Prologue Wind… There’s always wind… cold… incessant… chilling… wind…
Rurik pulled his knees in, his back pressed against the eroded walls of a derelict fortress. Doing so didn’t help. Nothing helped on a night like this, not even the thickness of his leather breastplate. His leggings were soaked. His face was worn. His hair snapped in the gales like a shredded flag. He shivered involuntarily.Before him came the crackling of a pitiful fire. It provided not the slightest warmth. The winds saw to that, flattening the flames, and threatening to tear them from the twigs that fed them.
A meager light was all that was spared. It flickered sporadically, occasionally bringing Rurik out of the darkness. He sat there, his arms wrapped about his knees, the flames glinting off the iron shackles clamped about his wrists. The chain between them had been severed; the remnants dangled from both ends.
The wind pulls upon the edges of my mind, draws away my fervor, my very will. It feeds without mercy. Its breath courses beneath my leather, its fingers raise tracks of flesh across my skin. I’m but naked in its grasp.
There arose a surge of wind, its arrival marked with a whoop akin to that of a massive bat’s wings. It took the flames with it, leaving him behind as nothing more than a shadowed figure in the night.
Rurik watched the hearth die with a look that fought between scorn and fatigue.
Fitting…
For awhile he remained motionless, finding no merit in rekindling the fire. It would die like it had countless times before, leaving him to restart anew. Eventually, he would either succeed, or else feel the hopelessness seep in and lead him into hypothermia. The thought of the latter kept him on the edge, but alive.
He crawled to the ashes.
Rurik glanced about, but the unfaltering gale distracted his vision. All he could discern was the wide ledge he knelt upon, and the silhouette of the castle’s lone spire rising on his left, towering above his shielding wall, and blotting out all of his peripheral. Before him, diminishing into the shadows of the land, stretched the indistinct shapes of lesser structures such as his. Nothing else could be seen. The night was unnaturally dark, as though the force of the winds had ripped even the stars from their fixed positions.
An odd rattling caught his ear – the twigs. Rurik looked down to find them scrambling towards the edge. He saved what he could. Taking the remains, he rebuilt the fire upon the site of his last one. There was no lingering heat, no glowing embers, nor even smoldering ash. The wind had taken it all.
He turned over several of the surrounding rocks –the debris of deteriorated walls – until he found the two that would suffice. Huddling close to the timber, he tried in vain to put himself between the wind and his project.
Rurik clicked the rocks together, over and over, occasionally releasing a fleeting spark. The gusts would take his wood, forcing him to rebuild, but he didn’t give up. Every trial was followed by a harder pounding of rock on rock, and an increasing amount of sparks.
Somehow I do not succumb to the elements. Somehow I do not submit. A grim price in the trade for freedom, but one I reluctantly pay…
How long has it been?…No,…has it been only hours?…only hours since I happened upon this harrowed place, this safe haven for thieves, for outcasts and pirates? Yes, shelter no doubt lurks within, yet I do not trust the fortress to be entirely abandoned. There are worse evils than an unforgiving gale…
Despair was not what finally stopped him. Something had caught his eye – torchlight, several torches no more than a mile beyond the battlements. Rurik watched the drifting balls of light slowly traverse the land. There was no chance that they were simply a party of travelers. Not tonight. Whoever they were, they were not out by choice. True, they may have been returning to some shelter, but Rurik doubted it. They were looking for someone. They were looking for him.
Like them…
It didn’t take long for Rurik to realize they were approaching the fortress.
He looked down at his bonds, the memories playing in his mind. Terror flashed briefly in his eyes.
Rurik suddenly became consciously aware as to the amount of noise he had been making. The thought held him frozen for a moment. Had his efforts caught their ears? He consoled himself with the thought that the wind had most likely drowned out his endeavors. But had they seen the fire from out there? He had seen their torches, after all.
Grudgingly, he forewent the fire, and tossed the rocks aside. Their tumult seemed deafening. He slid back into the corner, his ears acute to every grating sound that he made.
Damnable wind, let it feed.
A few seconds after he was situated; just as he began to lament his luck, to suffer the unforgiving gales without cover, without fire; just as Rurik curled up in his embitterment, he realized something was wrong: the grating hadn’t stopped.
Something was nearby.
Something had heard him.
There came a growl, heavy, rumbling, formed from deep within the throat. It was followed by the trailing expulsion of breath from the snout of some large beast. With that sound, and its intensity, Rurik was warned as to its position. It had paced along the other side of the wall he leaned against. Whatever it was, it would be rounding the corner on his left at any moment.
Rurik took to action, making haste down his right flank. Not eight paces away thrust a small outcropping, what must have been a dividing wall at one time, but now stood no more than three feet high. Rurik vaulted the barrier and used it for cover. He flattened his back against its stones and sunk out of sight. As a last minute precaution, he found the hilt of his sword, drew it, and held its curved blade against his chest.
A stillness settled, with only the endless current of wind filling the void. Even the scraping footfalls were lost to him.
In that stillness it came, shrouded in shadow, the form of a massive animal. It prowled slowly, the moonlight glinting a dark violet hue off its muscular back.
It made its way to the abandoned fire. Rurik held his ground, gripping his hilt ever tighter in apprehension. The beast sniffed the air. It pawed the ground, scattered the twigs, searching. It was only a matter of time before it found him. The scrapping. The breathing. The ever-present growl that reverberated from deep within the creature’s throat. Rurik didn’t have to look to know its size.
He made a run for it, never looking back, never bothering to check if it pursued him. Alongside the wall he ran, vaulting sections of the collapsed edifice as he went. He ran out of ground in seconds, only to jump the gap between him and the neighboring rooftop.
Onward he fled. Over upturned stones he vaulted. Over rifts between fortress structures he leapt. Roof tiles gave in his wake, plummeting into the cloisters below. His hair pulled before him as the wind surged by to outrun him.
Behind him came the creature, bounding huge expanses, churning brick and mortar in its undertow. Its shoulders rippled in his wake.
Rurik reached the end of the rooftops, the end of his escape. The next stretch of shingles continued on several levels below him. The nearest building, a watchtower, stood at the threshold, its stained-glass windows cut off by the gapping chasm. There was no chance of making it across.
Rurik didn’t stop. He didn’t hesitate. He reached the edge and leapt. His legs whirled on, searching for the lost ground. His arms came swinging up over his shoulders in great arcs. His scimitar launched out before him.
Blade and man shattered through the panes.
By luck, his hands met with the metal rim of a chandelier as a shower of colored glass rained down into the tower’s mess hall. His sword clattered somewhere against the stone floor below him.
Rurik’s momentum swung the chandelier forward, bringing it dangerously close to exiting out the far side of the tower. Rurik held on for all he was worth. Overhead the chandelier’s chain groaned, threatening to give at any moment and bring chunks of the ceiling down with it.
Like a pendulum, the chandelier began to swing back.
At that moment, the creature came through the opening after its prey. Its claws splayed. Its muscles flexed. Its arms swung around to wrap about its target. It caught the chandelier’s chain instead, its whole body looming just over Rurik’s head. The beast continued on unhindered, smashing into the window panes of the opposite wall. The chain gave. The ceiling caved. Rurik lost hold of the chandelier as it rocketed forward, taking wood framing and stone with it in its departure. Without ceremony, Rurik plummeted into the chamber, a long wooden table breaking his fall. In a shower of fresh debris he came down, breaking the table in half upon impact...
~End of Prologue~
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