Walking Away

Nothing ever felt so wrong

Myrrha held me in the house, away from the real work with Mack—where I knew almost as much as Mack and a lot more than Myrrha. The subtleties of spices and flavors meant little to Myrrha, whose art of cooking had been honed for the campfire not the kitchen. It just wasn't important, like building power and resilience. In fact, I think she deliberately over-salted the blue apple pie in the oven–it shouldn't make your eyes water until you bite in.

To distract my aunt from our war of words, I engaged her on her strong front. I tried to get her swinging the heavy broom handles she keeps by the stairs with the farmer-looking trident–a war-grade pitchfork. She turned that down–"Because you're not an urgan and I said no–" and so we fenced with daydream swords. To a workman, it would have looked like child's play, but dream fencing is even more rigorous than steel sparring. Sadly, as a retired swordsmaster, Myrrha easily outclassed me on both levels.

I hacked at her with questions about why she insisted on living on the edge among the urgans; in smooth rhythm, she answered each as easily as she met my dreamsword.

Among humans, Mack and Myrrha had raved like urgans–slinging out rusty and jagged words –until the glassy-soulled, "Reverend Mayor" Collen sent them away, with his vile gambit, into murderous exile. Here, in Old Man Wolf's woods, Ker taught them the very human art of forging tho–glass–that beautiful and treacherous alloy of truth and foolishness that kept the three of us alive for the better part of my life. They held this land for humanity, feinting and dodging with such guile that–Myrrha made clear–had Mack bothered to try it among humans, could have won Mack a dukedom.

The wordslinging that barely kept them alive could have taken them from freeman–barely worthy of being drafted into the low ranks of the soldiery–to the heights of royalty. None of that, not even my development as a swordsman, really mattered. With my fuzzy head, I couldn't aim my words any straighter than a claymore, so I hoped to make up for it with grit. Without mercy or shame, I pestered her to move on Old Man Wolf's advice, trying to weave a bit of tho myself. Finally, flustered by losing both gambits, I dropped my guard and barely parried her dreamsword inches from my throat. I managed that only because the rudely simple swing shook the glass from my own helmet.

"What would you have us do?" she said, plopping herself on the urgan-scarred wooden block by the iron-bandaged table.

She brushed aside the obvious object lesson–that I had dropped my guard–and the much subtler one that she and Uncle Mack were doing the same. I shrugged.

"Wanna run to Balthispeare whining, 'Please Mistress Medusa, take in a couple of deserter freemen?"

We would never do that, but I found myself nodding so hard my brain hurt.

"You'll get over it, kid." She leaned back and smiled down on me with the right side of her face. "When you're big like your mother."

The thought of one day being like Mother–as capable as Mack and Myrrha and 'Uncle Ker' put together–had me swelling up in sheer joy for the time of a parade step.

Myrrha wiped her forehead.

That burn on Myrrha's wrist–she said it had come from a dragon tongue, but Mack told me the truth: the 'dragon' had been something called a salamander. Only the size of a pony, the firebreathing lizard had fought like the devil but had not killed any of their party. They had had many such adventures, faced many daunting foes, and grown fantastically powerful. Maybe Old Man Wolf was wrong. Maybe the portents he saw warned of danger, not doom.

"What's going on in that fuzzy head there kiddo?" She straightened the magical cloth of my whitesuit.

On her adventures she had gained not only power, but many fabulous treasures. Not the least of which–I looked past the military-grade pitchfork and broom to the locked sword cabinet on the wall.

"Not so fast, soldier." She placed her steel mug on the crack where Mack had thrown Vog during the latest urgan brawl. "I can't trust you with an imaginary sword–we're not playing with Lumoc."

I blushed. I had dropped my guard while dream fencing in the kitchen–lost track of the battle on one front due to defeat on the other–but this was serious. "It's not for me. I just feel better—"

"Sigrun, where is this coming from?" She picked up my chin. "You know Wilt has been bothering us about this for years."

A cawing noise cried out, "Die!" A shadow raven, a minor haunt.

Out the window, a cloud formed a sharp-toothed, leering Death's Head. The pixies never pointed up a hint of doom before. Knowing how Myrrha felt, all I could do was stop myself from whining and stamping my feet.

"You know you have to be careful. Be responsible."

I not only understood, as best as my fuzzy head allowed, but desperately wanted her to hear the message as well.

I glared at the sword cabinet, fearing it would slip her grasp in our time of need. "When is Mother coming home." As in, before the doom comes.

"Impossible to say." She stood up to pour herself a drink from the battered iron kettle, on the iron-reinforced table. "What they're doing is as dangerous as it is important."

"It's only urga in those mountains." The sharp realization of where our doom lay. "If they were that bad, you'd never let Ker in your house."

"Mountain urgans flee the dragon's justice for a reason."

She drank as if thirsting for some spirit to help her breathe–though she permitted no potions in her house. I nodded.

"Ker's no berserker, barely even a soldier. Decent enough, if you handle him."

"And if you don't?" I eyed the sword cabinet, afraid to lock eyes with Death's Head.

"Mack can handle Ker." She stood up to gather a few of her spices from the topmost cabinet. "I don't want to hear any more about this."

I didn't care what she wanted, only what she needed. How could I proceed? I dared not guess.

A splashing and a soft curse from Myrrha.

I didn't even remember scrambling halfway up the ladder stairs to my room, as I pushed the rung away from my face to get my balance.

Myrrha stood at the counter, wiping up the water she had thrown across the counter.

What had spooked us so? Had it been another shadow raven calling, "eat" or "die?"

Ker's urgan bandits answered, beating at one another's armor in ragtag rhythm.

"Get up there and stay hidden," Myrrha commanded, "No matter what."

"Yes,'m," I said, and ran up. I groaned with the effort of hoisting the massive bar into place over the door.

Impossibly soft, the voice of Myrrha in my ear, "Love you, kiddo."

"I…" I shouldn't have been able to hear that. My heartbeat should drown it out. The massive stonewood door should deflect it. I savored the steel-true sweetness of her words, and choked on the bitter aftertaste, not daring to ask why had the pixies seen fit to carry this one comment to me. I swallowed it down and touched the door. "...love you, Myrrha."

The door to my room measured twice as thick as the front door; the bar easily weighed double. Likely the stairs would break before the door. I slipped it into place, taking a march-step to trace the runes burned into the bar. Sharp, angular, and commanding, the runes whispered, "NO MATTER WHAT."

The first day I woke from the dread fever dream, before Myrrha even showed me to my room, Mack and Myrrha sat me down and taught me these words, written in the urgan futhark–Ker's language–so that I would count well my only duty: to stay out of harm's way. I traced these letters and tapped the bar into place.

From where I stood, the death's-head cloud wasn't visible.

Thankfully, and at least, not yet. No need to keep looking for a needless answer. Instead, I slipped under my bed and pulled at the secret panel, revealing a secret cabinet–a hiding room–coffin sized. A place for things precious and small, like myself I supposed.

I grabbed up my spyhole, two green glass bits in a tube. A relic from a time of wonders, when 'glassmaker' meant more than another slur for 'human.' I had been led to them the day I learned the meaning of the word 'thorga'–urgan for glassmaker. That they survived had been a message, from the throne of the High King. It spoke to me still–reminding me that being fragile did not mean being doomed. I gripped them in my fist, and considered.

The bar sign–no matter what–faced all four directions. But with the higher grade of stonewood, and the larger gauge, my bedroom door would hold at least as well as the front door. Just as Myrrha had had time to gather her wits during Ker's midnight visit, I would have time to scramble into my little coffin.

I looked again at the spyglass–it had not survived by being buried in a vault. Mack would be concerned, and Myrrha almost split in half, if either guessed my plan–what I always do when 'Uncle Ker' brings his bandits crowding through. Yet the only reason to cower had been dismissed by Myrrha herself. I crawled over to the corner of my room and pulled up a floorboard.

The knothole would neatly grip my spyglass, and let me hear the voices in the kitchen below.

I dusted the hole and placed my glass.

Mack came in, wearing brigandine, tightening his buckles and adjusting his cutlass.

I shuddered, wishing that he had brought his plated battle armor, and shook it off.

Myrrha pulled at his buckles as well, then mussed his hair–as if to project the rugged look of an urgan brawler rather than a human soldier.

Lumoc sat out of reach, locked in its puzzle-locked vault, across from the battle-strong broomsticks and the double hardened, armor piercing 'pitchfork' that always stood in our kitchen as if mislaid during Mack's lunch.

Myrrha adjusted the flame in the oven with the pitchfork, exchanging worried looks with Mack.

"Hail, thorga!"

His way filled me so full, I had to look away before I ran down to slap him hello myself. That wouldn't do–an urgan cannot abide fragile things. I didn't need him to test me with his fists like his own piglets.

"Hail yourself, you ornery, pigheaded fool!" Mack slapped Ker's shoulder as rudely as possible.

Ker stood and smiled, then swatted Mack to one side.

For Ker, trading insults proved their friendship–for nearly any urga man. Everything ran as it should. Had Myrrha been right–that Old Man Wolf spent his day baying at nothing?

Behind him strode Vog, carrying a wild boar.

Vog lifted the beast and slammed it against the table.

The pig bounced on the remnant of our table, shaking the floor under my feet. The table hopped about and held firm.

Vog raised his arms in a V as the pig rolled against the wall.

My spirits soared with him. The urga mind fears grace and polish because, too often, the untested betrays them–breaking like 'glass armor.' They seek that which survives, not that which can be destroyed. He had thrown everything he had against the table–or not everything he had, but more than any table would need. He had found something worth trusting, and his hope flared–as did mine.

A third urgan stranger, spindly and pale, opened the door and stepped in. Black smoke hovered around his head, from the long pipe in his mouth.

Before seeing this man-monster, I had never noticed the slime we swam in. Everything I touched or saw or heard dirtied me in a way that could not come clean. Unable and unwilling to wage a war against the very earth beneath me, I choked it all down. "Sigrun, hatred? I thought you were better."

Mack stepped back as the little urga –no taller than Mack and nearly as wiry as Myrrha–passed through the room.

Mack shook his head to clear and announced, at the top of his voice, "Right Myrrha, looks like we got pig to roast!"

But Ker stamped forward. "Me pig. Dirty thorga-fire no touch."

Mack roared and brought his arm across the strongest part of Ker's rusted breastplate. "Mind your manners you muddy orc!" Then stood and watched Ker.

Perfect. I breathed a tentative sigh of relief. This had gone exactly as it should. The pixies had spoken for nothing, and all that remained was to watch Ker laugh approvingly.

But Ker hopped and screamed, his gray face turning greener still. "No. Thorga no touch. Me pig. Ha killed. Ha own." Ker drew his mud-stained machete.

"Ker you reckless, cowardly lout, put that away." Mack slapped aside the blade with his off hand. "Let's have at his like men, not thorga."

"No care. No cook, no touch, no thwack in face of tribe." Ker's rising voice grew ragged. At last he squeaked, "Must have death."

For a man like Ker, who ruled more by the depths of his lungs than the power of his arms, to overplay his throat was a mistake worse than dropping his weapon. A mistake no urga would ever make. I swore under my breath at the toxic black cloud slithering around Ker's head.

Mack nodded and stepped back, pulling his sword out and holding it behind him, low. "We can still walk away."

Mack's stance meant that while Mack had no desire to hurt Ker, his sword stood ready to do exactly that. With an urgan, he would stand in better stead by batting Ker around the ears, but this change in his friend had thrown him off his game.

Myrrha stepped forward and picked up a meat cleaver, holding it behind her apron.

She would not need to fight–barring some strange spell. No urga could pick up a grudge, let alone hold onto it. Mack would slay Ker and that would satisfy the gathering urga. To a man, the bandits would blame Ker for dying. And if by some stroke, Ker emerged victorious, he would toss Myrrha aside and resume the hunt for more interesting things to test.

At the thought of losing either Mack or Uncle Ker, I blinked away the burn. I would be a long time consoling Myrrha. "Watch over him," I said to my pixies.

They did not hear, did not respond. The sound did not even reach the walls, and my prayer had been muffled. The black smoke in the dead air besieged our fortress as much as it clouded Ker's vision.

The slithering smoke trailed back to the stranger's pipe. 'The pixies have monsters, too,' Old Man Wolf hadwarned. This monster man–more huma than urga–had brought his outsider friends. They had surrounded us, cut me off from the High King and His people.

Still more smoke coiled about Ker's head.

Ker stamped in rhythm. "Death, death, death!"

The Urga, kicking and beating at one another, chanted with him: "Death, death, death."

Ker lunged

Mack swatted the machete aside. "This path invites destruction."

"No care. Must have death." Ker struck again and again, with strikes that were easily met, but carried such force that they wore on Mack and chipped away at the swords.

"Very well, my friend." Mack shrugged left and brought up a stroke under Ker's sword, plunging through the rusted metal and deep into Ker's heart.

With a frown of grim victory, Mack stepped back as Ker staggered about, following his sword stroke to the right.

For an instant, Ker looked down at the sword, chin falling open. Then his head lolled back.

Mack raised his arm to fend off a final stroke from Ker's sword. The stroke cut through the cloth and bit into the steel plate beneath.

Myrrha grabbed her cleaver and buried it in Ker's dominant shoulder.

Ker grabbed at the sword in his chest with his off hand. The ruined main arm refused to fall limp, instead swatting wildly at Mack.

Mack tumbled back and sprinted to the brooms. He grabbed one and tossed it to Myrrha.

She barely fended off a strike with a hidden bracer. Ker's arm didn't care about the threat from Myrrha's cleaver.

The stranger guarded Lumoc's cabinet, puffing more curse smoke from his pipe.

It wasn't Ker. It had never been Ker. Like the haunted bones in the stories, the chant of the false urgan pulled the strings, from the first chant to the current. If they would strike down this stranger, their battle would end in victory. I ran to the door…

Only to be assaulted by the words of the bar: "NO MATTER WHAT."

I groaned. They did not need a little girl to defend. I begged for a sign, "Please, send me a hint."

But I had been abandoned, left in the steel jaws of the stranger's trap.

I shrank from it and ran to the peephole.

Myrrha fought Ker's attacks, parrying the cutlass with the back end of the cleaver. Mack skirted Ker's reach, drawing useless attacks from Ker's main hand as he went for the trident.

Strike after strike hammered their defenses, harrying them as they jockeyed for better weapons, never wounding them. But each parry and dodge moved slower by degrees, burning away the power of their arms and hearts.

I looked too deeply into the stranger. Filled with the rotten slime of hate, I felt an urge to light the house on fire. Better that we die with him than live with this infestation.

At last Mack lunged to the trident. He threw Myrrha a broomstick and faced against Ker.

Eying Lumoc's cabinet behind the stranger, Myrrha parried a strike with her broom staff, then threw the cleaver.

The stranger's yelp as the cleaver cut through his fake, cloth 'breastplate' shook the entire farm. Ker's arms sagged.

Wounded grievously, the stranger shuddered, mustering his hate and resuming his chant.

A glancing blow caught Myrrha's knuckles as she turned to retrieve Lumoc.

The next machete blow came with renewed frenzy, aiming only to keep her there as she bled.

The stranger sneered at them as his chant poisoned the air about us.

As Ker's arm lifted, Myrrha chose the perfect moment to disengage and break for the sword cabinet.

But the smoke gathered beneath her and dragged her underfoot.

Ker's arm tore from its root and drove the sword into her heart.

Mack's face turned ashen. "For all my kindness, this is how I am repaid?" Ignoring the sword, he lunged, skewering Ker's lungs and lifting him to balance above his head.

But the haunt did not need lungs. Both of Ker's arms battered him, until at last Mack too mercifully fell. Ker continued to slash at Mack until the chant ended.

"Now I rule," the stranger said, putting his foot above Ker and Mack, "how all thorga take payment."

The bandits beat one another in approval.

The stranger let their mad applause die down and sniffed. In urgan, "Now we cleanse this human rigoli. We search the home for any lingering remnant before it spreads."

They hooted and hollered.

Vog hoisted the block chair above his shoulders and stamped up the ladder stairs to my room.

In a cold sweat I scrambled under my bed, pulling with slick hands at the slippery panel's edge.

Bang, bang. As the block battered at my door, the stairs creaked and cracked. The door held firm, but the blackening smoke curled about it.

I dropped the panel again.

A stair broke, sending Vog cursing and scrambling, as the bar to the door began to curve.

Mack had built the stairs to be weak for just this moment. Yet the stranger's power would destroy the door instead. My shaking hands clawed at the panel which kept slipping back into place, almost seamless.

A strange whiff of spice–a cold, rotten mint–wafted by. The wood of the door turned black, as if burning from within as the bar shriveled. Again Vog swung the block, hammering the door.

Black charcoal skittered over the floor, filling the room with a festering alcoholic aroma that sent shivers through me.

I grabbed the panel and gently, gently lifted it up against the bed.

An awesome mess of blackened splinters skittered about me as I crawled into place.

I counted myself already dead as my ankle scraped out from under the panel, dropping it into place.

Another rain of charcoal fell as I rolled over to face up, followed by the thud of the bar falling and shattering on the floor. "Search the place."

Thundering and rattling as the urga ground up my bed and chest and the window.

"Nothing here," Vog said. "Look like thorga eat their piglet."

A sickening thud of wood on flesh forced a squeal from Vog. "Shake the glass from your helmet. They're not like us. Likely huma spawn wither and die."

"Shaman Korog!" Vog yelled, with a grunt and the whistle of his gladius. "I demand you stop that."

"I will make you thorgabent," the stranger warned.

The voice dripped with such disgust that it spoke greater hate than every hateful word in that hateful urgan tongue.

The stranger's taunting voice chirped: "Not like Mack. A piglet could kill you."

Vog grunted and hopped, swinging and missing, again and again as he raved of his desire to destroy Korog with a bristling passion.

The warsong of Vog spoke so deeply I found myself seeking for a sword, ready to rise up and end this.

Korog laughed in approval. "Vog you may be more urga than I gave you credit for. Stupid, but vital. Perhaps you make yourself apprentice to Korog."

Vog grunted in surprise.

"First lesson," he said, slapping Vog to the floor with his staff. "Stop hitting floor with face."

Vog muttered as he took his feet, poetic hatred falling into feverish babble.

My panel bowed and creaked under Vog's weight, pushing against my nose. My fever-burned arms could not hold him if the wood could not, but I pressed against the panel with all my might.

The other urgans laughed and waddled off, slipping on the broken stair and continuing back to the kitchen.

After what seemed to be hours of the wood pushing into my face, Vog stepped off. The panel regained its shape.

A sigh of relief refreshed my lungs, with the cold stink of Korog's cloud.

Mack and Myrrha lay dead on the kitchen floor like the pig they had brought. The heat of my coffin box burned my cowardly face and eyes. I ached to scream out my grief.

But the runes carved in the top of my tomb glowed gently. The mage had charged a duke's treasury to whisper Myrrha's dying wish: "NO MATTER WHAT."

So in that box, shivering against the savage verdict of honor, I laid back and softly sobbed.

For all my days, the memory of that blood-soaked, urgan shanty drowns my faith and paints the world in scarlet gloom. The smoke of that roast burned my lungs, even without the thought of loved ones on the pyre. I never dreamed so many tears could come from one little girl.

Over the course of the day, the songs grew distant. The smoke from the oven fires cleared. I dared hope the monster men had gone from my home to cavort in the fields. I never wondered if it had been a day or longer. I stank and shook with hunger as I crept about, sifting through the wreckage in the moonslight.

Among the splinters, nothing remained worth calling a weapon. Out the window, the dark sky hung dark and mute.

Cinders flickered across the merciless landscape, campfires born of the urgan wasteland.

I turned away from the window, not pausing to think whether I thought the homestead abandoned, or I wanted to face the fires of judgment. As I pushed against the remnant of my door, it might have been both.

Urga slept on and about the ladder stairs.

I tiptoed over Vog toward the shieldholder Kursey.

At once, Vog rolled on the broken stair and grabbed my ankle in his own.

I flipped and kneed her in the nose, tumbling end over end.

I righted myself and blushed, thanking the High King that I wore shorts and not a skirt– as if embarrassment were the only danger in this kitchen of death.

But Kursey snorted and settled.

Unsure how I had avoided certain doom, I ran to snatch up Myrrha's cleaver.

Caked in red blood, it lay in a pool of green urgan blood among the shattered remains of Lumoc's cabinet, at the feet of the sleeping stranger, war shaman Korog.

A smile graced my face as I snatched it up and stepped toward the monster man, this false urgan.

"Oh, Sigrun, but not like this."

Mack's voice groaned in my head, in that imaginary way that the fire-crowns and the omens came. I shook it off and eyed the throat of that despicable beast.

The beardless runt's head lolled back, exposing the knot of the throat.

Did I want to kill him quick, in order to live longer, or did I prefer to wake him with the first strike so he could know where his doom came from? I did not know.

"Sigrun, please. You've got to listen."

I looked over my shoulder.

Ker's head stared upon me, eye sockets empty. Beneath, Mack's and Myrrha's faced down–sparing me the horror of facing them. Behind them, on the stair, stood the pixie-cast image of Mack. "Don't do this," the pixie-ghost said.

Mack treated the urgans like people, albeit loutish ones. He might well have wanted them to have a trial. But he was dead, and his words didn't matter. I tried to imagine him as a squirrel, to no avail. "I'm not supposed to talk to my imaginary friends."

"There were reasons for that. This." He stepped down a few steps. "But that's all over."

"Why are you arguing against justice?"

"Oh, Sigrun, if I thought you could be a fair judge, I would beg you strike Korog down."

"Fair? What do you know of fair. It's not fair taking the form of my murdered uncle."

"My fault. Didn't want to rob you of the second sight." He shrugged. "But now you are in a greater danger than ever."

"Then let me strike him down while I have the chance."

"No. Take your time. Your body is safe." He floated down to the floor. "But the danger is greater than ever before."

"They could wake at any time. I wouldn't want them to get away with this."

"Kill him and you take his place." Mack advanced further. "You will become like him."

"I'm nothing like Korog!" I waved my cleaver at Ker's head and pointed at Mack. "Tell him! I am nothing–"

All the urgans chanted with me, even Ker's impaled head.

I dropped my cleaver on my bare foot. Harmless, it slid off and rooted itself in the floor.

"So…" A feral grin exposed my teeth and I curled my fingers. I nodded my head back as I seized my cleaver. "I do have power."

"As I said." Mack's ghostly face turned a whiter shade. "The same that brought Korog here."

"Are you telling me I shouldn't use the power gifted to me?"

"If you value the work you have done, you will turn from him. Leave the work of justice to those who look down on the field of battle."

"But I can use this power to slaughter this monster like the pig he is."

"Is that what Sigrun would do?"

My lungs full of ice, my belly ready to vomit in rage, I could not be farther from myself. My toe shook, as I tapped, trying to think.

"If you do not know, how will you decide your fate?"

"It is Korog's fate I decide." I lowered my cleaver. "Isn't it?"

Mack nodded. "But if you accept this gift that his masters have given you, well…"

"Then he will never harm another!"

"In that case this will be the last moment of freedom you enjoy as you serve them, till death–and likely, beyond."

"So I sell myself into slavery for justice? I can do that."

"Do you not understand? There is a reason they offer this."

"It is not fair. You should not be in the form of my Uncle, the uncle you led to his death."

"The real monster is the source of your power. They killed me. Don't give them what they want."

"I will conquer evil."

Mack nodded. "That much is true, no matter which path you take."

I put my hands on my head. "I don't understand."

"The choice is how to answer evil," he said, kneeling before me. "Do you want to heal or to harm?"

I looked down sadly at the cleaver in my hand, the only legacy I had. It seemed so small, so inadequate. I turned from Korog, and walked past the inhuman memorial.

In all my life, nothing ever felt so completely wrong as walking away.