Of Gods and Warriors ✓

Chapter 32

The woods creaked and groaned around the soldiers, protesting with its feeble limbs against the onslaught of the howling winds.

Stationed with Sergeant Wolturs' squad in this hidden corner of the woods far from the village, the patrollers muttered quiet prayers to Lord Edis under their breaths.

The first time she'd heard them, the words sounded strange to her, for they were in an old dialect of Midaelian used long ago in the north that sounded almost foreign. One of the patrollers had explained it to her in modern Midaelian:

"O King of Winter, we beg thee,
Have mercy upon our wretched souls.
You who commands the north winds,
Let not the cruel ice chill our bones,
Let not the snowstorms wreck our huts,
Let not the cold freeze our beating hearts
To lifeless stone,
O lord of frost and snow, we call on you."

Their voices were hushed, no more than a whisper in unison, a susurration of dry leaves rustled by a wayward breeze. Farren found herself joining in with them, shivering despite her cloak wrapped snugly around her shoulders, her hood pulled up to cover her ears.

Grant us your divine protection, Lord. Spare us your fury...

Seven years ago, when Farren had come to Kinallen and met the vampire patrollers and night-archers for the first time, she'd been terrified, and fascinated by their devotion to the Winter God.

The village she came from, people came up with all sorts of horrible legends about the vampirefolk-- about the patrollers demanding human sacrifices every new moon, preying on unassuming new recruits and draining them dry. So much had those superstitions gotten to them, Finnian had made her pack a bunch of wooden stakes with her things before she'd set off for Kinallen.

Thankfully, she never had the need to put them to use. No Midaelian ever had, for sorcery-crafted blood elixirs were more than enough to sustain them.

Still, Farren had wondered why the centuries-old, long-lived people would ever bow to any God, given their very existence was cursed by Draedona, forcing them to survive on blood and lead bleak, overlong lives. But the vampires still worshipped Edis, offered him tributes, raised temples and shrines in his name.

Why the ill-tempered King of Winter, of all deities? Why the vicious ice dragon that brought destruction in his wake?

✦✧✦✧

Shortly after Farren had made the deal with Atruer, she'd often have trouble sleeping. When after hours of tossing and turning would grant her no escape to the dark depths of sleep, she'd throw on her cloak and wander the deserted training grounds, or climb on the stable roof to stargaze.

Until one day she got caught.

"Who goes there?" The voice came from the watchtower.

Farren halted in her tracks, pulling her hood over her face, but naught escaped the sharp vision of the vampires.

A face peered down from the rails, friendly-looking despite its ashen pallor and red, luminous eyes. Bow in his hands, quiver full of arrows slung on his shoulder. A night-archer.

"You'll be in big trouble if our captain were to see you, kid. Go back. Off to bed, now," he said.

Farren hesitated. This was the closest she'd ever got to a vampire. She could ask him what was their deal with Lord Edis. But was this really the time or place for religious conversations as such? When a gust of cold wind left her shivering, the night-archer sighed.

"Stoked a fire," he said. "Come up here and warm up a bit, if you like. New place, new surroundings-- sleep's gotta be hard to come by. Happened to me too."