The Weards Tower

  Baron Matheller walked alongside the cart. The road to the Kings Pass was steep and bare, each step taking them further away from the spring of the foothills below. The Beorgens were over them now. The high-knife ridges and peaks were still covered in snow. He sucked in the cool mountain air with each step. It was hard going, but the Baron enjoyed the way the simple task of walking up hill numbed his worries.

  Sister Joan sat in the cart, long since given up trying to convince the Baron to take a seat on the bench. She had her papers in her lap, the reins of the draft horse loosely in her hands.

  “Fifelen,” she said. “That’s the name of the second of King Atheren’s spirits. He’s the brother of old Eot, though whether it’s brother in blood or monastic service, I don’t know. Durn’s records were thin on details, but it calls him the Hungry One. They used to leave an offering out for him after the harvest was over.”

  “No details on the offering?” Matheller asked between puffs of breath.

  “None, and the practice stopped over a hundred years ago,” she said. “There’s no one alive to ask now.”

  Perhaps it’s for the best,” the Baron said. He looked over at the great hessian sack on the back of the cart. An image of his knife plunging into the soldier’s neck as the man reached for it flashed into his mind. Matheller looked away. “Judging by the size of our offering for Eot, I think we can call them both hungry bastards.”

  “As you will, Sire,” Sister Joan said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t find out much else about Fifelen before Lord Becker arrived.”

  “You can count on Becker of all people to show a bit of piety,” Matheller said. “I should have been more cautious when I knew he was coming. Now what of the route to the, what was it, Valley of the Grey Watchers?”

  “There’s a path from the Weards Tower, it leads east across the Beorgens,” she said. “It was made before the people of Baidon followed the Saints.”

  “Oh, they followed the Saints back then, too, Sister,” Matheller said. “They were gods back then, before the Santisian doctrines stripped them of their titles.”

  Sister Joan gasped. “Baron Matheller, that is closer to heresy than I have heard from any lord. You should be ashamed. The Old Father created the world, and he, the most powerful, is God. Therefore, any being lesser must not be a god, but a Saint wielding his power.”

  “I haven’t heard someone recite Onol of Telburh’s Argument in quite some time. Not that it’ll be known by many in this company.” Baron Matheller chuckled. “On the matter of heresy, my dear Sister Joan, it is far too late on this quest to be worrying about that. We’re hunting damn spirits to circumvent a holy order. You’d best say a prayer to the Old Father on all our behalfs.”

  It was early evening when they arrived at the Weards Tower. The sun was low in the sky, still a couple of hours from setting. It was starting to cast the eastern sides of the snowy peaks and Weards Tower in golden light. This was as far a traveller could make it, regardless of season, come winter, and the switchbacks and steep roads of the Kings Pass would be engulfed in snow. As it was, the pass was mostly clear. Spring flowers and grass budded up between the rocks. A few patches of snow still persisted where the shadows of the mountains protected them, and a brook clearer than anything the Baron had seen in Bris ran down the hill. That little stream and others like it would give birth to the River Daun.

  The Weards Tower put Matheller and the rest of his party on edge. Without word or signal, they drew to a stop, looking down the road. It was occupied, with perhaps a dozen or more men, the light of a cooking fire shining through one of the windows. It was a stout rectangular thing with a single round turret protruding from the top. They had definitely been seen.

  “No one passed us by,” Baron Matheller said. “They are none the wiser, and we only look stranger to them by standing around. On with it.”

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  “Yes, Sire,” Marshal Rudola said.

  The Baron was back on the cart again, and he flicked the reins, setting the draft horse into motion. The rest of the men followed his lead. The steep mountain walls on either side narrowed as they approached the Weards Tower. Soon, only the stream and a low stone bridge across it separated them from the fortification. The Baron’s stomach tightened. Saints help them if someone decided to have a peek in the sack. There would be no escaping this time around. They were severely outnumbered.

  They crossed the bridge, got waved down by two men who lazily walked towards them with spears on their shoulders. There were others, sitting around the door to the Weards Tower. They watched on.

  “What business brings you lot to the Kings Pass?” One man said. His voice was thick with the accent of the Beorgens. These were men of Drun, not Becker’s troops.

  Baron Matheller smiled at the men. “We’re passing through on north to Highvale to do trade. I wouldn’t come all the way up here just to climb the hills.” He slapped his belly and laughed down at them.

  The men shrugged at each other. “Good a reason as any, I suppose.”

  The younger of the two, a broad-looking lad with a good deal of blond scruff, rubbed his chin. “Best have a look in the cart and make the alderman happy.”

  The men at arms went tense. The watchmen from Drun didn’t notice it, but their hands silently slid within quick reach of dagger or sword. It was a scary thing, the Baron thought, like seeing a lamb unknowingly wander towards a wolf. If things came to violence, they wouldn’t be able to fight the whole Weards Tower, but these two men would be cut to shreds before the alarm was sounded.

  The young lad started towards the cart.

  “Wait a minute,” Matheller said.

  The lad instinctively froze, didn’t look much happy about it. By the Weards Tower, the men sitting at the door got up, sensing things might come to trouble.

  “Don’t I know you?” Baron Matheller said, then, “No! Not you, but your young brother. That brigand ambushed us on the road to Drun, nearly hit me with a bloody peach.” Matheller reached behind him, grabbed a small sack which he tossed to the watchman. “Take this. Save one for your brother and be sure to pelt it at him when you see him next.”

  The watchman caught the sack and showed its contents to his companion. They smiled happily at the dozen or so red apples inside.

  “Anything else in there?” The happy young watchman said.

  “A bit more fruit and some grain is all,” Matheller said. “Enjoy the apples, my good men.”

  Without another word, Matheller set the horse into motion. The watchmen let them go, the others quickly gathering around the sack for an apple. They left the Weards Tower behind them, with its simple men, and for a second time in less than a week, the Baron prayed to the Saints. Don’t let the war get this far north.

  Come sunset, they had made good ground, striking out eastward through the Beorgens. The path had been tight and hard going, but there was a second wind amongst both animal and man as they sensed their destination growing close. They rose higher until there was a constant but thin layer of snow beneath their horses’ hooves. Camp was made in the shelter of a rocky overhang. The Weards Tower had long since passed from view. All around them, there were the snow-capped peaks above, and green fir trees and bushes clinging to the slopes below.

  Danner and Horace made a good fire and set about rummaging through the cart’s supplies for the salted meat and herbs they had brought in Drun. Soon, after some bickering, they had it cooking. The pleasant smell of pork wafted into Matheller’s nostrils.

  Louis and Grune made their way around the horses, brushing their manes and giving them feed, the groom working swiftly alongside the man at arms. Talber blew a tune on a small wooden flute that the man had brought all the way from Bris, and Sister Joan knelt away off in prayer. Matheller realised that perhaps he had seen this evening ritual of theirs a dozen times over, and he sat by the fire, watching it happen once again. He would miss this. The Baron had wanted to take Deter to the Beorgens someday. It had never happened. He’d have to tell the boy all about it when he saw him.

  “Sire.” Marshal Rudola came around a rock into the camp. “You should come and see something.”

  Baron Matheller followed the Marshal, and Rudola led him down a slope that turned westward. The sun was behind the mountains now, and the sky was a faded pink.

  “Pardon the language,” Rudola said. “But I was finding a good spot to shit away from camp, and I found these.”

  There were patches of clover in the snow. It looked like nothing out of the ordinary at first, until the Baron got closer. They were footprints in the snow, big enough that the Baron’s boot could fit in the impression made by the big toe. It seemed that the clovers and mountain flowers grew strongest where the creature had stepped.

  “That’s your spirit, Sire,” Rudola said. “I mean no disrespect, but by the Saints, I’ll be damned if I thought we were chasing any more than a wives’ tale.”

  The Baron whistled low. He felt giddy now, excitement and fear in equal parts. “Old Eot, the spirit of King Atheren. It certainly matches the size of our offering.”

  “The Balance of life has made the Eot grow.” Sister Joan stood behind them. She’d followed them out. Behind her, the awestruck faces of the rest of them, all peering down at the footprints of a giant, leading towards the Valley of the Grey Watchers.