I got to my feet. All I had was an eating knife, sheathed at my belt, and my hand came to rest on its hilt. If I could place some distance between myself and the others at this table, I could summon my harpoon. I hoped the man who had taken it from me possessed the good sense to keep his face clear of its sharp edges.
Ansgard reached out a hand and gripped my elbow. “This man has come from the south,” he said. “He is on an errand in search of a particular weapon.”
“I mean you no harm,” I added, and let Ansgard pull me back into my seat.
The old man, Oeric, peered at me through the smoke that filled the room, his eyes pale blue and rimmed in red. These eyes were sharp despite his age, and made all the more so by the mistrust I had evidently sparked in them.
“You’re painted like one of them,” Oeric muttered.
I could have explained to him that tattooing was a common practice among both my mother’s and father’s peoples, and that I doubted that mine were identical to those of his enemies, but I held my tongue. I was only here to find Deinaros’ knife. The less time I spent conversing with these people, the quicker I could leave.
“I apologize for any threat you might have perceived,” I said. “I’ve come here from far to the south, from the city of Gallia beside the summer sea. I’ve been nearly a month on the road, and I do not know your enemies. Yours is the first settlement I’ve encountered in many days.”
Oeric’s scowl, already etched into his face as if with a chisel, deepened. “You’re here for a weapon.”
I placed my hands on the rough surface of the table, well within view. “A knife,” I said, “made of obsidian glass. It’s a ritual object, used in dark magic, and it may be dangerous. My employer would like to see it returned for safekeeping.”
A low, crackling sound filled the room. Oeric’s mouth split into a humorless smile of yellowed teeth and black spaces between them. He was laughing, and I had the suspicion it was at my expense.
“You’re too late!” Oeric cried suddenly.
I glanced between him and Ansgard, an unspoken question on my face. Ansgard stared straight ahead.
“I know of what you speak,” Oeric said, pointing at me with a steady hand. “This one killed the man who carried it, and lost it not a month later.”
Ansgard made a sound deep in his throat.
Oeric dropped his elbows to the arms of his chair, steepling his fingers underneath his chin. “But you’re too late,” he said again. “It was stolen a fortnight ago, when the barbarians scaled our wall and slaughtered my guards. I would have been slain as well, but my son is not entirely useless.”
Beside me, Ansgard clenched his hands into tight fists beneath the table.
My heart raced unbidden. I took a slow breath, willing my face not to show the anger—helpless, impotent rage, and fear as well; fear that I had not felt in many years—that washed over me like a tide. This place had more in common with my father’s hall than its sights and smells.
“I see,” I said. “Then let me not burden your hospitality any longer than I must. If you can tell me where I might begin looking for the ones who took the knife from you, I’ll continue my search.”
More than before, I did not want to stay in this place. I did not know how long I could listen to Oeric describe his son in the same tone of barely-concealed anger that my father used to talk about me. Too often had I sat in his presence, my fists clenched like Ansgard’s, pretending I did not hear. By the time I was a man grown, I had taken up the habit of leaving whenever he began to speak, and staying away for days or even weeks at a time. Ansgard, however, remained, as surely as if he were tied to his place at the table.
“You should stay, traveler,” Oeric said. “Stay and tell us a story of the southlands. Enjoy the generosity of my hall. On the morrow, Ansgard will accompany you into the woods. Perhaps with your help, he can accomplish what he has so far failed to do, and recover what was taken.”
An itch started between my shoulder blades and spread across my skin. I did not wish to remain here a moment longer, and I loathed the idea of being held up as a more favored warrior, an example to which Ansgard would be compared every time we so much as occupied the same room. A number of young men of my acquaintance had played that role in my own home. I assumed that, like me, Ansgard had no brothers, or Oeric wouldn’t need me to shame him.
I couldn’t very well flee the fort now, and I had no idea where to begin looking in the vastness of the forest. I would have to stay.
More men filed into the hall, taking their places at the two long tables. The murmur of their voices filled the space. Their eyes caught the light of the fire with a small, sharp light, and they watched me with their teeth half-bared like wary wolves.
A woman in a gray dress, her sleeves turned up to her elbows, handed out cups and poured the ale. Another handed out trenchers of bread, and several more took great helpings of a thick stew from the iron pot on the central fire and distributed it to the hungry guardsmen, Ansgard, and me.
I wouldn’t refuse food when it was offered. I ate, and studied the men watching me, and observed that the carved seat beside Oeric remained empty.
After a short while, he got to his feet and indicated me with a broad sweep of one arm. “We have a guest,” he announced. “Tell us your name, stranger, and tell us of your travels. Be welcome in my hall.”
The stew had been filling, but thus far I had not felt welcome. I stood and looked out across the hall. Quiet fell around me, heavy and soft as a blanket, and fifty pale faces turned back to me. With their bellies full, they no longer resembled hungry beasts. They were only men, and Oeric was only a man, and—as I reminded myself—so was my father. I had not had cause to think of him in some time, and his long absence from my thoughts had made him loom all the larger when at last he had returned.
I banished him again. I had wandered the world, and I had stories to tell and an audience to receive them. Besides, this was a test: I would tell a tale, and if it was worthy, I would receive one in return, and learn the location of Deinaros’ cursed blade.
“I am Eske of the Clan of the Bear,” I began. “I was born far beyond the northern mountains, where the sun never sets in the summer, and where great mountains of ice float atop the storm-battered sea. I’ve traveled the endless steppe, and climbed the peaks of the East, where the great dragon watches over her faithful students. I’ve sailed emerald waters and walked among trees so large that no sunlight has ever reached the forest floor. I’ve met gods who walked as men do, and men who aspired to become gods. Listen, and I’ll tell you of the king of Salmacha, kept alive by dark magic as his body decayed. I’ll tell you how the island shook beneath my feet, and the very walls of my prison threatened to fall upon me. I’ll tell you of the brave sailors who came to my rescue, and the warriors who defended their home even against their corrupted king.”
And so I told the tale of Salmacha, from my arrival on the island to the crowning of the twin princesses. I left out the evil book, and the ambitious priest from whom I had taken it. It made for a better ending.
When I had finished, the feast had been eaten and the ale drunk, and the distant sun hung low above the wall. Darkness would soon follow. The men returned to their posts, their feet slower than when they had left them, and their eyes a little less suspicious. My tale and I had been judged, and my audience had found me adequate.
It was a good story. I had expected a more lively response. Now, as the hall emptied, there was only Oeric, clapping his hands together at a slow, steady rhythm. Ansgard sat beside me, his face unreadable and the muscles at the side of his jaw working silently.
“You are welcome in my hall, Eske of the Bear Clan,” Oeric said. “If you are as brave as you were in your tale, you will serve me well against the barbarians.”
I was beginning to detest the word barbarian, all the more so because for once in all my travels it was not being applied to me. “It would be an honor, my lord, to serve you, but I’m afraid I cannot linger here. I must find the knife and return it to Gallia with great haste.”
Oeric dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “Show him to his quarters, Ansgard, and ensure that he stays there for the night. We will discuss this in the morning.”
I was to be a prisoner, then. I stood, and let Ansgard lead me out of the hall. Three of his red-cloaked men fell in behind me. One of them had my harpoon slung over his shoulder.
“These barbarians must live to the north of here,” I mused aloud. “I saw no sign of them as I traveled here. There were only the men of the tower, and the workers in the fields.”
Ansgard grunted in reply. “They come down from the hills at night. Three days ago, they set fire to the fields around Lord Osgar’s fort.”
“Unfortunate, so close to the harvest,” I said. “Where did they flee to, after they had come here to take the knife?”
“To their burial grounds,” another of the men answered.
Another made a gesture, raising his hand to his forehead with two fingers and his thumb extended—a sign against evil. “The place of ghosts,” he muttered. “They took the bodies from the wall, and the one our archers felled.”
Oeric hadn’t mentioned any bodies on the wall, though by all indications, he had made a habit of it.
I was taken to a house close to the stable. The fire in its hearth was little more than embers, and the air within was only a little warmer than the wind without. Making a show of obedience, I sat down on the bed and busied myself with adding wood to the fire.
There I waited for an hour or more, while the watch changed and the man left outside my door shuffled his feet and yawned. I would get one chance to escape, and I could not waste it.
Night, black as the center of the earth, overtook the fort. I opened my door and delivered one sharp blow with my fist to the back of my guard’s unprotected head. He fell into my arms, and I dragged him inside and laid him by the fire.
I slipped outside and ran to the stable in a crouch. Bran stood, half-asleep, in the first stall, and my saddle lay over the gate.
“I can’t take you with me, my friend,” I told him. “But I’ll be back for you. I swear it.”
I took a length of rope from my saddlebags and put it over my shoulder. With silent footsteps, I made my way to the northern curve of the wall and ducked behind a building.
I reached my hand out, and felt the tremor in the air that was the song of my harpoon. A cry of surprise cut through the night, and the weapon came to me, its strap snapped neatly in the middle.
With the practiced ease I had gained from climbing the great trees of the South, I scaled the wall and leapt into the night.
Back to Chapter LIV: The Ring-Fort
Forward to Chapter LVI: The Burial-Ground
Eske just keeps getting captured. This won’t be the last time.
As of this writing, I have three and a half chapters left in my outline! Thanks for reading!
Space Whales Press 
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