God Within Us

A heavy pall hung over the entire group as they traveled, seeming to weigh as heavily on the feet of the peasants as their morale. Yesugei kept to the front of the band as they shuffled through the dense woodlands - staying low and swift as he followed the ruts in the dirt that made up the peasants’ hunting trails.

The woods of Gatchisk were nowhere near as dark and foreboding as the Devil Woods, but were just as disorienting. Without the snaking hunting trails it seemed as though the forests stretched on forever in all directions - an endless labyrinth of indistinguishable trees that was completely silent save for the heavy breathing and footsteps of their traveling band. In the open steppe, distant landmarks such as rivers or mountains could be seen from miles around as a guide - but in the forests, any strangely-shaped bushes or standing stones to guide their location disappeared a mere twenty paces further on. And the unnerving feeling of constantly being lost was not helped by the intense, suffocating humidity of the woods. Even in the shade he found himself sweating like a pig beneath his tattered silks, which in all likelihood needed to be burned - a fact he had made peace with by the second hour of their slow shuffle through the forest.

Of the nine new stragglers they had taken on, it was only Rudin - a boar-hunter by trade - who knew to keep them on the right path, judging where to cross from one fading trail to the next to stay moving westwards. Despite his being the oldest among the peasants with nearly forty summers under his belt, the man moved as though he were at least ten summers younger, and he kept a good pace with Yesugei as they scouted ahead.

The other stragglers from the village proved themselves useful as well, if only to carry supplies and the wounded boyar who muttered to himself in feverish dreaming. The boyar’s wife - Nesha - alternated between worrying over her husband and chatting with Vasilisa as they walked, and for the first time since they had set out Yesugei saw Vasilisa relax somewhat as she spoke to the middle-aged noblewoman. They spoke of the history of the land, of a dozen different boyars and governors whose names made Yesugei’s head spin, and of a young griffon - whatever such meant. He pressed on ahead with the boar-hunter to give the women some room to chat among themselves, and to provide a second set of eyes for any danger, human or animal.

“We’re not far from Balai now,” said Rudin as they passed by a large gnarled tree with two trunks growing from its base. “This is the beginning of the Gray Boar’s path, so we’ll exit the woods south of the town.”

“This trail is quite far from the village,” Yesugei noted as he and Rudin carefully ascended a slick muddy slope. “Farther than I’d imagine any peasants from Yerkh would be permitted to hunt. Yet you know the trails even this far like the back of your hand.”

Rudin bristled at that comment, but didn’t offer a reply at first - not until he was sure the others were beyond earshot. “Gods didn’t create the vast woods just so men could claim this bit and that bit for ‘emselves.”

“Perhaps, but men also have this nasty habit of killing those who stray into their bits of land. Especially hunters hunting where they shouldn’t be. In my land, they call them poachers.”

“If that’s what you call a man who’d rather risk the noose over seeing his kin waste away into nothing, then be my guest. But no-one from Balai ever complained about no missing pigs here or there-”

The hunter’s voice suddenly hushed, and he dropped low into a squat - beckoning Yesugei to do the same. A little farther up the trail, the earth split into a wide but shallow river - on the opposite end sat a woodcutter’s hut surrounded by tree stumps and a mossy pile of stacked logs. But what had caught the hunter’s attention was not the hut, but the large birds that floated lazily along the river: two fat swans, completely pale save for their bright orange peaks.

They traveled so serenely through the water it had almost seemed unreal - waterfowl cared not for the affairs of men, did not care for their petty wars and burned villages or even monsters of stoneskin. To them, in this peaceful, winding forest, life went on as normal.

Not for much longer.

He saw Rudin lick his lips, then hoist his long spear into an overhand grip as he slowly rose up from behind the dead tree they ducked to for cover.

In a flash, the hunter’s spear ripped violently through the reeds, followed by a loud honking screech as the steel tip found its mark. A white blur rose up from the river as the second swan took a panicked flight, but Rudin had already descended from their hiding place and pulled the first swan’s slick, feathery carcass onto land.

“There - now you’re in the business of poaching as well.” Rudin huffed as he ripped the spear from the bird's breast and stuffed the carcass into a cloth bag Yesugei hadn't even realized he was carrying. “If they catch us now, we’ll both be hanged. But at least tonight we’ll have some roasted swan with your moldy bread and cheese.”

The woodcutter’s hut past the river was empty - abandoned long ago if the moss growing on the walls was any indication. However, its occupant had absent-mindedly left the tool of his trade under his bed, and so they continued on with Rudin carrying his spear, and Yesugei a rust-covered double-bitted axe - its blade still good enough to carve apart flesh and split through a helm, or at least leave a nasty infection barring all else.

Soon they began to pass by more small signs of civilization - a wooden trail marker here, a runic standing stone there, but no sign of any townsfolk or patrols. Perhaps an hour shy of the sun’s setting, they finally emerged from the woods to see the town itself: a mess of wooden houses surrounded by a wooden palisade atop raised, packed earth. The boyar’s stone towerhouse stood proudly at the farthest western point of the town - right on the riverbank overseeing the pier, where the river Cherech glimmered with the last bits of daylight. Yet as Yesugei heard the others slowly make their way to join with himself and Rudin, he noticed something odd about the town…

“I don’t see anyone..”

From where he stood atop a small rise at the edge of the woods, Yesugei could spy no movements of townsfolk along the streets, nor guards atop the walls. The houses’ chimneys sat cold, and worst of all - no boats lay at the pier.

“Maybe everyone’s hiding?” wondered Gastya as he readjusted his hold on the stretcher carrying the injured boyar.

“No signs of battle, and the gates are still closed.” Yesugei fell into a tired squat as he squinted at the town from afar. “I don’t like this.”

Vasilisa readjusted her grip on her horse’s reins as she slowly rode up alongside Yesugei and Rudin. With the injured Vratislav still asleep, she was the closest thing to a leader the other peasants recognized - even though her discomfort was apparent on her face every time they toadied to her as the Grand Princess. Yesugei saw her eyes carefully flitting across the quiet town as she surveyed it, and he saw the same apprehension on her face.

“I don’t like it either,” she eventually said. “But it’s getting late, and we’ll freeze out in the woods. We should still take a look. A careful look.”

As she pressed her knees to the stallion, Vasilisa readjusted the strap of the wrapped Apostle’s cleaver on her shoulder. The peasants had offered to carry her mysterious ‘heirloom’ several times over during their short journey, but she had always refused - for fear of frightening them if they saw the twisted flesh and bone of the weapon most like, but Yesugei had also sensed a certain possessiveness over the blade. Too heavy to wield, too terrifying to even draw…but it’s all that remains now, isn’t it?

The prospect of a roof over their heads and a fire to keep warm at night proved strong enough to break the peasants’ apprehension about Balai, and their band of eleven quickly made their way from the woods towards the town with Vasilisa at the head. When they got close, Valishin called out with a cry of kara-ooooooooo to hail anyone within the walls - but received no reply save for the waving of the town’s flag mounted on the gatehouse. Soon they were right in front of the heavy wooden gates, but no-one as much as a sentry peeked their head from any of the battlements.

As Valishin called out with another loud cry Doru gave a frustrated huff and stepped to the gates, pickaxe in hand as he called, “Hey! Someone, open the damned gates! We have women and injured here!”

When no-one stirred from within the walls, the mason’s apprentice raised his pickaxe and slammed it against the iron-reinforced gates. When he did so, a bright flash suddenly exploded from the gates, and all Yesugei heard was a short yelp from the apprentice, followed by a terrible heat that washed over the entire company like a wave of fire. When he opened his eyes he saw Doru lying on the ground frightened, but alive. The apprentice’s pickaxe lay in front of the gates, the wooden shaft blackened and cracked by heat - where the pickaxe head smacked the reinforced doors the metal melted, turning the sharpened head into a misshapen lump of cooling iron. Khavel quickly rushed to pick up Doru, but the rest of their group was far more concerned with the symbol that had appeared on the wooden doors.

It was one Yesugei knew well - a fiery triangle atop a cross. The same symbol carved into Kaveh. Apostle magic.

They were here…or at least one of their kind was.

Yesugei looked to Vasilisa and saw she recognized the sorcery at work here as well, and with an authoritative shout she called, “Everyone stand back! We’ve seen this sorcery before - it is blood magic that will sear you alive!”

“D-do you think the boyar put it up?” asked Valka.

“No, or he did, then boyar Crahask is no friend of ours,” replied Vasilisa as she dismounted from the horse. “This is blood magic - we…we encountered something similar on the eastern road. It killed a good man.”

“How in hell are we supposed to get inside, then?” asked Marmun. “The walls are too high to climb, and we don’t have any ropes.”

But as Marmun talked, Yesugei heard something else carrying through the air - a strange, subtle sound from the gates that grew louder as he became acutely aware of its presence. He turned his head to the noise, and saw it came from the burning symbol, already beginning to fade after erupting forth its magic. The tune sounded beautiful to his ears, a high-pitched, cacophonous tune that sounded like no other noise he had ever heard before - one part howling wind, and another part a thousand plucking noises like the strings of a harp. It sounded so wrong, yet at the same time so beautiful in its complexity and myriad overlapping melodies that he hadn’t even realized he had begun walking towards the sigil until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” came the question from Gastya, but Yesugei shrugged off the farmer’s hand and continued his shuffling towards the fading sigil.

“Vasilisa…” he breathed as he drew closer to the gates, stretching out one hand until his fingers were nearly touching the surface of the iron band that Doru had struck. “Vasilisa…you can hear it too, can’t you?”

“Yesugei…” came her voice from behind him, quiet in awe of the majesty of the song that swelled in both their ears. “It’s-”

“-beautiful, isn’t it?” Yesugei’s mind felt like it was melting inside his skull, overcome by a swirl of strange and powerful emotions that he did not quite understand - could not understand - as if he was listening to someone else’s thoughts in a language both alien and intimately familiar.

His fingers nearly touched the burning-hot iron when another cry cut through the noise of the mystical song. “You madman! Get away!” The farmer Gastya and several other peasant men suddenly grabbed him from behind, struggling to wrench him away from the gates, but it was too late.

Yesugei’s fingers brushed against the doors, and then he was no longer in the Klyazmite plains. His world was a strange forest of flickering shadows, within them he saw faces faded from memories that were his and not his at once.

A bright, pale light cut through the shifting darkness, and he saw a tall, naked figure stride past him - through him, as a specter. From the writhing shadows he saw the towering gates of the town, gray and drab compared to the burning light of the spirit which ate away at the darkness. He saw the figure press its lips to the doors - whispering into the earth and the walls a terrible, beautiful, frightful, sorrowful song. Its voice was high and impossibly light, and Yesugei felt himself holding back powerful tears until the song ended, and then there was only silence - silence that felt choking and crushing now that he had heard the sorrowful song that spoke of forgotten memories, forgotten souls, forgotten lands.

A beautiful song…a terrible song…a song for fire, for the earth, and for the heavens…do they hear our prayers? Do they hear our cries?

“Yesugei!”

His eyes fluttered open as the voice jolted him back into the world of the living, the world of the suffering and downtrodden. Yesugei realized he was lying splayed out on his back in the dirt, and looking down at him was Vasilisa - her large, hazel eyes etched with worry. He blinked several more times as he felt the last vestiges of the dream fade away, then staggered carefully to his feet. As he stood an awful ache exploded from his back and behind, and he cracked his neck to loosen the tight cords of muscle.

They were no longer standing outside the gates, but within the walls of the town. Silence reigned over the small settlement - whose streets were orderly and clean, but completely bereft of life. Behind him, he heard several of the men working to seal the gates shut behind them, and once they were closed the poacher Rudin and Khavel lifted a heavy wooden bar over the doors.

Then the boyar Vratislav was in his face, awake and strong enough to stand on his own two feet.

“How did you open the gates?” The boyar demanded, his look serious. “Are you a blood-sorcerer, or just a lucky fool?”

“I just touched the gates, didn’t I?” The memory of even reaching out towards the doors seemed as though it had been ages past, but when he looked up at the sky the sun was still just barely over the horizon. It could not have been more than two hours.

“You did, and then you collapsed in the dirt as if you had died.” Vratislav spat, then muttered a quick prayer under his breath. “You had Lady Vasilisa worried sick and-”

“Boyar Rudin,” interrupted Vasilisa with a gentle smile. “I think we should just thank the gods that whatever fickleness was behind that spell ended up sparing him. For now, we have bigger worries to deal with.”

“Yes…yes we do.” The boyar muttered to himself in deep thought before calling out to the resting peasant men. “Gastya, Marmun, start searching the houses. See if you can find anyone - dead or alive. Doru, Khavel, get to the pier, and check if there are any smaller boats we can use. Rudin, you’re with us - I want to take a look at the towerhouse. Perhaps Crahask or one of his left a message to tell us what happened here.”

As the peasants reluctantly began to peel off in separate directions under Vratislav’s command Vasilisa tilted her head down and whispered in a quiet voice, “That song…what was it, exactly?”

“I…I don’t know. A prayer? A dirge? Maybe even a cry for help, to anyone who would listen…” His mind strayed back to the memory of the song, and Yesugei felt his chest grow heavy with a strange, sentimental sadness. “I saw a being. It whispered things into the walls, the town.”

“It drove the townsfolk out?”

“Perhaps. But before those Modkhai bastards needed butchery for their magic - I don’t see any corpses here. It’s like they all just…disappeared.”

Vratislav called to them, already beginning to make his way up the slope towards the towerhouse alongside his wife and Rudin. Vasilisa acquiesced to his call. “We should go - an entire town doesn’t just disappear.”

The houses beneath the watch of the towerhouse cast long shadows onto their group as they crept up along the path towards the keep, with Rudin, Nesha, and Valka lingering behind the two of them. Yesugei saw Vasilisa’s unease grow with every house they passed by - the empty town seemed even more frightening than the burned ruins of Yerkh. Why would hundreds of people disappear and leave behind all their possessions? In times of war, families took nearly everything they could carry before fleeing in the face of an approaching pillaging army - here, in some homes, days-old food still lingered at orderly tables set for dinner, wagons packed with grain and cloth for the markets sat abandoned in the streets, and some hearths still clung onto fading embers from the last remnants of their firewood. What scared them so much?

The towerhouse’s fortified gates were left wide open, groaning slightly with the wind as if beckoning them inside. In the boyar’s courtyard, Valka set herself to filling a cloth bag with cabbages and carrots from the manor’s garden while Vratislav rested with Nesha in the great hall among the griffon banners and empty seats of the boyar’s table. Rudin, Vasilisa, and Yesugei ascended the remaining floors one-by-one, each as predictably abandoned as the one before. In the quarters of the boyar’s druzhina, the armory was almost entirely picked clean save for a nasal helm - given to Rudin - and a recurve hunting bow with barbed game arrows - which Yesugei helped himself to eagerly. Vasilisa clutched onto the cleaver, but gratefully accepted a long dagger they found stuck behind one of the empty spear racks.

“At least you’ll have something to protect yourself,” remarked Yesugei. “Don’t all proper ladies carry small knives?”

“Have you met many proper ladies in your life, Yesugei?” bounced back Vasilisa as they ascended up the stairs to the roof. “I’d love to hear about what other princesses you’ve entertained.”

“You’d be surprised - my father’s court entertained proper ladies from all across the world, east and west.” The memories of a delegation from Tanh Ninh came to mind - an envoy of the nation’s emperor who had presented the khans each with five chests of silver, and his father with ten chests of gold and his choice of the emperor’s twelve daughters for a wife. He remembered how he and Kaveh had tried teaching some of the girls Khormchak and riding, before they were tossed from the royal tent.

The memory used to fill him with a small sense of warmth - a reminder of when they were still both stupid boys, and the world had seemed so much larger, so much more. Now the world had grown small - and smiley Kaveh was dead. Every memory would be tainted with that knowledge, poisoned by the Apostles. He ascended the rest of the steps in silence, his consternation apparent on his face to Vasilisa who didn’t press further.

The wind pricked a thousand small cold needles to his face as Rudin opened the hatch to the roof, blinding them all with the orange-red light of the falling sun. Below the battlements, he saw the entire forest and countryside awash in the orange-red glow of the sun’s light as though it were on fire - and then he saw that in some distant places, there was indeed fire, with thin plumes of smoke rising up from the woods and distant scattered holds.

“Demons tear me…” muttered Rudin, the maille aventail of his helm jingling as he readjusted it on his head to make out the view. “Looks like half the country is on fire. The Lord of Lightning ought to be pleased that war's finally come upon his people’s lands again.”

“You forget Perun is as much the lord of justice and he is of war,” pointed out Vasilisa as she rested against the crenels of the tower’s battlements. Her dark braid flowed with the howling wind as she cast her gaze upon the pillaged countryside. “There’s nothing just about this war.”

“Nothing just about any wars.” Rudin leaned his weight on the shaft of his spear as he talked. “What happened to Yerkh happened a thousand-thousand times over - even the noblest of boyars like lord Vratislav pillage and burn whenever they take to the field. ‘s just how war is. Lords and druzhinniks get to play at their glories, while everyone else suffers.”

The sun’s light glinted off of something hung around the flagpole of the towerhouse - a large wooden sentry’s horn banded with silver. Yesugei snatched the horn from the battlements as he thought aloud.

“You speak too bluntly to nobility to just have been a peasant,” he remarked as he examined the silver runic bands of the horn. “And you wield your spear like you’ve used it to kill more than wild pigs and swans. Who are you, Rudin?”

“No-one important.” His face was concealed behind a curtain of maille, but Yesugei could sense the sad smile on the poacher’s face as he spoke. “Might have been I was once the one dealing out the suffering at the beck and call of some lord or other…but I left those ghosts of mine behind me, at Ongainur Field.”

“You were there?”

“Aye, I was. We chased you Khormchak bastards for what, five days? 'twas twenty years ago, but sometimes when I close my eyes I remember things like they happened yesterday. I remember how I sweat like a pig beneath my armor - how fucking hot it was when we finally caught up to your warband. And the dust…dust everywhere, in your eyes, in your mouth, in your water, in the crack of your ass whenever you get off your horse.

“The dust gets more people killed than anything else - it blinds you, it terrifies you. It makes confused men scatter and bump, screaming and hollering to find each other while their boyars are trying to form up lines. And then someone gets hit by an arrow, and then someone else takes the first man’s place, and some other brave idiots run out from the shieldwall trying to avenge their brother, only they get killed too. And the arrows just keep falling and falling and falling…and every volley you don’t know whether it’s going to keep coming or whether the Khormchaks decide to charge. You look around for your boyar, your banners, but all you can see is the man standing next to you - and then he lowers his shield to get a peek at the field, and gets an arrow in the throat for his trouble. You almost want the Khormchaks to charge, to see the bastards up close…”

From behind the maille curtain, Rudin’s wide eyes almost seemed to glow with the memory of the battle where the Khormchaks shattered the Klyazmite princes on the field. Then the light faded, and turned to bitterness as he readjusted his helmet again. “I never got to kill any nomads in the end - we ran back into the woods once we heard the Khormchaks had Prince Izyaslav, Vadim, and Badan’s heads on spikes, and that Prince Yaropolk’s son Igor had run off with whatever remained of his men. Thirteen princes, fifty-thousand men…and the only ones who survived were the ones with the damn sense to run. And then there was the nomads’ peace, and no-one needed craven fighting men without a lord. A career as a bandit would be short and ugly, and my old armor fetched a good price - enough to buy me a small plot and a home on the frontier. Now even that’s gone…and I’m too old to start all over again.”

When Rudin finished speaking, it was like all the energy had evaporated from the poacher’s body. He shakily sat down on the stone floor of the roof, and for the first time his age seemed so apparent - as though the bottled-up memories were holding back the tide of time.

Vasilisa was at a loss for words, as was Yesugei. He suddenly felt very uncomfortable standing on the roof, as though he were in Rudin’s world as an intruder. Vasilisa’s own discomfort at the mention of her father’s retreat was etched plainly on her face, and the two of them exchanged a glance as Vasilisa hurriedly excused herself.

“Leave the horn with me,” said Rudin as Yesugei made to descend the towerhouse. “I think I’ll stay here - keep watch at least for a while.”

Yesugei obliged and followed quickly after Vasilisa - leaving the old poacher to watch the sun fall beneath the horizon of his scorched homeland.