Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

12 Bleeding Town

Erdil

    Around the first hour of the afternoon, the screams started. Women in the streets ran, wild and terrified, towards the mountains. The brave ones stood obstinate in their doorways, hiding little faces behind their legs. Every able-bodied man from Ysvallëi worked in the Ysberg mines, or southern fields. They had mouths to feed and appetites to satisfy.

    This, you can imagine, left the town in a vulnerable, precarious position, with no men to protect it except the elderly, infirmed, and weaning. The butcher woman from Keyïl lane was the strongest among them. Of course that meant the thieves started raiding on the other side of town.

    These were not the gentle limbed, nimble bandits found in the South-West. No! When a raider ship travelled upriver, it brought gigantic slabs of meat explained away as men with it. So-called men who towered over any northerner, whose belt could bridle a horse. You could call them giants, but you'd be wrong. They weren't giants, but were of a consecrated blood. Bred to cultivate terror in any mortal, slavering out slaughter like bulldogs slobber drool.

    Avétk had seen it before. The long, narrow, wooden boat, with a shallow draft hull, would fly with the mist of dawn up the river. By late morning, they had climbed the cliffs. By early noon they had cut through the little forest between the town and the river, like a hot knife through butter. Depending on which town they targeted, it might take them one to three hours to reach it from the moment their feet met the cliffs.

    If they targeted villages before the cliffs, they were bound to run into even fewer obstacles besides for the odd patrol or wall. Avétk had the sense that these raiders relished the challenge the cliffs brought, and he had watched the enjoyment on their faces when they dismembered innocents and defiled women.

    He stood at a window on the second floor of Kiester's Tavern, watching smoke rise from homes to the east, where he and the girls had stormed in on horseback the eve before. An apathetic melancholy took hold of his self at times like these. He wasn't the type to feel fear or trepidation, or to jitter with adrenalin and nerves. In fact, Avétk found himself feeling so apathetic it bordered on depression.

    Best get at it then. His axe's head gleamed in the sunlight pouring through the window. He walked to the door as he gripped it in one hand. His boots rang on the wooden floor, thuds of numbness in his consciousness. Emeline's large eyes watched him with angst, their allure unable to penetrate the heaviness saturating him.

    Are those darn eyes screeching in my head again? Avétk could've sworn he heard that same screaming silence in his mind, as he stepped out the door. A bang brought him a sudden focus on the present and the awful screech ceased. Ol' Kiester hollered at her barmaids in that growling accent, about celibacy and locking the doors, barring the windows, hopelessness, and strong drink. Other sounds filled the inn, the scraping of chairs being piled in front of doors, the banging of nails into wood, the clamour of weapons being retrieved, and the barmaids squealing in terror. Of course.

    A bubble of silence surrounded Avétk. As he walked past the barmaids, they would stop their hollering to stare, they would freeze in motion, their faces expressing their obvious amazement. Then they would return to panic and screaming, hoisting chairs, swinging kitchen knives and fiddling with sharp, inanimate objects.

    He reached the front door, threw aside a few chairs, and exited into the chilly afternoon air. Blood. Avétk sucked air into his nostrils with a deep breath. Yeah, it smells of blood. Lots of it. He closed his eyes and let the stench lead him forward.

    Not just blood. Smoke. Burning flesh, now that's a putrid stench! Avétk supposed he should've been disgusted, but a heartless man like him had no business being disgusted with something so benign as pain, or death for that matter.