Farek 36

After a few days avoiding the roaming bandit groups with the assistance of the guide Farek had hired, the travellers crested another hill and, at last, they saw their destination.  The House of Kiaraka was the toe of a large foothill, a two-storey manor surrounded by overgrown fortifications.  The outer wall had collapsed in two or three spots, while moss and vines claimed the last remaining guard tower, a crooked pinnacle on the edge of the corner of the defenses.  There were fewer visible damages to the abode, but its walls showed similar layers of greenery.

And in front of the House, freezing Farek in his tracks, was camped the Baron’s army.  There were hundreds of men based here, in tents of white, beige, and brown.  Palisade spikes had been set up on the fringes, and at tactical points throughout, while campfire rings denoted the bases of different troops, likely under the command of the varying lords and ladies who had answered Baron Norlam’s call.

Farek thought about it for a few moments, before dismissing their guide.  “We’re going in there,” he told his loyal men.  He couldn’t rightly learn anything against the House of Kiaraka and the origins of the ‘Thrane assassin’ without learning what interest the Baron had in this place.

The guards on the camp perimeter led Farek and his men in after only a short moment of confusion.  Under the watchful eye of three swordsmen, the travellers were shown a direct route through sharp wooden defences and make shift fences.  Only every twentieth man showed the signs of combat, a gash here, a slung arm there.  Brigands on the wild lands, likely.  The hammer of a smith’s hammer started to echo as their journey across the camp passed five minutes.  The pungent smell of sizzled meat and burned stew overtook the smell of sweat and trampled grass as they neared a small metal gate in the front of the House of Kiaraka’s walls.  The Baron’s pavilion, it seemed, was separated from the ruined defences of the hall by only a rank of dutiful soldiers and a short fence of wooden spikes.

The sentry near the Baron’s tent parted the flaps and Farek was marched inside.  His men were tense, surrounded as they were by a force with unknown intentions, but Farek put on an air of confidence.

“What’s the meaning of this?” a bold voice demanded as they entered a cluttered space.  A bed covered in messily strewn blankets was protected by a massive trunk of clothes.  Nearby, a guard stood, hand on sword hilt, eying the newcomers with a stoic glare.  The Baron had been sitting at a nearby table drowned in maps and mugs.  Grabbing a hefty pewter vessel from the mix, the broad-shouldered man rose to his feet.  Though Norlam had clearly been a man of athleticism in the recent past, his beer gut hung over his belt, barely contained by a stretched white shirt.  Taking an offensive step toward Farek and his warriors, Baron Norlam demanded, “Where did you lot come from?”

“Forgive my intrusion, baron,” Farek said, giving a bow of his shoulders and head.  “My name is Farek Gallendris.”

With scrunched eyebrows, Norlam scratched his retreating hairline and questioned, “Gallendris?  The bankers?  What, by the gods, are you doing here?”

Farek inhaled.  “Well, you see I’ve a great interest in archeology and have grown rather bored. So when I heard there was a ancient house rather untouched by history, I couldn’t pass up the chance to see this place!  You can only imagine my surprise, then, upon arriving here to see an entire army instead.”

As he spoke, the Baron’s confused expression grew more and more blank.  The beer mug sank toward his side as the big man stared at Lord Gallendris.

“May I ask if you share my passion for undiscovered artifacts?” Farek asked.

The Baron glanced to the side, at the scattered maps and letters on his desk.  He remained this deep in thought for a moment, and then scoffed loudly.  “That’s one far-fetched story.”  His guards tensed, and Farek’s guards retaliated in kind.  Hands gripped weapons.  The Baron cleared his throat.  “Are you with her?”

“Her?” Farek asked.  At last he had an honest reply:  “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you mean.  What are you doing here, Baron?”

Norlam ran a hand through the remnants of his neck-length hair.  Suddenly, he seemed like the world was on his shoulders, and he bore it with stress.  He lifted the pewter mug again, taking a frothy sip, and then returned it to the table hard enough to tremble a few of the other cups in place.  “Not part of the damned plan…” he muttered.  “And I’m expected to decide?”

“I can promise you I don’t want any trouble…”

“Guards,” Norlam said.  “Seize them.”

The sentries that surrounded them slid blades out an inch or two, but Farek held his hands out from his sides to still his men’s response.  With a threatening glare unwavering from the Baron, Farek unbuckled his scabbard and passed it to the nearest guard.  Within moments, his party was unarmed.  “I think you owe me a good explanation, Baron.”

“No,” Norlam said, striding closer.  “You owe me one.  Answer truthfully, or these might be the last words I will hear from you.”

“I came here to explore this house and that is the honest truth.  You think my intentions otherwise with only three guards?  I came here to talk with you so there would be no ill-will between us.”

“How did you hear of the House of Kiaraka?” Norlam questioned.  His eyes had narrowed when Farek said ‘explore this house’ and Lord Gallendris was uncertain if he had heard the rest.  Why was the Baron so stressed?  Erril had said that the assassin and his sister had been raised here, so why was the ruin now besieged?

Farek took a deep breath.  “I heard it from an assassin. One who was rather successful in ending another man’s life but unsuccessful in saving his own.”

It was like a light dawned on the Baron.  “An assassin?” he asked, his eyes alight. He took a step back and reached for his beer mug again.

“Yes, an assassin,” replied another voice.  Everyone froze for just a moment, until a guard drew a sword, and all eyes flicked to the Baron’s right.  Another man stood in the pavilion now, though his arrival had been utterly unnoticed.  His olive skin was framed by short grey hair.  His deep-set eyes peered out of his sixty-year-old face and met Farek’s for a moment as they passed around the room.

The Baron knocked over his table as he grabbed a sword that rested amidst the jumble.  Great Isle blades were bizarre in comparison to the swords Farek knew.  A prominent cross-guard protected Norlam’s hands from the double-edged blade.

The stranger held out his unarmed hands peacefully until the noise of breaking pottery and glass quieted.  “At east.  Everyone just needs to calm down a little.”

“Who are you?” the Baron demanded, his sword unwavering despite his earlier drinking.

“I’m the only one here the assassin tried to kill, Baron.”  It took Farek a moment to realize he was referring to a different assassin than the one that had killed man in Thrane’s court. “Unless she tried to kill your… prisoner, too.”

Farek blinked.  She?  Was he referring to the same ‘her’ that the Baron had referenced earlier?

“So she failed…” the Baron said.  His shoulders sank and his sword lowered.

The stranger nodded.  “She did,” he replied.  “And so, Elvara and Etrin rest in peace at last.”  With a frown and a thoughtful breath, the man continued: “The question now is, what are you two going to do about it?”

The Baron sank down onto the edge of the overturned table.  His spirits looked crushed.

“If I may interject… what, by the three Matriarchs, is going on here?”

Farek’s incredulous question interrupted the Baron’s moment of sadness.  The man looked up at him and shrugged.  “A woman arrived in my castle’s great hall one day, to inform me that my wife had been taken hostage.  She demanded that I escort her to the House of Kiaraka to earn my family back.  I’d never even heard of this blasted place then.”

“Elvara,” the stranger intoned.  “She was born here… and died here, demanding vengeance on me for the direction I set her life, and her brother’s, upon thirty years ago.”

“And who are you?” Farek demanded, staring at the grey-haired man.

“I’m Tarro.  I live here,” he replied.  “I lived here before I raised those two, and I’ll live here long after they’ve gone to rest.”

At last, the puzzle started to make sense.  The assassin that Farek had killed was Etrin, and Elvara had been his sister.  Raised by Tarro in this strange ruin, they’d been set ‘on a direction’ that led to Etrin’s eventual death.  Had Elvara forced the Baron to help her in order to get vengeance for Etrin’s demise, or for the deeds of her own life?

“So,” Farek said, considering it all.  “Where is the Baron’s wife?”

Tarro shrugged.  “I just said I live here.  I’m certain Elvara put the wife somewhere safe. With a noose around her neck.”

The Baron sighed, while Farek simmered.  With clenched fist and scarcely controlled footing, he glared at the obnoxious man.

“Look for her in New Mallam, I suppose,” Tarro added.

Farek added it all up, growing angrier by the word.  “You raised this ‘Elvara’, who kidnapped the wife of the man sitting before you, and all you can do is say she’s probably fine?  And now that you’ve made certain she has failed her quest in the House of Kiaraka, the Baron must pay the price?”

“Quiet your prisoner, Baron,” Tarro said, taking a step closer to Norlam.  A few more guards drew their weapons.  “Elvara brought your men here to my doorstep because she thought I wouldn’t kill them.  An insurance policy, if you will.  She thought, being the key part of that phrase.  So… how many lives is your wife worth?”

The Baron’s flushed face grew redder still as he considered all that had happened to him these last few months.  He inhaled and exhaled quicker.

Farek slid his hand into Etrin’s magic glove.

With a cry of rage, the Baron made his move.  He strode across the tent in two broad steps, brandishing his sword toward Tarro—and perhaps dooming them all.

A quick step forward might have been enough for Farek to stop it.  He reached out with the paralyzing glove, but didn’t get close.  One of the guards shoved him aside defensively, and Farek’s view of the violent charge skewed as he stumbled to one knee.

The Baron’s sword pierced Tarro’s shape, dissipating the form in a few rays of light and revealing that Tarro had never stood in their midst.  The apparition vanished, leaving a fading after image.

For an awkward moment of silence, the tent stared at where the odd mirage had stood.  Baron Norlam trembled with rage, while Farek found himself dragged back into line with his men.  He called out anxiously.  “Baron, did Elvara say anything about your wife that could give you a clue to where she might be?”

The stressed man took a deep breath, but froze before he could let it out.

Someone screamed, outside the pavilion.  One of the guards yanked open the tent flap, but no one could see what was going on from inside.  The camp seemed fine.  A loud clang echoed toward them next—that was sword striking sword.  And then another shout of pain.

All that Norlam could do was stare at the opening in a daze.

“Baron, you must command your men!  The further this continues, the more chaos will doom them,” Farek shouted.

That shook him out of it.  Norlam glanced at his men.  “Order a full retreat.  Go!”  And then, to Farek, he said, “Get out of here.”

The echoes of combat and death were tilted toward a full clash of battle now.  Screams echoed off the ruined walls.  Farek grabbed his sword back from one of the guards and drew it.  “Grab that torch,” he told Matek, pointing, while Diaren passed out their armaments again.  “We’re going to burn this devil’s house down.”

They marched out of the camp as a squad, just in time to see one of the Baron’s soldiers charge by, flailing his arms overhead.  He tackled another soldier, and, snatching up a cookpot toppled from the nearby fire, began to smash in his victim’s skull.  Another soldier hauled the madman off the concussed man, as Farek and his men rounded the tent toward the front gate of the House.  A grey and black mist was rolling over the wall, seeping through its cracks and into the camp.  The cloud had crested the crumbled ramparts like a wave, a wave that hadn’t reached the Baron’s tent yet.  In the midst of the thick fog, Farek watched soldiers stabbing one another.  A man slammed one of the craftsmen bodily into the wall and started beating him with a rock, while a soldier slid down, between palisades, and went to work on them both a knife.

“Sir?” Matek asked, still carrying a torch.

“Retreat,” Farek said.  The miasma crowned the wall overhead, and Farek hollered, “Retreat!”

At a dash, he led his men away from the House of Kiaraka.  The trampled grass and uneven earth gave way to a lurching job.  They dodged around a man who was hacking at a long-dead man with a wood hatchet, and then a maddened soldier barreled into Farek.  The Prince used the man’s own momentum to swing him out of the way.  The assailant came up to hands and knees, reeling, only to receive Farek’s boot to the side of his face.  As they pressed on, he snatched a square rag from a nearby tent and tore it into strips.  A mask he made, and his men followed suit.

The miasma had overtaken the closest tents but was hot on their heels, churning the minds of loyal men there into feral animals.  Had the Baron made it out? His men had escorted him a different way.

Blood and dead men soon replaced grass as the turf they trampled.  “Find a bow,” Farek gasped, his voice mumbled through the cloth mask.  They were staying ahead of the rolling fog, but he could feel its tendrils as a throbbing in the back of his throat and a blur at the corners of his sight.  Twice, when he glanced at his comrades, he saw shadows of them instead, twisting faces, rotting flesh, hallucinations.

But he kept going straight.  The next time a maddened soldier charged him, he didn’t stop after kicking him down.  The man tried to climb up and Farek put his boot on the man’s throat.

Panting for fresh air, they soon left the camp.  Dozens of soldiers had made it out, but many had not.  Farek could barely see the House of Kiaraka from here, just its slanted shingles and the point of the crooked lookout tower.  Thankfully, the miasma did not grow further.  It contained the camp, driving those caught within to murderous rampage.  Tarro had destroyed the Baron’s army.

Diaren pulled the rag away from his mouth and shoved a bow in Farek’s direction.  “Burn the blasted place down,” he hissed.

Farek pulled an arrow from the quiver the man had found and took aim at the House.  Just a test arrow first.  It was a few hundred feet, but Farek had trained with a bow as much as with a sword in his younger days.  A violent thump reverberated up his arm as the shaft soared skyward.  It fell past the miasma, inside Tarro’s property.  The next arrow bore fire from Matek’s torch.

Sievus recovered from the distorting effects of the cloud and at last parted with a bow he had found, offering it to Matek who was an excellent shot.  Soon, the first couple fire arrows were followed by more.  Some of the Baron’s soldiers, standing down a grassy slope from them, caught on.  More arrows joined the fray, slowly building the telltale glow of fire into a brilliant blaze.

Farek paused as he watched Kiaraka burn.  He had forgotten all about the prophesies of the strange sorcerer.  Gravagan had told him that he would burn down the house of the gold dog—which he assumed was the Organization, a criminal syndicate unrelated to this house.  But he was now burning down a literal house that he had been led to by the same man who had given him the gold fox ring.

And what was the last part of that prophesy?  The only person to die in that fire would be the person who could kill Farek.  Or would, Gravagan had said.  A blast of wind divided the miasma as a man in ornate black and gold armour marched down the grassy slope.  The soldiers lowered their aim, but their arrows either missed or were blasted away by wind.  The ominous attacker—Tarro, likely—approached with the swirling grey mist at his back and the remnants of the Baron’s men ahead.  When they clashed, he moved between them like water down the rapids.  Blood fanned the air, as Farek tossed down his bow and followed his men away from the field.

The last thing Farek saw, before fleeing into the bandit forests, was the dark spectre kicking one of the last soldiers to the ground and running him through with a furious stab.