Chapter XII:
Ettinlord and Errandghost
The snowfall stalled with John’s arrival.
He called for a meal, preparing the sturgeon as Grimnar gathered firewood.
Only among them all did Kalendros not partake in the meal, speaking quietly to John, before bowing to them, saying, “I have an appointment. Enjoy the supper,” and departing into the woods. After him followed Canute, not heeding Kurt’s call to stay, never had that black horse heeded his old master since Todteld first claimed him in the Yucca laden sand.
Grimnar started the fire with a burning torch from his pack, then the party sat on logs circling the fire.
The sturgeon was gutted by John, then a wooden mead cup, filled by Grimnar from a barrel on the sledge was passed around the diners as the fish was roasted and ready to sup. They dined in silence; Kurt starved for conversation with John. He assumed John might know his every question, his every excited, emotion colored comment, but there in between bites of fish and sips of mead, the minutes like hours, the silence became excruciating for the old boy. Anxiety ridden, he blurted out: “How??”
John looking up from his cup,passed it over to Grimnar and said, “This mead isn’t half bad,but I’m dying for a glass of some Northern Whiskey.”
Kurt tightened his fist and yelled. “John! I saw you obliterated! Liquefied by the Groomslayer! How are you alive, flesh and bone, sitting here as if nothing happened?! As if I’m the ghost.” His voice trailed off. He had gotten too emotional, childish, annoying. He felt shame before his old mentor and quietly sipped the cup as they sat in silence again. John cast a bemused look at Kurt, scratching his freshly shaved chin.
His eyes twinkled with affection and calm. He had expected Kurt to be anxious, and was forgiving of the old boy’s lack of decorum.
Then he smirked, as if Kurt had no welling tear in his eye, to save him face, he broke his silence and began:
“Kurt, in this morning’s paper I read, ‘GUSA President Claymore Dead at 178 Years.’ Dead at 178? Now come on, nobody dies anymore, right? Youth carries men far beyond their 100th year; some are older than two hundred with the face of a teenager. You don’t look yourself a day over thirty, but no, you’re 107, I remember your birthday…but Claymore dead? A lie. He can’t die with his anatomy. Nobody with that amount of pulver in their blood can. Wherever be his true whereabouts, whether in the Wildermark mines, the frontlines of the Bloodfirth, or some place more banal, it reminded me that I did in fact, at seventy years old, truly die. As you reminded me, I was killed by the Groomslayer, Erich von Herrenhausen Sr., to be exact…but how? That word how was your first question. How then? How am I here? It’s the very same question I’ve asked myself for months now. Here’s what I do know, Kurt-this all happened only a year ago by my calendar: I crawled out from under that old Great Oak naked and covered in earth. Then a voice spoke to me. It was a heavenly tenor, even with the foreign accent. It was Kalendros. He led me to some river I’d never seen before in our valley, washed me, clothed me. He guided me over every mountain till we finally reached the sequoias. I set up a lodge not far from the mountain folk. Met a few friends in town. Finally met up with Grimnar. And then just yesterday...a white-haired man with a voice like a lion’s asked me if we would go fishing. That was King Rammbock.”
The Weever’s eye started to bleed. Kurt pulled it from his pocket,setting it beside the fire, its silvery hued sheen reflecting the flames.
“That,” John said pointing to the Eye,“that is one of Rammbock’s heirlooms. Man was meant to take them up, to be the heirs to the Weever, that ancient defense against ettinkind, against wastelings and unghosts of every sort.”
“Volltrolls too,” said Grimnar spitting a bone out into the fire. “Precisely: all those foes of the One that unites us. The Godhood.” Grimnar poured another cup and said, “God, yes, and the foes are devils by their older name.”
“Devils, Satans, Daemons, many forgotten terms. Evil spirits. Unghosts. Azza and his kin are of that nature. The ettins are more akin to us men though. We are flesh and bone as well as beings of spirit, unlike the unghosts and errandhosts,” said John.
“And Rammbock, where does he fit in?” asked Embla, her dark eyes watery and solemn in before the fire. John drank again from the cup and said, “Before man was man, Rammbock warred with ettinland, Rammbock King,tamer of the damned.”
“Does that answer my question?” said Embla raising an eyebrow.
“Perhaps not to your liking, but like many stories and songs lost to time, the little information we do know about Rammbock is not enough to build a perfect picture. We need the help of men like Grimnar, old as these woods, who learned of the lineage of Weever heirs traced back to Rammbock’s first war with the ancient ettins. Unfortunately, there are few still alive that preserved this history and so the gaps in knowledge widen," said John speaking as if he was still talking about reading the newspaper.
“But you said you met him…what did you learn?” asked Embla now relaying Kurt’s mental questions out loud.
“Learned? He learned me how to catch sturgeon," said John swigging the mead cup.
Kurt sighed. John was never so obtuse. A man of guarded speech, but he used each syllable with precision for whatever he felt needed to be uttered. John sensing Kurt’s exasperation continued: “Here’s the truth, and Grimnar here can attest to my words.
King Rammbock is among us now. He has been among us for a long time too. He doesn’t always make it obvious; a cool breeze on a warm day, snowfall in summer, a blue eyed stag looking out at you in the darkest of woods…many innocuous happenings could be a sign of his presence. Even now, as we were out on a little canoe, our fishing rods drawn, side by side in the flesh, I had this feeling of the strangest sort... that man Rammbock, despite being truly a man felt more like an errandghost; like Kalendros but wiser, more lucid. Like he knew all of my worries and let them sink into the lake as we drew our lines...”
Grimnar nodded. “Indeed, he is unquestionably mighty, for I know I have been sustained in long life for many millennia through his quickore and spirit. Let’s reserve the story of the origin of quickore for another time...He and I are from a forgotten epoch and so he wished that I would preserve the deeds of men, Yottins and unghosts from that terrible era, lest it be erased from memory altogether. His mother too, the lady in purple, is a woman beyond all compare and has aided me substantially throughout the years.”
“I don’t understand why he won’t snap his fingers and stop all of this,” said Kurt,“does he really need us to go through all these steps ourselves?”
John nodded, drinking in Kurt's concern. “If he snapped his fingers now I fear, some of us who still have time to become warriors against the unghost in the future would be doomed to sink in the Eldermark today…point is, he will come if you seek him out.
He will help us all and halt this horror for good. But he comes at his own pace. He sent me here first to tell you all what troubles have not yet come, and that we all must ready ourselves for trials we could never have imagined. Kalendros in the meantime should be meeting with the head of the Bear Town council, my friend Roland Harzmann.”
Kurt spoke in a small voice. “Troubles to come? Troubles like the vaighlings wiping out whole cities? Like the the Rural County Zones being razed and converted into militarized zones planted with apegift booths? We’ve seen it coming for years and did nothing about it...What worse could transpire?”
John sighed.
“It’s far grimmer, Kurt…even the ettins will be begging for mercy at what will come next. This is what Rammbock told me, what Kalendros should just now be telling Harzmann and the Bear Town citizenry: Aside from extraordinary circumstances, all those men in the past century who have taken an apegift will become united to the Eldermark. They will become the footsoldiers, the generals, the new kings and queens of the unghost empire. Whether that empire lasts a day or until the end of the world depends on the outcome of this war…it will be as in the days of legend, as during my primordial war with the ettinland, man today is in need of a tamer of the damned and he has him. The Weever is ready to finish the source of this plague on man’s souls, but if he is not made whole the war will be a long one.”
Grimnar weakly coughed and said, “Happier news you could have delivered us from your fishing trip, Ormsvard?”
“Ah, so the jolly green giant wanted to hear tales of Candy Cane Lane and the Big Rock Candy Mountain?”
“Please! Anything but this talk of Yottins and Devils! It's all ll I’ve dealt with for a century now,” said the big man, his green beard dripping with mead.
Kurt scratched his head. “So, everyone who has ever take an apegift will fall to the unghost? There's no reversing it? No chance other than to be a slave to Azza? That would even include Verity, and she's the heir to the Weever’s Tooth...We need her to return to sanity before we can bring the Weever back and end the war..."
John swallowed a bite of sturgeon and said,“Rammbock told me this: The Weever will certainly return. This is my will. Stand fast, follow the shadows and never despair, otherwise you will truly fall to the Unghost.”
“But is there no chance to get Verity back?” asked Embla, her voice cracking a bit.
John shook his head. “I know only what Rammbock told me…if there’s another way…I cannot say. Presently, and to our detriment, Verity is a general in Orbaulker’s army.”
A resounding blast broke the silence of that late day. It was a clarion call like a thousand mammoth trunks trumpeting.
Grimnar cried out over the blast: “Icewild! The horn of the errandghost heralding the Great Winter! It's time...”
“Time?” thought Kurt. But he wondered not long.
He saw the pained answer in the eyes of his comrades.
“Time for the end,” said Embla faintly.
+++++
Bear Town was in flames.
About its forest perimeter, a hundred thousand vaighlings encircled its trees in a formation like a crescent shadow.
The vaighling Morhel Kraka commanded his thousandfold brothers, all screeching in pain as Icewild sounded.
In Bear Town, panic and terror flurried among the ash and swift falling frost, the inhabitants, from infants to the elderly, meeting pulver artillery, arquebus and sword gnawing through those bravest and those fleeing.
Old, outdated guns returned fire, in vain, to those creatures that once resembled men: to the ettins; tall and handsome and eyes and skin aglow. Their naked hides a palette of blinding pinks, and whites and greens. The ettins marched, eating as they killed, spitting bone and blood upon the ground.
The fighting Bear Town braves, fifty and outnumbered 10:1, were dealt with like mice in an owl’s nest.
Within a few minutes, the ettins completed their apegifts.
A creature in red garments descended upon them. It was Kalendros, covered in black blood, his eyes full of sorrow.
The ettins smiled their great white saber teeth, protected by their corrupter, their lord, walking from the flames, proud, without care or concern. “Where was their protector?” said the ettinlord casting a finger to the tiniest corpses. “Where were you, ghost?”
Kalendros wiped a sweating brow, drawing forth his gleaming blue blade. Its fury rained upon the Ettins. The ettinlord nodded, holding out his tongue for the blue blade, the already cleaved tongue dancing between its precise chops. Gripping it, squeezing it, tossing it aside, he grabbed Kalendros by the scalp and wielded him about like a mill until the red robed Errandghost was cast as an Olympian tosses a javelin over the burning woods, plunging into the lake.
“Pink,” said the ettinlord, “Cast the weakest of his men into the Eldermark. Azza desires their loyalty in this war. They are gathered in the grove among that rotten tree of the ram.”
He pointed to a one-eyed obelisk in the middle of their encampment. “There is a door to the Eldermark within that aircraft...I trust they will arrive safely...once they meet the mark, we’ll transform them like the Herrenhausen ape countess...Here, this will make it easier.”
He placed an oblong shaped item into the pink ettin’s clutch and nodded.
“As you will it,” said Pink smiling from ear to ear.
“No…no, as you will it,” said ettinlord.
Thus was Bear Town turned into a cemetery and desecrated in the same hour.
+++++
Orbaulker called forth his vaighling kin from the depths of the Wildermark, a billion winged soldiers equipped with cannons and ettin-sabers: “Reclaim the land. Return it to the Unghost Creator. Make men weak in fear and capture them, living or dead.”
Arnulf, Margrave of the Bloodfirth looked upon the black mass of vaighlings from his bedroom window in the highest tower of his Chateau.
On one half of his view was the ancient forest of the high-ettins, a tall and gray-green wood.
On the opposite end was a ruddy wasteland, the bleeding sand of the Eldermark; its frontlines and the swarming vaighlings.
Orbaulker had arrived at the Chateau an hour before, in the throes of a raucous soiree held in the Margrave’s honor.
The Rural County Zone of Greater Vargia had been granted to him by President Claymore, shortly before his abdication and death. It was said by ettinpriests, that in death, for Claymore’s lack of expediency in converting the RCZs to official ettin territory, he was destined to be reborn as infantry in the Eldermark war, cannonfodder, a nothing-actor; a speck of sand in the Eldermark wasteland.
Would such a fate befall Arnulf next?
Allegiances and alliances were pledged between Herrenhausens and ancient beings from the Wildermark that mutually hated the vaighlings. Despite the best efforts of men, Orbaulker and Azza’s forces had gained the upper hand. The Herrenhausen noble titles and land meant nothing in the face of the ettin-law. For those who had been hesitant in abdicating their territories, like Claymore, like the Herrenhausens, like Arnulf, they were to be grievously punished. The old powers of mankind had lost earth’s scepter and crown. Their prince, the Groomslayer, had vanished and his troops either defected to various local vaighling and ettin warlords or were subsumed by Orbaulker’s expanding empire.
Even Arnulf, cold, grey skinned, blonde haired and sunken-eyed, teeth like razors, tall and gangly, looked to be of a different species than the creature standing before him.
A hulking frame of quills and teeth breathed beside its vaighling commander.
Orbaulker presented the creature as his second in command and the new President of the GUSA and Herrenhausen-West.
Arnulf shook his head in dismay. “What has become of you...?”
Orbaulker stroked his bald chin and looked to his President. “Who do you say you are? I do not speak for your Majesty.”
Eyes glowing, the humanity, the soul of Verity von Herrenhausen still flickered somewhere behind that deathly gaze.
“I remember how treacherous it was…what they did to you, Verity,” said Arnulf.
“It was an evil plot, a wicked act…may I use such harsh language? I wept for you…you were the most beautiful woman I had ever known…It was a selfish weeping, I must admit. But we mourned for you. But despite what has happened...you are there…somewhere still...I know it!”
Arnulf held out a painting, a dazzling canvas of blue skies over the shining faces of a young girl and her father.
Verity stepped up to the painting. She let loose Scimitar of Mockwitch, splitting the painting in two.
The severed remains of the portrait dropped from Arnulf’s quivering hands.
Verity returned the scimitar to her sheath and said, “I recognize this grotesquery not.”
Arnulf looked to cry and said, “Maybe you have become something, somebody else…but still, I see Verity in those eyes. I know she’s crying out within that twisted frame they’ve contorted for her restless soul...”
Orbaulker chuckled. “You yammer on, Margrave...why? You will be allowed to govern this sliver of dirt safely distant from the Eldermark maelstrom and dine and frolic and rut with as many beautiful apes as you wish. Azza believes you can serve his kingdom despite your recent...nonconformities. He knows you can still become great.”
“Great like the Eugenius Geissler? Like Adatmen and his father? Is that what you wish I become?”
“What he wishes...is for you to will yourself to godhood! But not like Eugenius Geissler, no. Nor his successor in the Groomslayer, the unfortunate boy Erich Jr...Under his captainship the Groomslayer corpus has been rendered impotent.
He now wanders the Eldermark, a slave to ancient ettins.”
Arnulf shook his head. “How pride has blinded you…Erich is no slave to ettins…well, you will discover soon enough what has befallen him. He is changed…”
“What do you know about the matter? His whereabouts are no concern for a Mark Count of the Bloodfirth Chateau..." said Orbaulker.
“His recent changes more than ever concern me, vaighling. Now, exerting all authority granted unto me under the Old Accords of Ettin and Man, I formally reject your proclamation of occupying my territory. I order you and your troops to disperse my lands at once.”
Orbaulker shook his head. “You’re jesting. We were not asking.”
“Oh, I know! I was too courteous, I must admit, beforehand. Get thy arse hence.”
A man approached them from the chamber door.
“There’s another way,” said the man holding out a hand to Verity. He was tall, white bearded and in a suit of shimmering quickore armor.
His presence was like a sun beam at midnight.
Orbaulker raged. “This creature cannot be here! Do you understand the implication, fool? You have lost everything now, Margrave! You are now an enemy of Azza Unghost!"
He directed a finger to Arnulf’s heart.
“Slay him, Azza's Champion.”
Verity swung her scimitar to Arnulf’s chest. It shattered.
She shuddered. The scimitar had struck the armor of the white bearded man. He brushed off the shards of the scimitar and turned to Arnulf saying,“What shall you make of this war? Will you join me like your friend Erich?”
Arnulf knelt. “Yes, my Lord.” The man placed his hand on Arnulf’s bowed head and said, “Rise, my son. I will be there for you always.”
He looked to Verity and Orbaulker.
“Return to the Eldermark if war is what you desire. We will fight, though we wish your souls freedom from the tyranny of unghostdom.”
Verity cast her gaze from the man’s beautiful visage.
Orbaulker scowled, saying: “Come…come, my champion…without his Weever pulled together…we will see what victory awaits him in this war. Besides...he is merely an ape, and has died before...he is now a reanimated fetish, a taboo ready to be smashed again.”
The armored man cast his hands forward, his voice like roaring thunder.
“Away now accursed one! Away back into your fire!”
With his word, Verity and Orbaulker scurried away like rats into the shadows of the land, their troops following after their cowardice, never acknowledging the cause of their fleeing was the command of the one ancient before man was man, Rammbock.
End of Part One