In the Ruins

For an instant Anna thought a pale shimmer of light illuminated the frater’s slack face, pouring over him as water pours over rocks in a stream. Blessing shrieked and scrambled backward. Heribert’s body jerked. His eyes snapped open. He sat up, folding forward and coughing dirt out of his mouth. He wiped dirt from his face and, wondering, shook it from his hands.

“Where?” he said hoarsely. “Where is he gone, the one I have been waiting for? His husk is here, but he is lost.”

They all stared at him.

“You were dead,” said Jonas.

“Was I?” he asked. He got his feet under him, slipped once, and Blessing dashed forward and helped him stand.

“I said you couldn’t die! I did! I did! You’re not dead. Are you?”

He covered his eyes with a hand. Blessing clung to his other arm, wiping her filthy face on his tattered sleeve.

“The rest are dead,” said Berthold suddenly. “Ai, God.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” said Jonas desperately.

Berthold shook his head. “I know!” he said bitterly, gesturing toward the fallen stones and sunken hill. “It was in God’s hands, not ours. We’ll die if we stay here. My lungs hurt. There’s nothing to drink. This ash covers everything. I can’t tell if it’s day or evening or morning. I don’t know where we are, but we must leave this valley and find a place of safety.”

Brother Heribert turned, still awkward as he gained control of his limbs. He stared at Berthold for a while as if sorting through what possible meaning his words might have. Anna was still too numb to speak, but she did notice how very blue his eyes were, startlingly so in contrast to his pale, dirty face. She’d never noticed his eyes before.

“I know how to leave this valley,” he said, his voice still hoarse, not really like Heribert’s voice at all. “Follow me.”

2

IVAR had never experienced rain like the downpour that drowned them now. If he turned his head up, he wouldn’t be able to breathe. He and Erkanwulf huddled under the spreading boughs of an oak tree in the great forest called the Bretwald as the storm churned the path first to mud and then into a stream of boiling, frothing water. They had nowhere to shelter, no one to beg for help, and plenty of trouble keeping their mounts from bolting.

“Look there!” cried Erkanwulf, shaking as he pointed.

Out in the forest lights bobbed, weaving among trees obscured by the pounding rain and the curtain of night. The young soldier took a step forward, meaning to call out to them, but Ivar grabbed his cloak and yanked him back against the tree.

“Hush, you idiot! No natural fire can stay lit in this downpour! Don’t you remember who attacked us before?”

“Ai, God! The Lost Ones! We’re doomed.”

“Hush!”

It was too late. The lights turned their way.

“Come on!” Ivar splashed out onto the path, jerked up hard when his horse refused to budge. He grabbed the reins with both hands and yanked and tugged and swore, but in an argument of weight, the horse won, and it refused to leave the shelter of the tree.

“What do we do?” gasped Erkanwulf.

“Abandon the horses.”

“We can’t!”

“Is it better to be dead?”

The lights wove a new pattern, circling in toward their prey, and he heard a shout, a very human shout, and then the most horrifying and peculiar and inhuman sound that had ever assailed him.

“What is that?” Erkanwulf whispered.

A beast’s vast cry rolled over them. The sound made Ivar’s heart freeze, and Erkanwulf’s mount reared up, then slipped and staggered sideways, dragging Erkanwulf with it away down the slope.

The gale hit so hard and unexpectedly that Ivar actually was blown off his feet, and only his mount’s stubborn footing saved him from washing away down the foaming canal of water that the path had suddenly become. Wind cracked through the forest, splintering trees everywhere. Trunks crashed to the ground, giants falling to earth. The noise was a hammer, its echo ringing on and on as he cowered on his knees under the oak tree. All he could do was pray. Boughs shaken loose tumbled everywhere. Leaves whipped him in the face.

A crack splintered through the howl of the wind. A huge branch split off the oak tree and plummeted to earth, striking Erkanwulf’s horse on the head. The beast went down as if flattened. Erkanwulf slipped in the mud as the reins jerked taut, and somehow got caught under the horse’s shoulder as the ground gave way.

Ivar crept over to Erkanwulf, but because of the slickness of the mud and the angle of the ground and the thick tangle of branches and leaves, he couldn’t budge the horse. The poor animal was dead, killed instantly.