The Infinite Bard - Unplanned Retrieval

I get to share anther story for The Infinite Bard this week. So I figured why not a fantasy adventure?

Enjoy!

A scream, shrill and quickly cut off, jerked Halar out of his sleep.  He sat up and swung his feet over the edge of his bed, his hand coming to rest reflexively on the haft of the mighty battle axe he always left leaning against the wall of his room.

The sound of breaking glass, a heavy thump, and then another shout - a man’s voice this time, angry and questioning, and then quickly reduced to a dwindling gurgle.

Felda, next to him on the bed, pulled the bear hide that they used as a blanket in the autumn up over her shoulders.  “What is it, husband?” she said, but the tremble in her voice said she knew the answer before she voiced the question.

“Raiders from Hoffstar,” Halar growled, and stood.  The blanket fell off his body and he stood in his smallclothes.  He immediately got goose bumps from the chill in the air.

The fire had long since gone out in the little stone hearth he had built into the corner of their room.  The embers gave off a dim reddish light.  With their single window battened against the cold of the night, it was barely enough to do more than reveal the shape of things: the lump of the cabinet where they kept their clothes, the box for his armor.  The smaller lump of the cradle where little Gisele somehow still slept.  

But he didn’t need to see to navigate the familiar confines of his home.  Stepping over to his armor box, he kicked the top open with his bare foot.

Two more screams pierced the night, and he cast the thought of armor aside.  No time.

“Bar the door behind me,” Halar said.  Then he hefted his axe and, still clad only in his smallclothes and barefoot, threw open the door of their little home.

Halar charged out into the night, a battle cry on his lips.

He immediately pulled up short, as a hulking…something…came out of the gloom directly in front of his door and sprang at him.

The gleam of distant firelight against metal.  The guttural sound of outgoing breath, and with it the bitter-sweet stench of decay.  The whistle of something speeding through the air.

Those were all the warning Halar got, but it was enough.  He dove to the side, rolling over his shoulder and springing back up onto his feet in a single motion, then turned and, sounding his battle cry again, clove downward with his battleaxe, putting his full weight behind the blow.

The blade sank into soft flesh for a heartbeat before striking something hard and stopping short.  The shock of it sent tremors up Halar’s arms, and he almost lost his grip on the weapon form the sudden discomfort of it.

But he had struck bone before; he knew the feel, and knew how to deal with it.  Stepping forward, he placed his boot onto the side of the now unmoving attacker and thrust his weight back the other way.

After a couple seconds, the axe came free, and Halar, squinting, peered at his foe more closely.

There was little light, for this night was a new moon.  But several fires had cropped up all around the village, and that allowed him to see some details.  Enough to realize his attacker was no man.

Its legs bent the wrong way, and no human had ever possessed arms that thickly out of proportion with the rest of his body.  And the head…  Halar could not be certain, but it looked as though a trio of horns were growing from the thing’s forehead.  And were those tusks protruding from its lips?

More screaming, from over by the longhouse, pulled his attention away.  There were dark shapes rushing past one of the fires over in that direction.  More beasts like this one he had killed.

The attack was not over.

“What is it?” Felda said, from inside the doorway.

“Bar the door!” He snapped, then he set off running toward the longhouse.

The longhouse lay more or less in the center of the village, with the various houses and other buildings laid out in a rough circle around it.  The entire village was surrounded by a wooden palisade wall that Halar and the other men had spent two weeks constructing after the first rate from Hoffstar six months ago.

There were supposed to be men on watch throughout the night, specifically to prevent the village from being taken by surprise.  So where were they and how did these whatever they were get in?

That was a concern for later.  For now the raiders, whatever they were, were continuing the attack.  Silhouetted by the fire, Halar could see that they ran in a strange hunched-over lope, using their arms as much as their legs to propel themselves across the ground.  Several of the raiders had satchels slung across their backs.

And the satchels were moving.

A chill went down Halar’s spine and he sped up to a full sprint towards them. From all around the village doors crashed open and men shouted in chagrin as they poured out their houses.

A pained bellow came from off to the left, followed by the sound of steel striking steel.  A new fire started in that same direction drawing Halar’s gaze away from the raiders ahead.  A trio of men were fighting twice their number of raiders, and they were hard-pressed about it.  But other men were approaching from the opposite side, so Halar turned his attention back to his targets ahead.

There were four of them, and he was getting close.  The rearmost of the raiders was without burden.  The other three each carried a moving sack.

Halar raised his axe, drawing deep breath as he bolted across the last few feet between himself and the rearmost raider.

It turned its head.  Their eyes met, and the raider said something.

It was language, it had to be. But it was nothing Halar had ever heard before: guttural, interspersed with barks, generally ugly.  But the other three seem to understand it, as they shifted the burdens on their backs and redoubled their speed ahead.

The rearmost raider turned to face Halar, drawing a curved blade of some sort from its waist and blocking his chop with comical ease.

Halar stumbled to the side as his attack was thrown off course.  He almost fell, but a quick shuffle step helped him keep his footing, and he spun back to the raider.

And just in time.  It had pressed forward, closing and slashing at Halar again while he was extricating himself.  He barely hide time to bring his axe up.

The raider’s weapon struck Halar’s axe just below where the head joined with the haft.  The force of the blow sent another tremor up Halar’s arms and forced them upward even as his body tumbled backwards.  And then the axe lefts his hand completely, tumbling off into night’s darkness as his backside struck the ground.

The raider looked at him through narrowed eyes for a half-second that seemed to stretch out into an eternity.  Then it lowered its weapon and tapped the pommel against something on its left wrist.

Sudden blue-white light, blinding in its intensity compared with the night’s gloom, overwhelmed Halar’s senses for a heartbeat.  He recoiled, raising his left hand to shade his eyes from the glare, but could not make anything out for few seconds, while he blinked the spots away from his eyes.

He was amazed to have that much time; he expected the raider to finish him off while he was dazed.  But instead, his attacker backed away.

Behind it, a six-foot wide ring of blue-white fire hung a foot or so in the air.  Where Halar should have seen the entrance to the longhouse through the center of the ring, instead there was…somewhere else.  It was difficult to make out details through the glare of the ring itself, but he saw strange vegetation and at least one towering column of rock - nothing like the terrain surrounding the village.

The sack-carrying raiders leapt through the ring in quick succession, and the one who had knocked Halar down reached the ring.  It had kept its gaze locked on Halar the whole time.  Now it raised its weapon to point at him and said something else in its incomprehensible language.  Then it, too, leapt through the ring, and it winked out of existence.

Halar was left sitting there, stupefied, with a purple-white after image of the ring emblazoned on his vision and a growing fire of anger kindling in his heart.

The sounds of fighting from behind roused Halar from his stupor, and he pushed himself to his feet.  Glancing behind, he saw that the six raiders were down to four.

Too many.

After a hurried search, he found his battleaxe.  Snatching it up, Halar turned and hurried toward the melee.

A third raider dropped, then a fourth, but five of Halar’s fellow villagers had fallen as well, and there were only three fighting the remaining two beasts.

The fire near the melee had spread, completely engulfing a nearby house and sending a pillar of dark smoke skyward to obliterate the stars.  The other fires in the village were growing as well, but glancing around, Halar saw numerous shapes, men and women both, hurrying back and forth from the village’s well, buckets in hand.

Hopefully their efforts would be enough, but he couldn’t worry about that now.  Another of the men fighting the beasts fell, and the raiders were redoubling their efforts.

Halar gripped his axe in both hands and raised it high over his head.  Bellowing out another battle cry at the top of his lungs, he charged forward.

The raider nearest him must have heard Halar’s cry.  It turned its head toward him, and its eyes widened in the firelight.

A second later, the beast collapsed face-first into the dirt.  That small distraction was all the opening its opponent needed to take its throat with a cut of his broadsword.

Halar slowed, looking from the fallen raider to the man it had been fighting, and recognized Yorst, his friend since childhood.  Blond where Halar was dark and nearly as hairy as a bear, with a beard that could soak up an entire tankard of ale, Yorst was half-a-head taller than Halar and stronger besides.  Only Halar’s greater speed gave him a chance in a duel against Yorst, but he still lost more often than he won.

Yorst grinned at him, then turned to the final raider.  Halar followed his lead.

The beast knew it was in trouble.  Where it had been advancing on its opponent, a whip-thin fellow barely off his mother’s teats named Carlan, it now retreated before the three men working together.

Yorst forged straight ahead, continuous cuts from his broadsword forcing the beast to retreat all the faster, and Carlan and Halar came at it form the left and right.  The final outcome was never in doubt, though the beast did manage one counter that forced Carlan to hop backwards to avoid being eviscerated.

But that counter was its undoing.

Halar’s axe caught the raider’s left shoulder, and it crumpled to the ground.  The beast rolled onto its back, dark fluid pouring from its wound and its weapon lying uselessly on the ground at its feet.  It’s eyes widened as Yorst stepped forward, an almost human expression of fear appearing on its animalistic features.

Yorst raised his sword above his head in a two-handed grip, and the beast’s right hand flashed toward its left wrist.

Too late.  Yorst’s blow clove straight through the moving arm at the wrist, and then continued into the beast’s chest.  It spasmed once, then the breath left its body in a choking gurgle, and it slumped, limply, into death.

---

The fires were quickly put out, and torches lit throughout the village.  There were no more raiders present, and the people began to assess their losses.

Ten men dead and another seven wounded.  Five women injured, two by the raiders, the others in fighting the fires.

But the worst came when Yorst and Halar bent over to inspect one of the raiders.  The beast’s bulk was difficult to move, but they together managed to roll it over and tear open the satchel it had slung on its back.

“My God,” Yorst said, recoiling reflexively when he saw what—no, who—was within.  “Children.”  He looked up and met Halar’s eyes, and Halar saw a cold fury that even eclipsed his own burning there.  “They were taking the children!”

That set off a panicked flurry of head counts, and inspecting hiding places.  

Of the half-dozen raiders that had been killed, four had satchels with children inside, and there was only one survivor.  Two little girls had been smothered when the beasts fell and crushed them beneath their bulk.  The third, a boy…  

He had been cloven nearly in half by one of the blows that killed the beast that had been carrying him.

In trying to rescue him, the men of the village had slain him without even knowing it.

It was enough to make the bile rise in Halar’s throat, but that was not the worst.

“Three are missing,” one of the women said, after they had verified the tally.

Halar knew exactly where they had gone.  “We must get them back,” he said.

“But how?”  Yorst’s voice carried entire levels of fury mixed with frustration.  His own children were safe and hale, but the boy who had been cut apart was his sister’s.  There was murder in his eyes.

Halar walked over to the last of the felled beasts, and squatted down next to its corpse.

The thing was covered in coarse, dark fur from head to toe, but it wore leather breaches, a leather harness across its chest, and bracers on its forearms.  The bracer on its left forearm was inlaid with a bluish crystal of some sort.

Halar hesitated for a second, then reached out and pressed his fingers against the crystal.

It moved slightly inward, and then blue-white light illuminated the entire scene as another of those rings spun into existence from nothing.

“Four of them retreated through another of these,” he said, rising to his feet, and a trio of voices from the gathered crowd backed up his words.  Halar looked over at Yorst and raised an eyebrow.

Yorst’s smile promised bloody vengeance.  “Gather your gear.”

---

The terrain was like nothing Halar had ever seen.  Tall, narrow columns of rocks, weathered as though by untold years of wind and rain, made the otherwise flat earth into more a maze than a plain.  The vegetation was prickly, with long spines growing out of bulbous, grey-brown bodies and strange yellowish flowers at the plants’ peak.  The earth was pale, as though devoid of life.  The sky was overcast, with grey-pink clouds that boiled and writhed, and gave the distinct impression that they wished to spill downward to completely engulf the land except for some force holding them back.  But despite the clouds, the air was dry, enough to crack a man’s lips if he did not continuously wet them, and carried a faint odor of honey mixed with sulphur.  A diffuse orange-ish light illuminated everything, though there was no sign of the sun or any other light source.  Even more odd, it cast no shadows anywhere, as if the light itself were being projected from every point at all times.

Strangely, the place was almost pleasantly cool.  Far warmer than the village had been.  Within minutes Halar had come to regret the furred cloak he had donned and before coming through.

He didn’t regret the boots, though.

Warmer or not, this was not the sort of place Halar would ever have wanted to visit.  Indeed, the very land itself seemed to scream at him that this was no place for the likes of men, and they should flee and never return.  

When they first arrived, he had to restrain the strong urge to just step back through the portal into his village, and rescue be damned.  That had taken a monumental act of will; more than he would have thought possible, and some were not able to overcome it.  The rescue party, a dozen strong, was reduced to nine in those first minutes; the other three simply could not withstand the land.

Yorst sent them back to join the rest of the village’s men, who had orders to hold the portal from the other side, and not let it close until they returned or unless a force too strong to defend against tried to break through.  That had seemed a sensible precaution, because who knew if the crystal would work on this side, or if it did, where the portal would open to if they tried to use it.  Better to keep it open than risk being stranded.

No one thought less of the men who turned back, but all resolutely did not watch when they went through.  The temptation to follow was simply too great.

Now, after what seemed hours tromping through this alien domain, Halar felt the urge to retreat all the stronger.

There had been no sign of the other group of raiders, only the unending sameness of the terrain, without any variation or usable landmark to mark the passage of time or distance save the etchings their party periodically left in the columns of stone.  It was enough to make one lose hope.

You couldn’t tell it from looking at Yorst, though.  He walked at Halar’s left side near the head of their little column, steely determination etched unmoving onto his face.  

“What is this place, do you think?” Halar asked, and received a shrug in reply.

“Not our world, surely.  Who ever heard of a place like this?”  Yorst gestured at the column they were striding past.  It almost looked like lump of melted wax, if one didn’t look at it closely.  His expressed hardened; Halar would not have thought that possible a moment before.  “It can only be a domain of evil, to have spawned beasts such as these.”

That matched well with what Halar had been thinking, and it was no comfort.  “I wonder what - “

A quick hissing sound and a raised, clenched fist from the Carlan, who had the lead about ten paces ahead, brought him up short  and made him bite back his words.

The group froze, waiting, watching, listening.

Carlan flicked the fingers of his hand skyward twice, and the men darted for cover.  Halar pressed his back against the wax-like column of rock and adjusted his grip on the haft of his axe, peering forward carefully.  

All around him, his companions did the same.  Three had brought bows; they nocked arrows and drew their strings halfway back.  The rest froze into watchful readiness.

A few seconds later, the source of Carlan’s alert became clear.  A series of barks and ugly syllables carried faintly to Halar’s ears.

He recognized it immediately: the speech of the raiders.

Halar smiled grimly.  Finally, their quarry was within their grasp.

A second voice, a bit higher in pitch than the first, spoke, and then a second later, the pair stepped into view.  About twenty paces away, walking from right to left across Halar’s field of vision.  They were just as bulky as the raiders had been, but their attire was different.  Rather than utilitarian leather, they wore flowing red cloaks that draped over their shoulder and dragged the ground behind them as they moved in their strange, hunched walk.  One carried a black and gold staff, thicker than a walking stick but clearly not meant as a weapon; it was too ornate.  The other was without burden.

The staff-bearer was the one doing the talking, and it was clear from the other’s demeanor that staff-bearer was the higher rank of the two.

The pair seemed to not notice the rescue party, but then they did not exactly make an effort of it.  Their eyes did not deviate from their path ahead.  They just continued forward, oblivious to the men’s presence.

Halar looked over at Yorst and got another shrug in reply.  

It appeared some people were fools, even here.  All the better for Halar and his companions.

They followed the pair of beasts at a discrete distance, being careful not to remain in their sight any more than absolutely necessary in case they decided to remember their caution.

That never happened.

After a seeming eternity, the two beasts turned right around a particularly broad column, and Halar’s party hurried to follow.  But when he rounded the bend, Halar found himself staring in surprised shock.

It was like the land had completely changed between one step and the next.  The interspersed columns continued to run into infinity to the right and left, but ahead, there were none.  In their place was a broad clearing, as devoid of vegetation as it was rock columns, where were constructed a large pyramidal structure, maybe eighty feet tall and half again as many across, and three smaller, single-story out-buildings, one for each side of the pyramid, implying a fourth opposite from where Halar and his comrades currently stood.  All of the structures were constructed of dull yellow-brown stone, except for the very top of the pyramid, which gleamed a bright red reflection of the sourceless illumination that filled this land.

After a half-second’s surprise, the complete lack of cover struck him, and Halar ducked back behind the column he had just passed.  Slowly, carefully, he slid around until he could just see what was going on.

The two beasts continued on without a care in the world, apparently paying the out-buildings no mind as they headed straight toward the pyramid.  On this second look, Halar saw a dark opening, wide enough for at least four men to walk abreast through it, in the base of the structure facing them.

The pair’s passage was interrupted, though.  A door opened in the nearest out-building and another of the beasts, this one dressed as the raiders had been, hurried out to intercept them.  The trio met about fifty feet from Halar’s position, and from that distance he could not hear their words.  Not that he would be able to understand them anyway, but he didn’t need to.  From the agitated gestures of the staff-less beast, it was obvious whatever the raider had reported was not welcome news.  The two began obviously arguing for a minute before a single word from the staff carrier, and a brisk motion of his staff, brought an end to it.  The pair turned to face the staff carrier, who barked out a quick series of instructions.  The raider prostrated itself, or at least that was the closest human stance that Halar could equate to it, before the staff carrier.

The pair of red-robed beasts turned away and resumed their course toward the pyramid.  Only after they had departed did the raider rise and hurry back into the out-building.

Nothing happened for more than a minute, but Halar felt no temptation to break cover.  Whatever that exchange had been, it was important.  Best to remain and see what came of it.  Glancing to the left and right, those of his company that he could see also remained where they were, apparently having come to the same conclusion.

Then the door swung open again and the raider—Halar presumed it was the same one but who could say?—emerged again, this time pulling a long leather cord behind itself.  It give a heavy yank on the cord, and a line of other beings followed it out.

Beings was the only word Halar could put to them, because they were not these beasts, nor were they human.  They were like nothing he had ever seen before, nothing he ever could have imagined.  They had four legs and two forelimbs like arms, ending in hands that were bound against their bellies.  They each had a head, and from this distance it was difficult to make out any details to their faces, but the snouts were elongated and the ears floppy like a rabbit’s.  That cord was tied to a collar that each wore, and it continued past the first in line all the way down to the end.  There were a dozen in total, and a second raider brought up the rear.

The two raiders and their prisoners, whatever they were, turned and followed the path the red-cloaked duo had taken into the pyramid, stopping only for the rearmost raider to bark a command of some type or other into the out-building before shutting the door behind itself.

Halar looked away from the scene and met first Carlan’s then Yorst’s eyes.  They exchanged nods, and then passed hand signals to the rest of the part to pull back.

They met in a group several columns back from the clearing.

“If our prisoners are here,” Carlan said—and Halar noticed how carefully he referred to them as prisoners, not children—before anyone else could get a word in, “they’re in that out-building, or one of the others.”  There was a muted chorus of mutual agreement that Halar joined in.  Carlan nodded.  “I will go make sure.”

That evoked more discussion.  Yes, Carlan was the fastest and most nimble among them, but he was lacking in experience.  And, worse, one of the older men in the group had been trying to coax Carlan’s mother into realizing she was still a woman and he a man despite both of their spouses dying the last winter.  How could he then explain that he had let Carlan risk himself needlessly?

That objection was quickly and, for the circumstances, loudly put down, and the nay-sayers grudgingly assented to Carlan scouting the out-buildings.

Ten minutes later, they knew the lay of the land.

“Our people are in the nearest structure,” Carlan said.  “They’re held in a pen at the rear of the building from the entrance.  There are other…different,” Halar clearly heard the distasteful turn of his tone when he said that, “creatures in other pens as well.”

Halar looked down at the makeshift drawing of the structures and their layout that Carlan had drawn in the earth and frowned.  “There probably will not be very many guards in the prisoner pens,” he said.

Yorst nodded agreement.  “A small force to go in and get our people.  And we’ll need a reserve to cover our retreat after we’ve got them out.”  He looked up at Tomas, the eldest of the men who brought bows, and Tomas nodded concurrence.  He returned the nod, then looked over at Halar.  “We’ll also need a watch on the other buildings, to warn if anyone comes at us from the rear.”

Halar understood immediately.  As much as he wanted to be among the group that physically freed the children, this was a task as vital, if not more, than the actual incursion.  The watch would be essential to the survival of the infiltration force, and to the success of the entire mission.  And Yorst wanted someone he could depend on with his life.

Halar nodded.  “It is done.”

Their eyes met, and Yorst nodded.  And in that one gesture fell the entirety of twenty-five years of friendship, trust, and mutual respect.

---

Halar’s back struck the side of the pyramid, and he forced his breath into a long, calm repetition of in and out.  However much his heart pounded in his ears, he worked to keep his breaths slow and steady.  His teachers had told him that was the way to keep himself under control and force his body into obedience to his mind, and long years of difficult labor and occasional jeopardy had taught him the truth of that.

Today, though, was different.  Though he forced his breathing into a slow rhythm, his heartbeat and anxiety refused to cooperate and get in line.  It was like he was facing a peril he had never encountered, or even conceived of before.

Imagine that.

Halar looked to his left, where Carlan crouched at the farthest edge of the pyramid, watching the out-building on that side, then to his right, where Goren, small, stocky, and quick beyond what one would expect from his build, kept watch on the other side.  Both men gave positive signs when their eyes met his, and Halar forced himself to at least a modicum of greater calm.  Then he peeked around the corner into the opening leading into the pyramid.

No movement.

All was well.

He looked out at the out-building and saw Yorst and the other two men of his team approaching the door.  

There had been no movement at all in the ten minutes between when the party got back to the edge of the clearing and when they commenced the raid.  But still, Halar could not help thinking something was terribly wrong, and they were all about to be snared in a horrid trap.

Yorst and company reached the door.

It wasn’t Halar’s job to watch them, it was his job to keep an eye out for potential threats.  He turned his eyes back into the entrance to the pyramid.

Things had changed.

Where just a moment before, the interior was still and empty, now there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the beasts ensconced in their equivalent of chairs inside the pyramid.  They all were sitting to Halar’s left and facing to his right, toward Carlan’s side of the pyramid.  Just at the edge of his vision in that direction, as he squinted into the dim light within, Halar could see a great slab of rock atop a dais.

If he didn’t know better, he would say it was an altar.

As he watched, the two beasts in red robes that his party had followed to the pyramid walked into view from an opening on the far side.  They still wore their robes, but their sleeves were rolled up to their shoulders, and the staff carrier had left his staff somewhere.  In its place, he carried a long, curved blade and seemed to glow with a red flame in the ubiquitous light.

From somewhere out of sight, a gong sounded, and four more of the beasts, clad like the raiders in breeches and harnesses except that theirs were dyed bright red like the cloaks the other two wore, stepped into view.  Between the four of them, they were carrying one of the four-legged prisoners Halar had seen before: two at the shoulder and two at the hips, each controlling two of its legs.  

The prisoner was held horizontally, and bucked and struggled as they carried it out, but to no avail.  Between the beasts’ great strength, superior numbers, and its bonds, the prisoner had no hope of escape.  Within seconds, the serving beasts had it strapped down on the slab of rock, and then they backed away.

The cloaked pair stepped forward, the junior one stopping to pick up a brazier that lay near the entrance they came through.  The brazier was attached to a metal handle by a short chain that left it swinging in front of the junior redcloak as it followed its master.  But the coals contained within it glowed red hot, and if gave off a great cloud of smoke as they maneuvered from the entrance to the altar.

The pair stopped and, moving as one, turned to face something that Halar could not see off to his right.  They bowed, very nearly the prostration that the raider had shown to the staff carrier earlier, then turned and faced the audience.  The staff carrier said something in that barking, guttural language, and the crowd prostrated itself, murmuring something unintelligible in return.

Halar took a moment to look back at Yorst’s team.  The lead man was at the door, checking the lock.  Findng the latch easy to turn, he looked back at Yorst, who nodded in affirmative.

A cry from within the pyramid pulled Halar’s gaze back inside, and he wished he had not done so.

The staff carrier stood behind the altar, looming over the four-legged prisoner, who was bawling in exquisite terror that transcended all language.  The red cloak had its arms raised high above its head, grasping its blade in both hands.  Its eyes were turned upward, and it shouting something in a powerful tone that penetrated the distance between itself and Halar easily.  Every syllable of the beast’s prayer struck Halar’s soul directly, and he could do nothing but watch as the red cloak brought its blade down.

The prisoner let out a long, drawn-out wail of absolute despair and agony.  The cry went on and on well past when it should have ended in the merciful oblivion of death.  On it continued as the red cloak cut through the prisoner’s flesh and bone, then sawed a great opening in its chest.

The red cloak released the knife with its left hand and reached in.  Then, with a savage twist of its arm, yanked the still-beating heart out of the prisoner’s chest.

And still the prisoner screamed in agony.

Only after the red cloak turned and placed the heart onto the brazier its underling held at the ready, and it burst into flames that sent oily, acrid smoke rocketing upward toward the apex of the pyramid, did the prisoner’s agonized shrieking stop, as it finally, mercifully sank down into its eternal slumber.

Bile filled Halar’s throat, and it was all he could do not to loose the last remnants of a long ago dinner onto the lifeless dirt of this place.  Desperately, he turned away, seeking something—anything—to look upon besides the grisly ritual being played out within the pyramid.

His eyes alighted on the out-building, where Yorst’s team was exiting.  All three were stained by dark fluid that could only be the blood of the raiding beasts, and one held his arm against his body in a manner that suggested he had taken a painful wound.  But all were alive, and they had the children with them.

More, they over a dozen creatures whose genealogy Halar could not even guess at, so strange were their features.  But as the first of Yorst’s team sprinted across the gap between the out-building and the forest of stone columns beyond, one and all followed without question.

Yorst was the last to emerge from the out-building.  He stood tall, proud, as he surveyed the domain of their victory.  His eyes alighted first on Carlan, then on Goren.  He gestured them to return, and they obeyed without hesitation.  When his eyes alighted on Halar’s, Yorst grinned the crooked, wily grin he had used to get the lasses in trouble back when the two of them were young, and he waved for Halar to rejoin the group.

Halar returned the grin with the best smile he could manage, then pushed himself off the wall of the pyramid.  He took two steps away, then paused to look back.

Through the dark doorway into that charnel pit of suffering, he saw the red-cloaked high priest, for what else could that beast have been?

And the high priest was looking through the doorway straight at him.

Their eyes locked, and Halar had the impression the high priest was taking his full measure, down to his very soul.  Then it snarled, at it was a sight that sent Halar sprinting away from the pyramid as fast as his legs could take him.

---

The celebration when they returned was boisterous.  Yes, men had been lost.  Sons and daughters as well.  But that always happened in war, and this night the village had recovered souls whom many had thought were forever lost.

So despite the early morning hour when Halar’s company and their charges returned, a keg of mead was cracked open, mugs were filled, and instruments were retrieved.  And before long, a festival such as was normally reserved for the first thaw or the harvest was in full swing in the village.

And never mind that there were strange faces—strange in every way, down to the most minute body part—among them.  After the team’s explanation of where they had come from, and particularly after Halar described their fate had they been left to the beast’s tender mercies, the village opened its arms to the strange beings in their midst.

Of course, that was a relationship that would take a long time to resolve, but for moment at least, all was well.

Or at least, it was supposed to be.

But as Halar watched the merriment, the joy of the faces of the three mothers whose sons and daughters were returned to them, and the gladness—unforced despite their pain—of the families who had lost this night for the rescue of those innocents, he could not shake the look in the high priest’s eyes from his mind.

The music moved his soul, but he found he could not remain in the circle around the bonfire.  Instead, he left Felda’s side and walked to the edge of the village, near the spot where the portal ring that they had travelled through on the rescue mission used to blaze in its white-blue brilliance.  There, he lifted his mead horn to his lips, drank, and thought.

It was some time before he felt a presence drawn near from behind himself.

He knew it was Yorst before his large friend came up next to him.  Somehow, he had always known when Yorst was near.

Halar’s friend didn’t say anything for a long moment.  He just joined Halar in drinking, and watching the area where the ring had formed.

Finally, Yorst lowered his horn and broke the silence.  “We did a great thing tonight, my friend.”

Halar nodded agreement, but could not find the words to respond.

Yorst looked sidelong at him, paused, then said.  “You did a great thing.”  He put special emphasis on the word you.

Halar shrugged and took another drink.  “Perhaps.”

Yorst’s gaze grew stern, and his lips turned downward into a scowl.

Halar turned his head to look his friend straight in the eye.  “This isn’t over, you know.”  He moved his free hand toward where the ring had been.  “They’ll be back.”

Yorst met his gaze and held it, and after a moment, both the disapproving scowl left his face and the light of merriment left his eyes.  And the two of them turned back to the location of the portal and drank from their horns in silence as the sun peaked up above the horizon to the east.

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I hope you liked this story. If you did, you may also like my Glimmer Vale Chronicles, which is an ongoing sword and sorcery adventure series that has a bit of a Seven Samurai/Western feel to it.

You can check out a short story here that gives a look into that world, before the first book. Then go by my web store at SSN Storytelling, or one of the other online book sales platforms, and check out the series.

But if you really want to be cool, I'm running a Kickstarter right now to help fund production of the third audiobook in the series. You can get the entire series at a discount there, and help support a truly worthy project!

Thanks in advance for your support!

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://www.michaelkingswood.com/2020/07/07/the-infinite-bard-unplanned-retrieval/

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