Cirx
Wind screams through a sheet of rain, another driving storm. This day the rain is moderate for Staggenmoire, the same on-and-off weather for weeks now, but the winds come from the east and the west and seem to collide around them. A squall—a driving curtain of black water—hangs to the north, approaching faster than they currently sail south.
“We can still outrun it,” Cirx shouts to his knights as they heave lines.
Waves smash against the hull of the Seachord like the watery fists of giants. The Eventide is capricious, but the Seachord’s not sunk yet.
“Reef the sails instead of lowering them.” Cirx assists in reefing the mainsail alongside two knights, the Moonriders scattering around the decks in a panic, more distraction than assistance.
Damn space pirates are useless on water.
Cirx looks skyward to the Sky Sea through a torrent of rain. He swears he sees faces peering down from up there, although they must only be in his mind: Kitasha, his wife; Erin, his daughter; and Enix, his son. They are begging him to free their souls, their noses pressed against the Sky Sea as if against the glass of some celestial window. Sir Garrabrandt’s face joins theirs, asking Cirx to fulfill his vengeance. Cirx can then fall upon his own sword, as he promised, and release his Mir from purgatory as well. But Sir Garrabrandt instead asked Cirx to care for his two living daughters … Garrabrandt’s wife’s and his two deceased daughters’ faces join the others, backdropped by all those crushed inside Staggenmoire castle.
The sooner they find this fiend—if it exists at all—the sooner Cirx can free those souls.
That’s Cirx’s duty—the primary purpose of the Fiend Slayer of Staggenmoire—to slay only men and beasts who kill so the souls of the innocent victims can find eternal peace.
For now, the Horseman rides around the dead in the Sky Sea, taunting them, siphoning their hope and creating suffering as they seek the eternal paradise of Heaven.
Cirx’s heart twists and seems to wring itself of emotion like the rain from Riesbold’s beard, but the guilt and longing and impatience to help those he loves does not drip free. Instead, the emotions cling to the chambers of his heart and claw their way into its muscular walls.
The future is as uncertain as fire in Staggenmoire skies.
A voice pierces the wind. “This is the weather of the fiend. The kind of storm that hides it from man.” First Mate steps up onto the main deck, and his haunting eyes lock onto Cirx. “I can smell its ancient salt and grime on the wind. Such an immortal fiend has slain more people of Staggenmoire than even the great wyrm of the bogs. That’s the fiend your father killed, no?”
Cirx’s muscles tense as he runs a hand across his breastplate and the sigil of three raindrops. The ancient wyrm killed over nine hundred men, women, and children. And when Cirx’s father slayed it, he became the greatest Fiend Slayer in Staggenmoire’s history, releasing those souls from their insipid purgatory of the Sky Sea and from the clutches of the Horseman into Heaven.
Cirx could never fill his father’s armor, but this man was tempting him to try. How could this First Mate really know so much, or anything at all, of Staggenmoire?
Someone below decks shouts, a hollow, bellowing sound.
“There!” First Mate points starboard, distracting Cirx. A nest of foam and churning waves races away from the Seachord. Rain plummets and wind howls, tearing at the masts and sails. In the distance, a sea forest rises from the Eventide, stretching above the waves and reaching for the Sky Sea. “It attempts to outrun us. To hide in that forest on the sea. Make for it!”
Cirx motions to the knight at the helm to take them starboard, after whatever runs below the waves and hopes to hide in the sea forest—trees growing hundreds or thousands of meters tall from the depths of the Eventide to rise hundreds of meters more into the air and breathe below the Sky Sea.
“It’s an entire shoal of fiends!” First Mate stares at the waters intently where black humps or fins or bodies crest the now greenish water.
The Seachord spins and yaws and pursues the creature or creatures, but the beast or beasts slip into the trunks of the sea forest before Cirx and his men can close the gap between them.
“We cannot sail any closer.” Cirx motions to the sea trees. “Younger shoots still concealed by the Eventide may puncture our hull or act like a shoal and trap us.”
“Blow your horn, Fiend Slayer.” First Mate’s eyes dance with an evil fire, his face appearing gaunt and twisted. “Summon the beasts. Ride out to them.”
Cirx slowly lifts the Horn of Fiends to his lips. This is not the first time he’s blown it, but it’s the first time on Staggenmoire. In the vastness of space, it summoned or called out only the demons buried inside men.
Aaammmrrrooooooooooooo.
Minutes later, the gangway and ramp bang and lower to the waves as the winds shove against the Seachord and scream in a ghostly voice through the boughs of the sea forest. Destriers snort and stomp on the decks. Knights clatter as they mount.
Cirx finds his borrowed destrier, Heatherfell, a chestnut like Kallstrom, but so unlike Kallstrom. He digs his heels into the mare’s flanks, and with a swish of her tail, she leads the Knights of Staggenmoire between the bulwarks and onto the Eventide, floating atop hooves with keratin more buoyant than ice or air.
The destrier’s hooves slap against the green swells and splatter foam, flinging white spray into the air and across the knights on Cirx’s tail. The knights race across swells as easily as they would desert dunes, maintaining a phalanx formation while metal and leather shriek as blades are drawn. Men shout and brandish swords.
Towering trees of green and blue grow larger as they draw closer. Limbs sprout fronds of algae where leaves or needles would typically grow, algae that floats atop the water or dangles and waves in the wind.
The gale of the approaching squall howls from the east and west and spools around the island of a forest, sending the boughs and algae leaves soaring like mizzenmast sails. But the surface of the water and the swells within the forest still and seal over. Gulls bray and wheel about in the wind before taking cover in the trees. Glow flies chirr in a dyssynchronous chorus; they flash blue as they weave about the trees like will-o’-the-wisps.
“The fiend’s headed for the deeps.” Riesbold glances about the boles of the trees. “We’ll have to wait it out.”
“Set watches,” Cirx says. “And place a man in the crow’s nest.”
“Anyone who misses this beast’s next breath will clean every other man’s dishes and toilet,” First Mate shouts over the bulwark of the Seachord.
Moonriders hoot in the background, but their wide eyes peer timidly across the waters.
Something splashes in the darkness of the forest.
Cirx’s head jerks in that direction, and he scrutinizes the depths beyond shadow and limb. Swells rise and fall against green or gray trunks mantled in seaweed. A mist creeps about the trees, crawling down from the canopy and swarming the trunks.
Splash.
There’s a ripple, a ring of ripples carrying out under Cirx’s destrier, although not from its hooves.
“It’s taunting us.” Tegard motions to another knight and uses his sword to point below Cirx and then into the darkness of the forest, where more ripples emerge. “Or it’s setting a trap.”
“Be wary.” Cirx reins Heatherfell in a pivot and urges her into the forest.
The muted light of the suns seeping through the Sky Sea fall to a whisper. The rain lessens. Tendrils of shadows with gnarled lumps lunge from the trees and gambol about the sloshing waves. Mist wraps white scarves around tree and air as it seeps outward, weaving between trunks and rolling around Heatherfell’s legs. Glow flies settle low in the mist, and their chirring grows softer before dying out.
The crackle of flaring oil torches sound behind Cirx as his knights follow, carrying in their wavering orange lights.
Cirx ducks and lowers his sword to pass under several dangling fronds of blue algae, their undersides lined with shiny spicules. His knights follow, just over a dozen now, down from the score who originally departed Staggenmoire—the price of revenge, a revenge that has thus far gone unanswered. They’d all been through so much: space, flying ships, Viking raids. And now even their own home doesn’t want to welcome them, sees them as outsiders.
“Spread out, but don’t lose sight of each other,” Cirx says.
The air stills inside the sea forest and seems to thicken and grow a weight and life of its own. It grows an appetite, sheeting off the feeling of a predator. Everything beneath these bows is hungry, the atavistic recesses of Cirx’s mind calling out for him to flee.
They weave their destriers around tree and rising brush that floats atop the sea.
What mysteries lurk between these woods?
It’s not the first sea forest Cirx has ever ridden into, but he’s done it less than a dozen times, as these old growth forests are not common and are difficult to reach, since they only grow in the deepest parts of the Eventide. Parts that are far, far from land.
This is probably the first time some of the younger knights have ridden beneath the boughs of a sea forest.
The knights’ breaths deepen and grow louder, a rasping against bark and mist. Whatever they chased into this darkness will have no trouble knowing where they are, whether it wishes to hide or attack.
Aaammmrrrooooooooooooo.
Cirx blows his horn again to draw out the fiend.
Someone behind him bellows in alarm but regains their composure and falls silent.
Hooves plod on, but the horses feel it too: the hunger of these woods, a predator as ancient as the sea. And the animals are probably realizing they are the prey drawn into its web of deceit. Their ears flick back and forth; rapid breaths stream from flared nostrils. Ribbons of mist swim around their legs and necks.
Cirx squeezes the hilt of his sword. What choice does he have? To turn his knights against First Mate, the man they vowed to assist? Their honor would be tarnished and broken more than Cirx could bear. He’s bent his word to save others and to attempt to free the souls of his beloved family, but to act against a man while losing the chance to then free his family is going too far.
If he takes over the Seachord, he can return to the city. But there are no more spaceships on Staggenmoire besides the one First Mate offered them for their service, one that showed an ability to conceal itself from the Northrite’s ambush. He could free his knights and himself from the madness of chasing an ancient fiend, or the myth of one, but he’d be no closer to hunting down the Northrite.
Someone shouts in the darkness to Cirx’s left.
He spins Heatherfell in that direction—shadows consume the area, but the edge of a knight’s sword flashes under orange flame. Cirx kicks his mount into a gallop. Water flies as Cirx brandishes his sword.
Black tentacles writhe from beneath the waves, encircling the fetlocks of a knight’s destrier. The horse snorts and rears, its eyes rolling, the whites gaping.
Sir Branidon leans forward against his destrier’s neck to maintain his seat as he hacks at the tentacles. Blood sprays out from a severed tentacle as a mass of black flesh sails free, its tip still wrapped around the horse’s leg. And the severed tip still twitches.
The other tentacles drag the destrier’s legs downward as the horse kicks and thrashes and whinnies in fear. Branidon topples over the rump of his rearing horse, and his breast plate smacks into the swells with a slap. He yells.
And the sea engulfs him, swallowing him whole, taking his head last and stitching over to silence him with a gurgle and rush of bubbles.
Heatherfell lunges into Branidon’s steed as Cirx swipes at the mass of tentacles dragging the destrier under.
A gush of water erupts from the depths as the tip of a beak breaks through the surface before quickly withdrawing.
Cirx slices through another tentacle.
More knights arrive, and shouting breaks out in the distant trees and shadow. As well as howling that carries and echoes through the still air of the forest like ghostly horns.
All of the tentacles slip back into the sea, and Cirx swings a leg from his saddle, gripping the cantle and pommel as he dips and probes the depths with his foot where Branidon disappeared.
A surge of water bursts under Cirx’s leg, and Branidon rushes to the surface, gasping for air.
And he floats there on his back, his legs and arms splayed. Buoyant padding is layered under all the plates and greaves and vambraces and pauldrons of any Staggenmoire knight to keep the weight of his steel from dragging him into any body of water.
Not the first time a Knight of Staggenmoire’s fallen into the Eventide. That lesson was learned and addressed centuries ago.
“Bloody squid.” Branidon spits out a mouthful of water and motions to his destrier, whose snorts and rolling eyes have begun to settle. “As big as Morganstead.”
Riesbold bellows with laughter. “Good training for a squire, but nothing close to a fiend. Even the largest squid flee after they’re relieved of a few of their tentacles.”
Cirx leans over and assists Branidon in the awkward dance of rising from the water’s surface, clinging to his comrade, and regaining his destrier’s saddle.
“I was worried there was something worse hiding in this forest.” Riesbold sheathes his sword.
Another howl breaks through the shadows. Knights too far away to see yell. The smell of blood drizzles through the mist. Steel rings in the distance amidst snarls and growls.
“To them!” Cirx wheels Heatherfell around and gallops her through the trees, weaving around trunks. Glow flies pop and spark in surprise as Cirx thunders past.
Something takes advantage of the moment of weakness and separation, something far smarter and slyer than squid.
In the surrounding darkness, footfalls of loping creatures slap and pad across the sea. Heaving panting comes from either side of Cirx as he rides. Eyes like the lights of glow flies wink in and out of the darkness—flashes of white. Yellow irises.
Forms with masses of greenish fur flicker and disappear under a patch of mist and torchlight.
And the distant cries of the knights fall to a haunting silence.
Cirx reins in Heatherfell, and Sirs Tegard, Riesbold, Branidon, and several others nearly run into him as they slide across the water to rolling stops.
“Where are they?” Riesbold bellows. “Sir Inglethor? Eusair?”
His shouts die out in the forest, absorbed by the trees that hover far overhead and eclipse the world.
A rush of cold wind tickles the hairs on the back of Cirx’s neck as if something rides past him unseen. Something invisible.
The Horseman is here. He’s trailed Cirx around the galaxy and back to Staggenmoire. Cirx cannot shake him no matter how hard he tries. The Horseman haunts his footsteps and rides through the shadows of this forest, leaking smoke from his mouth and flared nostrils, his twisted horns of writhing flame crackling atop his head. The red eyes of his horse search through the trunks for the victims as its hooves pound the Eventide, dropping trails of flame and ash.
The Horseman rides for someone now.
The chill Cirx feels sinks into his bones. He sees it and points—a river of blood in the green swells, a chunk of a destrier’s tail, a floating arm still wearing its vambrace and gauntlet.
“Sea wolves,” Riesbold says.
“Sea wolves don’t hunt men.” Tegard raises a torch, and his eyes seem to equal the size of a squid’s eyes as he watches the floating mist. “Unless they’re diseased or starving to death. They are aloof creatures, social and intelligent. Similar to man in many ways. Hardly fiends.”
Cirx glances about. “Something is amiss in all of Staggenmoire. She does not welcome her knights home after their travels through space.”
“We don’t have enough knights to hunt down, much less face, a pack of sea wolves.” Branidon spins his destrier in the circle as the mist roves through the trees.
Other eyes and panting breaths lurk out there.
“We cannot leave our comrades,” Riesbold says.
“They’re already dead, Mir.” Tegard swings his torch at a cloud of mist hovering too close, splitting it into white smoke.
Riesbold grunts in fury. “The Horseman takes their souls by the hand at this moment and drags them up into the Sky Sea.”
Add them to our ever-growing list of souls to free. Cirx wonders if he’s becoming desensitized to the suffering of the dead. To their purgatory. Even to those he loves. “We cannot hunt a pack of sea wolves without hounds and with so few knights, or we’ll all be wandering the Sky Sea. We ride back to the Seachord.”
Cirx bows his head for his men and kicks Heatherfell into a gallop. He doesn’t know if it’s a feeling or a muffled sound that draws him in, but he veers Heatherfell through a ring of trees in the wrong direction.
A flash of torchlight behind him dashes against the waves in a small clearing. Three forms as long as steeds but covered in shadow and ringlets of green-tinted fur resembling seaweed dance in a mad circle. They lean back on their haunches and fight against something between them, rending apart stumpy remnants that protrude from an armored torso. A torso that hovers in the air like some dark offering held aloft by the competing forces of their tripod of jaws.
Cirx and Heatherfell do not break stride. The light of Tegard’s torch seems to turn Cirx’s blade to flame as he raises it, and he and his destrier fall upon one of the wolves, cleaving its head from its shoulders in one swift downstroke. The sound of cold steel slicing through bone is muffled by a matting of fur. Blood sprays the water as the wolf’s form slumps lifelessly onto its side and rides along a rolling swell.
Less than a moment later, Riesbold and Branidon have done the same with the second wolf, Tegard and several others slaying the third. Riesbold spins his destrier around to study their surroundings.
Forms shift in the darkness of the trees. Scuffing, panting. A broken howl. Other sea wolves not yet ready to hunt men grow angry and consider their options, their thoughts floating on the mist.
Cirx wheels Heatherfell around to face his knights. “The souls of Inglethor and Eusair have escaped the Horseman’s clutches.” Two out of so many souls we seek to set free. Not enough, but a beginning. “There are no other fiends here. Ride for the Seachord before Staggenmoire raises more.”
Cirx kicks Heatherfell into a gallop.
His knights follow without a word in a clatter of cold steel and leaden melancholy.
