God Within Us

THE township of Hlotopol was marked by its citadel - a tall, proud beast of stone that rose loftily above the rest of the town and wooden ringwall that encircled it. Vast expanses of tilled fields surrounded the town from three directions, and the Cherech lay to the west, spanned by a single great bridge which had taken two generations to build.

The only approach to the citadel was a long, winding trail up a hill, and then across a ditch filled with iron spikes. And from all directions, marksmen from the citadel’s stout rounded towers could rain fire, stones, and arrows upon any attackers with impunity. And once any attackers cut their way across the ditch and passed through the gatehouse, the citadel was a maze of tight, easily-defensible hallways that would make invaders bleed for every wing they seized. When his scouts first came upon the town and relayed what they heard and saw, Goran feared they would lose hundreds in the assault - hundreds that could never be replaced in good time.

When they struck the town, they lost a mere dozen.

The harvests had come in early, and so there were hundreds of freeholders and serfs going to and fro with their wagons. With their force camped in the dense woods a mile off the road, it was all too simple to seize a band of farmers and their carts of wheat and roots. By the time the first guards realized the newly-arrived peasants at the gatehouse were wearing maille under their cloaks, it was too late. A few of Yasaman’s crossbowmen brought down the sentries before they could raise the alarm, and by the time the citadel stirred from its slumber, half a hundred horsemen were barreling through the town streets and the morning market.

Climbing hooks sailed over the walls of the citadel by the time the first arrows flew from the towers, and Heller’s men fell upon the gate with a ram they stashed in one of the farm wagons. The defenders hadn’t even the time to bar the citadel, so the doors crashed open on the first swing. Swords, mace, and axes clashed in a dozen hallways and along the battlements, but the men of the Company were armored and ready for killing, and the druzhina of the citadel was caught unawares.

By the time Goran rode through the opened gates and into the courtyard upon his white steed, it was all over. What druzhinniks remained had thrown down their weapons, the town’s magister sent a runner meekly asking mercy in surrender, and the blue griffon flapped defiantly against the gray morning sky.

Even Heller was surprised at how quickly the town had fallen. The Solarian met him in the courtyard, his enameled breastplate and sword smeared with gore. “I never thought it could be so easy,” the commander huffed, as Goran dismounted and walked with him to the hall. “By sun and stars, they didn’t stand a chance. Your people do not fight well at all, it would seem.”

One of the Company men passed by them, dragging a body towards the pile of corpses in the courtyard. When Goran saw the corpse’s face, he realized it was a boy, barely on the cusp of becoming a man. A servant. A potboy, most like.

“You needn’t worry - it will get harder,” he spoke back to Heller, his voice bitter. “By the Lightning-Lord’s favor we took them by complete surprise, and the garrison was a skeleton crew - Radomir must be out in the field, and he’ll surely return for his lands.”

“Let him come,” sneered Heller as they passed into the shadows of the hall. “Even if he has ten for every one of us, we could turn them back with ease behind these walls.”

I do not intend for him to live that long, thought Goran. The lord’s high seat was vacant, and the men were busy looting all that wasn’t nailed down - tapestries, silverware, furniture, even armor and arms that sat untouched in the stores. But first, I will take everything he loves.

“Heller,” he said, “Go through the cellars and hall, and root out everyone you find - especially any family of the boyar. Have Salar sweep the rest of the citadel, and Fynn gather up whoever is of note in town: the magister, merchants, priests, all of them. Take care to not bring death where none seek it - after all, these might well be your subjects in good time.”

Once Heller had stomped off to busy himself with shouting at his lessers, Goran found himself wandering the quiet halls. A few servants scurried quickly past him, their heads bowed low. He wondered whether they recognized him, and as he climbed higher and higher around one of the stout towers his mind wandered. The steps had seemed so much higher when he had last come to Hlotopol. But then again, the summers had also seemed warmer, and the tapestries brighter, and the world more alive, and filled yet with promise.

How could it not have been so? Back then, he had still been the heir to Gatchisk, still a prince. He sparred with a few of the junior druzhinniks in Hlotopol’s courtyard, though he had always felt they held back out of deference, or fear. Radomir had watched him from the shaded gallery, flanked by retainers and his daughter, a willowy girl with wide eyes and a quiet grace, three years his junior.

Talk of a match had hung about Hlotopol, and it was no coincidence Radomir’s daughter had been seated right next to him at the feast - though she could barely bring herself to meet his eyes, and spent most of her time meekly picking at her plate. His father Gvozden brooked none of the marriage talk, and dismissed the notion outright when it was brought up at the feast by his boyar.

The griffon does not lie with the hounds, his father had said with a wave of his hand, for Radomir’s father’s father had once kept the kennels for the House of Gatchisk. And the prince does not wed the scion of a lesser house.

Goran could still remember the cold, mocking edge in his father’s voice. He had thought himself so wise, so certain of his plans. Even then, Gvozden must have had Belnopyl in mind - must have dreamed of securing an alliance with the Grand Prince’s blood. But look how that turned out, Goran thought bitterly. His father had schemed and planned, only to see his own blood cast aside as the lesser, and forced to resort to bride-stealing as if he were some common brigand.

Reaching the top of the tower, he stepped out onto the battlements. The wind tugged at his cloak as he took in the view - the vast fields stretching out like a patchwork quilt, dotted with the flickering lights of distant homesteads. The black waters of the Cherech shimmered under the waning light, winding lazily through the land.

He turned his gaze northward, where the Cherech disappeared beneath the horizon, seeming to be swallowed up by the distant mists of the Gravemarsh. And somewhere beyond those mists lay that uncertain future which nagged incessantly in the dark places of his mind. Foreign boyars and courtiers, icy Svetopolk and his northerners, and Vasilisa above all else.

But that was his future - and his alone. How was he to convince the other commanders, convince them to fight for a land where there lay no reward, and for a woman none of them knew?

As night fell and the stars wheeled into the sky, Goran remained atop the tower, turning the dilemma over in his mind. He ran through the arguments he might make, the promises he could give, but each plan seemed fraught with risks. Yasaman was a born follower, more a sheep than any Jamshyd lion - he was one who could easily be swayed with enough time and pressure. Kassa would doubtless stand firmly against striking anywhere but Gatchisk. And Heller…

The Solarian would call me mad, he thought to himself. Because I am. Because I am following the words of a dead woman.

He discretely ordered a search for Cirina of Belnopyl among the camp followers the morning after she had come for him, but his men turned up neither hide nor hair of the walking corpse. For a while he wondered whether it had been a dream, or some madness born from the piling stresses of command, but then she appeared to him again, walking amidst a crowd of washerwomen in the column.

For whatever reason, the spirit remained, hidden in plain sight. But for all her stalking and magic, she never gave him any more words of wisdom or warning. Hours passed, and still, no answer to the question of the commanders came. All he could do was stare out into the darkness, where the lights of Hlotopol and the citadel’s torches slowly flickered to life.

By the time he made his descent from the tower, his officers had gathered the important denizens of the citadel and the town in the hall. There, he learned Radomir had gone off to witness the kurultai of the Khormchak Horde - frustratingly far from Goran’s blade, but also far enough to be a non-threat. But among those whom they had captured in the citadel were Radomir’s cousin and castellan Rolan, his wife Milyena…and the shy, willowy daughter Larissa, now a woman grown, and fierce to boot.

“My brothers are going to kill you,” spat Larissa of Hlotopol when she saw Goran. “But not before my husband flays you and all your eastern savages alive.”

Indeed, Radomir’s heir Yaropolk and his two sons remained at large in the field, laying siege to Gatchisk. And Larissa’s own husband, Stribor of Krich, was busy leading a campaign of fire and forage across the east to strip the land bare. But their men were far away and few in number - so they were welcome to try and take his hide and head, if they so wished.

Goran gave only a smile in reply to Larissa, then turned to the rest of the gathered folk in the hall. “You all know of me, and my claim,” he boomed. “I am Goran, son of Gvozden, and heir to Gatchisk. I have come to claim my lands as is my right, and to scatter all who have risen against the house of the griffon. Serve me well and true as you have my father for many years, and I will forgive you for your treason.”

“Treason?” sputtered Rolan, the veins in his neck swelling with rage. “You speak of treason? You, who fights alongside easterners and heretics? You, who sells your own land out to savages and abominations of every stripe and-”

Heller’s steel gauntlet slammed across the aged castellan’s face, driving him to his knees. Bloody teeth clattered upon the floor, and Rolan’s drivel fell curiously silent. The rest of the gathered men said nothing, standing glum with their heads bowed low as if they could disappear by being still for long enough. Then at length, each of them came forward one by one swearing to the Young Griffon their allegiance, and asking quietly for his clemency. No-one save for Radomir’s blood balked.

For their swift declarations and remorse, the magisters and merchants were seated alongside their liberators in the victory feast. Radomir’s stocks of roast game, fish, and rich imported wines fed his citadel’s conquerors well, and the Young Griffon presided over it all, seated at the high table with Heller, Fynn, Salar, and Radomir’s noble blood. Instead of idly picking at her plate as she had years ago, Larissa spent the feast burning holes in the side of Goran’s head with her smoldering gaze. When after a time her glowering, Rolan’s coughing, and Lady Milyana’s sobbing became tiresome, he ordered them to their cells.

As it happened, he soon found himself pulled away from the feast by loyal Fynn. The Klyazmite had received some hushed chirps from one of the guards stationed by the walls, and in the privacy of the hall’s half-shadowed wings, Fynn pressed a folded parchment into his hands, pressed with red wax, but bearing a Sanurian seal.

Kassa.

The letter was brief - but then, the Sanurian had always been a man of few words. But whether with few words or many, the news was both sweet and grim all the same. “Word from Kassa,” he spoke quietly to Fynn. “He works fast, our Sanurian. Sviatarsk is taken, and all of its outlying villages.”

“What about Yasaman?” asked Fynn in turn.

Goran ground his teeth. “He staggered up from Balai. Someone else had the bright idea of torching the place. No supplies, and no ships.”

No ships. That much was written plain as day. Balai had been a keystone to the whole invasion - its riverine vessels made up the only great fleet this far south and east along the Cherech, and on it he had staked hopes of being able to move swiftly across the land. Heavy merchant ships with good oarsmen would have carried them all the way to Gatchisk, and allowed them to outpace all but the swiftest of cavalry armies. Ships would also have given him swift passage to the north, to Belnopyl. Now they were gone - either at the bottom of the Cherech, or in the hands of whoever torched and looted Balai.

He crumpled up the parchment in both hands, and cast it over to Fynn. “I told Heller this campaign would get harder. Now it really begins.”

Fynn’s eyes flicked upward, searching his Grand Captain’s face for direction. Goran thought on the matter, and eventually spoke.

“Keep this business quiet for now,” he muttered. His voice was a rasp against the buzz of the hall behind them - the revelry was growing, roars of drunken laughter and clattering plates echoed down the stone walls. “We will talk of his at the war council tomorrow morn. For now, let the others celebrate. Let them think we’re invincible a while longer.”

Fynn gave a curt nod, and tucked the crumpled letter into his tunic before vanishing back into the candlelight of the feast. Goran took a long look at the throng of feasting warriors, their faces flushed with victory and wine. The hall swayed with songs in half a dozen different tongues, but none of the celebrations stirred his dead appetite. The absence of Balai’s fleet gnawed at him, like a festering wound beneath armor.

He kept his disappointment hidden, and quietly slipped away from the revelry, winding through the dimly-lit corridors towards the boyar’s chambers. Radomir’s bed awaited him, a grand and heavy thing adorned with silk curtains and heavy pillows. There was a great joy in claiming it - planting himself there, to take that wretched man’s own home, his own bed. He had half a mind to have one of his men bring said wretched man’s daughter to warm his bed, but set the thought aside. No, not again.

He lay alone in the darkness for what felt like hours, staring at the dark canopy overhead. The thick drapery cast strange shadows by the flickering firelight of the hearth, reminding him of his little fears of monsters in the dark growing up. Only they were not such little fears anymore - now they were real, along with magic, spirits, and dead talking things.

Sleep came excruciatingly slowly. His thoughts churned relentlessly, visions of lost ships and burning towns mingling with too many blurred faces - all the specters of the past, all of them slowly returning to memory.

And when he finally drifted into sleep, the dreams returned.

It was the same damnable dream every time.

He found himself clad in heavy, golden armor, riding on the back of a destrier, spurring it madly across a field choked with bodies and ash. The sky above was black as ink, save for a single, blazing star streaking across it, trailing a golden line in its wake. It plummeted toward the distant horizon with terrifying speed, and cast the world in a terrible red glow. He rode hard and fast, but he could not escape it - could not escape the feeling that the star was coming for him, coming to obliterate him and everyone he loved.

When the star struck the earth, the ashen ground shuddered and split asunder, and from the great chasm there exploded a wave of hungry darkness. It swallowed everything - the dead, the sky, and even the air itself. The void surged for him, and for a brief moment he felt nothing but cold terror. Then it hit, he was lost, and the endless black was all he knew.

Goran jolted awake, gasping for breath. Sweat beaded on his brow, and his limbs felt leaden, as if that dark wave had left its weight behind in his body. The fire in the hearth had dwindled to embers, casting long, skeletal shadows across the room. He groaned, pushing himself up, every muscle aching as though he’d spent the night in chains.

“Demons take this bed,” he muttered. Perhaps Radomir’s own spiteful cruelty had been born by nights spent in ill sleep beneath those uncomfortable sheets. But it wasn’t just the bed. The omen lingered in his thoughts, gnawing at the edges of his tired mind.

Shaking off the remnants of sleep, Goran called out for a servant. It took a moment, but one of Radomir’s household eventually appeared - a thin, gray-faced man with the look of someone who had learned to survive by being invisible.

“Draw me a hot bath, then fetch my squires,” Goran commanded the stooped man as he swung his legs out of bed.

Once he was washed and scrubbed clean of last night’s filth, he felt some of the gnawing terror recede with it. Then, almost ceremoniously, he donned his lord’s clothes. First was his old doublet, white cloth and decorated with golden embroidery that wound in swirling patterns across the fabric. The stitched blue griffons, kept lovingly clean for years, stared back at him proud and defiant. In place of his beaten sword belt, he banded around his waist a shining thing of linked golden plates, each segment finely etched with geometric designs. Gone were the mud-stained cavalryman’s boots, replaced with soft leather shoes, each step now cushioned, silent. And finally, the circlet - a simple, elegant band of gold with a small sapphire set at its center, bought for a good sum in Albina-Suzdal.

It wasn’t yet a crown, but it would serve until he earned the right to wear one. The right that lay along a road seeming ever more fraught with hardship each passing day.