Chapter XIV:
The Thousand Year Fate of Lovers
Kurt awoke, glimpsing the swift hooves below, a rider dismounting before him, gray haired, t shirt and blue jeans. John.
He fell back to his sleep, his memories returning him to hours before, when John set out on Canute; Grimnar and Embla gathering ammunition from the sledge, then the first of those giant foes appearing from the mist.
He swung the ettinslayer between their necks, their ettin bodies coming quicker, as fire rained from above, vaighlings casting black wings over the sacred grove, then wafted a smell he had known only as a boy during the war.
After he smelt it there was nothing to his memory but a void.
He fell in that abyss, lifted by an invisible hand. Growing more conscious he muttered a few words in Varglish as if speaking to Grimnar. “Wohith ar thei yewendet?”
“Speak Inglish,soldier.”
John stared into the face of his old teacher, stern but kind; weary but ready to trudge on.
“You’re finally awake. That ettin-gas is no joke.”
Kurt recalled the vinegary smell.
“The gas…It took me out...and Embla…Grimnar, Kalendros? Where did they go?”
John lit a cigarette. They were shrouded in a natural white mist, a glorious half orange moon above them, a frigid air met them, Kurt welcoming the warmth of John’s cigarette.
“Kalendros is busy fighting off wastelings…But the others. Grimnar. The Herrenhausen.They were captured. Sent to the Eldermark.”
Kurt felt sick. “And a day on Earth is 100 years in the Eldermark...what will happen to them??”
John puffed his cigarette and said,“Kurt, these are times unlike any other. I can’t say what will come next…I’m of no use to be honest these days…”
He pointed his cig up towards a spiraling set of steps.
He explained how they were a mile above the Towering Sequioa, how Canute raced upwards to avoid artillery strikes from the vaighlings.
How the woods were besieged on all corners: the air by vaighlings, on the ground by the traitors of Bear Town, the ettin forces emboldened by news of Rammbock’s absence.
“You dropped this by the way…a piece of Rammbock.”
He handed him the Weever’s Eye. Buck stood behind them, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight, impatient.
“He’s getting antsy…I won’t keep him…Canute and I must be off, Kurt.”
“John…but where…let me come with you…I know it’s time to fight! I’ll die gladly if it means dying in battle with you!... In all honesty, It should have been me who was killed that night by the Old Oak! You have experience, I’ve spent my life trying to be as good as you were...”
“As I was? You speak your true feelings. Kurt, you have surpassed me! On that day by the Oak, yes, It should have been you.…But I subverted the ettin’s plans…That Eye gives its beholder the protection of the Weever’s ghost, his watchful gaze, his warnings…to pull it apart from my person, to pass it down to you meant that I gave up that protective power…knowingly. But why? Well…don’t make me say it…”
Kurt looked up to John, confused at his bashful face. He was always so sure, so confident and composed.
“Because…I…cared for you, Kurt. Right? Like a son. Never had one, had a daughter,but come on…You were ready. Ready to fight…but I made a mistake. I knew how much you admired me…Your singular devotion to fighting my cause…it was wrong. My cause was one only of revenge. If I never found the Eye, I would have killed you and all the other boys out there on the field for what Carolus’s forces did to my girls.
Look, you understand it’s more than just the war. You die now, and then what? The vaighlings…they’ll come back, again and again…it never ends. We have to end this cycle …We must strike at the source.”
“What is the source?” asked Kurt, the moon in his eyes.
“The Unghost. He has a temple out in the Eldermark. He has a body that he possesses and...” Buck was nudging them with his snout. “Alright,you damn ram,alright…I’m off…Ask Kalendros about the details. I can’t say where I’m going and don’t follow me…above us here’s the castle of Rammbock’s Heart…so I have been told…never been inside…but Kalendros insists this is the place for you before you meet Rammbock…”
Kurt nodded. “I…thanks, General.” He saluted John.
“Dammit, son.” John embraced him.
“Now, off you go…we will see each other soon enough, I reckon.”
Off rode John then on midnight-black Canute into the mist. Kurt looked up the steps to the towering gates of the torch bearing castle of Rammbock.
As he stepped up the stairs, three little shadows spoke, whispering. “Is Kurt going to be alright?” asked one of them.
“He has to be, right?” said another.
+++++
Kurt was guided by Buck, prancing ahead of him, the long stairs stretching on and on,the frigid air biting, their path only visible by flaming torches not unlike Deathbrand in length and ornamentation.
Deathbrand had never felt heavier to Kurt, but as his legs trembled and exhaustion began to call him to his knees, Buck manifested behind him, pushing him up and over one last step. Twelve torches circled a speckled blue stoned platform Kurt and Buck rested upon.
They were immersed in the shadow of an egg-shaped edifice, a fortress of an imperceptible hue to man’s limited senses, though Kurt supposed it to be a brilliant red.
Standing before the castle gates looked to be the tusk of a whale-sized beast.
It was held in position by a man, whose lips were primed at its narrow end.
The man pressed his lips to the horn, the sound blowing forth like a thousand thundercracks, his breath like a tempest rushing, summoning cutting frost and lightning from the high heavens.
Kurt braced against the horn's blast, its noise in his pulver ear of incalculable pain. He gripped the ear, or what was left of it, blood flowing hot and free.
A reached hand gripped Kurt’s head, raising him to his feet. The hand was ice cold, and as the palm shifted to his pulver ear he felt the pain numbed. He heard only from his remaining ear, the pulver ear was amputated now, soldered by the chilling touch of the hand.
The horn’s blaster dwarfed Kurt, so that he figured that it was not a human before him but a High Ettin, graceful and beautiful he was, his skin a soft shade of blue.
“Kurt Eisenforst,” spoke the giant, “You stand at the gates of Castle Rammbock, the Heart Castle. No impurity may pass through.”
“Are you an ettin?” asked Kurt.
The giant said nothing. Kurt took notice of his manner of dress. It was South-Vargian, leather trousers black with blue stitching.
A cap on his head carried a brilliant golden feather, his hair long and tangled, blonde, the eyes too shone with an amber glow.
“I am Iseld, the trumpeter of Icewild. I have been informed of your arrival by the lady of the house. She tells me that a friend of yours is within the castle.”
“A friend?...who?” said Kurt.
“Come, come,” said Iseld, his voice tinted with a Mountainous Vargian accent, low and bright.
Buck bounded ahead of them, pushing forward at the iron gates.
Entering the castle, Kurt craned his head up towards the ceiling.
It appeared to be higher than the heavens.
It was a brilliant dark blue inscribed with swirling clusters of keyholes like stars, loosing threads of golden light down to the otherwise darkling hall.
Iseld ushered a hand forward.
“Your friend waits in the infirmary.”
“Infirmary?”
“Indeed, Kurt Eisenforst. Many injured from the battlefield rest here.”
“Then I should be fighting alongside them…send me to the frontline…I mean it.”
“I know you mean it…no,Kurt Eisenforst, you do not understand what lies on the frontline…it is not mere bloodshed, death. It is undeath. An undying war.”
“I don’t understand…”
“In due time, you will…I know how deeply you wish to be left in peace…I am a kindred spirit in that regard…ah, Kalendros, I was hoping you’d pop out eventually.”
Kalendros stood under a bell-shaped archway, his eyes sunken, his face gaunt.
“Follow him, I must attend to my post,” said Iseld bowing and turning away.
“Thank you, Iseld,” said Kalendros bowing.
Kalendros and Kurt stepped past the archway, meeting drawn curtains in dozens and dozens of rows, Kurt glancing at the sallow faced men, eyes shut and lying supine on little beds.
“I have been accompanied in all of this, I should be honest with you, in these days where little shadows have been following you about...”
Kalendros pulled aside a curtain. In the hospital bed was a skeleton of a man, dark holes instead of eyes, the hair loft white wispy strands.
He terrified Kurt, though he felt his heart move to pity with Kalendros’ hand on his shoulder.
Bedside was the figure of a boy, a little shadow: featureless, a silhouette, a suggestion of flesh and blood, but as the curtain was pulled, it startled the shadow, and revealed a more distinct body, its dark hair and eyes, dressed in the red uniform of the Taboo Smashers Child Army.
“I know you,” Kurt said quietly, carefully studying the boy’s face.
The boy said nothing, shaken, as if caught in a forbidden act.
Yes, you’re…my old comrade…you’re Etzel Galvan!! Truly Etzel as I remember him!”
Kalendros nodded. “Your eyes do not lie, Kurt Eisenforst. This is indeed, Etzel Galvan, though he may only be a shade to us now. Still, he sees, he touches and feels and is granted this clairvoyancy to understand what peril lies for his future.”
“Does he know about Verity? His fate?” said Kurt, still in disbelief.
“He knows what he must know. It is ‘par for the course’ so to speak for a child who has only known horror all his eight years on Earth.”
“And what good will it do him to know this? Will it change his future…or our past?”
“We are living in his future, Kurt Eisenforst. And his past.”
“Explain…”
“I can only say this: as you already have learned, a day on earth is approximately, 100 years in the Eldermark. The shade of this boy left him on earth and he has wandered for many more years than that.”
“So is he real...or just a memory?”
“Have you forgotten?...No, if I say more, it will harm you and him. Yes, he is more than simply a distant memory, and I will hold my tongue for now.”
“So...this shade is here with us…but what happened in the Eldermark? To Embla and Grimnar?”
“Kurt, this is why you have come here.”
“This is why I have come to the infirmary? To see my old friend Etzel’s memory? Iseld told me already.”
“No. Kurt, the shade is not the friend Iseld spoke of,” said Kalendros now looking down upon the pitiable man on the bed.
“Who then...?” said Kurt, unease washing over him. Kalendros looked up from the man and sighed. Etzel’s little shadow, the boy from the battlefield, stepped around to the opposite side of the bed. He pulled a glittering artifact, a steely branch of quickore, from a second drawn curtain: an axe. The Weever’s Tail thought Kurt.
“You recognize the weapon, the axe. But his face? Now do you see, Kurt? He was there for centuries before we found him. A day and a half on earth.”
Kurt looked upon the man in the bed. “That’s not him. That’s not him!” said Kurt, shouting.
“Etzel’s shade found him…in a cave along the Deep Crick Hot Springs, a resort inhabited by ettin princelings and their mistresses.
He was led there by a caravan of penitents, the white hooded souls of Uthurs Quarter-tongue. Your friends were made prisoner by the princelings after the first fifty years… allowed to live within the Hot Springs, but what happened further is unclear. What happened to the woman, the princelings would not divulge when I spoke to them. And…he is likwise unwilling to speak on the matter," said Kalendros looking to the dying man.
“So...Embla…is still there, in the hot springs?” asked Kurt.
The man on the bed groaned.
The others watched as the man quivered, mustering his entire strength to say: “Yes she is still there. Her bones. And our son’s bones. They wouldn’t let me bury them.”
“Who…who did this??” said Kalendros shocked at the sudden speech of the living corpse.
“It was the beast...the Herrenhausen girl. Verity. She took them away from me. Killed my wife and baby.” His withered frame turned to Kurt and said, in wisp of a voice: “Our road is a hard one...”
Watched by Kurt, Kalendros and Etzel’s shade, Grimnar died in the Castle Rammbock infirmary.