"Sely?" Asked Jorge. The woman's eyes were sore from a night of tears. She was visibly shaking, the cold was doing no good for her worried heart.
Her head came to bow. "Y-Yes, milord," she spoke hesitantly. The woman was plainly pretty, around thirty and dressed in a tattered kirtle, stained with mud and chicken shit.
"We're free-swords from Wal Gerrig, and we pose no harm to you, nor to the other villagers. We've come to help find your son and all the other children," the raven-haired man said.
"Yes, I-I thought I recognised 'im. Those goodly grey eyes they whisper about, milord. Like brewing storm clouds. Like stone. And that scarred snout." Her doleful watch briefly wandered about Alasdair.
"You're that fallen knight of the Exalted, ain't ya, milord? The ol' Guardian of the Opus who has 'imself a maddening sickness…" She said to him.
"I'm cured…" Alasdair spat out. It wasn't a sickness.
"I'm glad you were cured, milord. It was most terrible what things it had you do."
Alasdair merely clenched his fist to tame the burn in his gut; another tongue dared to speak of things it knew nothing about.
"Sire Wuldric, the Oracle's mutt?" She asked him. "We've all heard the tales."
Alasdair sighed in the frost, even the poorest folk of Elynire thought lowly of him.
"Tell us of your boy," he sprung to the point.
"Well It 'appended just before the cockerel crowed, milord. I had sung both me boys to sleep and left them to rest. In the night I was 'woken by a foulest stench… the sourness of rottin' flesh filled me home, milord…" her voice was breaking.
"I came to check me boys and found only Henri sleeping, like a babe was he. So peaceful and not knowing. But Lander was to be nowhere I looked. The stench was strong. It had me retch… Bloody Creator…" Sely cupped her mouth with a hand, as if the smell tainted the wind.
"Henri, how old is he?" Alasdair gestured towards the boy peeping by the window, who had hid once Alasdair drew attention to his prying.
"He's thirteen summers, milord."
"And your missing son, Lander?" Asked Jorge.
"Barely five years, milord," she answered.
Alasdair looked to Jorge and the older man's eyes had squinted in thought.
"What of Daina and Alden?" Alasdair nodded at his dark-haired friend.
"Daina was eleven, and the crippled boy was no more then seven." Her eyes darted between Alasdair and Jorge who both appeared as though they had discovered something.
"Do you know the ages of all children?" Questioned Taryn, proving that he too sailed within the same vessel of thought.
"Barric was a young boy, five or six winters, and Hela was twelve springs, milord," Sely told them.
Alasdair was reminded of an old Elynirish song about children vanishing from Redhirn, a small fishing village on the north coast of Elynire. He had been but a young boy and the drunk who had told him was simply that, a drunk. But he'd be a fool to ignore that Brynwood shared a few common things with the tale of Redhirn. The wandering children who had all been under the age of wedlock, and the stench of rot, which lingered by the places they were last seen.
"Would you mind me having a little look by your home?" Alasdair asked her.
"Of course not, milord! Pray do! if it helps find me boy." Sely took Alasdair's hand in her own.
"Me boys are all I've got, milord. The Violet-Rot took me husband a month ago. Sweet Creator… The illness took many from our village…"
Alasdair turned to his companions. "I won't be long," he said.
Jorge nodded, "give us a shout if you need a hand."
"Oh he'll need a hand alright… He's likely to shag her, the horny cunt," Taryn whispered just loud enough for Jorge to hear, causing the man to catch his laughter. Luckily he did not sip on ale, for it would have spluttered all over Oraani's disapproving glare.
Around the back and by the fallow fields came a window without glass, but a sheet of cloth had been used instead to keep at bay the season. The cloth laid by the mud, in the puddle of earth and rain, having been torn from the rusted nails once holding it to the wood. Along the wooden frame were clumps of grey hairs caught between splinters; and there came weathered oak, worn and riven as if something had forced itself through the window. Sely had said the other villagers lacked the courage to even peer upon the scene, and so she awaited Urvin's return, in hope he would find something useful. The bedroom window was barely wide enough for Alasdair to squeeze his burly hide through; he had removed the sword from his back and attempted to climb in, but had found he couldn't, even as he sucked in his gut. So what could have crept in? Within the room were two beds of straw resting under dried bundles of hanging wildflowers and sage. Henri's bed was furthest from the window, close by the fire pit filled now with dead ash; and Landor's could easily be reached if Alasdair's arms were long enough. The airs were still plagued by the rotten stench, it clung to the winds with a festering hold and turned Alasdair's stomach. He was very familiar with the stench and prayed it wasn't what he thought it would be. By the plinth of the outer wall were the remnants of what came. Alasdair knelt in the dirt to unearth it, to eye the mark left behind. He often thought his own hands were large, but they came like a child's when he placed it within the mud-print.
"Creator's mercy…" He whispered, as his eyes followed the faint trail through the fallow fields behind Sely's cottage. The cold lingered and dribbled down his spine, the eerie cloak of being watched cradled him. He squinted. Passed the unploughed field and by the treeline of Brynwood's forest. Movement came with the breaking of day's light as it danced through the crooked branches of slumbering trees, and a thin veil of mist curdled the winds; it kept his eyes from peering too far, but his hand was close to his sword, just as his master had once taught him. He was struck before his next breath came; his back flattened against the sodden dirt. A force, wild and untamed, rammed him from the side. The breath surged from his lungs in a silver puff. His face slobbered in wet flicks.
"O-Oi!" Alasdair tried to push the beast from licking his face, but found his efforts came fruitless. The hound was a bulwark of muscle, near the size of a horse with a head like a bear's.
"Get off! Bloody mutt!" He sealed his eyes and kept moving his head about, but the hound's kissing came relentless.
"G-Gallant!! Gallant!" Yelled a panicking man, who came striding across the mud. He whistled and the hound came from its terrorising of Alasdair.
"You bleedin' mutt!" The man scolded his dog and bowed his head before Alasdair.
"I-I beg your forgiveness milord! He's never done that before!"
Alasdair wiped the stickiness of dog spit from his face and stood from the ground with a groan.
"It's fine," he said, rubbing the clump of mud from the back of his head.
"The whores of Wal Gerrig aren't much more skilled…" The free-sword said. Alasdair eyed the huntsman's panting hound, its thick skull came just below the man's heaving chest.
"Garmr wildhounds must have a thing for drunkards and free-swords?" He chuckled at his own jape.
"And you must be Urvin, the village huntsman?" The man was certainly garbed like a hunter. He had himself an ash wood bow by his shoulder and a dagger of iron at his belt; a fur hide to keep warm his bones and a hood partly sheathing his golden curls. Urvin was a couple years younger than Alasdair, not nearly as rugged as the free-sword, but his shapeless, scraggy beard came tangled with forest dirt and winter frost. Alasdair held out his hand to shake, but the younger man ignored his gesture.
"I am, and I know your face, milord…" Urvin's hand came to scratch behind his hound's pointed ear instead.
"Have you come to offer a hand, Alasdair Wuldric?" The blues of his eyes were cold.
"Well, I might need a little help myself, from a hunter and his hound," Alasdair said.
Urvin nodded, "what've you come to find?"
Alasdair had discovered quite a fair bit in the short time he had been in Brynwood.
"Creator, where do I begin? I know all children have been under the age of thirteen…"
He pondered upon the time of their disappearances, knowing there most certainly was a clue lurking. Daina had been gone all day and Alden had vanished whilst throwing stones at the moon glimmering upon the cloudbane river. What of Barric and Hela? He knew Landon was taken in the midst of night, late eve, long after the sun had fallen. He thought hard and chewed the chapped skin on his lip.
"The children… They've all vanished after dusk, haven't they?" He said within the dawn of realisation.
"Creator," Urvin spoke softly, "you may be right, milord."
Alasdair's gaze fell to the trail of footmarks,
"There's a shitty guff of rot, and this trail here, it leads right through the fallow fields and into Brynwood Forest," he said, pointing with one eye sealed.
The huntsman sniffed the air, "the same stench was by where we found little Daina's basket, but even Gallant here couldn't trail it. They say a Garmr wildhound can sniff a man from across the Shimmering Sea." Alasdair smiled at Gallant. The brindled hound was from his homeland of Resviland. Once a wild breed that roamed the Garmr wetlands of Rhodhal; the first clans of Ironshore soon discovered their cleverness and compassion should a Garmr be raised from a pup. Perhaps Gallant had greeted Alasdair with such joy because the hound had caught the whiff of his Resviric blood.
"The Wandering Children of Redhirn, do you know the tale?" Alasdair plucked a clump of grey hair from the window.
Urvin gulped, "I do, milord. But ain't it just a tale? Mothers and fathers tell those things to scare their children into behaving." Alasdair couldn't blame the poor sod for doubting the truth of the tale, for he did not believe it himself, not before stepping foot in Brynwood.
"My mother often said that all tales hold some truth. But then again, I was a naughty child. The kind a parent would try to scare into behaving." Alasdair held out his hand to show Urvin the course hairs within his hold. The huntsman gazed into Alasdair's eyes with worry etched in his own.
"I-It can't be? C-Creator?" Urvin muttered to himself. "An Ogren? out here?!"
"A young Ogren. Even worse. Can your hound follow the scent, at least from the forest?"
"He can, milord. Gallant's a Garmr, his nose is trustworthy!"
And the three walked the fallow fields together, across wrinkles of icy mud to reach the misty fringe of trees, where knotted branches rattled with a rigid dance, as the frost and moss clambered their wooden bones.
"Hold out your hand, milord?" Alasdair did as Urvin asked and Gallant's wet nose came with eagerness to catch the scent. The hound dove his head to the mud and began roaming a nose by the soil. He whined and followed it with a short bark.
"He's found somthin', milord!" Urvin took the bow from about his shoulder and readied an arrow just in case.
"Do you know these forests well?" Alasdair asked as they trailed behind the hound.
"Yes, milord. My father and I would hunt burflak here when I was a young boy," Urvin said, and Alasdair smiled at a fond memory of his own father, but it quickly soured from its sweetness.
"There were wind-wolves back then, Luga-fangs. We'd see 'em scurry about the mists in winter. Never once did they trouble us, milord." His hand brushed the grey hide draped around his shoulders.
"But they've been gone, milord…"
"Can you stop calling me 'milord'? I haven't been a bloody lord in about four years," the free-sword said in jest.
"Alasdair should do."
"Would it be rude of me to ask you a question, Alasdair?" Urvin spoke softly to the free-sword. They strolled side by side but the huntsmen had his gaze on Gallant.
Alasdair grunted, "well, I mean, that all depends."
Urvin had slowed his pace to allow Alasdair ahead of him, and the grey-eyed man kept behind the mutt, whistling a tune to himself.
"My sister… She was a Heretic living in Wal Gerrig. Never practising Mystai the forbidden Heresies." Urvin's eyes watered by their sapphire rim.
"And you… four years ago… You murdered her. Why?" Alasdair turned on heel to see an anguish ridden huntsman before him. Urvin's hand quivered by its hold on the ash wood but his eyes glared with murderous intent. The huntsman had his bow lifted, by its hawk feathered hilt he pulled back the arrow and had Alasdair in his sights. The boy was a hunter, not a killer, but he appeared willing to change that.
"Her name was Arla Downere! She was sweet! kind! She was lovely! How? By the Creator's mercy! How've you been allowed to live! After all you've done to this Kingland?! To its good folk?!" Urvin's sorrow had Gallant bound over to him, the hound nudged the man and whined, jumping up to lick at his face.
"Heel!" Urvin commanded his hound and it laid on the earth by its master's boots.
Alasdair held out his arms. "Do it! Let your bloody arrow fly! Do us both a favour!" His words had Urvin pull harder on the string.
"I've killed many folk, huntsman! Too many to name and near too many to remember! Your sister wasn't the first, and by the creator she weren't the last. Funnily enough, I remember her. She'd killed two of my Exalted brothers during the Quiet Rebellion! Sire Benn Rethalt and Sire Davlen Welg! Both were good men! Both had themselves good wives and children! What else was I to do!? She spoke gore-speech and rotted them away!" Alasdair was still just as lost as he was back then. Ensared within the ardent ire and the numbing anguish. Urvin's sister wasn't the peak or plinth of his mountain of sins.
"It was my responsibility to protect the realm! To– "
"Hold your fuckin' tongue!" Urvin cried. "A rebellion you had caused with your wicked ways! Men like you spin lies like a spider spins silk! My sister was no murderer! Those bastards raped her! She sent a letter to my father before the Rebellion!"
Alasdair stepped closer to Urvin.
"Go on lad! Take my life! It might make you feel better for a month or even a year – but I swear it to our divine Creator! The trees in this forest will die of old age long before you forgive yourself!" Hatred was never worth nurturing. It was a blight to a man's spirit. Alasdair had fallen prey to that plague, an illness still festering within him.
"You're not like me… You can't purify evil with evil… So don't bloody try…" Alasdair said.
The huntsmen was lost in his own hatred, tussling with the rot plaguing his own kind heart, deciding on wether to kill Alasdair or not. The free-sword sealed his eyes and placed his life in Urvin's bow, knowing the arrow was soon to slip.
The forest glistened with silence, and the trees had kept still for only a moment, but by his cheek he felt a sharp wind; a feather brushed his flesh after iron had split it, and a warmth trickled just as a thud was heard from behind. The thin dribble of crimson trailed down his face to drip from under his jaw. It stung in the cold, but the wound would not challenge his mortality.
"Go on, Gallant!" Urvin shooed his hound to keep on the scent, and the hound ran by Alasdair to do as his master requested.
"You missed…" The free-sword gulped as his thumb came to wipe the blood.
"On purpose. I never thought I'd ever meet you… Alasdair Wuldric." Urvin spoke in quietness.
"The Mutt of Wal Gerrig… The tales had me conjure you as a fiend, a hideous and savage creature…" Urvin's words trailed into the white haze of his warm breath.
"In my nightmares you were a man-beast who stood taller than these here trees, who had himself feral eyes the colour of winter mist… You're but a cowardly man filled with regret, ain't you? Death would let you flee from the misery of this world, from the pain you've cursed this kingland with," he spat out.
"The Illuminant must hate us all… especially those of us born as heretics. What you did could never be redeemed. You are forsaken and evil."
Alasdair's eyes could not meet with the other man's, for fear they would see that his words struck the free-sword with truth. Urvin's views were shared with most if not all folk of Elynire.
"We've to find what's taking the children from my village, it's the only thing I give a bleedin' shit about," Urvin said to him, as he followed after his hound. Alasdair stole himself a deep gulp of frozen air and slowly walked behind Urvin. He wanted to beg for the man's forgiveness but had chosen to bite his tongue and chew on his words. Words could be empty things. Barren and fruitless. At times they could change things when uttered with power; but no meagre apology would bring Urvin's sister back to him, or cleanse Alasdair's hands, and so he kept silent, following the huntsman and his loyal hound through the sodden forest.
A glade soon emerged, a deep patch of stale crimson and the stench of decay had grown legs to dance amongst the cold. A dozen or so crows, a murder of black feathers, had gathered for a banquet of rotting bones. The Garmr howled and the murder fled, to take to the sky in a dark flock.
"What is it?" Alasdair questioned aloud, but the answer came sooner than expected.
"B-By the Creator's mercy…" A small body. Shrivelled and sallow in the cold. Strewn about the dead grass in fragments. An arm by the tall oak, and legs twisted in the nettles. Eyes plucked by birds and clothes shredded in the dirt. Urvin and Alasdair shared a knowing look, something foul and most terrible had been and gone.
"It's ol' Felbby's grandson, Alden…" Urvin knelt beside the corpse and bowed his head. Alasdair thought as much, he counted only three limbs about the glade.
"The poor lad…" A rage began to seethe within the free-sword's gut, churning and tying knots. He pummelled the underside of his fist against a tree and cursed under his breathe.
Urvin stood but kept his head bowed, chin to chest and hands placed palm to palm in prayer.
"No place is there, where I do not see thee. And as my wife lays weak and weeping, my sweet child famished and feverish. If I be a father and a husband without mercy nor sacrifice; I shall turn my spirit unto your hands great Creator, so that the wolves leave my trail."
"Path of Rulers, Song 12?" Alasdair found it an interesting Bright Song to recite over the corpse of a child.
"The dead don't need words… It matters not what you say to them. But the little lad deserves a proper burial, and his grandfather deserves to say his farewells." He trampled across the glade to join Urvin by Alden's corpse. The sallow skin and blue lips had an old memory haunt him. A memory of his mother came from the chasm of hidden trauma to strike at him.
"I'll carry the lad home…" Alasdair unfastened his cloak and wrapped the boy's remains within it. He took Alden with care and cradled him in his arms, choosing to ignore the subtle blossom of the noonflare.
"Me and Gallant here will have a look in the forest, we may have yet to find something. We'll return by dusk…"