Chapter 4: The Cold

 The team returned to the road, the nightmarish wagons and clearing behind them. Knowing the restless confusion of the other members - except for Kanaa - Andrek began to explain what they had seen.

 "The Vandr Kalde are savages. I have heard many stories about them, but never seen them for myself; today is the closest that I have gotten, and I do not hope to get closer. Most of what anyone in Barrek knows about them is through stories and unsubstantiated tall tales," he said as they stomped southward along the snowy path. "Some people don't believe they exist at all, and maybe they just don't want to. If you are inclined to believe in them - which, if I may hazard a guess, we all are after that forest - then they can be traced back to some of the first settlers of Barrek that turned to cannibalism in desperation." He shivered as he recounted what he knew.

 Kanaa continued his companion's tale. "The Atylanens have similar stories, whether that contributes to their validity or not. The settlers only cannibalized one another after a spirit of some sort from within the ice whispered to them. Their cannibalism made them powerful at the cost of their humanity, and they became beasts. The carving that Andrek and Sarah saw - a hand with a fanged mouth in the center - was the mark of their spirit, who they believe to be a god."

 "What does this mean for us?" Azai asked.

 "If a party of Vandr Kalde is roving somewhere here, then we'll have to remain on alert until we get out of Barrek," Andrek said, stroking his beard in thought. 

 "No matter." The dark elf shifted the black blade on her shoulder. "If they should find us, I will give them a bloody end."

 "As will I," Sarah joined. "The people that they massacred shall not go unavenged."

 "Let's restrain our zeal for a moment, mates," Daniel chided. "If it comes down to it, I've got no doubt that we'd lay 'em out right quick, but in the interest of self-preservation, it's probably best to avoid picking fights with bloodthirsty lunatics," he said, not realizing that his advocacy for restraint may have been picking a fight with debatably bloodthirsty lunatics.

 Kanaa agreed. "I concur with our sharpshooter. We receive no compensation for dispatching these barbarians, as cruel as they are. We should keep our focus on the long journey that we still have ahead of us; there may come a time where we will require use of your fervor."

 Sarah bristled. "If ever there was a warband that deserved destruction, it would be these 'Vandr Kalde'," she said. "We cannot sit idly by, if given the opportunity to send them back to their malevolent spirit-master, bloody and broken. Martyn demands the destruction of the wicked, and we are the hammer of his vindication, whether you accept that responsibility or not."

 Andrek grunted as he walked. "Make no mistake, I'd lose no sleep over their deaths, but we're speaking in hypotheticals. We don't know how many there are, and even if we did, we might not come across them in the first place. In any case, vigilance is all that we can muster against them for now. Greycrag's not getting any closer unless we keep putting one foot in front of the other."

 Steadily, the darkness of the day's end began to creep into the space left by the retreating light of the setting sun. The group, who had been accustomed to camping in forests and behind ridges to protect them from the harsh winds, was fortunate to find a large cave in a mountainside this evening, eager to relieve themselves from the long trek that ground away at their endurance.

 Getting a hot fire set up in icy conditions may have proved a challenge for ordinary teams of travelers, but Andrek trivialized such things. The cavern was large enough for them to spread out their tents, as they would've when camping outside, and provided them with some much needed time alone after a full day of one another's constant company - for better or for worse. Once they ate dinner, each person was free to do whatever they pleased with the few hours of reprieve that the night sanctioned them.

 Before Kanaa went off to do whatever it was that he was going to do with his evening, Andrek had convinced him to give him the strange package with their employer's heirloom. To the dwarf's pleasant surprise, his companion didn't actually take much convincing at all, in fact, requiring a mere promise that the sorcerer "would not do anything reckless with it", which Andrek was more than happy to agree to. 

 Curiosity had always come easily to Andrek. Too easily, some might say, for his own good, but he had managed to make it work in his favor so far, just as he was about to make it work for discovering, he hoped, a little more detail about the mysterious object. When he retrieved the mundane looking item from Kanaa's pack, he had to give it an oddly strenuous heave to pick it up. Little bastard's heavier than it looks. He clunked it down in front of his tent, the tough brown wrapping crinkling as it was laid to rest on the ground. His efforts had attracted a spectator: Daniel, who was sitting on a nearby rock and watching whatever it was that Andrek had planned, smoke drifting lazily from the end of his pipe.

 "Any guesses?" Andrek asked as he poked, prodded, and manipulated the cumbersome object.

 "Solid gold - wait, no, engraved diamond," Daniel said in mock wonder, gesticulating widely in a grand display before promptly popping the stunted pipe back between his lips. "Or it's just solid bloody brick, and we're being taken for fools."

 "Think good thoughts, Danny, think good thoughts." The sorcerer's wandering fingers, after hefting the package to one edge, found a wide, flat wax seal on one side of the heirloom's flank, keeping overlapping layers of wrapping shut - his way inside. It had some sort of insignia stamped into it, one that he did not recognize, of a crow with wings spread and a flamboyant dagger clutched tightly in its claws. Alongside this curious symbol was a small number pressed into the soft, red material: '7'.

 "Come take a look at this, Danny," he said, tilting the side of the package with the seal towards the soldier. "This mean anything to you?"

 Daniel leaned forward and squinted at the insignia in thought. With narrowed eyes still trained on it, he inhaled slowly from his pipe, held it for a few seconds, and exhaled slowly, allowing the smoke to curl and dissipate effortlessly. "Nope." He sat back up.

 Andrek looked around the camp, as if someone unexpected was listening in on their conversation. "Hear me out, here," the dwarf leaned in and lowered his voice. "What if we open it up? Just for a quick peek." 

 Daniel pulled away apprehensively, but before he could speak, Andrek spoke again. "It'll be easy, lad, don't worry. Look, you can delicately cut the insignia off with my dagger, set it to one side, we'll have a short look at it and see what we can see, then we'll tuck it back inside and I can reseal the wax with a very careful application of magmancy," he said, slowly fanning both hands forward in a calming motion.

 "Why do I have to cut the wax off?" the soldier asked, which Andrek took as a sign of partial progress in convincing Daniel to be an accomplice.

 "Well, you don't have to be the one to cut it off exactly - you just need to pick it up after I shift it off. My resting body temperature would likely soften it, and we'd risk deforming it, meaning we'd risk having to fix it before we put it back on."

 Just as the sorcerer had done a few moments before, Daniel also looked over his shoulder at their surroundings, checking to see that their employer would not suddenly appear before them and catch them red-handed. Apparently satisfied, he turned back to Andrek. "Alright, gimme the knife."

 The dwarf gave a mischievous chuckle and withdrew his dagger from its leather sheath with a light thwish, which his partner in crime took. "That's a good lad. I'll help hold the wrapping still," he said, pressuring the paper on the side of the heirloom until it was tense and flat.

 Before he lost his nerve, or got too deep into his own head about holding the knife just right or getting the angle perfect, he lined the blade up well enough and, over the course of a few stressful seconds, clipped the seal from the paper and caught it tenderly in his other hand. He carefully set it down on the rock he had been sitting on and, with justified concern, investigated its condition. All seemed well.

 "Care to remove it? Do the honors, and I'll be sure to keep the wrapping in fine shape?" Andrek asked, slightly shaking the heirloom in temptation.

 In for a penny, in for a pound. Daniel put his hands into the wrapping, and they found something smooth, cool to the touch, or this part of it was, at least. Putting his arms underneath it so as to slide it out of its delicate container, he heaved backwards and revealed the item that they would be carrying for the foreseeable future.

 To both of their utter disbelief, it was as Daniel had guessed. Not engraved diamond, nor solid gold, but a stone, slightly less than a foot long in either direction and three inches tall - uniform, grey, mundane. Shifting the awkward bulk off of his forearms and into his hands, he tilted it to his left and looked at its underside. Equally uniform, equally grey, but somehow distinctly more mundane.

 They both sat down, eyes transfixed on the dull object, and neither said a word. Their surprise simmered down with unexpected speed into a confused brand of acceptance, as if the reality of the item had proven too boring to even be translated into tangible words. They 

simply sat there, hoping they could wish the heirloom to shift into something more exciting, a wish that they were not granted. With pursed lips hidden beneath his voluminous moustache, Andrek nodded slowly, the ridiculousness of it all setting in. Daniel, also beginning to grasp this ridiculousness, nodded slowly as well - a shared revelation of disappointment, and defeat.

 "Brilliant," Daniel flatly managed to say at last.

 "Yep," Andrek replied.

 Another silent second passed before both men burst out laughing, indulging for a short time before reigning themselves in.

 "I can't believe it's a stupid rock," Daniel said with a slight smile, shaking his head in denial. 

 "There's got to be more to it, hasn't there?" Andrek wondered, pulling the drab stone closer to him and examining it for himself. Nothing. He ran his hands along it, searching desperately for some hidden switch or imperceivable secret. He would even accept a bump or a scratch on its surface at this point, but still nothing. He pushed it away from him, refusing that this could be all. Instead, he picked up the wrapping that it had come in and groped his hand around inside; maybe there was something more within? Once again, his hunting efforts came up short.

 Withdrawing his arm, he looked inside in the hopes that his eyes could catch something that his fingers did not - and they did. Sadly, the container was just as empty as his hand had reported that it was, but it wasn't another object inside the wrapping that his eyes had caught, but the wrapping itself. Barely glimmering from the light of their campfire, Andrek saw something glitter on the inside of the wrapping's surface. Weaving vein-like lines ran across it, only visible when they glinted off of the flickering firelight, iridescent and conspicuous. A knowing grin crept across Andrek's face; giving only a wry glance to Daniel, Andrek violently crumpled the wrapping up and tossed it nonchalantly into the fire.

 "What the hell are you doing?" Daniel cried, staring wide-eyed into the flames as they licked around the wrinkled brown ball, but the sorcerer stopped him before he could continue his objections.

 "Calm yourself, lad," he said, rising up with dramatized slowness and stretching calmly. "Look." He walked over to the fire, reached his ensorcelled hand into the blackened wood, and withdrew the folded ball. The wrapping paper was untouched by the blaze, the picture of pristine, without so much as a single singe marring its surface. Not content with this display, Andrek unraveled the material into a rough, deeply-creased sheet. Holding it against the ground, he ran his hand over its crumpled surface, and in the wake of his hand, the paper flattened into its previous unsullied form, flat and fresh. He repeated this process a few more times until, impossibly, the brown wrapping looked as it had sixty seconds before.

 "Spurning paper," Andrek said with a short, gleeful raise of his eyebrows. "It's a type of enchanted material. Only works on highly specific types of paper, and makes it all but impervious to nonmagical damage," he explained before retrieving his dagger, attempting to puncture through it to no avail. "Haven't seen it before, but I always thought it was a fascinating little trick - and an exceptionally expensive trick, at that."

 Daniel's mind crunched in thought, a process that he frequently eased with assistance from his pipe. "Why go through all that protection nonsense for a rock?"

 Andrek shrugged. "Hard to say. Could be that it's far more than just a slab of stone, but as far as I can tell, that's not the case. Whatever the case may be, we've learned at least one useful thing-" he said before gesturing to Daniel to help him return the rock to its magical casing. "-whoever is paying for all of this definitely has the money to pay for our contract - and probably a vault's worth of gold on top of that."

 Handling it far less carefully than he had the first time, Andrek folded the paper shut, Daniel positioned the wax symbol, and Andrek sealed the curious container with the controlled heat of one of his heated fingers.

 Tonight, Kanaa sat at the mouth of the cave, looking out at the last silhouettes of the wilderness that remained visible before they, too, were concealed until the sunrise. Whatever Andrek was fiddling around with inside that wrapping had been long forgotten; if the sorcerer wanted to do something foolish with it, it would be his responsibility. Between his blocky fingers, he delicately held a large quill, occasionally refreshing it in a stout ink pot that laid on the ground next to him. Hunched over a piece of parchment in front of him, he scribbled onto it infrequently, sometimes in short bursts and sometimes pecking at the paper one word at a time. Walking quietly so as to not disturb him, Sarah crept up the gentle slope of the cavern's entrance, stopping beside the Atylanen scribe.

 "What are you writing, Kanaa?"

"It is nothing. Just a way to soften the mind after the interminable sharpness that travel requires," he replied, not looking up from his work until he had finished whatever he was writing on it.

 Sarah sat down next to him, the top of her head just coming up to his shoulder. She couldn't help but to glance at the paper that Kanaa was writing on. Although she wasn't able to make out the details from a short look, she could see that the parchment was not an isolated sheet, but bound together with others in a small book. The ink on the page was sparse and irregularly grouped, nothing like a journal.

 Kanaa noticed her peeking. "I get the notion that you will stay until you know what I am writing," he said, smiling wryly. "Do not worry. I am pleased that you take interest in it." 

He passed the crudely bound book to her, and she realized that the short lines of writing weren't meant to be full sentences at all; it was poetry. It whispered romantically in the serenity of nature, the glistening of black water in moonlight, the crisp taste of the autumn air, the calm stillness of snow-capped mountains. The language was quiet, soothing, simple, and within that simplicity was beauty.

"It's lovely, Kanaa," she said, handing the book back to him. "Have you written poetry for very long?"

 He shrugged, causing flecks of snow to tumble off of his fur-covered shoulders. "In a manner of speaking. I started years ago, but I only write when it strikes me, so I have not written much compared to the length of time that it has been written over," he explained, "Though I would not have it any other way."

Sarah hushed for a moment. "My father wrote poetry, back in Dominum. I don't think I've seen someone else's poetry firsthand since his."

"What did he write about?"

"We had a hard life in Ordomartyn. He worked as a tanner; every day he would come home filthy and wet, and there was nothing that could get the smell out for good," she laughed softly. "Martynism asks that every follower becomes literate, so that they can read Martyn's scripts for themselves. My father used it for poetry as well. He was a romantic, and wrote about his climate, much like yourself, but he wrote about the city, and his work. He loved them both."

"He sounds like a good man."

"He was."

A somber quiet settled into place, and the two of them embraced it for a time before casting it off like an old coat.

"What is your father like?" Sarah asked.

"I do not have a father," he said before hesitating. "Not a father in the human sense, at least. Atylanens are not born as you are. When an Atylanen reaches maturity at thirteen, they may carve a small figure out of ice. If done with enough care and attention, during the new moon it will be granted life as Atylanen; the carver becomes the child's vartijan, their keeper, much as your father and mother would be. Sometimes the statue is not granted life, and the Atylanen will have to start again and wait until the next new moon."

Sarah stared at him, lips parted in fascination. "You live such curious lives. It sounds lonely."

"It is. Being vartijan is as much of a time of growth for you as it is for the child, but even with the many times of uncertainty that accompany caring for a child, circumstances have a way of working out in the end." He paused. "Much like the nature in my writing. The land has gone through so much, and has grown just as we have grown, and even with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it has still managed to be a beautiful world." He exhaled deeply, lost in thought.

"The world hasn't done it alone," Sarah asserted. "The world is only as it is because of us. We have done right by it in many places, and wronged it in many more. It won't fix itself."

Kanaa nodded. "Indeed; though wherever we may be taking the world, I intend to enjoy the vistas as we go."

With that, the pair fell silent, watching the last slivers of light remaining outside leave as the view faded into the darkness.
 

Time passed, as it has a habit of doing, and the group resumed their journey at first light. If time was going to pass all on its own no matter what, they would have to make efficient use of it, though the glacial climate of the Barrek Federation did its best to impede their travels with torrential snowstorms and slicing winds. Minutes built into hours, and hours into days. The threat of the Vandr Kalde hid behind every snapping branch and shuffle of snow.

"I've been thinking-" Daniel began.
"A dangerous pastime," Andrek poked.

"Ha, ha," the soldier responded dryly. "I've been thinking about if we should name our group."

Andrek chuckled. "What for? Want to recreate some of your favorite fables? Brave heroes, valiant knights? To be fair to you, though, we've already got our damsel in distress, isn't that right Azai?"

"I'll put you in distress, if you're not careful," she replied flatly.

"Not exactly," Daniel said, getting back on topic. "Just thought it might be a good idea to have a story straight before someone asks us what we're up to. Not exactly an inconspicuous bunch, eh? A roving band of adventurers might be the most reliable cover that we can muster for ourselves."

Andrek tilted his head. "Not a bad scheme, actually. Do we really need a name for our merry little group to sell it, though?"

"Probably not," Daniel admitted, "but it could be fun, right? Makes it all feel a bit more important than being glorified couriers, while we're at it."

A bestial growl interrupted the prospective conversation, and they stopped their march. No one spoke, all attention focused on locating the growl's source.

"Bear?" Daniel whispered after a moment, longrifle at the ready. 

The man that burst through the treeline along their flank firmly rejected the soldier's hopeful assumption. Forced to abruptly take in their attacker, they saw that it wasn't a man at all, not entirely. His hair was matted, overgrown and twisted, far longer than most normal men would be able to muster. He was tall and muscular, though neither aspect fully rivaled Kanaa's Atylanen heritage. In each hand, he gripped a crude ax, worn and battered from an unknown history of chopping and hacking. Impossibly, he wore almost no clothing, bare skin exposed for the ravenous cold, but that frigid winter air rolled off of his skin in wisps of steam. A Vandr Kalde, in all of its obscene glory. It roared as it charged, revealing a brutal set of animalistic fangs, and two more matching barbarians crashed onto the road shortly behind it.

Daniel's natural reflexes - or training, whichever it was - fixed his rifle on its own and fired on the first berserker, the ear-shattering boom thundering across the frigid wastes. Death caught the barbarian at a glorious three hundred and seventy meters per second. The Vandr Kalde was laid flat in an instant, the spinning shot hitting him square in the chest before his dense mass slammed into the hard earth with a resounding thud.

The second attacker was not far behind, and though it did not have to face down the barrel of Daniel's longrifle, it was met with the far more intimidating, eight foot tall Atylanen, broadaxe in hand and teeth bared in a snarl. Despite this imposing challenge, the Vandr Kalde did not break stride, frothing and yelling as he threw himself at Kanaa. His axes narrowly missed the enormous man, who dodged with surprising speed before bringing his own mighty blade down onto his opponent's exposed back, sinking deep into its flesh, severing its spine and killing it instantly.

It should have killed it instantly, at least, were it a mortal man - but they were Vandr Kalde, and the lacerated warrior whirled its twin axes towards Kanaa in a blinding fury, managing to scrape across his leather-braced skin. The Atylanen gave a short grunt of pain, dislodging his weapon from the Vandr Kalde's back in preparation to bring it down once more, but it was devastated by the long black blade of Azai's greatsword before Kanaa could strike again, which she pushed through the savage's chest with great effort.

By this point, the third attacker had been closing in, though its advance had been greatly impeded by scorching bolts of fire from Andrek's ensorcelled hands. It dodged a couple of them with alarming haste, but the burning onslaught was impossible to avoid entirely. The flaming spheres struck his skin, forcing him to stumble and slow, but the Vandr Kalde's endurance was unmatched by even the fiercest beasts that the dwarf had encountered before.

Its grimy hair was even alight in multiple places as it reached the fight, eager to tear apart Andrek and devour his broken body - but Sarah stood between the berserker and his prize, warhammer in hand, immovable. It raised an ax to bear down on the Martynist in a powerful chop, howling and clamoring, but Sarah thrusted the hammer forward with hidden strength. It collided with the bestial creature's nose, shattering it into bloody mush and blunting the assault. 

Kanaa and Azai were still locked in combat with the second barbarian, though the wretched thing was decisively outmatched. Though it had survived the Atylanen's first cleave of his broadaxe, it was in no condition to muster an offensive beyond a wild flailing. Azai's wicked greatsword had pinned it in place and allowed her to keep out of range of the screaming warrior's swiping axes. Within the span of a second, she withdrew her sword from the monster's chest, spun it around deftly, and drove it sickeningly into the throat of the injured savage, at last muting its incessant yawp and reducing it into a watery gurgle. With the unrelenting speed of a born killer, she pulled the blade out of its body once more, heaved it above her head, and brought it down directly into the Vandr Kalde's head with a scream of her own. The savage was silenced for good, its unworthy blood tarnishing the white snow, and Azai was satisfied at last.

Daniel, his years of training helping him in a way that natural instinct could not, had reloaded his longrifle in opportune time, as he had innumerable times before. With the Azai and Kanaa slaying their foe, Sarah and Andrek's yet remained. A twitch of movement, away from the ongoing battle, caught his trained eye; the first attacker, the one that he had shot dead in the chest at close range with a longrifle, was moving. 

Daniel couldn't believe what he was seeing as the monster heaved itself off the ground. It was, as far as the soldier could surmise, blessedly out of fighting shape. It stumbled as it tried to regain its footing, mumbling as if it, too, was baffled that it was still alive. Wasting no further time for it to miraculously steady itself, Daniel aimed his longrifle at the revenant savage and fired for a disturbing second time, the familiar deafening gunshot serving to announce to the entire wilderness that this Vandr Kalde had, at last, died.

The soldier drew his sword and turned to the last duel between Sarah and the lone berserker, but before he could get involved, the Martynist was finishing the fight. She sustained a nasty gash across her arm and cried out, but this seemingly did nothing to impede her fervent grip on her hammer; if anything, she went on the offensive, matching the barbarian's roars with shouts of her own. The warhammer bludgeoned into the beast's chest once, then again, then again in a furious storm, cracking ribs and crushing organs each time with blistering speed. 

Although it endured the repeated blows of the Martynist, the Vandr Kalde stumbled backwards and fell onto the icy earth. Without hesitation, Sarah stomped her foot onto the vulnerable foe, leaving it pressed firmly into its hairy stomach. One ax had fallen out of the monster's grasp, and she had no interest in permitting it to regain control of the other. She brought her vengeful hammer down in an unbroken chain of sundering swings, again and again and again, the chest and the neck and the skull, again and again and again, the ribs and the shoulders and the face, cracking and breaking and shattering until it laid still, mushy and unrecognizable. Sarah's lungs ravaged themselves, gasping and heaving to meet the demands of her zealous assault. Just as it had been at the clearing, the ground around them was crimson and marred, though this time it was at the hands of the righteous, the hands of the vindicator, the hands of Martyn.

Sarah spat onto the brutalized corpse of the Vandr Kalde before her, the saliva mixing with the rapidly cooling blood. "Death is too good for you, monster. Consider it Martyn's blessing." She spun towards the forest that their attackers had ambushed them from, warhammer held aloft. "I'M COMING FOR YOU, PROFANE CREATURES!"

"If there are any more out there, I don't think that they'd bother hiding by now," Daniel disarmed. "Gunshots would've attracted them anyway - might still be attracting them."

"Good," the Martynist barked. "We will crush them."

"No, not good," Daniel refuted. "We rang the dinner bell. Could be hundreds of them out there, for all we know. We need to move."

Sarah kept her gaze fixed on the forest, that miserable forest that harbored unholy savages, then whirled away from it with a frustrated growl, relinquishing her fervor and rejoining the group as they hastily fled down the road.

That evening, they went out of their way to find a more secluded position to make camp, lest more of the Vandr Kalde find them. The group gathered together before withdrawing to their own activities for the evening.

"Two rounds from a longrifle at spitting distance," Daniel shook his head. "Never seen it before in my life, not from a man."

"That was no man," Sarah corrected. "It may have been once, but make no mistake: whatever spirit it communed with took their wits and their soul, replacing both with corrupt strength."

"It died the same as a man did," Azai said idly as she honed the edge of her freshly baptized greatsword. "It took an extra swing, but it died all the same. They are clumsy, blind, pathetic little things, and we killed them as such."

"Do not become overconfident," Kanaa advised. "There were but three of them. What if we had fought six?"

"We didn't fight six," Azai rebuffed. "We fought three. Three that caught us unprepared and unaware of their endurance; they have overplayed their hand, and we are better equipped for another encounter."

"At any rate, we should be able to avoid another encounter, at least for the time being. We should arrive at Frostmaw before last light tomorrow," Andrek said. "I think a warm bed, some proper walls, and a stiff drink could do us all some good."

After a day that was perhaps too eventful for their own good, the Bastion being within their grasp was a much needed beacon of respite. After a short time more, each member retired for the night in anticipation of the comforts that tomorrow would bring.