Last Son of Ironhorn [ch.1]

The common hall of the inn was alive with jubilation as patrons danced around their tables to the beat of the drums. Marilda and her minstrel troupe sat on the dais in the corner of the hall, blending the drumming with the melodic tones of their horns, lutes, and the seamless lyrics of the woman’s honeyed voice. The musicians had only arrived the night before, and already greatly uplifted the otherwise dour mood of the Inn of the Hill Giant. Stranger danced arm in arm with stranger. Men and women who had only known each other in quiet passing held each other in laughter like old friends and new lovers, the tune melting away their woes and apprehensions.

Balor did his best to stay far from the commotion, although he did find his foot tapping away at the beat. At the very least, he admired the true talent Marilda possessed. He could appreciate it from his table, which sat along the adjacent wall to the dais, where he was able to survey the whole of the hall. It was also near enough to the bar, where Agnes had spent the evening taking coin and filling flagons. The silvering innkeeper would make a round to his table every half hour to graciously keep his cup filled with spiced honey water. She had asked him for a dance at the start of the previous song which he had politely declined, citing the salted pheasant leg and cabbage salad she had brought him when the night was young.

Willem had stepped up in his place, taking Agnes in his arms and whisking her around the floor of the hall until she had run out of breath. The man may have grown, but he still had the spirit of the youth Balor had known when they first met. He was now dancing with a young, freckled woman with auburn hair; the cartwright’s daughter who had been at the inn for a week. Willem had finally brought out a smile in her. It lasted well after the song ended, when he kissed her hand and escorted her back to her seat. Her cheeks turned as red as her hair once he had walked away.

“You gave her a dance she is not like to forget soon.” Balor said as Willem took his seat next to him. The man ran a hand through the mop of his black hair, combing the sweat away from his eyes.

“Dance is the best way to a woman’s heart, brother. It shows her how well you can lead, and how well you listen to her.”

“Well it seems you have lead yourself right into her heart. At least for the night.”

Balor looked back to see the girl shyly smiling in their direction, her lake blue eyes locked onto Willem.

“Awfully tempting, is she not?”

“I know you think so, but I don’t believe my Ysabel would let her keep her face if I admitted that.” Willem said half in jest. “Invite her to dance, Balor. I know your sea legs are stiffer than a draeglin’s hide, but a little merriment would do you good.”

“Her beauty is wasted on me, Will.” he responded, his heart braving a glance at the freckled woman. Despite his effort, he only saw Maire, so he looked away. “I will leave her attention to the young men.”

“You are three years my elder.”

“Then respect the wishes of your elder, boy.”

Balor smiled as Willem cracked into mild laughter that blended in with the rest that was echoing around the hall. Most of the patrons were now seated, resting as the minstrels sat to refresh themselves. The auburn-haired girl and another young woman sat with her father, a trio of foresters sat in the center of the room sharing a meal with Agnes’s nieces, a sheepherder downed his fourth flagon of ale.

All through the commotion however, Balor felt a chill run down his spine as the door to his right opened. He reached for his sword belt and kept his hand on the hilt until he saw Tylar walk through and towards him. His golden hair was tied in a ponytail, and his grey cloak hid the red gambeson and sword he had on. Alongside him was a man in weathered clothes who looked like a freshly raised corpse. The man leaned against Tylar as he brought him to a nearby table. Balor stood and made his way to them.

“Who do you have here, Ty?”

“A lone rider come up from the south along the road. He was unarmed, stupidly enough.”

“Looks like he has met Hell on the road. Was he being followed?”

“A miracle that he wasn’t, but Cerrit and his bird are watching the tree line just to be sure. Not that he would attract much. I’ll wager by appearance that he's already been robbed of his coin and food. He was carrying something else though. Something common thieves wouldn’t bother taking off him.”

Tylar handed Balor a brown travel satchel with a wreathe emblem embossed on the front flap. As he opened it, he found several small parchment scrolls, stained with water and dried blood. As he examined one, he felt his eyes widen as he found a button of golden wax sealing the scroll, bearing the symbol of two crossed curved swords within a holly wreathe.

“This is the King’s seal. This man is a royal messenger!”

“My guess is he was delivering these to every settlement along the North Road when he was set upon. He was lucky to arrive here at all.”

By now, Agnes had spotted their commotion and sent one of her nieces to tend to the messenger. The innkeeper then turned to them; her brows furrowed.

“You boys are supposed to keep trouble out of my establishment, not drag it in. Where did this come from?”

“He is a messenger from the King. The boys found outside looking like this. He will be no trouble.” Balor assured.

“He may not be trouble, but he means trouble. Lawlessness has overrun the north. The king is in the south, and if he came like this traveling from the south, it means we’re not safe in either direction of the road.”

“All four of us will be on duty tonight, Agnes. If there is anyone out there right now, we will not let them close.”

“And during the day what then? Or tomorrow night? You are young, but even you need rest. What am I to do then?”

“Perhaps the contents of the messages might make that clear. As the owner of the inn, one of them was meant for you, no doubt.”

Balor handed the scroll in his hand to her, and she held it for a moment, staring at the wax seal. On the dais, Marilda began to sing again, humming the low melody that began Lail’s Heart. As the liveliness of the common hall began once again, Agnes motioned for him to follow her, and they headed off to her private solar, which was down a thin corridor near the cellar entrance. Tylar followed close behind, and Willem, who had been distracted by the auburn-haired girl, followed them when the trio began walking away.

In the solar, Balor and his companions sat in the oaken chairs placed on the other side of Agnes’s desk, and watched as the woman lit the rusted oil lamp on the musty tabletop, illuminating the room. She carefully used a letter opener to break the seal and unfurled the parchment. Balor watched as the older woman’s face shifted in the lamplight, her brows slowly rising as she read the words. His heart began to beat faster with anticipation. After a couple of minutes, she narrated the message:

Subjects of the Realm,

War is upon us. We have struck a mighty first blow against the Kingdom of Celeron; the full strength of our armies now sallies into their lands. Rejoice, as we have avenged the fell deeds committed at the Isthmus of Felduin. It is my decree, that all nobles and mayors contribute one quarter of their remaining fighting men to the defense of the southern borderlands. You have one week to reach the quota of this summons, and a fortnight to send your strength to the royal camp assembling at Greenshield. With your continued support, we will make safe our realm from these foreign bastards. Many blessings to our triumph.

- King Eldrin I, Forty-Ninth King of the Greene Dynasty, Celeron’s Nightmare

“Celeron’s Nightmare? Sounds a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it?” Willem said after a few moments of silence. Balor saw the joke failed to ease the worry that had fallen over Agnes.

“The King is so blinded by his war that he leaves his people without defense.”

Balor saw the truth in her words. He remembered just a month earlier, when scores of lords, knights and soldiers had marched south down the road to join the king’s invasion army. Men who kept the peace in their respective lands. Bands of outlaws rose up to fill the vacuum of their absence, and now roamed the north with impunity, leaving fighters like them the only source of protection for the people. With the new decree, more men would be sent south, allowing the outlaws to grow stronger.

“Agnes, you pay us well, but we are four against a clearly growing tide. I do not know if we can keep your place safe much longer.”

The woman hovered the parchment over the flame of the lamp, lost in thought. She ground her teeth as she tensed. She spoke after another long silence, her eyes glinting in remorse.

“I had feared this day would come. You boys have done good for me this past month. I’d like to thank you for that. I will pay you for one more night of service. In the morning, I will take my nieces and travel south to seek refuge in the capital.”

“What of your inn?”

“The Inn of the Hill Giant has stood for near a century, since my grandfather built her. She will not fall easy. Let the looters and strays have her. I can take her back when order returns to these lands.”

Tylar asked the question before he could. “And what of us?”

She frowned when he asked, as if she had hoped to avoid addressing the issue. Like many times before, Balor heard the words before Agnes ever spoke, and they washed over him like a wave of disappointment.

“You are welcome to come with us; I care for you boys. But I will no longer be able to afford you living off my expense. Without the inn’s revenue, I may not even have enough to feed my own.”

He spied Willem’s head dip down, and Tylar was already tuned out of the moment, blankly staring at the wall behind the innkeeper. Balor could only nod in acceptance as they processed the news of their renewed homelessness. He stood from his chair.

“We understand, Agnes. Until tomorrow, you are paying us to guard your property and family. If we may be excused, there are still several hours until sunup, and that messenger may have brought some trouble we need to look out for.”

Willem and Tylar stood up with him, and without waiting for Agnes’s response, he led the boys out of the room.

____________________________________________________

The stool outside the stables of the inn was rough and uneven, but it gave Balor a place to rest while on his vigil. Inside the stables were four grey mares, a couple of workhorses, and an odd-looking pig with a disfigured nose that made a sound akin to flint scraping wood rather than a traditional snort. He would stare into the darkness, eyeing dirt road north to south and north again, on the brink of losing himself to sleep before a loud sas would anchor him back. He turned to the pig, who was staring back at him from its pen. He unsheathed part of his sword to break its stare, but the pig simply bared its tusks in response.

The flapping of wings in the night broke their confrontation, as Balor recognized the beating of Khorus’s wings. The pig retreated into its pen, sasing as it went. Khorus then landed at his feet, the large blue gyrfalcon kicking up the stray hay as it perched on the ground. Balor knew wherever Khorus was, his master was not far away.

“Any sign of company, Cerrit?”

“We swept the road a quarter mile each way. Was none that we could find” said the familiar voice from behind him. He turned to see Cerrit’s lean figure standing over him. His dark brown hair and chinstrap beard blended in with the coloring of his cloak. He extended a gloved arm, allowing Khorus to perch on it. He fed the bird some jerky from his satchel.

“Did the others tell you what happened?” Balor asked.

“We’re on our own again. It’s for the best. Willem was getting too familiar with the girls here.”

“I am surprised you noticed. You spent more time on the roof than you did inside.”

“We have no high ground here. It was important to keep a good watch.”

“Well, you have done good. Since it is our last night here, don’t you at least want to sleep in your room once.”

“No. Think I’ll just taste that pheasant Khorus caught before it’s all gone.”

“I would not hope for it, there was quite a party in there tonight.”

Cerrit gave a disappointed hmm before heading inside the inn. Knowing Tylar and Willem were also on guard in the darkness of the night gave Balor some comfort. Still, he kept his eyes peeled and ears sharp. Time passed, and thoughts of being forced onto the road again began to overtake him. They could try to seek employment in the town of Dillain, but Lord Dillain himself was at war in the south, and the last he had heard Lady Dillain had barred the town gates due to outlaw raids. Beyond that, the only other prospect was Piers’s Farm. If they were lucky, the old farmer might just have enough spare food to hold them over for a few days. As his eyes grew heavy, Balor’s thoughts then lingered back to the salthouse by the sea, where they had found him washed up. Thoughts of an auburn-haired beauty standing by the shores. And as sleep took him, his thoughts drifted back home.

The cliffside was as grey and craggy as he remembered it. Below he could hear the thunderous crashing of the waves against the rockface. He felt the cold spray shower him, and the sea wind seemed to cover him in a warm, salty embrace. He turned to see the three distant yet towering sharp peaks of the mountains at his back. Thangoris was a beautiful as he remembered. He found memory carrying his legs back towards the cliff, the memory of childhood calling him home.

But as he neared the outcrop where the cliff jutted out into the sea, his heart was torn out. At the edge of the outcrop, where he expected to find the imposing drum towers and stout structures of Ironhorn, he found instead a blackened husk of rubble. The main gate had been blown inward, taking much of the curtain wall with it. He hauntingly walked through the naked stony arch. Fading ash marks outlined where the wooden shield hall had stood. The keep, with its magnificent archways, was now charred and scattered across the center of the yard. And of the seven drum towers, only the Lighthouse Tower still stood, the tallest of the seven. It was shell of its former self, with crumbling holes in its structure where the catapults had breached it. Balor had mourned years ago, but couldn’t help the tears as they willed to well in his eyes. A salt rain that he had sworn he would never taste again fell in tandem with the rain that began to shower the ruins. He stood in the midst of his tragedy, struggling to keep the screams of that night from coming back.

It was not enough. Despite the rain, the rubble began to catch fire. Balor fell onto his back as the tower erupted into a gout of emerald flame. He was breathing faster than a bucking horse, but the sound of his own breath was overtaken by half a hundred horrid screams. The weight of the heat and pain caved into his chest like a war hammer and seemed to rip out his ears. Each drop of rain only fueled the fire. However, unlike the night Ironhorn fell, the flames glowed an eerie bright green. All around him, the ruins began to change from grey rubble into a smooth black stone. And ashen smoke began to come together in the sky like a whirlpool of death. The whirlpool tugged on the flames, making them grow taller. Rubble came apart in the air and rose higher. Balor also began to rise higher. He screamed as the smoky portal pulled him off the ground; he was lost in a sea of screams before he felt himself unstitched with a searing pain, and he joined the cloud as ash.

He awoke in the darkness of the forest, surrounded by the looming shadows of the jotunn pines. He sat in the dirt, trying to rein in his breath. The screams echoed in his head, but faded into the night as his breathing slowed. The weight in his chest lifted slowly, and soon only the sounds of the night could be heard. The crickets and rustling leaves seemed to go on forever, until they were interrupted.

“Balor!”

The cry immerged from the direction of the inn. Balor clumsily rose from the dirt as his strength returned to him. He reached for his sword, but his hand took time to wrench the blade free from his scabbard. By the time he had, the torches had come into view. Three of them scattered in equal distance from each other within the trees. The cries had gotten louder.

“Balor! Where are you?!”

Willem, he realized. Cautiously walking forward, he called out to the three.

“I am here! Just ahead of you!”

The torch lights got closer and brighter, until Balor heard the licks of their flames. Willem had approached from the center. Tylar had removed his cloak, and the left torch seemed to brighten his red gambeson. From the right came Cerrit with Khorus on the shoulder opposite of his master’s torch, his axe drawn and ready in the other hand.

“You know, it’s polite to inform you companions if you’re going to wander off.” The sarcasm in Willem’s voice was thick. Cerrit slung his axe on his belt, and Tylar shoulders became less tense.

“I am sorry. I would have, but I did not mean to be out here.”

“Were you taken by something?” asked Cerrit, whose falcon began to turn its head, observing the darkness around them.

“No, nothing took me. One moment I was seated on a stool outside of the stables. I fell asleep, I had a dream, and I awoke here.”

“Excellent, now we have to contend with you sleepwalking into trouble.” Willem grinned as he spoke.

“The dream felt very real. My body must have actually begun to walk.”

“Quite the dream it must have been to have carried you this distance.” said Tylar.

“I was dreaming of-”

They were interrupted by an ear-splitting scream from the woods behind them. Balor pushed past Willem, looking into the dark of the woods, and his breath caught in his chest when a point in the far distance began to glow from a fire, and more screams came from it.

“The inn! It’s burning!” Willem unsheathed his sword.

Balor tightened his sword belt and freed his own from its scabbard, taking a deep breath to expel all chaos in his mind.

“Let’s go, boys.”

He began to run towards the glow. The others fell in behind him, and Balor heard the wing beats of the falcon above. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, brushing past shrubs and branches, paying little mind to each cut and scrape he received from them. The glow brightened, and the screams grew louder.

By the time they had reached the tree line, the flames were rising high into the night. They had taken the stables, the thatched roofs of the outbuildings, and they were starting to climb the inn’s supports. All around it were men on horseback, armored in shoddy iron plate and wielding long axes. Patrons lay strew across the ground. Two of the woodsmen had been ridden down on the road, another patron was hanging on the beams of the of an outbuilding, the body now burning within. One of Agnes’s nieces lay outside the inn’s door in a dark pool. A few of the women were being tied up and slung onto horses by a giant of a man. Balor searched for Agnes among them, but could not find her.

“There’s a dozen here, I see seven behind the inn. We can’t take them.” said Cerrit, looking through Khorus’s eyes.

“We can’t just do nothing. They’ll carry off the survivors!” Willem responded.

Balor looked back towards the burning stables, focusing past the flames. Sure enough, above the roaring of the fire were the bays and distressed sounds of the animals trapped inside.

“We will need a distraction to do any good here. Willem, come with me and guard my back. Tylar, Cerrit, when the time comes immerge from here and liberate the survivors.”

“How will we know when the time comes?” said Tylar, raising a quivering eyebrow.

“You will know.”

With that, Balor waited until most of the raiders were distracted by more patrons immerging from the smoking inn to run for the stables. The footfalls trailing him let him know Willem followed close behind. The flames were now eating at the supports, so they had to move fast. Once they reached the entrance, he motioned for Willem to remain outside. He did so, sword at the ready.

The hungering heat radiated from the building, and the smoke wrapped around his lungs like a noose. He covered his mouth with his shirt, violently coughing. The heat watered his eyes as he pushed forward, ironically making everything around him a watery haze. Even so, he was able to make out the erratic movements of the animals still living. One by one, he sought out the doors to their stables and cut the locks with a strong swing of his sword. Blurs of brown and black cut past him in sheer panic, one was even aflame. The last one, a small pink figure smaller than the rest, panted with a queer sas sound as it bolted out of its enclosure.

The supports had begun to creak as the fire bit at their structure. Balor, stumbling at this point, willed himself back outside. The weight of the smoke pushed past his shirt and into his airway, but he ragefully dragged his feet towards safety. No sooner had he left the fiery ruin behind him than the supports snapped, and the roof collapsed in a loud crash. Balor fell to his knees, retching out the mucous and ash caking his lungs.

All around him he heard added chaos, wiping his eyes he saw the freed horses being chased down by the raiders. There were less of them now, and in the distance, he heard clashing steel. The surviving patrons were gone as well. The raider who had been binding them had an axe buried right through his pot helm and deep into his skull. Two others were being cut to pieces by Cerrit, who was a whirlwind of brown and steel against the light of the fire. Tylar had mounted a horse and fought one of the mounted opponents, both were an equal of each other. It took Khorus swooping down on the raider’s head to allow a drop in his guard. Tylar charged at full tilt and slashed the man’s throat; the blood spooking his horse and adding to the chaos along the road.

Balor felt a hand reach for his shoulder. He raised his sword only for his arm to be caught by the person, but he relaxed when he saw that it was a bloodied Willem. He had a small gash in his abdomen, but his red sword indicated the foe had taken a worse wound.

“Nice distraction. The boys jumped to it immediately. The survivors fled into the woods.” he said out of breath.

“Are you alright?”

“I can walk still, but if we linger this’ll be the least of our worries.”

Balor nodded. He whistled to Tylar and Cerrit, both heeding his call when they had finished their opponents. Falling behind the inferno that had been their home for two months, they made for the safety of the forest. In his retreat, he heard one of the outlaws in the distance interrogating someone, and Balor's heart sank in a dreaded realization after hearing the words.

"Where is the Ironhorn!?"