Chapter 34: Descent

He couldn’t believe she had sided with the thief.

Larean had always been a thorn in his side. From the very first moment he had laid eyes on the Nimean, sitting down to remove a pebble from his shoe during their escape from the Burn as if his comfort was more important than their safety, he had known the man was trouble.

Today, he had once again proved he couldn’t be trusted. Risking their lives like that just to stay and help someone they didn’t even know was simply not acceptable. And then Soria had compounded the problem by staying with Larean instead of coming with him.

Pelam had walked alone for over an hour now. He guessed the other two were somewhere on the path behind him, trying their best to catch up. The smart thing to do would probably be to simply sit down at the side of the road and wait for them to reach him, but he wasn’t in the mood for that. He was angry at them both and wanted them to suffer a little for their insolence. Forcing them to walk alone, just like they had made him do, was a fitting punishment for them.

Fortunately, the night was warm and pleasant, and walking through the woods made him momentarily forget his current predicament. The smell of conifer needles and resin took him back to his early years in Cloverheart, playing in the forest or learning to hunt with his father.

It wasn’t just the fragrances of the summer night that reminded him of home. The sounds were there, too. There were the trilling of the nightingale, the chirping of the crickets, and the deer barking. Somewhere behind him, he could even hear wolves howling.

His musings were disrupted when his brisk steps took him past a small farm on the side of the road. It wasn’t big, nothing like a full village. Just a simple house to live in, a small stable for the animals, and a rickety old chicken coop. But the smell of manure emanating from the place didn’t fit with his idyllic memories of childhood. After all, his father had been a hunter, not a rancher.

Farther down the road from the little farmstead, the path split in two, and he had to make a choice. The one veering off to the right appeared narrower and less frequently traveled. Both seemed to go in a more or less northwestern direction, though, and he guessed it wouldn’t matter for their final destination which one he picked. One road likely passed through Tagglemouth, while the other led directly to Terynia, and along both, there were probably a number of smaller villages as well.

Knowing how lazy Larean was, Pelam assumed the Nimean would go for the wide, easy road when he and Soria arrived at the junction. Not wanting to give the thief that satisfaction, Pelam elected to go right.

For a brief moment, he considered hanging some kind of sign from a branch to indicate which way he had chosen, but anger and jealousy clouded his judgment, and he decided it was more important to make them suffer a little more than to ensure they found him right away. It would serve them right, he thought, if they arrived at the junction and were forced to consider that maybe, just maybe, they had lost the most important member of their team. And it was all their fault.

Had he listened carefully to his own thoughts, he might have heard how childish and petty they were. But Pelam’s rage was too loud and too important for him to pay attention to anything other than his own misery. Taking a perverted pleasure in his defiance, he gladly marched on into the darkness.

Ten minutes later, the path began to narrow even further, impossible as it might sound. It was no longer straight, but meandered around gray rocks and black trees as it took him deeper into the dense spruce forest. Here, the sliver of moonlight that had guided his steps out on the open road no longer reached the ground. Gnarly roots and loose stones made progress slow, and eventually, the hunter in him was forced to admit that the path no longer looked man-made.

Had he somehow managed to get turned around, or veered off the path he had started on? Or had it been a game trail all along, and he just hadn’t noticed?

Pelam didn’t know, but he was starting to wonder if perhaps he had made a mistake going this way. Still, turning back to look for his companions wasn’t really an option. It would be the equivalent of admitting defeat to Larean.

Somewhere to his right, not far from where he was on the trail, a shrieking—almost trumpeting—sound eerily pierced the night. To Pelam, it was both familiar and strange, as if he had heard it before but couldn’t quite remember where, or what it meant.

It did, however, make his heart race.

He continued to walk the narrow path, trying not to stumble. But in the darkness, such plans were, of course, in vain. More than once, he slipped on a patch of loose leaves or got his foot stuck under a spruce root that looped up above the ground. The first time he lost balance, he dropped with his head onto the soft, dense moss at the side of the trail. When he opened his eyes, a large rock sat only a hand’s breadth from his face. Had he fallen only a little differently, he might have hit the back of his head and never woken up again.

The second time he fell, the ground gave way below his feet, and he tumbled head over heels down the hill, into a deep, wide chasm on the left side of the trail.

For a moment, he just lay there in the darkness, covered in dirt and leaves, his head pounding with a headache that felt like someone had taken a saw blade to the base of his skull. Slowly, he tried to sit up to get a bearing on his surroundings.

The hillside from which he had fallen was steep and covered with loose, slippery vegetation. He might be able to climb it again if he knew where it was safe to put his feet, but in the middle of the night he couldn’t see more than a gray slope there.

From the top of the hill, just to the left of where he had stood before he fell, he could hear the ear piercing, howling shriek again. Something—or someone—was watching him from up there. And whatever it was, it was closer now.

To his right, the small valley he had dropped into continued to the limits of his vision, which, admittedly, wasn’t very far in the heavy shadow, before it disappeared in the distance, hidden by the night and the wide branches of the spruce trees surrounding him. To his left, the valley vanished into a dense cluster of large, leafy bushes just a few men’s lengths from where he sat.

For a full minute, he stayed still, quietly listening for the shrieking noise to return, but was rewarded only with silence. Then, he suddenly heard a twig snap somewhere to his left, as if something large and heavy had stepped on it.

Holding his breath, he tried to look for the source of the sound, but could see nothing. For a short moment, he thought there was movement at the top of one of the bushes there, but it could just as well have been only the wind.

There were no more noises, neither inhuman howls nor cracks from broken branches.

Whatever it was that had been out there was gone now, he thought. Either gone, or sitting in complete silence just to his side, watching him from the darkness.

For a moment, he thought he caught a faint whiff of carrion on the wind.

Pelam could feel his pulse quickening. His breath, which he had been holding to hear better, now came fast and shallow, as fear filled his heart.

Gods, he prayed in silent desperation, for the moment putting his rebellion aside. I need your help!

He now knew why the howling screams had seemed so familiar. He’d heard them before, occasionally, very rarely, from within the deep forests surrounding Cloverheart, when he had been hunting with his father.

They were the territorial vocalizations of the woodland troll.

Without knowing better, he had encroached on their land. And now they were preparing to protect their den and their young against the unwitting intruder.

Moving as slowly as possible to avoid making any gestures the animals might feel threatening, he tried to sit up into a better position to defend himself. Without a sound, he unhooked his sword from his belt and held it with a firm grip in his right hand, ready to strike.

When it finally happened, he had little advance warning. To his left, he heard the sound of broken branches. Less than a second later, a large, gray shape whirled through the undergrowth and threw itself at him, screaming in primal rage, its sharp canines clearly visible inside its wide open mouth. The large, carnivorous ape held a long, thick piece of wood in its right hand, wielding it like a club, trying to smash his skull in.

Instinctively, Pelam held up his sword to protect himself, but the thin blade did nothing against the powerful muscles of an animal twice the weight of a man. The heavy branch connected with his scalp with a cracking sound, sending him flying to the ground. Pain seared through his head, and for a moment, sparks flashed behind his eyes.

There were only two options left to him. He now had to choose between scaring off the troll or fighting it. But if this was its home territory, or if it was protecting its young, getting it to leave would be close to impossible.

Realizing this would be a struggle to the death, he tried to get to his feet again, but before he could rise fully, he felt a sharp pain in his back as his adversary, now holding the club in both hands, hit him there with full force.

The animal shrieked, chattered and thumped its chest, attempting to intimidate him into leaving the area. But no matter how much Pelam wanted to, he couldn’t. The sides of the valley were simply too steep for him to scramble up in these dark, wet conditions.

With pain shooting through his back like a bolt of lightning, he fell to the ground face first, his head buried in the damp moss. He could smell the dirt and the leaves filling his nose as he tried to turn around to face the howling troll.

It was too late.

From out of the darkness, the animal came flying again, landing its heavy feet on his battered spine with a sickening crack.

Pelam fell again, his legs no longer carrying his weight. Strangely, there was no pain, he thought. Then he realized he couldn’t even move his feet.

In fact, below his chest, it was as if his entire body had ceased to exist.

And hovering above him stood the troll, its club raised over its head, ready to deal him the final blow.

Then it froze.

In that moment, the sun rose and washed all the darkness away. With a brilliance beyond words to describe, it filled every shadow on the forest floor.

No, he thought, it couldn’t be the sun. It was still the middle of the night, and down here among the trees, the sun wouldn’t shine that brightly even during the day.

The big ape watched the light with horror, its terrified shrieks echoing through the forest as it ran away to hide. Not wanting to stay around a moment longer than necessary, it even left its wooden club behind.

Pelam didn’t understand its fear. Whatever the light was, it was beautiful.

Suddenly a voice spoke to him, dark and rich, filled with ageless wisdom and infinite strength.

“Pelam Gathór. You have been chosen,” it boomed, the force of it making the trees around him wave and the ground he lay on shake.

“Worship me, and rise in my honor. Do my bidding as my Knight, and I will give you power and status beyond what mortal men desire. I am Mardocar the all-mighty, son of heaven. I am your god.”

“I… can’t walk,” Pelam whispered, all thoughts of vengeance momentarily forgotten.

“You will rise in my name. I will carry your sword and your shield as you cleanse your homeland of those not of purest Agerian blood. In my honor, you will bring the strength of the Empire to the ends of the world, as you subjugate the mongrels. You are honored, for I have chosen you to do this in my name.”

Slowly, reality started to catch up with Pelam. This was Mardocar. This was his sworn enemy, and the reason for his entire journey. But circumstances had now changed dramatically since he first set out on his voyage of revenge. Things were not so black and white anymore.

“You killed… my family,” he wheezed, barely able to speak.

The god of strength and genocide paid no attention to what Pelam had said.

“As proof of my power, I will restore you,” the god told him, his voice penetrating him with its warmth. “Rise, pick up your sword, and walk, my son.”

The moment Mardocar said that, Pelam could sense something starting to move beneath his skin. It felt like worms were burrowing through his flesh, slowly knitting it together. Pressed against the ground, his spine twisted and jerked, the way a child might violently play with a doll. Suddenly, pain shot through his back as if someone had pierced it with a pitchfork.

He screamed uncontrollably, yet relished the sensation.

A stench of death rose from his bubbling flesh, as dark pus seeped through a newly formed crack in his skin. Pelam sat up, feeling his limbs once more respond as he commanded them to move.

Rising to his feet, he turned to face the god of the world. Now healed, his old defiance had returned.

“I will not serve you, Mardocar!” he shouted, with little concern for his own safety. “I will defeat you. I will slice the throats of every single one of your worshippers, just as you did to my family. My father’s, my mother’s, and my sisters’ pain will be yours. I will kill every one of your followers. Every man, every woman, every child. There will be no one left to serve you.”

Mardocar laughed, the sound reverberating through the dark forest like thunder.

“You are most welcome to them. Have your way with my priestesses, and slaughter my worshipers. Please. Consider them my gift to you. They exist solely to suffer and die for my glory. Yours will be the hand that sacrifices them to me.”

The god’s response stopped Pelam cold. Mardocar wanted him to succeed in his mission of revenge?

“Of course,” the god of the world responded to his unspoken thought. “I heard your vow that day, when you stood there in the forest above Cloverheart, overlooking the remains of those who had given up their own lives, and the lives of their kin, to honor me. Your rage was an offering to me, as sweet as the smoke rising from the burning bodies of your sisters.”

Pelam felt as if all life had drained from him. In the span of a minute, his whole purpose of existence had been stolen from him. All he had done since that fateful day, all his grief and his pain, the exhaustion and struggles he had endured to get to Terynia to avenge his family had been for nothing.

No, worse than that. It had all been for the glory of the god he had sworn vengeance against.

“I have always been with you, son,” Mardocar said, his voice sweet and rasping. “You have worshiped me since you were a child, ever since your parents first brought you to my shrine. Ever since you first invited me in, I have been there when you have called on me.”

“You never helped me!” Pelam spat.

“You almost died in the bog,” the god reminded him. “You would have, if it had not been for me. But you were not ready yet.”

“You did nothing there. I called on you, and you did nothing!”

“Didn’t I?” Mardocar chuckled. “Do you truly believe the branch you grabbed moved within reach on its own?”

“No,” the god continued. “I have been guiding you from the start. You have always been mine, Pelam Gathór. Every dark thought you’ve had, every minute of anger and jealousy you indulged in, has brought you deeper into my divine embrace.”

Pelam raised his voice in defiance. “I will not serve you!”

Mardocar shrugged his shoulders and turned to leave.

“Very well,” he said. “If that is what you want, then so be it.”

In that same moment, Pelam fell to the ground in a soft heap of skin and flesh, his legs no longer carrying him as the god of strength took away the divine healing he had been granted.

No. No, you can’t take this away from me! This can’t be it. I can’t die a cripple, bleeding out in the woods, alone and forgotten.

Mardocar, slowly walking away in the distance, said nothing.

Why am I even fighting this? There is nothing to be gained from resisting further. My whole mission was for nothing. If I had slaughtered his worshippers, he would have counted that as a win. If I surrender to him now, he still wins. There is no difference. The only way I can lose more than I’ve already lost is if I die now.

“What would you have me do?” he whispered, hoping the breeze would carry his voice.

This time, Mardocar’s reply came from inside his mind.

“Worship me,” it said, the sound grinding into his skull with the force of a rockslide. “Bow before my feet. Pledge your soul to me, and I will raise you up as one of my Knights Eternal.”

And with a whimper, Pelam Gathór, enemy of the gods, sold his soul to Mardocar.

In the darkness of the night, Sir Pelam rose.

Author's Note

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