceress, and an untried jarl. The muttering grew louder.
“Listen,” Bromin began, but the word came out in a squeak. He forced his hand to his swordbelt and cleared his throat. “This ford marks the outermost edge of our green and fertile lands. Beyond, as poor Laefman told us, our foe awaits. We will be there tomorrow when the sun is high. The witch has struck first, and a fearsome blow it was.”
He knew better than to make light of what had happened or to plant false hopes.
“This is no lark, no boy’s jaunt to slay the giants of the haybarn. But be not afraid! The power of this witch is as nothing compared to the strength and power we bring against her.” His voice grew stronger. “The fearsome and legendary Captain Shirvold leads you, the finest fighting men of the realm.”
The men clapped their scabbards against their legs in applause. This was better. They needed to find their fighting spirit.
“And to fight this foul creature with her own weapons, know that Therabine the wise will ensorcel her. You saw how easily she broke the spell over poor Laefman.” While the men nodded at this, Bromin hoped no one would remark that poor Laefman was now a headless, broken thing lying in the dirt.
“Last but not least, we have the finest woods cook between the Last Mountains and the sea!” Bromin gave a mock bow and applauded Aintellk with a grin. This garnered a small laugh. The men had relaxed, like a group waiting for the inn to open after a long harvest day. A shuddering breath of relief rippled through Bromin.
In his mind he heard a bard strum a note and sing the first words of Bromin the Brave’s battle against the Witch of Dreams. He opened his mouth to remind the men of the songs of glory that would be sung about them, but he froze.
Laefman’s body spasmed, and the legs gradually straightened. The shortened arm flopped in the dirt, seemingly in search of the head. The hand on the broken arm flexed and pointed toward the mountain. Laefman’s mouth moved, and a few gurgles emanated from the torn flesh.
Bromin heard Laefman say, “It will be lovely, my lord.” He jumped back, gagging, before he realized that no one else had heard the voice.
Therabine donned leather gloves and piled the head and hand onto the torso. “Bury him,” she said, “under heavy rocks.”
* * *
All that day they followed the road higher into the mountains, past gnarled trees and prickly undergrowth. By noon, the sounds of birds and squirrels had disappeared.
Unease and sickness grew within the little company. Therabine told them that the witch was poisoning their minds, not their bodies. She spoke words of protection that dissolved the veils of illusion and enchantment so that a man might feel better for an hour or two. But all too soon again fell curtains of dread.
Bromin watched with disgust as she stammered incantations and fed men oily draughts that only made them choke. At a bend in the road, he grabbed her arm and dragged her aside.
“Useless!” he hissed. “I would be better off with a traveling peddler of firepops and magic beans. How will you fight this witch? Bore her to death with your endless muttering?”
“You know nothing, young jarl!” she snapped. “I will not waste my strength keeping sniveling young men” — she looked him up and down — “from crying for their mothers. My battle lies beyond you.”
Bromin saw the tremble in her hands and the solid black of her eyes. “Fah.” He strode away.
He stoked and banked his anger at the old woman’s bungling, for it muffled the worm that whispered at him mind in every silent moment. He could turn back, the worm hissed, he should go back. Plainly, he needed more men, Shirvold would surely agree. Obviously, the witch was too powerful, Therabine would eagerly attest to that, to save her own skin if nothing else. To turn back now to ensure victory later would be no shame!
Sometimes Bromin worried that the others could hear the voice inside his head. He fought against the hope that the witch was a myth, or long dead and gone. He knew that if he returned without trying, he would never get another chance.
The evil at the ford prompted Shirvold to order treble-watches that night. Each watcher would be watched by two others. No one vanished in the dark, but sleep was evermore elusive. Those not on watch moaned and screamed their way through nightmares of the vilest tortures and cruelties.
They woke to a day that would never see the sun, just a slow passage from black to grey. Therabine found Bromin as he ate cold porridge. “And you, young jarl, tell me of your dreams.”
He smiled and insisted that he slept soundly. Despite her probing eye. he did not speak of the earl’s scornful laughter amidst the cries of the men in their night terror, or of the hooks and cables and the woman with wild red hair that pursued him through the night.
All morning they trudged uphill through the dripping trees. Bromin went from man to man, offering a clap on the shoulder or an encouraging word. It was as much for his sake as theirs. After several hours, a fog rolled down the mountain, cold and thick and wet. Bromin lost sight of the men nearest him. For several minutes they blundered through the mist, calling out, before the fog lifted and the troop regathered itself.
Bromin felt better after the fog dissipated. The mountain had tried them, but the company did not falter. He had not faltered. The worm quieted as the road leveled out, and they passed the first of the grand marble columns that lined the approach to the sanctuary. A flat expanse of several hundred paces opened before them, and beyond that a sheer cliff rose into the clouds.
The company hid in a copse of trees off the road, near a sheltering hummock of earth. Bromin wasted no time, and pulled Shirvold and Theramine through the brush and crawled to the crest of the soggy little ridge.
“I was here once.” Therabine spoke at Bromin’s shoulder as they took in the sight. “This was a plaza of soft grasses, where pilgrims pitched their tents. There was a small market over there,” she said, “where farmers sold sausages and bread, and fruit and cheese. A farmer’s wife sold me a lamb pie I would give a year of my life to have again.”
“The forest has swallowed your memories,” Bromin answered. Trees that were tall in her time now stood huge and hulking. The grass had grown into tangled thickets, cut through with goat paths. The road, not yet completely overgrown, led to the base of the cliff.
Uncounted generations ago, the temple had been carved into the stone of the mountain. An arched double door the height of three men led into the temple. On either side of the doors stood two ornate temples, built out from the cliff, made of huge square-cut stones.
Intricate carvings covered the walls of the temples, but age and weather had softened their outlines. Atop each temple stood a statue, each so large as to dwarf the door between them. The face of one bore a look of confidence, while the other’s features were twisted with despair.
Thick creepers and moss strangled the structure and the trees that grew nearby. All was silent but for the drip of water.
Bromin cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the last tendrils of the late morning fog. Nothing moved.
“Do you see anything? Feel anything?” he whispered. He felt silly asking the same questions, but didn’t know what else he was supposed to do with his sorceress. My father had nothing useful to say about that, he thought.
“She is near,” Therabine said, “but that is all. I’m sorry.”
Bromin snorted. “Perhaps I can leave you here as the new temple priestess.” She did not reply.
“What are the statues on either side of the temple?” he asked. One seemed to reach for the sky, while the other held its head in both hands.
“Hope and Fear,” Therabine said. “The only things anyone ever truly took away from the oracle.”
Now Shirvold snorted. “Oracles and omens are a fool’s pursuit.”
Bromin bridled at the older man’s disbelief but said nothing. Misunderstood prophecies sparked so many of his mother’s tales, in which a young princeling fought evil and won the maiden’s favors. Now he was a man, and others would tell the tales of this quest. His must include a prophecy, he thought, the tale of Bromin and the witch.
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by Ralph Benton
